Like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and The Graduate, The Last Picture Show is one of the signature films of the "New Hollywood" that emerged in the late 1960s and early '70s. Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry and lovingly directed by Peter Bogdanovich (who cowrote the script with McMurtry), this 1971 drama has been interpreted as an affectionate tribute to classic Hollywood filmmaking and the great directors (such as John Ford) that Bogdanovich so deeply admired. It's also a eulogy for lost innocence and small-town life, so accurately rendered that critic Roger Ebert called it "the best film of 1951," referring to the movie's one-year time frame, its black-and-white cinematography (by Robert Surtees), and its sparse but evocative visual style. The story is set in the tiny, dying town of Anarene, Texas, where the main-street movie house is about to close for good, and where a pair of high-school football players are coming of age and struggling to define their uncertain futures. There's little to do in Anarene, and while Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) engages in a passionless fling with his football coach's wife (Cloris Leachman), his best friend Duane (Jeff Bridges) enlists for service in the Korean War. Both boys fall for a manipulative high-school beauty (Cybill Shepherd) who's well aware of her sexual allure. But it's not so much what happens in The Last Picture show as how it happens-and how Bogdanovich and his excellent cast so effectively capture the melancholy mood of a ghost town in the making. As Hank Williams sings on the film's evocative soundtrack, The Last Picture Show looks, feels, and sounds like a sad but unforgettably precious moment out of time. -Jeff Shannon.

If a pig can herd sheep, then the field is wide open for animals with unusual talents, and not just on Letterman's Late Show, either. Buddy, the golden retriever who made an unexpected hit in the initial Air Bud (1997), shows just how far you can stretch one joke over the course of two movies. Which isn't as far as the makers hoped, unfortunately. While the first film-about a performing dog who runs away from an abusive clown, befriends a lonely boy, and becomes a basketball star-had its charms, this one pushes the gag to the limit. This time, Buddy the dog learns to play football, even as he foils a plan by an international group of thieves to steal animals and start their own zoo. This is one that will hold the kids' attention while the adults do something else, at ease in the knowledge that their children are watching an innocuously entertaining movie. -Marshall Fine.

Blake Edwards's delightful 1959 comedy stars Cary Grant as a World War II submarine captain whose preference for a by-the-book command reluctantly yields to certain realities. Chief among those is that Grant's first officer (Tony Curtis, who impersonated Grant that same year in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot), a shameless hustler, is better than the navy at delivering whatever supplies the ship and crew need to keep going. But when Curtis sneaks a handful of Philippine refugees and several gorgeous nurses onto the all-male sub, the skipper not only has to cool down his crew but deal with an unexpected feminine influence on ship protocol. The film is a great deal of fun, sprinkled with the director's trademark sight gags (including one of Edwards's best, involving a torpedo and jeep), and graced with his unmistakable lilt. Grant is in great form, his comic brilliance almost impossibly effortless. -Tom Keogh.

This gritty 1997 film marks the merging of several budding talents: sisters Sylvia and Alex Sichel, who serve as writer and director, and actors Alison Folland (To Die For), Tara Subkoff, and Murmurs singer Leisha Hailey. The idea behind the movie was the Sichels' awe at ever having survived being teenage girls in the big city. All Over Me is about Claude (Folland) a shy, overweight teen who works in a pizza parlor after school and is secretly in love with her best friend Ellen (Subkoff). But Ellen is far ahead of Claude in development. She has an older boyfriend, and she harbors a bad case of destructive self-loathing that erupts frequently and with a fury. But All Over Me isn't just a teenage cautionary or coming-out tale. It's as much a story of New York and its unbearably long, hot summers as it is the downtown music scene or teenage dreams and struggles with adult issues. More than that, it's a well-made film that has its own rhythm, working slowly to give us insight into the girls' natures. It succeeds admirably in taking us back to that age when everything seemed possible despite the dangers of the city closing in. Growing up has never felt as close to home or as scarily realistic. [+]

Congratulations to director Paul Weiland for taking a stupid premise and creating a truly romantic look at marriage. Mercedes Ruehl is dying of a weak heart, and her husband, Jean Reno, hopes to keep his promise to bury her in their tiny Italian village, despite a lack of room in the cemetery. While he is trying to keep his friends and neighbors out of the local bone yard, she is quietly seeking candidates for his next wife. Many movies treat marriage as a death sentence. For Roseanna looks past daily bickering to the enduring love and warm companionship of well-matched lovers. Clearly defined characters, a disarming dénouement, and passionate performances transform the silly plot into a playful valentine. -Rochelle O'Gorman.

Jude Law makes the term emotional vampire literal in this somber, restrained tale of a modern-day bloodsucker in London. As the improbably named medical researcher Steven Grlscz (pronounced "grilsh"), he's a cool charmer who woos lonely women and feeds off them at the height of their emotional intensity. He begins his seduction of Elina Löwensohn (who played a vampire herself in Nadja) just as relentless police detective Timothy Spall starts an investigation of him for the murder of his former lover Kerry Fox. It's the start of an unusual battle of wits. Equal parts AIDS metaphor, ancient myth with a modern twist, and shrewd mind game, Immortality (originally released as The Wisdom of Crocodiles) is an art-movie interpretation of the vampire myth, too chic and bloodless to be compelling but curiously fascinating in its way. Leong Po-chih directs with clockwork precision and emotional restraint, elegantly creating a handsome but impersonal world where Grlscz's painful need for love is an extreme symptom of modern life. Law plays his part as a fascinating paradox, hiding his feelings and schemes behind a mask of impenetrable ennui that periodically bursts in a gush of sorrow and disappears just as fast, while Löwensohn is almost as hard to read with her angular face and unusual accent. The meticulous detail and cool images make this more a dispassionate mind game than a horror movie, where the ideas never quite come to life but become a curious enigma. -Sean Axmaker.