The General (1926)

Hands down, one of the best films I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. From start to finish, the acrobatics and ingenuity displayed in setting up, developing and pulling off grand events for a single laugh is mind-boggling. Streets ahead of any physical comedy of today, the film's strongest suit isn't actually its comedy or its stunts - as good as they are. The storyline here is not as razor thin as it may seem; it really comes alive when you see how earnestly everybody is invested in their roles. Again, much more so than the actors in today's "comedies."

The Usual Suspects (1995)

A complex web of intrigue and allegiances is weaved through basically a two-hour long monologue and shown in flashbacks, the ultimate outcome of which is the largest deceit of all. What really works here is how the concurrent story-lines are played - first the actual drug bust, then the interplay between the characters, then the looming question of an unseen character's identity. Each is played out and each carries as much weight as eachother, allowing the film to not only suck you in, but keep you there and on edge for the duration, when everything is wrapped up so neatly.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

With all the trappings of a typical Western, this film manages to avoid most of what makes Westerns repetitive by focusing solely on the characters. Characters, true which are fairly flat, except for the main character, whose arc even a blind man could see coming and whose obsession with gold comes on so fast and sudden, it may give some viewers whiplash.

However, the lust for gold is secondary to the interactions between the characters which come about during and especially after the search for gold becomes fruitful, and its those interactions which keep the film gripping throughout its second half.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Sometimes I feel that a movie is included here just because of who is in it or who created it and given the overly large emphasis this film's promotion gives to the author of the play its based on, I have no doubt that is the case here.

It's shot beautifully, like a film noir epic, but it has no story and nothing happens. The conflict that it has, does little more than make the unlikable and unrelatable characters simply bubble around until the conclusion, called only that because that's when the credits roll, not because anything particularly noteworthy happens there.