Remember the old days, when Pamela Anderson Lee was still just a Playboy Playmate turned Baywatch babe? You know-back before the bootleg release of her infamous home video with then-husband and ne'er-do-well rocker Tommy Lee, at which time the whole world got to compare Pam's barely adequate acting chops with her formidable skill at fellatio? Yes, those were the days (1996, to be exact), when a movie like Barb Wire represented dubious progress for the busty blonde, who was determined to make as big a splash on the big-screen as she did in the world's most popular syndicated TV series. Set in the year 2017 when the Second Civil War is in full force, this sci-fi action thriller stars Pam in the title role-a leather-clad biker babe ("don't call me babe," she warns) who runs a nightclub in the last free city in America. The rest of country is controlled by the "Congressional Directorate," a dictatorial superpower which suspects Barb of trafficking in black-market contraband. That gets her into plenty of trouble (and a lot of cleavage-revealing costumes), and. well, if any of this sounds even vaguely familiar, it's because this comic book-inspired movie is really just a shamelessly breast-enhanced variation on Casablanca, with Pam Anderson in the Bogart role. Taken for what it is, it's a brazen folly with action to spare, and as guilty pleasures go it's surprisingly enjoyable. What-you were expecting Oscar material? -Jeff Shannon.

The action of the film is set in 1079, the last year of Boleslaus The Bold's rule. This is a story of conflict between the king and Bishop of Cracow, which ended tragically with the bishop's death. The first and foremost a portrayal of two powerful adversaries with strong personalities and inflexible characters.

Scorned by reviewers when it came out, this concentrated dose of commando death-dealing to legions of Nazi machine-gun fodder has acquired a cult over the years. In 1968 Clint Eastwood was just getting used to the notion that he might be a world-class movie star; Richard Burton, whose image had been shaped equally by classical theater training and his headline-making romance with Elizabeth Taylor, was eager to try on the action ethos Eastwood was already nudging toward caricature. Alistair MacLean's novel The Guns of Navarone had inspired the film that started the '60s vogue for World War II military capers, so he was prevailed on to write the screenplay (his first). The central location, an impregnable Alpine stronghold locked in ice and snow, is surpassing cool, but the plot and action are ultra-mechanical, and the switcheroo gamesmanship of just who is the undercover double (triple?) agent on the mission becomes aggressively silly. -Richard T. Jameson.

Landmark films never lose the ozone-snap excitement of their special historic moment. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the first feature shot outdoors in three-strip Technicolor, and its exhilaration in forest and lake, mountain and cloud remains as fresh and privileged today as it must have been in 1936. Director Henry Hathaway, already a seasoned veteran, had a fine pictorial eye along with sturdy storytelling instincts; he knew just how to place his cast in dynamic settings without getting fussy about it (a talent still going strong 33 years later in True Grit). No one would mistake Trail for a great film, but it's abundantly enjoyable, and a model of golden-age craftsmanship. This was Hollywood's fifth version of John William Fox's novel about a long-running Appalachian feud and its interruption by modernity in the form of a mining engineer (Fred MacMurray). The very young MacMurray, Henry Fonda (the scrappingest of the Tolliver clan), and Sylvia Sidney (as the cousin he loves) form an appealing romantic triangle, while elders Beulah Bondi and Fred Stone (the Tollivers) and Robert Barrat (patriarch of the rival Falins) nurse generations' worth of sorrows. Nigel Bruce is droll as MacMurray's colleague, Spanky McFarland represents the Great Smokies chapter of the Little Rascals, and hillbilly Greek chorus Fuzzy Knight gets to sing two peerless ballads, "Twilight on the Trail" and "Melody from the Sky. " And if that eldest Falin boy seems familiar, add 20 years and a war bonnet and you've got The Searchers' Chief Scar, Henry Brandon (here Henry Kleinbach). -Richard T. Jameson.

Idealized portrait of young delinquents' lives and rehabilitation. Cast: Aleksandra Slaska, Tadeusz Janczar, Tadeusz Lomnicki. 1954. B/W. 115 mins. English Subtitles.

First Polish comedy made after WW II. A newly married couple are continually thwarted in their efforts to find some sort of home in a devastated Warsaw. Cast: Danuta Szaflarska, Adolf Dymsza, Jerzy Duszynski. 1947, black & white. 102 min. English subtitles.

As both an actor and a director, Clint Eastwood has had a string of unparalleled critical and commercial successes, from his trademark Westerns to the Dirty Harry action films. This set of six Eastwood films captures the actor as both cowboy and cop, from the 1970s to the '90s. Eastwood ventured into new territory with 1971's The Beguiled, a creepy and seductive thriller about an injured Civil War soldier who causes strife at an all-girls school. While there, he tempts an innocent girl (Elizabeth Hartman), and engages in an unnerving battle of the minds with the school headmistress (Geraldine Page, at her tortured best). The same year, Eastwood burst onto screens with Dirty Harry. This action blockbuster introduced the world to Harry Callahan while making waves with its aggressive violence and nonstop thrills. Eastwood himself helmed the vigilante Western The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) as well as the comedy Bronco Billy (1980), which films show Eastwood at different ends of the cowboy spectrum: a vengeful family man seeking revenge and an amiable traveling showman who runs a Wild West extravaganza, respectively. With his Oscar-winning film Unforgiven, Eastwood showed himself as the master of the revisionist Western, crafting a morally complex tale of Western justice that turns the notion of good guys and bad guys on its head. And he proved he still had star status with the thriller In the Line of Fire, playing an aging FBI agent who takes on a cunning psycho (John Malkovich) determined to assassinate the president. While this selection doesn't feature any Sergio Leone Westerns or Eastwood's later acclaimed dramas, it remains a great snapshot of a long and illustrious career. [+]

Succesful attempt to apply western style of the movie to reality of Polish days soon after the WWII. Real "Polish western". Cast: Gustaw Holoubek, Jerzy Przybylski, Zofia Mrozowska 1964, B/W, 93 mins. English Subtitles.