Duck Soup (1933)

My introduction to the Marx Brothers was a learning experience. First, I learned that Alan Alda pawned his character Hawkeye from MASH completely from Groucho. Second, I learned how annoying Harpo is. Thirdly, I don't think I have ever seen a film before that packs as many jokes-per-minute as this does. They fly so thick and fast that its actually astounding that they managed to squeeze a story into the mix: bare bones, every second of it, and there just to drape jokes over. But you couldn't ask for anything more from a comedy than literally non-stop laughs.

Carrie (1976)

The film is so perfectly done and causes you to empathise so deeply with the main character, that you put it aside and you hope - beyond reason - that things will turn out OK for her. During the entire first-date sequence and first half of the prom, I cannot recall being so happy for a character as she exudes, one can feel, her first extremely infectious brightening beams of happiness.

It should also be noted that although she has supernatural powers and is teased mercilessly, she was actually a lot less crazy than some of the other students in the film.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

One of the few films that I've seen which attempts to ape a particular style and manages to do so, in terms of its writing and direction, so well that it could be one of the genre's masterpieces.

As every aspect of the story unfolds, its multi-layered intrigue deepens, peeling back layer after layer of sordid intrigue without at any point becoming muddled or confused. It's focus remains solely on untangling the web that is thrown up around the characters and its that driving force that propels the film forward.

Compelling from the get-go and a masterful film noir.

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.