One of the most ferociously iconoclastic and experimental films of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais's 1961 feature, winner of the grand prize at that year's Venice Film Festival, is based on a script by Alain Robbe-Grillet. At its center is what seems to be a simple but unanswerable puzzle: Did its protagonist (Giorgio Albertazzi) have an affair the year before with a woman (Delphine Seyrig) he just met (or possibly re-met) at his hotel? The inquiry becomes an unsettling experiment in flattening the dimensions of past, present, and future so that any difference between them becomes meaningless, while Resnais's coldly formal but oddly dreamlike geometric compositions make space itself seem a function of subjective memory. Add to that Resnais's trademark tracking shots-long, smooth, a visual correlative of a wordless feeling-and this is a film that truly gets under the skin in almost inexplicable ways. One of the most influential works of its time. -Tom Keogh.

This beloved 1962 film from the golden age of international cinema can't help but look terribly self-conscious now, full of ambivalent nods to the contemporaneous vitality of the French New Wave (an obligatory iris shot of star Hardy Kruger, for instance, as seen through something like a tiny knothole). There is also a fair amount of dragging and wasted motion in the overlong story, but even that is forgivable given this film's extraordinary, soulful portrait of a beautiful if impossible relationship. Kruger plays Pierre, a former military pilot whose plane crashed after a bombing raid in Indochina. Killing a little girl in the process, Pierre suffers a psychological trauma that is lessened by the company of a 12-year-old orphan named Cybele (Patricia Gozzi), herself an abandoned, luckless child in need of companionship. Meeting every Sunday, the two become immersed in a deeply affectionate world of their own, where nothing unsavory actually occurs yet a full range of emotional colors seems possible-much like two innocents reborn in each other's eyes. Cowriter and director Serge Bourguignon adopts a fairy-tale tone for both the central bond between Pierre and Cybele as well as the oddly harsh, uncaring social environment that inevitably condemns their union. Bourguignon is lucky to have a couple of important allies: Maurice Jarre for the musical score and legendary cinematographer Henri Decae behind the lens. While these artists can't save Bourguignon from his own trite excesses as a visualist, they enhance his considerable feeling for the redemptive poetry of an unlikely love. -Tom Keogh.

This popular and beloved film, produced by Tsui Hark and directed by Ching Siu Tung, is a standout in the Hong Kong supernatural-action genre and spawned many sequels and copycats. A Chinese Ghost Story stars Leslie Cheung as Ning Tsei-Shen, a timid and likable tax collector. Looking for a place to stay the night, he comes upon a spooky abandoned temple occupied by a tough Taoist swordsman (Ma Wu). Despite his warnings, Tsei-Shen stays anyway. Later he encounters a beautiful maiden (Joey Wang) who he quickly falls in love with. Unfortunately, she is a ghost who is being forced to trap men for an evil spirit who feeds on their souls. A Chinese Ghost Story has been widely praised for infusing the genre with humor, action, romance, and inventive special effects. Memorable images include an attacking mile-long tongue and a cloak opening to dozens of ghastly decapitated heads. The final battle in hell is said to have inspired scenes in Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness. And the film has its share of homage: A group of crusty zombies are reminiscent of the skeletons in special-effects guru Ray Harryhausen's 7th Voyage of Sinbad-and they are eliminated by Tsei-Shen in comedic slapstick fashion, not unlike the style of Charlie Chaplin. [+]

The Oscar®-nominated film Tristana continues a devastating critique of social convention by director Luis Buñuel (Belle de Jour, That Obscure Object of Desire). Beautifully photographed in Toledo, Spain, the story is splendidly acted by Catherine Deneuve (The Last Metro, Belle de Jour) and Fernando Rey (The French Connection), in perhaps their finest roles. Rey is Don Lope, a liberated but hypocritical aristocrat who seduces his beautiful young ward, Tristana (Deneuve). Given the opportunity, she flees with her lover (Franco Nero, Camelot), but illness forces her to return and, later, marry Don Lope. The result is a tense union in which Tristana slowly gains the upper hand.

Growing up in the palace at a time when female servants are expected to be sexually available to the men they serve.

An all-but-incoherent sequel to (and completion of) trendsetting martial arts director Chang Cheh's Water Margin adaptation of Seven Blows of the Dragon. The plot was so familiar to Eastern audiences that it's barely sketched in. Most of the picture is just fighting, Robin Hood-style daring-do staged and shot in the standard slapdash style of 1970s kung fu. China's emperor enlists the Liang Shan Po outlaws in a struggle against the traitorous lord Fang Lau. Seven heroes, complete with cool nicknames (David Chaing is Yen Ching, "The Graceful One") are assigned to infiltrate Lau's impregnable, water-guarded fortress, and several of these paragons get to die staunchly in rivers of blood. Ti Lung, who costarred in John Woo's The Killer almost 15 years later, fights minus an arm, before gallantly expiring. (The broadcast TV version, while nominally uncut, switches to black-and-white during the exsanguinate scenes. ) -David Chute.