"David Lean again, in perhaps the best translation of a Dickens novel to the screen, and surely the greatest of Dickens’s novels too. Crisp, brilliantly cast, a flawless rendition of the period, and amazingly faithful to the novel, Great Expectations is the model that every Masterpiece Theater rendition of an English classic strives to emulate, only better, far better than that."

"I had the great honor of being at a screening of the restored print in Los Angeles some years ago. I think this is Bertolucci’s masterpiece, though one could argue he made several of them. Ravishingly beautiful visuals, terrific performances, and among the most liquid and complex camerawork ever. A study of fascism, based on the book by Alberto Moravia."

"My highest recommendation in the “reread” category. Sure, you’ve read Fitzgerald’s masterpiece somewhere between freshman and senior year in high school, but I can guarantee it will mean so much more now. Reading this again, when you’re a little older and a little wiser, is like being in a room you’ve been in before. Only this time the lights are on."

"This has got to be the most wonderful film about that transitional period that groups of close friends in young adulthood must go through as they accept more and more the responsibilities of maturity. There is so much spontaneous camaraderie, natural humor, truth, and, finally, Chekhovian sadness in this gentle masterpiece. Plus, those Italian slackers sure know how to dress!"

"For instance, A Tree of Wooden Clogs, which would have to be one of my favorite films. A year in the life of a peasant commune in Italy — again, it’s poor souls living through a year, so you’re getting a sense of seasons and hardship and community, and a simple, very basic deprived existence. I think that’s a masterpiece, that film."

"A true American masterpiece. Perfectly modulated, admirably restrained, and building in tremulous emotion scene after scene. If waiting eight years between features yields such thoughtful and deeply accomplished work then we should all give in to patience and do the same. One of the best films of this young century, and sure to outlast many of this or any other year."

"A masterpiece and one of the key achievements of 1970s New Hollywood—maybe only behind the Godfather films. Its mix of loving classicism, European influences, and ’70s permissiveness is jolting and desperately real. American small-town life has never been rendered with such empathy, unapologetic frankness, sadness, and despair. Timothy Bottoms’s performance is the most wrenching portrayal of male adolescence ever."