See the Star Archive for the ratings themselves — this is where I write up why each one earned its stars.
- UPDATE — CITIZEN KANE (1941) A newsreel obituary unravels into a portrait told by five people who barely agree on the man. The deep-focus photography still looks like it was filmed tomorrow.
- UPDATE — CASABLANCA (1942) A love story that keeps its politics and lets both win. Every line has been quoted so often it's easy to forget how well it was earned the first time.
- UPDATE — THE THIRD MAN (1949) Vienna in rubble, a zither on the soundtrack, and a friend who turns out to be the story's monster. The sewer chase is still the template for a hundred imitators.
- UPDATE — SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) A dead man narrates his own ending. Hollywood turns its camera on itself and doesn't flinch — ready for its close-up, indeed.
- UPDATE — SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) A village hires seven strangers to save it from bandits, and the action grammar it invented is still being copied by every heist and ensemble film made since.
- UPDATE — VERTIGO (1958) An obsession disguised as a mystery. The dolly zoom gave cinema a new word for falling, and the ending still unsettles on the hundredth watch.
- UPDATE — SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) Two musicians flee the mob in a girls' band and the joke never runs out of road. The closing line remains the best button on any comedy in the archive.
- UPDATE — LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) A desert epic built on a single, patient match cut and a performance that turns a real historical puzzle into pure spectacle without losing the man at the centre of it.
- UPDATE — 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) From bone to satellite in one cut, then a computer that argues for its own survival. Still the picture every space film is measured against.
- UPDATE — THE GODFATHER (1972) A wedding opens the door to a business run like a family and a family run like a business. The baptism sequence alone justifies the five stars.