Laura is the high mark of film noir and combines romance, suspense and sophistication to create a movie that plays on your emotions and explores the motivations, lusts and anger of men.

Dana Andrews discovers the beautiful advertising executive Laura, (Gene Tierney) is missing and one look at her portrait causes him to fall in love with her. Unknown to him behind the scenes the strings are being pulled by snobby columnist and (Clifton Webb) who too is in love with Laura but attempting to place the blame on her fiancé (Vincent Price) whom is loveable but not too bright.

We don't want to give away the movie but this love quatro gets an unexpected surprise half way through the movie that will keep you guessing to the very end. This is the first and considered the  best by many of  the Otto Preminger murder mysteries. If you've never seen Laura, do.  Though nearly sixty years old, this movie plays as well today as it did back then.   TOP

IS IT SAFE?
Yes, no, how can you know? This is the movie that gave dentists a bad name.  Mix in fleeing Nazis, secret agents, diamonds and a college kid, (Dustin Hoffman) caught in the middle and you have Marathon Man. Laurence Olivier's portrayal of the former Concentration Camp dentist is chilling and if you've ever had dry socket or a root canal without Novocain, this movie will hit a nerve and make you cringe.  Smart, eerie, thought provoking and surprising, this movie is often cited by the Hollywood elite as one of the best suspense thrillers of all time; our only advice: Get your teeth cleaned before you see this movie, not after!   TOP

Night of the Iguana

NR: 1964
Starring: Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr  
Director: John Houston
 

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Fast and furious fun like the kind you get with a James Bond classic.  This is the only movie we've ever seen that caused our blood pressure to remain high and our hearts to beat faster by just watching a movie for nearly the entire two hours.  What a wild ride! Seeing former teen "stoner" star Keanu Reeves in an action thriller proves him to be a multi-faceted actor of many talents.  He and Sandra Bullock heat up the screen with chemistry and the movie keeps you cheering all the way to the end.

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Made with less than $500,000 as TV movie, Duel is the first film which caused Hollywood to notice Spielberg.

Nothing fancy about this film.  It is raw psychological emotion with few words and the ultimate portrayal of road rage before anyone knew what it was.  We first saw this movie nearly 25 years ago and the images, storyline and suspense made an impression on us then, even at just ten years old!  Now that is a powerful movie. Years later we discovered the name of the movie and watched it with new eyes as an adult.  So simple in its storyline it is as brilliant a psychological thriller as Hitchcock's The Rope.   Duel proves it isn't the special effects that make the movie.  Ultimately it is the storyline and its ability to create empathy with the viewer which creates greatness TOP

Anytime you see a movie where people kill each other's spouses to avoid suspicion, Stranger's on the Train is its genesis.

The story follows the fiendish battle of wits between tennis pro Guy (Farley Granger) slightly off and sexually confused, (edited out of the American versions due to censors)  fan Bruno (Robert Walker), who proposes a mirror scheme of trading murders. Bruno kills Guy's unfaithful wife. Guy is suppose to kill Bruno's father. Hitchcock builds the plot meticulously and like The Sixth Sense, this is a movie you will want to see over and over.  The tension never leaves and each time you'll spot new clues you missed. The British version of Strangers on a Train is considered one of Hitchcock's crowning achievements. TOP

Talk about good timing, The China Syndrome premiered just weeks before its fiction became reality on Three Mile Island.  Unlike Manchurian Candidate, this movie wasn't pulled.

Jane Fonda plays the token female television news reporter who finds herself in the middle of a scandal when a routine story at the local nuclear power plant turns into a cover-up of epic proportions. She and cameraman Michael Douglas  befriend the plant's whistleblower (Jack Lemmon) Together they try and proceed to expose the hidden dangers hidden in the nuclear reactor. The China Syndrome closes out an era of socially conscious films dealing with the environment and overpopulation causes like Logan's Run and Solent Green embraced by teen and twenty-something Baby Boomers. -TOP

If you love political spy thrillers, Three Days of the Condor is right up your ally.  Redford plays a reader for U.S. intelligence who inadvertently escapes the  mass murder of his colleagues. Faye Dunaway is frightened into protecting him from the assassin who is now hunting him.  He wasn't suppose to get away. Max von Sydow plays the professional assassin hunting him in a suspense filled cat and mouse game. The ending is an unusual comment on justice and priorities, that through its unpredictability keeps the viewer guessing until the end.  TOP

Cape Fear 
  
PG: 1962
Starring: Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum,
Polly Bergen, Lori Martin
Director: J. Lee Thompson
106 Minutes

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This is the original and still the best.  What happens when an attorney doesn't put forth information that would cause his client to be acquitted on a technicality for a murder he commits?  That killer comes back to seek vengeance on the lawyer and his family by stalking and torturing him psychologically and ultimately trying to destroy him.  This is a wild ride that taps into every man's fear when it comes to protecting his family and the lengths he will go to in order to keep them safe.

All the Presidents Men

PG: 1976
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards
Director: Alan J. Pakula
139 Minutes

Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, Jason Robards

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Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein (Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Redford), whose investigation into the Watergate scandal prompted President Richard Nixon's  resignation. Their bestselling exposé is crafted into this suspense filled look  into one of the largest scandals in American politics.  It feeds on the paranoia anyone caught in a conspiracy feels.  Especially appropriate today in the current political climate where American news media are following political agenda's and neglecting facts rather than investigating and reporting what the rest of the world is seeing, hearing and knowing.  Watching All the Presidents Men gives a glimpse to the chaos that occurs when the truth supercedes the PR and America wakes up to the lie.

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