Richard Linklater's warm-hearted comedy is elevated to late-night stoner classic status by a manic central performance from Jack Black, here masquerading as a substitute teacher in a posh American private school who educates his privileged pre-teen charges in matters RAWK. Great, throwaway fun.

Much-misunderstood 1975 John Schlesinger reading of Nathaniel West's classic parody of Hollywood's corrupting influence in the '30s. Bristling with brilliant scenes exposing the individual's vulnerability in a crowd which worships bland celebrity, it lurches between satire and the truly horrifying. Donald Sutherland and Karen Black (miscast) star, while Conrad Hall photographs.

Robert Aldrich's most profitable movie presents war as mean-spirited farce: Major Lee Marvin offers a bunch of jailed WWII Gls—including John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson and Donald Sutherland—the chance to join him on a suicide mission into Occupied France. The movie wastes its greatest actor, Robert Ryan, but it's a relentless work—violent, funny and deeply cynical.

Startling documentary about an American family torn apart by sexual scandal

San Francisco, 1969: do enough acid and anything is possible. A gaggle of (mostly) gay freaks and flower children (and latterly, disco diva-to-be Sylvester) become the Cockettes, a utopian, ragged-arsed theatre troupe who wow the West Coast but flop in NY. This funny, moving doc eventually unravels in a roll call of deaths, both drug and AIDS-related. They were stardust, but all too briefly.

Candid 1994 documentary about iconic, sexually dysfunctional artist

Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy is one of the standard bearers for 'arthouse' cinema. And though the movies occasionally hint at self-importance (in Zbigniew Preisner's intrusive scores and the colour-coded shooting style), Kieslowski's steely control of storytelling always keeps the narratives fiercely compelling

This made Edward Burns' name as an actor-writer-director when it won Sundance back in '95 on a matchstick budget. He plays one of three Irish-American siblings trying to understand each other and the women in their lives. Straight-talking, romantic yet unsentimental, it's the kind of comedy we wish Woody Allen still made. Or, for that matter, Burns himself.

After all the talk of paying tribute to original 1970s cops David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson throw out any genuine resemblance to those freewheeling dudes and simply take the piss for 90 minutes. There are some canny gags and clever pastiches of buddy-movie clichés, but they give up on it halfway through and just cruise camply.

Amiable comedy westerns starring James Garner, from 1969 and 1971. In the first he brings order to a lawless gold-rush town; in the second he's a conman passing off his sidekick (Jack Elam) as a deadly gunslinger. Both are droll delights, with amazing supporting casts that include Bruce Dern and Walter Brennan