1. The Dirty Dozen (1967): Directed by Robert Aldrich. With Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy and Donald Sutherland

2. Bitter Victory (1957): Directed by Nicholas Ray. With Richard Burton, Curd Jurgens, Ruth Roman, Raymond Pellegrin, Anthony Bushell, Alfred Burke and Christopher Lee

3. Saving Private Ryan (1998): Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Ed Burns, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Jeremy Davies and Giovanni Ribisi

4. Where Eagles Dare (1968): Directed by Brian G. Hutton. With Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, Patrick Wymark, Michael Hordern, Donald Houston and Peter Barkworth

5. The Guns of Navarone (1961): Directed by J. Lee Thompson. With Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, Richard Harris and Irene Papas

6. Objective, Burma! (1945): Directed by Raoul Walsh. With Errol Flynn, James Brown, William Prince, George Tobias, Henry Hull, Warner Anderson and John Alvin

7. Play Dirty (1968): Directed by Andre de Toth. With Michael Caine, Nigel Davenport, Nigel Green, Harry Andrews, Patrick Jordan and Daniel Pilon

8. The Secret Invasion (1964): Directed by Roger Corman. With Stewart Granger, Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Edd Byrnes, William Campbell and Henry Silva

9. The Dark of the Sun (1968): Directed by Jack Cardiff. With Rod Taylor, Jim Brown, Yvette Mimieux, Peter Carsten, Kenneth More, Andre Morell, Olivier Despax and Guy Deghy

10. The Inglorious Bastards (1978): Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. With Bo Svenson, Peter Hooten, Fred Williamson, Michael Pergolani, Jackie Basehart, Michel Constantin and Debra Berger

1. Damian in The Omen (1976): Could it be… Satan?! Imagine a Very Special Jerry Springer Show episode called “My Son is the Antichrist but I Love Him Anyway,” and you get a fair idea of this (in)famous horror opus, directed by Richard Donner. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick play the not-so-proud parents of the little satanic spawn, who’s portrayed as a glowering, dark-haired tot whose mere presence radiates enough evil to affect the people around him. So other characters get hanged, impaled by spikes, or decapitated by runaway sheets of glass. The whole mess leads to Devil Jr. staring at us (or maybe at the sequels ahead) with not-quite-wholesome eyes. Hey, nobody said raising kids isn’t hell.

2. Esther in Orphan (2009): Well, this one should help bring down adoption rates. A couple (Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard) bring a nine-year-old Russian girl named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) from the orphanage into their home, and some unusual things start to happen. Like nuns getting bludgeoned with hammers, or cars with deaf daughters in them careening out of control, treehouses bursting into flame… It gets to the point where Farmiga and her son are in the hospital while Sarsgaard tries to drown his depression at home with wine and the wicked orphan is in hoochie-mama, vamp dress, coming on to him. Since the movie was directed by the dude behind the House of Wax remake, at least some of the intention may have been comic. In any case, the skin crawls.

3. The kids in Battle Royale (2000): It’s bad news when your teacher is Takeshi Kitano. In this no-holds-barred futuristic satire, the Japanese government (having apparently decided that Lord of the Flies is a sound basis for the educational system) sets an entire class of ninth-graders loose on a deserted island and orders them to kill each other. No rules, just only-the-strong-survive ethics, leading what began as a field trip into a harrowing bloodfest. Director Kinji Fukasaku takes his daring concept into some pretty oh-no-he-didn’t-go-there-did-he areas, with juvenile combat bringing out the inner beast out of these students. And I thought my high-school was harsh! Keep an eye out for Chiaki Kuriyama, “Go Go” from Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

4. Linda Blair in The Exorcist (1973): What is it with kids and demons? Blair plays Reagan, the young girl whose body becomes a playground for a particularly vile spirit with a penchant for soup-spewing and colorful profanities. Okay, so it isn’t really the girl’s fault that she’s evil, but damn, she’s horrifying all the same, especially with director William Friedkin gleefully hurling every shock effect in the book into the viewer’s face. Blair was reportedly chosen out of a huge list of hopefuls. I wonder if the interview went along the lines of the one in Bruno. “So, does your child have any problem with projective vomit, foul words, masturbating with crucifixes or covering her body with sores?” “Well, as long as she gets famous…”

5. Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son (1993): Props to whoever saw Culkin in the Home Alone flicks and thought, “You know what, that boy isn’t cute, he’s scary” and decided to cast him as the smiling lil’ creep in this thriller. The tiny blond 12-year-old comes to stay with his uncle and aunt, but it’s not long before his cousin (Elijah Wood) starts to realize that his innocence is really just a mask worn by a budding psychopath. Animals are slaughtered (aren’t they always in these kinds of movies), traffic accidents are triggered, food is poisoned, F-bombs are dropped. Wood is by far the better actor of the two, but when it comes to just being a sinister, tow-headed runt, he just can’t compete with Culkin.

6. The kids in Village of the Damned (1960): If this one still plays incredibly twisted today, I wonder how it must have seemed to 1960 audiences. Everybody in a small, quiet English village suddenly falls unconscious one day; nine months later, every woman is giving birth at the same time to children who aren’t very innocent. In fact, the kids all sport the same platinum hair, glowing eyes, and knack for reading minds and forcing people they don’t much care for to kill themselves. George Sanders tries to figure out the reason: Alien visitors? Atomic residue? In any case, if you thought one terrifying child actor was bad, imagine having to deal with a whole classroom full of them. My heart goes out to teachers everywhere.

7. Patty McCormick in The Bad Seed (1956): Next to some of the hellions in this list, Rhoda the original problem child seems almost quaint by comparison. Quaint, that is, until she kills you for taking away her penmanship medal or for not appreciating her curtsies. This adaptation of the Broadway hit is not a very good movie; it’s stagy, high-pitched, and at times unintentionally amusing when it should have been scary. Still, the beaming, pigtailed terror carries a creepy edge, even if the movie changes the original ending to include both an act of divine punishment and a ridiculous end-of-credits spanking that must have had viewers even back in 1956 rolling their eyes at each other.

8. The baby in It’s Alive (1974): Larry Cohen is one of the most underrated mavericks of 1970s horror, always spiking his low-budget projects with bold, subversive ideas. In this cult hit, he envisions the next generation of kids as a failed experiment that’s born with an alien head, huge fangs, claws, and an insatiable hunger for blood. Daddy (John P. Ryan) goes after Junior with a loaded revolver and plenty of paternal issues. While Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby is the high-class monster-infant classic, Cohen’s project is cruder but just as powerful, ditching glossy production values and big stars for a straight-to-the-jugular force. Don’t miss the sequels, which get increasingly campy but never abandon the original’s familial subversion.

9. The brood in The Brood (1979): Director David Cronenberg said he was inspired by his divorce during the making of this oh-that’s-just-wrong grossout classic. Would you trust a psychiatrist played by Oliver Reed? Unfortunately for them, the characters in the movie do and play into the not-so-good doctor’s experimental techniques about turning anger, frustration and assorted other bad vibes into bodily mutations. That’s bad news for sensitive but clueless Art Hindle, whose troubled wife (an unforgettable Samantha Eggar) has channeled her energies into a pack of deformed children who attack kindergarten teachers with hammers. If there’s a gorier demonstration of maternal love than Eggar’s “birth” scene, then I’d rather not see it.

10. Bill Mumy in the “It’s a Good Life” episode of The Twilight Zone (1961): Before becoming a regular in such TV shows as Disneyland and Lost in Space, Mumy played a kid who drives his family up the wall with his strange mental powers. Modern viewers probably know this Twilight Zone gem from the spoof The Simpsons did in one of their Halloween specials, but the original has an enduring creepiness that’s still worth tracking down.

The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939): Everybody seems to love this classic fantasy, but can people imagine how utterly bizarre this might have seemed back then? I mean, a house crushes a witch and an army of dwarves shows up to celebrate, the Scarecrow gets at one point torn apart (hay everywhere, like severed limbs) and then set on fire, and the Wicked Witch of the West melts before your very eyes. That’s not even mentioning the flocks of flying monkeys, or the terrifying sight of Bert Lahr with stuffed cheeks and a bow on his mane (in close-up!). No wonder the little ones in the audience started believing that “there’s no place like home.” With World War II just on the horizon, you gotta start indoctrinating isolationism early!

Return to Oz (Walter Murch, 1985): Because, you know, the original wasn’t creepy enough. So who needs happy endings? Dorothy has returned to Kansas from Oz, and she’s deeply disturbed by what she saw there. So Auntie Em puts her in a mental hospital (!). She escapes and again goes somewhere over the rainbow, only this time her friends include a talking chicken, a Jack-o-lantern pumpkin-creature, and a metallic clock-man. Oh yeah, and the Wheelers are just about the freakiest things ever! Imagine The Neverending Story, The Dark Crystal and all those early ‘80s puppet creepfests rolled into one, and you have Return to Oz.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 1971): Not the recent Tim Burton remake, which, though it has Johnny Depp grinning while decked in Michael Jackson’s clothes, isn’t nearly as disturbing as the original. Children are invited into the titular Chocolate Factory only to be dumped into vats of bubbling brown liquid, blown into huge balloon, and tossed into an abyss. All while the Oompa-Loompas do their little dance. Just in case Gene Wilder’s slightly deranged look as Willy Wonka doesn’t clinch it, there’s the infamous “tunnel boat sequence” to remind you this fable is set in the ‘70s, baby! It takes some doing to add more creepiness to a story by Creep King Roald Dahl.

Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, 1941): It’s a tight race for which Disney movie is the most disturbing of them all. Bambi, with its sniffling animal-voices and maternal assassination? Pinocchio, with its helplessly growing noses and children-turning-into-donkeys visions? We’ll go with this classic, which combines all of the greatest traumas Uncle Walt ever unleashed upon an audience of kids. So imagine: You’re born with huge ears, everybody makes fun of you, your mother is taken away before your very eyes, your only friend is a circus mouse, you’re painted like a clown, and mocked by jive-talking crows. And then you get drunk, and the most alarming procession of psychedelic elephants parades before your eyes. You know, The Exorcist only wished it was half as horrifying.

The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004): This Christmas chestnut was hailed by some as a new advance in movie magic, with its CGI-reshaping of human beings. It’s a revolution, all right; the only problem is that the glassy-eyed, store-front mannequins that director Robert Zemeckis uses to people his Yuletide yarn are scary as all get out. There’s something eerily jerky about the way they move and act, so that it doesn’t matter that it’s Tom Hanks pantomiming three or four characters, they all look like skeletons with a layer of congealed rubbery goo over their bones. A dream? More like a nightmare. Personally, I was more pleasurably disturbed by Zemeckis when he was sneaking in cartoon nudies in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Song of the South (Harve Foster, 1946): Racism is, sadly, not an alien feature to older cartoons. (Just check out the stereotyped “darkies” that fill many of the early Loony Tunes hits. Heck, Bugs Bunny himself used to wear blackface.) Since Disney liked pushing animation to the next level, it outdid them, too, with this half-cartoon, half-live-action ode to Uncle Tomisms which makes Gone With the Wind look boldly progressive by comparison. Blacks here are happy, lazy and nostalgic for the good ole times (of slavery?), practically overgrown children. And, as if that wasn’t enough, there’s Brer Rabbit being thrown into a pit of spiky plants. Who knew Disney had so much nightmare fuel in him?

The Witches (Nicolas Roeg, 1990): Roald Dahl territory again. This time, it’s courtesy of Nicolas Roeg, no stranger to freakiness (Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth). What he’s doing directing a children’s movie is anybody’s guess, though he does capture the Dahl flavor, meaning that this will keep kids up at night imagining being turned into rats. That’s right, children here are turned into rats by a coven of witches led by Anjelica Huston. The climax finds the boys turning the tables onto the hags, turning them into really disturbing, rodent-like animatronics, with Mr. Bean himself delivering the fatal blow (with a meat cleaver) into the screeching rat version of Huston.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (Roy Rowland, 1953): Man, the 1950s were weird. This wacky-ass fantasy sends Tommy Rettig into an alternate world that looks like Arabian Nights on crack, where he’s chased by thugs and forced to play a giant piano for his professor, Dr. T. (not to be confused with Mr. T., who’s a pussycat when compared to the bizarrely fey Hans Conried). There are rollerskating villains joined at the beard, Mom looks like dominatrix, dungeons are full of painted dancers who break into big, ornately choreographed gay numbers, and everything ends with a nuclear explosion. And three little words: “The Elevator Song.”

Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009): I still remember mothers dragging their kids out of this one, complaining about the “darkness.” Well, I dig this one, but I can’t play them: There’s some spooky, heady stuff here. First of all, the passageway young Coraline takes from one world into the next looks like a pulsating intestine. Second, you get to see grimacing ghostly faces trapped inside a mirror. And third, the way Other Mother turns into a hunchback-tarantula is downright terrifying. And let’s not even get into the sewed-on buttons and mouths, or the old, rotund neighbors and their risqué showgirl number.

Moonwalker (Jerry Kramer, 1988): Michael Jackson as a “nice” gangster who tries to save the children of the world from drugs sent by evil Joe Pesci. By dancing and turning into a car and a spaceship and… Sometimes words fail us. Just watch.

Frank Sinatra in The Man with the Golden Arm: Sinatra beat out none other than Marlon Brando for the coveted role of a recovering heroin addict in Otto Preminger’s controversial 1955 film. Though he had had already won an acting Oscar for From Here to Eternity, Sinatra went even further in proving that he was more than just a skinny crooner with this harrowing, instinctive and gutsy performance. He was often clearly disinterred in his later roles (maybe it was all the partying with his Rat Pack pals), but in such scenes here as his tender romance with Kim Novak and the cold-turkey sequence, Sinatra is never less than electrifying.

Jimmy Cliff in The Harder They Come: Like Sinatra, Jimmy Cliff seemed to have a naturally magnetic rapport with the camera. The great Jamaican reggae singer showed terrific screen presence in this 1972 cult movie, in which he played a naïve country boy who comes to the big city to sell his songs but ends up exploited by the music industry. Taken advantage of by record promoters and criminals, he runs afoul of the law and, as the police closes in on him, his music shoots to the top of the charts. The celebrity-outlaw plot is hardly original, but the scene where Cliff sings the title song remains a great cinematic moment.

Bette Midler in The Rose: The Divine Miss M always had a rollicking bawdy energy in her performances, but nothing could beat her breakthrough role in this 1979 drama for sheer animal force. Mark Rydell’s film about a raucously self-destructive female rocker is transparently based on the life of Janis Joplin, but Midler grabs the role with both hands and makes it her own with a centrifugal mix of blood, sweat and tears. The movie itself is bleary and depressing, but Midler (who also performs a great roster of hits, including “Keep On Rockin’” and “Fire Down Below”) gives it an aching, soulful center.

Dean Martin in Rio Bravo: As the gigolo-jester of the Rat Pack, Martin could (and often did) simply glide in and out of a movie role, leaving little more than streaks of hair grease. Under master filmmaker Howard Hawks’ direction in this peerless 1959 western, however, he actually interacts with his fellow actors and creates a living, breathing character. As “Dude,” sheriff John Wayne’s soused deputy, Martin is excellent as a man plagued by drink and shame who pulls himself together through Hawks’ favored themes of action and camaraderie. And when he sings a duet with Ricky Nelson, it’s not an obligatory song inserted because of the singer’s contract but simply the characters hanging out sublimely.

Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were: Love her or hate her, you can’t deny Babs’ strong screen presence. She won an Oscar for her 1968 debut Funny Girl, and proved herself an accomplished physical comedienne in What’s Up, Doc? (1972), but her best, most subtle performance may be in Sydney Pollack’s fairly irresistible 1973 romance. The story proceeds as a long flashback detailing the ups and downs in the relationship between a politically committed woman (La Streisand) and a pleasure-seeking hunk (Robert Redford) over the course of the years. It’s an easy movie to make fun of in some ways, but the rapport between Streisand and Redford on the screen weaves a moving, bittersweet effect.

David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth: So Bowie comes from another planet? Who saw that one coming? Nicolas Roeg is one seriously strange director, and for this very strange 1976 science-fiction fable he found the perfect performer in Bowie’s otherworldly androgyny. He portrays a visiting alien (no, not Ziggy Stardust) who lands on earth and experiences humanity’s potential for greed, is chased by a government man (Rip Torn), and gets involved with a troubled girl (Candy Clark). I’m not sure whether Bowie is an actually skilled actor or this is the perfect combination of persona and role, but in any case you can’t take your eyes off him.

Queen Latifah in Chicago: Rob Marshall’s 2002 Oscar winner showcases plenty of actors turned singers (Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere), but I was more impressed by former ‘90s rap-gal Queen Latifah’s turn as a prison matron. Her song “When You’re Good to Mama” is one of my favorites in a production full of great numbers, providing amble evidence of Latifah’s humor, sensuality, and presence. A critic once wrote that she’s the kind of woman Mae West wanted to be. He got that right.

Cher in Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: Cher won critical accolades for her roles in Silkwood (1983) and a Best Actress Oscar for Moonstruck (1987), but my own favorite performance by her is in this unfairly forgotten 1982 drama directed by the great Robert Altman. The story, taken from a minor play, focuses on the dreams and disappointments of a group of small-town waitresses, and Cher’s good-humored worldliness is a standout even next to such accomplished actresses as Sandy Dennis, Karen Black and Kathy Bates. Famous critic Pauline Kael compared her to the great Arletty (Children of Paradise), and it’s a tribute to Cher that she doesn’t disappoint.

Tupac Shakur in Gridlock’d: Unlike most rappers who flocked to movie screens, Tupac Shakur had a genuinely electric presence that was worthy of the young Sean Penn. He was terrifying in Juice (1992) and touching in Poetic Justice (1993), but my favorite performance by him was in Vondie Curtis-Hall’s spiky 1997 comedy-drama, released a year after his untimely death. He and Tim Roth play ex-junkies trapped in a sea of red tape, trying to get through hospital bureaucracy while staying clear of cops and thugs. Roth gets the showier, jumpier role here, but Shakur’s surprising range of emotions, from slyness to desperation to warmth, shows that his death was a real loss to the film world.

Justin Timberlake in Southland Tales: Okay, okay. So Timberlake’s really not a good actor, and Richard Kelly’s 2007 bomb’s really not a good movie. Yet his sequence alone deserves a spot in any list.

Madonna in A Certain Sacrifice: It’s not uncommon for performers to have pre-stardom roles they’d rather not mention in their resumes. Indeed, Madonna went as far as try to ban this 1979 student film, which was only released in 1985 when she hit the big time. Other than the prurient fascination of watching the Material Girl-to-be still raw, brunette and screechy, this scummy little affair is best left alone. It’s incredibly boring, the production values make home videos look opulent, and Madonna only has a few scenes. Those brave enough (or masochistic enough) to stick with it are rewarded with a vision of Ms. Ciccone at the center of a cannibal-revenge orgy. Even with this kind of incentive, however, the real sacrifice is watching the movie.

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hercules in New York: Ah, Arnie. Way before he developed a sense of humor about his ridiculously bountiful physique in Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator, he was the butt of the unintentionally hilarious jokes in this dreadful 1970 action-comedy. As Hercules (of course), Schwarzenegger looks like a huge slab of beef wrapped in a tonic, with English words struggling to make it past his thick Teutonic diction. “Hercules has no need of money.” “How dare you touch Hercules?” “What is all this zoological talk about male and female animals?” Now imagine Arnie struggling with these sentences while Arnold Stang looks on from the sidelines, delivering one face-palm after another. Suddenly, Red Sonja doesn’t look so bad.

Sylvester Stallone in The Italian Stallion: Before Stallone can laugh at rival Schwarzenegger’s early career blooper, he should check his own closet for skeletons. Also in 1970, the struggling young Stallone appeared (reportedly for $200) in a low-budget skin-flick named Party at Kitty and Stud’s, a pretty unappetizing item with lots of body hair (did nobody shave in the early Seventies?) and grimy shagging. Then, after the box-office smash of Rocky, the movie was resurrected under the title The Italian Stallion. It’s sort of fascinating to see John Rambo himself flexing his muscles before a smeary mirror and smacking a chick with his belt, but, like most porn movies, it gets tedious and unappealing in a hurry. And Stallone doesn’t even get to do a hot-looking chick, either. Bleh.

Jennifer Aniston in Leprechaun: After she became one of the Friends, Aniston would always dismiss the idea that she had starred in this horrible, low-budget 1993 horror flick, saying with tongue in cheek that it was just some girl who looked like her. Alas, no, that’s really her as the token attractive-but-tough chick trying not to laugh while being chased by a bloodthirsty little green dwarf. Warwick Davis overacts joyously as the Leprechaun, but Aniston looks pretty embarrassed to be in a movie where the pint-sized Irish monster kills people with pogo sticks. Who’d have thought then that, some fifteen years later, she would have been ex-Mrs. Brad Pitt and that the Leprechaun series would have been in its fifth sequel? (Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood, anyone?)

Ronald Reagan in Bedtime for Bonzo: Reagan was no Brando, but in his early days as a Warner Bros. contract player he appeared in a bunch of good movies, like Dark Victory and Kings Row. Of course, when he was starting to get into politics, the only movie everybody recalled was this quite silly 1951 comedy, which had him sharing the screen with a mugging chimp named Bonzo. To be fair, this is not the worst movie Reagan was connected to (that would be That Hagen Girl), but the image of a presidential candidate playing straight man to a monkey was irresistible to his opponents. Reagan wisely was a good sport about it, probably understanding that the role gave him experience for dealing with the other primates in the White House.

Johnny Depp in Private Resort: Whether giving human form to Tim Burton’s fantastic visions or playing a mischievous pirate in mindless blockbusters, Johnny Depp is certainly one of his generation’s best actors. But even brilliant actors have to start somewhere, and for Depp that somewhere was this smarmy, witless ‘80s sex comedy. He and Rob Morrow (another since accomplished actor who probably doesn’t brag about this one in interviews) play horny teenage guys trying to tap every ass over the course of a weekend at a Florida vacation resort. It’s all too typical of the decade’s t&a romps (gratuitous nudity, casual homophobia, and randy old people are some of the standbys), though Depp isn’t bad in it, showing hints of his eccentric sensitivity in the midst of the story’s imbecility.

Adam Sandler in Going Overboard: With stinkers like Billy Madison, Little Nicky and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry in his resume, you’d think nothing would embarrass dedicated jester Sandler. Well, think again. This pre-Saturday Night Live cringefest, made in 1989 for what looks like twenty bucks, is bad enough to make Carrot Top himself feign amnesia. The scrawny, struggling Sandler plays a scrawny, struggling comedian who tries out his brand of wackiness aboard a luxury liner. Laughs ensue? No, but headaches do. I’m not sure if he’s doing a tribute to Jerry Lewis or what, but mightier talents than him have been crushed by less obnoxious material than this. Bonus for embarrassed-future-stars watchers: Billy Zane as “King Neptune.”

Jim Carrey in Rubberface: I remember seeing this one advertised around 1995, after Carrey became huge with Ace Ventura, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber. Suddenly, here was a movie being advertised as the comic’s lost hilarious work. You know, companies have been sued for false advertisement for less. Rubberface isn’t even the right title; it’s Introducing… Janet, and it’s a 1983 made-for-TV Canadian flick that’s not quite an hour long. And man, does it blow. Carrey is in fact a minor supporting role, but already he’s doing that crazy mugging we all (well, at least some of us) know and love him for. Carrey did plenty of bad flicks before he got famous (remember Once Bitten?), but none as flaccid as this glorified afterschool special.

Tom Cruise in Endless Love: It takes a powerful drive to survive having such a bomb as Franco Zeffirrelli’s drippy coming-of-age romance. Cruise isn’t the protagonist (that unlucky fellow is Martin Hewitt), but his minor role nevertheless stinks up the joint. He pops up as a cheerful young arsonist with a squeaky voice and a penchant for needlessly removing his shirt. Already you can sense Cruise’s ruthless presence, as well as the emotional void underneath the metallic exterior. Well, it could have been worse. He could have been stranded with Brooke Shields in an island in The Blue Lagoon.

Jeff Goldblum in Death Wish: Let Goldblum’s role as “Freak #1” in this famous, reactionary Charles Bronson box-office smash stand for the pinnacle of Early Roles Stars Probably Wish They Could Forget.

Marlon Brando in The Godfather/Last Tango in Paris (1972): How low was Marlon Brando’s career around time of production of The Godfather? So low that the greatest actor in the world had to actually audition for the part of gangland capo Don Vito Corleone in order to appease the studio bosses. Luckily for film history, the casting was approved and Brando’s performance became the stuff of cinematic legend. And that same year, he was also magnificent in Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial Last Tango in Paris, creating a portrayal of a man so emotionally electrifying that, decades later, the film still shocks and enthralls. Two astounding performances in the same year. Talk about coming roaring back.

John Travolta in Pulp Fiction (1994): Just when it looked like John Travolta was doomed to forever appear in movies about talking babies, a certain movie-geek director remembered the excellent early work he did in Saturday Night Fever and Blowout, and, going against everyone’s advice in Hollywood at the time, gave him one of the juiciest parts in his movie. That director was Quentin Tarantino, and the movie was Pulp Fiction. Playing a spaced-out, out-of-shape killer, Travolta reminded everybody of what a daring actor he can be. From there, it was a long line from Get Shorty to… Battlefield Earth? Well, it was great while it lasted.

Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler (2008): Nobody was cooler than Mickey Rourke in the 1980s, when he’d bring his perversely soft voice and handsome slyness to movies like Diner and Year of the Dragon. Then something went wrong. Rourke decided to focus on a boxing career, did awful movie after awful movie, and seemed to get addicted to plastic surgery that left his face looking like an alligator-skin boot. It’s to his credit that whatever painful impact all of these experiences had on him is in ample display in his brilliant performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, where he draws on his past with powerful honesty. Let’s hope he looks ahead to his future with as much boldness.

Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986): Dennis Hopper was in danger of becoming the screen’s go-to nutty hippie when he horrified his way back into everybody’s consciousness with his unforgettable role in David Lynch’s surreal classic. As Frank Booth, a dedicated pervert who gets his jollies by beating up and raping a lounge singer (Isabella Rossellini) in between giggly inhales of some mysterious gas, Hopper is nothing less than the greatest grotesque in a world filled with great grotesques. Lynch once said that Hopper’s glee in campaigning for the part almost scared the director out of hiring him. Now that’s Method acting!

Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man/Tropic Thunder (2008): Great talent is not much without the discipline to use it. For a long while, it looked as if that was the case with Robert Downey Jr., who in the 1980s and 1990s proved again and again that he had gifts to burn, and was indeed simply burning them away with a string of irresponsible “bad boy” behavior. Then, in recent years, he settled himself down, sharpened his focus, and proved himself one of new treasures of American movies. His one-two punch last year with Iron Man and Tropic Thunder showed Downey at his peak, bringing edginess to a rather conventional blockbuster and bold brilliance to Ben Stiller’s satire. More to come, we all hope.

Martin Landau in Ed Wood (1994): Martin Landau had been working nonstop for decades, but, despite such eye-catching roles as the gay killer in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, stardom still eluded him. In the late 1980s he gave superb supporting performances in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), but it wasn’t until his role as the broken-down Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood that the Academy recognized what a marvelous actor he had been all along. Playing Lugosi with a need for drugs and egocentric tantrums, Landau gives the dying horror-movie star the crumbling dignity of Lear. His Best Supporting Actor win was one of the most richly deserved Oscars ever given.

Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights (1997): The problem with so much of Burt Reynolds’s career was that he didn’t take it seriously enough. His screen presence in films like Deliverance (1972) and White Lightning (1973) was that of a true star, yet he was soon spending more time kidding around with his buddies on screen than concentrating on giving a performance. Like Tarantino with Travolta, director P.T. Anderson gave Reynolds his confidence back with a beautiful role in his slam-bang porn-industry epic Boogie Nights. As adult-movie director Jack Horner, Reynolds provides the charm, the slyness, and the coolness that had been missing in his work for far too long.

Robert Forster in Jackie Brown (1997): For his sensitive eye to forgotten actors, Quentin Tarantino has received the unofficial “comeback king” title. Pam Grier is wonderful in Jackie Brown, but the movie’s great rediscovery is Robert Forster’s unexpected grace in the supporting role of bail bondsman Max Cherry. Forster had played everything from Arab warrior to cowboy over the course of many years, and he had virtually disappeared in Z-movie purgatory when Tarantino chose him to star in his criminally underrated 1997 film. As Max, Forster’s lined face conveys a lifetime of missed choices and the hint of hope for romance. It’s a gross injustice that his beautiful performance lost the Oscar to Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting.

Jean-Claude Van Damme in JCVD (2008): After his heyday as an exotic action star in the 1980s and early 1990s, the “muscles from Brussels” was relegated to the direct-to-DVD action shelf at Blockbuster Video. Was there more to him than brawny biceps and the ability to do slips? The answer, in Marbrouk El Mechri’s meta JCVD, is a resounding “yes!” Playing himself (or the movie’s version of himself, in any case), Van Damme reveals a candid grace and sense of humor that were only hinted at in his big, bone-breaking extravaganzas. It’s not quite an official “comeback” yet, but we’re hoping he’s getting armfuls of projects now.

Neil Patrick Harris in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004): Like Van Damme, Neil Patrick Harris was another forgotten celebrity who, tired of being seen as a trivia question, went all-out and beat everybody to the punch with a brilliant, who-would-have-thought self-parody. He comes late into this stoner masterpiece, but his portrayal of himself as a horny, tripped-out jerk steals the movie clean from Harold and Kumar. Just his nonstop torrent of dirty lines (“Come on, dudes, let’s pick up some trim at a strip club. The Doogie line always works on strippers”) deserves some kind of award.

1. Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro: When De Niro burst into Mean Streets (1973), it was clear that Scorsese had found the ideal actor to put his passions up on the screen. Childhood friends, the two were a match in intensity, and their collaborations are treasures of volatile cinema. There’s the simmering violence of Taxi Driver (1976), the messy emotions of New York, New York (1977), the overpowering physicality of Raging Bull (1980), and the cutting humor of The King of Comedy (1983). And then, after a hiatus, a new run of masterful collaborations: Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995). When these two got together, there was a palpable sense of danger. When is Marty going to dump Leonardo DiCaprio and go back to his ideal actor?

2. John Ford and John Wayne: Wayne was Ford’s vision of the American cowboy, yet it’s amazing how complex that image is. The Duke had appeared in small parts for Ford, but it wasn’t until Stagecoach (1939) that the director found his star. Strapping, strong, and more of actions than words, Wayne’s persona in his early works with Ford (including The Long Voyage Home, They Were Expendable and Fort Apache) showed an idealized view of the Old West pioneer. Yet who can forget the downright scary, psychotic side that both men explored so brilliantly in The Searchers (1956), or the unforgettable sense of regret that they found in The Wings of Eagles (1957) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)? Their works together remain textbook examples of collaborative art.

3. Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich: “There is no Marlene Dietrich! I am Marlene Dietrich,” Von Sternberg once thundered when asked one too many times about his most famous Galatea. Indeed, there’s a feeling of immersion between filmmaker and star in their movies together, something almost invasive, like Von Sternberg is making love to Dietrich through the lenses and we shouldn’t be watching. To watch The Blue Angel (1930), Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935) in order is to see the rise and fall of one of cinema’s most intense relationships. They were artists who make great work on their own, but together they created sublime art.

4. Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant: Grant always had a dark gleam in his eye, a hint of a ladykiller hiding behind that tuxedo-ready exterior. Hitchcock was more than happy to bring out that side. Much of the suspense and beauty of Notorious (1946) rests in the offhand callous way Grant acts toward Ingrid Bergman, pretending (or is he?) to be a jerk in order to get her to do her job as a spy. Before that, there was the movie-long question of whether this handsome rogue could be a killer in Suspicion (1941). To Catch a Thief (1955) make the most of the actor’s dapper sleekness, and North by Northwest (1959) used Grant’s brilliant sense of humor to suggest the moral awakening of a playboy. Hitch was never known for his fondness for actors, but with Grant he found the perfect embodiment of his suave, sardonic worldview.

5. Howard Hawks and Humphrey Bogart: I almost went with Bogie’s collaborations with John Huston, but ended up picking Hawks. Why? Because Hawks, more than any other director, understood what made stars, well, stars. The Bogart persona had already been defined by the time the actor appeared in Hawks’ To Have and Have Not (1944), yet it’s amazing how much sharper and more surprising he is here than in his earlier films. There was a unique rapport between Bogart and Hawks—both were stoic men who loved adventure and strong women, and this easy understanding carries over into The Big Sleep (1946). Watching these films, there’s a marvelous sensation of friends playing bridge.

6. Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman: The artistic relationship between the great Swedish director and his favorite muse was as intense as Von Sternberg’s with Dietrich. Yet where Von Sternberg seemed to be making love to Dietrich, Bergman is more interested in funneling his anxiety through Ullman, making her feel and act his suffering, as it were. They first worked together in Persona (1966), where the actress gives flesh to her maestro’s raging, tangible, often obscure horrors. Whether confronted with a cavalcade of fright in Hour of the Wolf (1968) or with the waste of war in Shame (1968), Ullman always gave Bergman’s torment a human face. They also collaborated in The Passion of Anna (1969), Cries and Whispers (1973), Face to Face (1976), The Serpent’s Egg (1977), and Autumn Sonata (1978).

7. Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski: Talk about a match made in insane heaven. Herzog and Kinski first met when the great future German director was still a boy and the actor was one of a bunch of people living in his apartment. When they collaborated years later in Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), it was a sublime combination of crazed visionaries, both of them burning with passion and neither willing to step down from their uncompromised visions. There are hair-raising stories about the behind-the-scenes struggles between Herzog and Kinski over the course of the years, yet Woyzeck (1979), Nosferatu (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987) survive as artistic monuments feeble men would never even attempt. And check out Herzog’s My Best Fiend (1999) for a heartfelt portrait of their work together.

8. Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune: Even after Kurosawa put Mifune in a suit in The Bad Sleep Well (1960), it’s impossible to forget the actor as the feral samurai in The Seven Samurai (1954). The bond between Kurosawa and Mifune was one between warriors, of artists known for their dynamic force on the screen. There’s the postwar energy of Drunken Angel (1948), the hard-boiled toughness of Stray Dog (1949), the astounding vitality of Rashomon (1950), and the atomic-age anxiety of I Live in Fear (1955). Their work in Throne of Blood (1957) updated Shakespeare, while The Hidden Fortress (1958) gave way to Star Wars. Also check out Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), High and Low (1963), and Red Beard (1965).

9. Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni: Directors often use actors as alter-egos, though rarely with the frankness, grace and humor palpable in the give-and-take between Fellini and Mastroianni. The actor was the dissolute playboy trying to find sense in modern, decadent Rome in La Dolce Vita (1960) and the frazzled, creatively blocked filmmaker in 8½ (1963), and in both cases brought a delicate, sensitive edge to characters that could have otherwise been unlikable prigs. Mastroianni’s other roles for Fellini—in City of Women (1980), Ginger and Fred (1986) and Intervista (1987)—are marvelously sly critiques of their own roles as an aging sexy star and a mischievous master director. Fellini’s favorite subject was always his own mania, and he was lucky enough to have Mastroianni to give it heart and soul.

10. Anthony Mann and James Stewart: Stewart had marvelous, ongoing relationships with such great directors as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra. Yet I pick Mann as his best director because he was the one who found the violent neurosis hiding behind Stewart’s gangling stammering. Their first film together was Winchester ’73 (1950), and right away there was a violence and harshness to the post-WWII actor that you couldn’t imagine in, say, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1954) and The Man from Laramie (1955) are outstanding westerns, revelatory portraits of the shadow side of one of America’s most beloved actors, and proof of the enduring richness that can blossom when director and actor click.

In chronological order:

1. Freaks (1932): Scandalous when it was first released and unappreciated until its rediscovery decades later, Tod Browning’s infamous “horror movie” is actually a very compassionate look at life’s outsiders and how they deal with a world that’s often morally misshapen. The story, which is set in a traveling sideshow of oddities and focuses on the relationship between a dwarf and a trapeze artist, would by itself be shocking to the tasteful people at MGM studios. But to add insult to the injury, Browning cast real-life “freaks” in the movie and showed their humanity while ruthlessly depicting the hypocrisy and venality of the film’s “beautiful” people. Few pictures since have been as disturbing and as moving at the same time.

2. El Topo (1970): Alejandro Jodorowsky is a mad genius, flaunting all the baggage that comes with the term. He’s been a magician, a mime, a comic-book artist, and a mystic before even stepping before a camera, so there was little doubt that his movies would become objects of admiration/derision/bafflement. This is his most famous movie, a would-be spaghetti western filled with cruelty, inscrutable symbols, dwarves, blood, bunnies, monks… Jodorowsky himself plays the title character, a bearded gunslinger riding through a bizarre wasteland of demons and saints, meeting one wacky character after another. This one makes LSD trips look mild. “What it all means isn’t exactly clear, but you won’t forget it,” the ads promised. Indeed.

3. Harold and Maude (1971): I must confess to never particularly liking this one. I know, I know, it’s a classic in the dark comedy genre and there are people who have seen it a million times. Still, it always struck me as way too pleased with its own “outrageous” promise. Anyway, it’s about the bond between an owlish, morbid little snot (Bud Cort) who keeps staging his own suicides and the relentlessly life-affirming old crone (Ruth Gordon) who becomes his friend (and, ugh, GILF). Director Hal Ashby is pretty good at keeping an absurdist tone, but the anti-establishment kookiness grows very cloying very quickly. Why isn’t it surprising that Wes Anderson considers this one of his favorites?

4. Pink Flamingos (1973): Only John Waters could have made a movie about “the filthiest person alive” and turn it into a lovable comedy. Designed as an all-out assault on good taste, it follows the mishaps of Baltimore outlaw Babs Johnson (the one and only Divine), who goes up against her neighbors (David Lochary and Mink Stole) for the gold medal in depravity. Where to start? There’s the hideous Edith Massey in her messy crib, Babs and her psychotic son Crackers (Danny Mills) licking the furniture, and, of course, Divine’s exultantly nauseating ready-for-her-close-up grin at the end. Waters would eventually head into the mainstream, but to this day nothing says “midnight movie” quite like Pink Flamingos.

5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): I’ve had friends who could quote Jim Sharman’s cult staple from beginning to end, but, like Harold and Maude, this one never did much for me. Maybe it’s the whole buildup of the “biggest midnight movie of all time,” or maybe it needs to be experienced with folks in costume and yelling quotes at the screen in order to be truly appreciated. In any case, it’s an enjoyable if self-satisfied campfest, a burlesque of horror movies and rock operas with Tim Curry in lipstick and stockings as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Susan Sarandon as Janet (Damnit!) Weiss, Richard O’Brien as Riff-Raff, and Meat Loaf as Eddie. Surely one of a kind, even if not particularly my kind.

6. Eraserhead (1977): David Lynch is no stranger to the depths of his own subconscious, though it’s doubtful he ever swam as far into it as when he made this unique fantasy. Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is an anxious-faced young man in a bizarre netherworld of industrial residue and greasy surfaces. Things become even more unbearable to him once he finds himself stuck with a newborn baby that looks like a skinned calf and keeps crying nonstop. Welcome to Lynch Land: Baked turkeys bleed, people disappear in bathtub water, and there’s a tiny woman singing inside the radiator. The director would reach wider audiences with Blue Velvet, but he’d never make a movie as uncompromisingly grotty as this one.

7. Repo Man (1984): Another blast of irreverence ripping through the Eighties, Alex Cox’s loopy comedy seems to have been created especially for cult audiences. Otto (Emilio Estevez) is a young punk whose alienation from an empty, consumerist society knows no boundaries. His sole role model is Bud (the great Harry Dean Stanton), the leader of a group of car-repossessing outsiders, and, as if that wasn’t enough, there are also shadowy government agents tracking down the radioactive remains of a spaceship. It’s amazing how much radical strangeness Cox shoehorned into this story, from the alien tones of convenience stores to the callous violence lurking in every street corner. To quote Otto: “Intense, man!”

8. Brazil (1985): What’s a cult movie without a little anguished production? Terry Gilliam’s futuristic fantasy is the best Orwell story Orwell never wrote, but the producers weren’t keen on the story’s sardonic pessimism and brought out the scissors. There are reportedly three versions of this tale of a pencil-pusher (Jonathan Pryce) discovering personal rebellion in an oppressive society, including one that tries to tag on a happy ending. Ultimately the studio fudging doesn’t matter, because Gilliam’s visionary romanticism and striking visuals (Robert De Niro as a blithe revolutionary! The winged visions in the torture chair!) have made sure that fans rallied behind the film as one of the few bright spots of subversion in an otherwise staid decade.

9. Dazed and Confused (1993): I remember seeing Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age ensemble comedy when it first came out, and thinking it was pleasant but unexceptional. Following a bunch of junior-high high-school kids over the course of a night in 1976, it struck me as a pretty good American Graffiti type of nostalgic flick. Yet it stayed with me and my friends. Characters like the pothead (Rory Cochrane) and the creepy aging jock (Matthew McConaughey) and their lines (“Didja ever look at a dollar bill, man? There’s some spooky shit goin’ on there. And it’s green too!”) kept coming back. And, weirdly enough, it’s become a staple for people who are too young to really remember the time it depicts.

10. The Shawshank Redemption (1994): How does a movie with an unpronounceable title taken from an obscure Stephen King novel and given a bad advertising campaign manage to reach the number one spot at the Internet Movie Database? It’s amazing what positive word-of-mouth and a prosperous video and DVD afterlife can do to redeem a box-office failure. To be fair, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Frank Darabont’s inspiring tale about the friendship between two men (Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman) behind prison walls. But its extraordinary success attests to the way movies become cult movies by bringing together viewers.

1. Showgirls (1995): Paul Verhoeven is no stranger to having audiences misunderstand his movies, but people really missed the boat on this one. The story of an avid young dancer (Elizabeth Berkeley) working her way up the Las Vegas stripping circuit was tarred and feathered and ran out of town when it first came out, and critics today still smirk if you try to defend it. But the truth is that this is a devastating satire of ambition and show biz, visually exhilarating and funny enough (and intentionally funny) to make Frank Tashlin proud. Between the reviewers and the great French director Jacques Rivette (who called this a masterpiece), I’ll go with Rivette, thank you.

2. Heaven’s Gate (1980): Another beautiful movie ruined by a lingering reputation. The story goes that Michael Cimino’s epic saga of the corruption of the potential of the Old West was virtually single-handedly destroyed by a review from New York Times Vincent Canby. Afterwards, everybody just seemed to be parroting the same words (“disaster,” “overlong,” “incomprehensible”) without even bothering to see the movie. Its reputation remains shaky to this day, but I’m glad to see more and more people at least giving this profoundly moving Western a chance. Heck, the great British critic Robin Wood even placed it in his all-time top-10 list.

3. Lady in the Water (2006): I’m not a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan, but this heartfelt fantasy absolutely didn’t deserve the venom the critics spewed on it. Sure, Shyamalan has a pretty unsightly sense of self-grandeur that is off-putting, insisting on creating his own worlds (complete with his own mythology) where he is some sort of messiah. All of this applies here, but people seemed to entirely miss the sweetness and childlike sense of storytelling and community that the movie radiates. When Paul Giamatti brings the water sprite (Bryce Dallas Howard) back to life through the power of his emotion, it’s hard not to cry. Instead, folks were making fun of the special effects.

4. Mission to Mars (2000): When you talk about Brian De Palma, it seems you can’t just give props to the guy, you have to vigorously defend him against an army of naysayers. “He’s a cold stylist!” “He’s a misogynist!” “He rips off other movies!” So it goes with this exceptional science-fiction tale, which was slaughtered by reviews when it first came out. People were complaining about the quality of the dialogue and the silliness of the situations and completely missing the visual poetry De Palma invests in this film, which is more than worthy of comparisons with Stanley Kubrick’s own classic space odyssey. I usually dislike the critic Armond White, but bless him for defending this one.

5. Color of Night (1994): Weird how some critics sometimes will focus on a film’s single aspect and forget about the rest. When talking about Richard Rush’s giddy, audaciously over-the-top thriller, they kept going back to Bruce Willis’s penis over and over. Never mind the bold use of color, the hilariously high-pitched cast (including Ruben Blades, Brad Dourif, Lance Henriksen and Leslie Ann Warren), or the return of director Rush (absent from the screen for 15 years). No, it was all about the special guest appearance of Bruce’s willie. Grow up, people, and appreciate a movie that stretches the borders of a conventional thriller.

6. Ishtar (1987): Another one of those movies whose very name seems to make people shudder. Folks saw Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman playing terrible lounge singers stuck in the Middle East, then saw the huge price tag on the movie’s budget, and readily called it a turkey. No need to even watch it, apparently. Actually, it’s a very funny satire of the old Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road comedies, with barbed commentary on Yankee fingerprints in that troubled region of the world and insights on friendship and betrayal from director Elaine May. And, dear critics: The songs are supposed to be bad. That’s part of something called “humor.”

7. A Countess from Hong Kong (1967): Talk about disrespecting your elders. Charlie Chaplin is one of cinema’s great builders, giving dignity to screen slapstick and finding nobility and humor in human survival at its most desperate. So how do reviewers repay him when he made this criminally underrated comedy-drama? Oh, by deciding he was “senile.” I can see audiences who got off on Bonnie and Clyde that same year shunning this as old-hat, but anybody with even the slightest sense of film history should have understood Chaplin’s sweetness here, which is so deliberately anachronistic as to be downright avant-garde. Andrew Sarris’s terrific appreciation seems like a voice in the wilderness, both then and now.

8. Cruising (1980): There were picketing lines even before William Friedkin’s lurid thriller reached screens. Because the story dealt with a New York cop (Al Pacino) who had to pose as a gay hustler in order to capture a killer terrorizing the city’s homosexual areas, it was automatically assumed that the film was homophobic. That’s an understandable response, of course, but the movie is not so much against gays as it is against the oppressions society forces on people of all kinds, resulting in murderous distortions of sexuality and identity. Glad to see it got more shaded, understanding reviews when it was re-released a few years ago.

9. Land of the Pharaohs (1955): Howard Hawks was a master storyteller who left masterpieces in every genre he tackled. Or almost every genre. Even Hawks aficionados dismiss his entry in the sword-and-sandal epic sweepstakes, but it’s not a bad movie at all. The plot, set in ancient Egypt and dealing with an architect involved with pyramids, stern pharaohs and malicious vixens, is an odd fit for the loose-limbed filmmaker, but it has the professional-men-in-action lines of the classic Hawks template, and the film displays a marvelous sense of movement in crowds and widescreen spaces. And, in its deadpan way, it’s very funny. Ever alert, Martin Scorsese gave it a nice shoutout in his documentary about American movies.

10. Freddy Got Fingered (2001): Is Tom Green a mad genius, or just mad? I’m willing to risk my critical reputation (which is not saying a lot) in suggesting the former. Critics scrambled to outdo each other’s vitriol when it came to reviewing this purposefully haphazard film, which isn’t so much a comedy as a freeform essay on what’s funny, what’s gross, and what’s just impossible to describe. Will it become the Un Chien Andalou of the gross-out comic world? Only time will tell, but for now, you’d be hard pressed to dismiss this as an ordinary movie.

The Cannes Film Festival came to a close yesterday, with Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon unsurprisingly taking home the Palme d’Or. Knowing Haneke’s typical brand of hardcore seriousness, expect no romantic comedy. The top winner at Cannes usually showcases plenty of artistic merit, though sometimes you really have to wonder. (Dancer in the Dark, anyone? Pelle the Conqueror? The Son’s Room?) So here, without further ado, is a list of my 10 favorite past Palme d’Or winners, in chronological order.

Viridiana (1961): That Luis Bunuel’s scathing story of the desire for faith and the endless variety of human venality made it to the festival in one piece (it was produced in Spain under Franco’s nose) is miraculous in itself. That it pocketed the top prize is even more amazing. Still stands up sublimely.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964): Jacques Demy lived in a world of his own, and when he put that world on the screen, it could be either nauseatingly saccharine or plain enchanting. This candyland fantasy, in which every word is sung, epitomizes the latter category. A visual and melodic feast; weirdly enough, one-eyed master Fritz Lang was the president of the jury that year.
 
Blowup (1966): It’s one thing to incorporate a decade’s feeling of unease into a movie; turning them into a timeless artistic statement is quite another. This existential thriller is the only movie I can think of that could fascinate students of Michelangelo Antonioni’s stylized angst and fans of the first Austin Powers.

If… (1968): Lindsay Anderson’s unforgettable call for arms, which could never be made now. Taking a page from Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct, Anderson directs Malcolm McDowell into cinematic legend as a budding revolutionary navigating a world of dying British symbols, bullies, and offhand surrealism. Great music, too.

Taxi Driver (1976): Where to begin? Robert De Niro’s indelible “You talkin’ to me” speech? Jodie Foster dancing with Harvey Keitel? The final bloodbath? Martin Scorsese created a brilliant urban nightmare, but apparently other jury members had to fight hard for the film to win, since jury president Tennessee Williams was beyond appalled by the film’s violence. They won their case, and cinema history was made.

Apocalypse Now (1979): “My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam!” Francis Ford Coppola’s legendarily arduous production works best in sequences than as a whole, but what sequences! Beset by problems (horrible weather, ailing actors, money troubles) and presented as a “work in progress,” the film nevertheless waltzed out the top winner. The “Ride of the Valkyries” sequence surely had something to do with it.

Under the Sun of Satan (1987): Maybe the most challenging movie on the list, from a filmmaker who’s still too unknown outside of his native France. The George Bernanos novel is just about impossible to adapt, yet Maurice Pialat is up to the challenge, and creates a difficult but ultimately overpowering portrait of a rural priest’s faith and passion. Jeered while collecting his prize, Pialat flipped off the audience. Nice!

Wild at Heart (1990): Not the greatest David Lynch movie (Mulholland Dr. received only the Best Director Award when it played in Cannes), but I always had a soft spot for this woolly road trip into the great surrealist’s pop subconscious. Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern are beautifully matched bats out of hell, Diane Ladd and Willem Dafoe do some unforgettably grotesque things, and hey, it’s The Wizard of Oz!

Pulp Fiction (1994): Another controversial winner (like Pialat, Quentin Tarantino gave some jeering harridan the finger) that still works beautifully. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny at the café. “Royale with cheese.” The adrenaline shot. “Bring out the gimp.” The Wolf in his tux. So many indelible bits, so little time… For anybody with the slightest love for cinema, it’s a gift that just keeps on giving.

A Taste of Cherry (1997): Abbas Kiarostami won a deserved Palme for this superficially simple but in reality quite complex tale of a suicidal man’s journey into an open grave. With breathtaking visuals, evocative rhythms, and quite a stinger at the end. A great starting place to explore the works of one of the world’s greatest filmmakers.