(52) The Maltese Falcon (1941), d. John Huston, US
The chase for Hammett's black bird, and the vanity of human wishes - greed in particular.

(53) La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) (1939), d. Jean Renoir, Fr
The daddy of all those 'weekend gathering in a country house' movies, and among much else a celebration of life as living theatre.

-- The Wizard of Oz (1939), d. Victor Fleming, US
The red shoes, the yellow brick road...

(55) Fargo (1996), d. Joel Coen, US
Pregnant police chief Frances McDormand sees off the black hats in a marvelously deadpan thriller about a kidnap that goes spectacularly wrong.

(56) Don't Look Now (1973), d. Nicolas Roeg, GB
Wintry Venetian chronicle of a death foretold.

(57) Touch Of Evil (1958), d. Orson Welles, US
Proof that post-Kane Welles was not a downward spiral, this flamboyant exercise in baroque film noir begins with the cinema's most exhilarating and complex opening-shot ever.

(58) Annie Hall (1977), d. Woody Allen, US
Well, la-di-dah - and Diane Keaton sets a fashion for waistcoats and baggy pants. Plus the escaping lobsters.

-- Cinema Paradiso (1988), d. Giuseppe Tornatore, It/Fr
A childhood to die for...?

-- L.A. Confidential (1997), d. Curtis Hanson, US
A Veronica Lake lookalike trapped in a web of male desires.

-- The English Patient (1996), d. Anthony Minghella, US
A dying man in a Tuscan monastery lets his memories wander.

(62) The Apartment (1960), d. Billy Wilder, US
The perils of ingratiation, or why not to lend your pad to a philandering boss.

-- The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), d. Orson Welles, US
RKO hacked it down to what Welles saw as a travesty of his original gently ironic elegy for a lost America. A masterpiece, none the less.

-- Un Coeur en hiver (1991), d. Claude Sautet, Fr
A troubling study of a menage a trois, complex and effectively underplayed.

-- Reservoir Dogs (1991), d. Quentin Tarantino, US
The heist gone wrong, '90s-style. Tarantino lands a straight left - smack on a glass jaw.

(67) High Noon (1952), d. Fred Zinnemann, US
'Oh, don't forsake me...' Marshal Coop does his duty while his Quaker bride waits. A classic old-school Western.

(68) Mean Streets (1973), d. Martin Scorsese, US
The first time Scorsese really showed what he had in him: Catholic turmoil, masochistic machismo, a love of rock 'n' roll and a genius for motion pictures.

-- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), d. Sergio Leone, It
Splashy, excessive, cynical US Civil War yarn, with lashings of hot spaghetti sauce.

(70) His Girl Friday (1940), d. Howard Hawks, US
Hecht and MacArthur's Front Page given a brilliant twist by turning Hildy Johnson into Walter Burns' ex-wife. Cary Grant vs. Rosalind Russell, the repartee was never faster or funnier.

-- Mirror (1974), d. Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR
Archive footage and shimmering forests create an autobiographical cine-poem, a beautiful enigma.

-- The Usual Suspects (1995), d. Bryan Singer, US
Labyrinthine ultra-modern thriller, satisfyingly clever.

-- Trainspotting (1995), d. Danny Boyle, GB
A novel Edinburgh drug story.

(74) Chungking Express (1994), d. Wong Kar-Wai, HK
Two lovelorn Hong Kong cops, two interlinked stories - speedy, wry, sympathetic and very catchy.

-- Seven (1995), d. David Fincher, US
Impressively nasty thriller featuring a couple of mismatched cops, a cunning serial killer and the Seven Deadly Sins.