Columbia pictures International

It was directed with energetic skill by Top Gun Tony Scott, but this breathtaking 1993 thriller (think of it as an adolescent crime fantasy on steroids) has Quentin Tarantino written all over it. True Romance is really part of a loose trilogy that includes Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, with a crackling Tarantino screenplay that rides a fine line between raucous comedy and violent excess. Christian Slater plays Clarence, the comic-book lover who meets a beguiling prostitute named Alabama (Patricia Arquette), confronts her vicious pimp (Gary Oldman), and embarks on a cross-country odyssey with $5 million worth of Mafia cocaine. Mayhem ensues, culminating in a favourite Tarantino climax-the "Mexican standoff"-in which a roomful of guys are pointing guns at each other, waiting to see who shoots first. Brutal, profane, and totally outrageous, True Romance is not for everyone, but with a supporting cast that includes Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, and Val Kilmer (as the ghost of Elvis!), you can be sure this movie will never be boring. -Jeff Shannon It was directed with energetic skill by Top Gun Tony Scott, but t his breathtaking 1993 thriller (think of it as an adolescent crime fantasy on steroids) has Quentin Tarantino written all over it. True Romance is really part of a loose trilogy that includes Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, with a crackling Tarantino screenplay that rides a fine line between raucous comedy and violent excess. Christian Slater plays Clarence, the comic-book lover who meets a beguiling prostitute named Alabama (Patricia Arquette), confronts her vicious pimp (Gary Oldman), and embarks on a cross-country odyssey with $5 million worth of Mafia cocaine. Mayhem ensues, culminating in a favourite Tarantino climax-the "Mexican standoff"-in which a roomful of guys are pointing guns at each other, waiting to see who shoots first. Brutal, profane, and totally outrageous, True Romance is not for everyone, but with a supporting cast that includes Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, and Val Kilmer (as the ghost of Elvis!), you can be sure this movie will never be boring. [+]

In the spy-crazed film world of the 1960s, Len Deighton's antihero Harry Palmer burst onto the scene as an antidote to the James Bond films. Here was a British spy who had a working-class accent and horn-rimmed glasses and above all really didn't want to be a spy in the first place. As portrayed by Michael Caine, Palmer was the perfect antithesis to Sean Connery's 007. Unlike that of his globetrotting spy cousin, Palmer's beat is cold, rainy, dreary London, where he spends his days and nights in unheated flats spying on subversives. He does charm one lady, but she's no Pussy Galore, just a civil servant he works with, sent to keep an eye on him. Eventually he's assigned to get to the bottom of the kidnapping and subsequent "brain draining" of a nuclear physicist, all the while being reminded by his superiors that it's this or prison. Things begin to get pretty hairy for Harry. Produced by Harry Saltzman in his spare time between Bond movies, the film also features a haunting score by another Bond veteran, composer John Barry. -Kristian St. Clair, Amazon. [+]

Vacationing in northern California, Alfred Hitchcock was struck by a story in a Santa Cruz newspaper: "Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Homes". From this peculiar incident, and his memory of a short story by Daphne du Maurier, the master of suspense created one of his strangest and most terrifying films. The Birds follows a chic blonde, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), as she travels to the coastal town of Bodega Bay to hook up with a rugged fellow (Rod Taylor) she's only just met. Before long the town is attacked by marauding birds, and Hitchcock's skill at staging action is brought to the fore. Beyond the superb effects, however, The Birds is also one of Hitchcock's most psychologically complicated scenarios, a tense study of violence, loneliness, and complacency. What really gets under your skin are not the bird skirmishes but the anxiety and the eerie quiet between attacks. The director elevated an unknown model, Tippi Hedren (mother of Melanie Griffith), to being his latest cool, blond leading lady, an experience that was not always easy on the much-pecked Ms. Hedren. Still, she returned for the next Hitchcock picture, the underrated Marnie. Treated with scant attention by serious critics in 1963, The Birds has grown into a classic and-despite the sci-fi trappings-one of Hitchcock's most serious films. [+]

Brian De Palma's 1998 thriller is largely an exercise in airing out his orchestral, oversized visual style (think of his Blowout, Body Double or Raising Cain) for the heck of it. The far-fetched story featuresNicolasCage as a crooked police detective attending a championship boxing match at which the Secretary of Defence is assassinated. The unfortunate Secretary's right-hand man (Gary Sinise) happens to be Cage's old friend, a fact that complicates the cop's efforts to reconstruct the crime from conflicting accounts-a directorial strategy bearing similarities to Kurosawa's Rashomon. The outrageousness of the scenario essentially gives DePalma permission to construct a baroque cathedral of spectacular camera stunts, which (he well knows) are inevitably more interesting than the hoary conspiracy plot. (The opening scene alone, which runs on for a number of minutes and consists of one, unbroken shot that moves in from the street, following Cage up and down stairs and in and out of rooms until finally ending ringside at the match, is breathtaking. ) The shifting points of view-based on the contradictory statements of witnesses-also give De Palma licence to get creative with camera angles and scene rearrangements. The script bogs down in the third act but De Palma is just revving up for a big, operatic finish that is absolutely gratuitous but undeniably impressive. Yes, it's style over substance in Snake Eyes but what style you're talking about. -Tom Keogh.

After making a critically acclaimed debut with the low-budget independent drama Heavy, writer-director James Mangold took on this gritty crime drama, which was highly touted as Sylvester Stallone's long-awaited return to a serious dramatic role. With an illustrious cast of co-stars, including GoodFellas alumni Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Ray Liotta, Stallone plays Freddy Heflin, the ineffectual sheriff of a New Jersey suburb that a group of corrupt New York cops have turned into their own off-duty criminal empire. Deaf in one ear and desperate to prove his worth, the sheriff takes on the cops with standoffish assistance from an Internal Affairs cop (De Niro), resulting in an explosive climactic showdown. The stellar cast can't be beat, and Stallone is quite good as the overweight cop whose pride is on the line. Mangold's script is wildly uneven, but Cop Land still packs a white-knuckled punch. -Jeff Shannon.

Fran Rubel Kuzui's 1992 tongue-in-cheek vampire comedy is sugar-coated horror, an unusual mix of the cute and scary, with a splash of postmodern pop nonsense to give culture critics something to think about. Kristy Swanson plays a Valley Girl who learns she belongs to a line of ancient vampirekillers. After training under the watchful eye of a mentor(Donald Sutherland), she becomes a spandex-wearing, kung-fu kicking, stake-stabbing babe and the mortal enemy of a narcissistic master vampire (Rutger Hauer). The accent is all on cheery attitude, though the action can be as authentically unnerving as any other halfway decent monster movie. Paul Reubens, formerly Pee-wee Herman, has a small role as Hauer's fanged familiar. -Tom Keogh.

Thelma & Louise is a feminist manifesto writ large on the big screen, a smart and funny gender reversal of the standard Hollywood buddy formula, a road movie extraordinaire, with characters who became instant cultural icons. No matter how you define it, Ridley Scott's 1991 box-office hit pinched a nerve and made the cover of national news magazines for tweaking gender politics like no movie before or since. Callie Khouri's screenplay overhauls the buddy formula with its story about two best friends (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis) who embark on a liberating adventure that turns into an interstate police chase after a traumatic incident makes both women into fugitives; they are en route to a destiny they could never have imagined. The perfect casting of Sarandon and Davis makes Thelma & Louise a movie for the ages and Brad Pitt became an overnight star after his appearance as the con-artist cowboy who gives Davis a memorable (but costly) night in a roadside motel. -Jeff Shannon.