Filming in Venice and Morocco whenever funds permitted, Orson Welles shot this adaptation of The Bard's play in scraps over four years in the late 1940s. The circumstances—there were literally years between shots—inspired kaleidoscopic editing and audacious improvisation:when costumes failed to arrive for a critical murder, Welles restaged it half-naked in a Turkish bath. The result:the most vibrant slice of Shakespeare-noir ever filmed.

Burt Lancaster, gruff and manly, and Tony Curtis, delicately fey, star in Carol Reed's howlingly homoerotic tale of two leotard-clad acrobats in '50s Paris, vying for each other's respect, for the affections of Gina Lollobrigida, and for mastery of the triple somersault. "Teach me the triple!" says wide-eyed Curtis to Lancaster. "Are you crazy?!" splurts Lancaster, outraged.

Time has been kind to Less Than Zero. This kitschy exposé of teenage dysfunction in Beverly Hills, now freed from the weight of Bret Easton Ellis, has much in it to admire, from the fluorescent art direction and uber-'80s soundtrack to Andrew McCarthy's glassy-eyed performance and Robert Downey Jr's eerily prescient depiction of a rehab recidivist.

The promising 1996 debut by Greg Mottola, The Daytrippers is the epitome of early-'90s Sundance syndrome, where fulsome character and sharp dialogue take precedence over narrative logic. Thus, on the whim of daughter Eliza (Hope Davis), the entire Malone family (including indie queen Parker Posey) take an entertaining but essentially unjustifiable day trip to Manhattan.

Arthur Penn's follow-up to Bonnie And Clyde, based on Arlo Guthrie's blues hit about his arrest for littering and how it led to him being rejected for service in Vietnam. Penn's movie follows Guthrie as he wanders the US from draft board to college to commune, providing a time capsule of the dreams and rituals of late-'60s drop-out America; and one that, with its lingeringly downbeat ending, now looks prescient.

Lengthy adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about poor black folk in Georgia during the first half of the 20th century was Spielberg's first 'serious' film. The territory is admittedly dark (incest, domestic violence) and, despite its faults, it succeeds thanks to visual skill and a sterling cast led by Whoopi Goldberg.

Miraculous, much underrated adaptation of posthumous Kieslowski screenplay by Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer. Cate Blanchett is a British teacher in Turin who, as an act of vengeance, becomes an unlikely terrorist. Young policeman Giovanni Ribisi falls in love and joins her on the run, but it's more about magic realism and haunting, luminous beauty.

Prompting both genuflections at its breakneck brilliance and gasps at its gung-ho grisliness, Roger Avary's comeback has been a startling opinion-divider. Fans of the Bret Easton Ellis novel will relish the former Tarantino sidekick's fidelity to the blank immorality of the prose, yet the movie bursts with visual ideas. James Van Der Beek is fearlessly irredeemable as Sean Bateman (younger brother of the American Psycho), flailing across campus, gobbling up narcotics, rock'n'roll (it has a great soundtrack), girls, boys, suicides, whatever.

A career highpoint for director Michael Caton-Jones, This Boy's Life also provides one of Robert De Niro's most memorably mannered performances as the parochial bullying stepdad to Leonardo DiCaprio's teen protagonist. With his seething Fargo accent and petty pronouncements ("I know a thing or two about a thing or two!"), he's always fascinating, even when the movie isn't.

Based on a John Cheever story, this 1968 movie stars Burt Lancaster as a seemingly prosperous and urbane middle-aged man who decides to swim back to his suburban house via all the pools in the neighbourhood. But his journey turns out to be an exposé of his personal downfall. An enigmatic meditation on the American Dream, marred only by a couple of hazy, slo-mo scenes that radiate '60s naffness.