The Criterion Collection

My favorite full-length Fellini (I'm also quite fond of "The Temptation of Dr. Antonio" in "Boccaccio '70"), vignettes of Rimini in the 30s. At graduate school in Bologna, I showed it as the first film in our film club series.

Endlessly quotable movie about college grads who don't leave.

Almost like Kicking and Screaming, but with difficult British accents and the end of the 60s.

Bergman's masterpiece is surprisingly entertaining and not that dark, compared to many of his others.

This is the Czech New Wave film for me, I saw it years before any others, and it's great.

Tarkovsky is possibly my favorite director. This brave Soviet film is all about the role of art and Christianity in Russia. Like all Tarkovsky, its ponderous and poetic. Bothered by a headache, I watched it in four sittings but enjoyed it. The story of the casting of the bell is especially good.

Fassbinder's masterpiece is a dark indictment of the German economic miracle with a hard-to-like anti-heroine. But it is one of his most watchable movies. I saw this for the first time as a freshman in college and it grew on me. The ending is excellent.

Reed knows how to create a noir atmosphere better than anyone. And Orson Welles as Harry Lime: "You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." A ride on that big wheel was the grand finale of my first trip to Europe back in 2001.

One of the best comedies ever, naturally.

Haven't seen "Alexander Nevsky" but the Ivans are very good, the stylistically Satanic tsar giving in to his demons. Stalin might have killed Eisenstein over it.

Seen "Easy Rider" of course but "Five Easy Pieces" is better, for me Jack Nicholson at his best as a wayward soul from a family of musicians out west. The annoying hitchhiker and diner scenes are amazing.

Admittedly saw with a headache and maybe bad subtitles, but I didn't get much out of it - a colorful mess with a few good shots.