Almost certainly the wildest movie ever made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Satan's Brew is as unhinged as some of the director's masterpieces are rigorously controlled. A kind of gross-out comedy on art and fame, Satan's Brew takes as its hero a celebrated poet, played by longtime RWF cohort Kurt Raab, whose resemblance to Peter Lorre is uncanny. In the first of the film's many affronts to good taste, the poet kills his wealthy mistress in an S&M game, thus prompting a financial crisis-he may even be forced to start writing again. The movie careens from one jaw-dropping oddity to the next, inspiring the suspicion that Mike Myers may have seen it before inventing his "Dieter" character. This depraved three-ring circus is not the way to be introduced to Fassbinder, but the director's fans will be amused. To quote the movie itself: "An epic from the sordid depths of humanity!" -Robert Horton.

Paris, 1943. Three Allied parachutists land unexpectedly and turn upside down the peaceful lives of Stanislas, a conductor, and Augustin, a decorator. The only way to get rid of their unwanted guests is to lead them to the free zone! Louis De Funès, Terry-Thomas, Bourvil-if these names don't mean anything to you, your credentials as a cosmopolitan might be extremely suspect. Three of the biggest figures in the history of European filmed comedy signed on to Gérard Oury's La Grande Vadrouille (The Big Stroll) , and the resulting alchemy brought forth box-office gold: $17. 2 million in ticket sales, a French national record which stood for 30 years until Titanic, the very symbol of the ugly American film industry if there ever was one, knocked it from its perch. Terry-Thomas sparkles as an English pilot lost in occupied France during the Second World War; Bourvil and Louis De Funès play Parisians who somewhat involuntarily aid the ubiquitous Resistance by smuggling a British major across German lines. De Funès, best known for his portrayal of the wacky French police officer in the highly popular series of Gendarme films, is a manic, elastic comic genius, a proto-Rowan Atkinson with a rubbery face and a knack for physical humor. Here, his portrayal of conductor Stanislas LeFort remains alert, witty and moving-even when he's spazzing out. The antic script, cowritten by the intelligent and able Danièle Thompson (Cousin, Cousine), plays more like Hogan's Heroes than any war movie really ought to-the stodgy, autocratic Germans are perpetually undermined by those scruffy, resourceful French scalawags-but humor is Vadrouille's, and Oury's, justification, and almost all of the jokes work. It would be another few years before French cinema could muster up the courage to treat the Vichy period, and France's wartime complicity, with anything like genuine honesty. [+]

David Lean backs up vicious wit with tender romance in this thrilling adaptation of Harold Brighouse's play. As Henry Hobson, a tyrannical bootshop owner, Charles Laughton (Mutiny on the Bounty, Ruggles of Red Gap) is a comical drunk of Falstaffian proportions. When Hobson forbids his daughters to marry (their unpaid labor supports his pub visits!), his eldest daughter defiantly sets her cap for Willie, the shop's best bootmaker. Brenda de Banzie (The Man Who Knew Too Much), as the eldest daughter, hounds the flabbergasted Willie into marriage, resulting in a thriving new shop of their own. As Willie, John Mills (Great Expectations, The Big Sleep) performs a gradual metamorphoses from painfully awkward to gently confident. Together, the sweet couple turn a crafty business deal into a loving partnership. David Lean's finest films, from Great Expectations (1946) to Lawrence of Arabia (1962), are resolutely sober, which is more than can be said of Henry Horatio Hobson in his wonderfully comic encounter with the moon in Hobson's Choice (1954). Lean's only other comedy was Blithe Spirit (1945), but here he approaches matters of the heart with a surprising lightness of touch and wins a marvelous performance from Charles Laughton-himself soon to make his one and only film as a director, Night of the Hunter (1955). The setting is late-19th-century Salford, England (the black-and-white location filming is exceptional), and widower Henry Hobson forbids his three daughters to marry to avoid paying their dowries. Romance will not be thwarted by economics, and much humorous conflict ensues, interspersed with some serious and even disturbing moments. [+]

Anthony Hopkins gives a subtle but searing performance as a lawyer who aspires to a political career but takes dangerous steps. Eager to escape the boredom of his marriage, John Strickland (Hopkins) first just flirts with the daughter of some friends. But when a social worker named Paula Gerard (Lise Hilboldt) approaches him for help with a case, she turns out to be not only young, pretty, and attracted to John, but is also the heiress to a large fortune. As the affair progresses, John discovers that both his wife and his mistress have secret sides-which come forth after a gruesome murder. A Married Man is slow but meticulous, and the breadth of psychological detail possible in a four-hour miniseries creates a vivid picture of marriage and adultery. Hopkins excels at the kind of stark inner conflict that burns with a cold but brilliant flame. -Bret Fetzer.

Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse rolls over you and wraps you in its stylish embrace. The plot, such as it is, follows Vittoria (luscious Monica Vitti, The Red Desert) as her engagement falls apart and she slowly falls into a giddy but anxious affair with Piero (Alain Delon, Le Samourai, Purple Noon), a trader in Rome's stock exchange. Like Ingmar Bergman (Scenes from a Marriage, Persona), Antonioni examines the nuances of human relationships-but where Bergman is dense and dialogue-driven, Antonioni is spare and visual (there's maybe a page of dialogue in the first fifteen minutes of L'Eclisse). Every frame is like an exquisite black and white photograph, yet there's nothing static about this movie. It's fluid, sleek, and graceful, achieving its own kind of visual music. L'Eclisse contrasts opposing elements: Light and shadow, noise and silence, laughter and death, love and money, desire and dissatisfaction. Critics often describe the movie as a portrait of modern alienation, but they focus too much on Vittoria herself; while she finds her own life wanting, all around her Antonioni's camera captures a much larger world, full of as much vitality as despair, as much hope as loss. This is a movie essential to anyone's understanding of what movies can be. -Bret Fetzer.

From one of the world's greatest directors of women comes a candid and revealing look at discrimination against women in 1930's Japan. The highly acclaimed film chronicles the heartbreaking fall of a young telephone operator who consents to become her boss' mistress in order to support her alcoholic father and put her brother through school. Isuzu Yamada is tremendous as the tough heroine condemned by society for behavior that would have been tolerated if she were a man.