This Gun for Hire (1942)

This Gun for Hire (1942)

[7] Alan Ladd (Shane) made his breakthrough performance in this unusually dark and violent film noir tale co-starring Veronica Lake and Robert Preston. Ladd plays a hit man hunting down a client (The Lodger's Laird Cregar) who double-crossed him. Lake…
Woman of the Year (1942)

Woman of the Year (1942)

[7] After ending her late '30s career slump with The Philadelphia Story, Katharine Hepburn followed up with another smash hit, Woman of the Year. It was her fateful first pairing with Spencer Tracy, with whom she'd make eight more films.…
Santa Fe Trail (1940)

Santa Fe Trail (1940)

[5] Errol Flynn's third western casts him as dutiful West Point cadet Jeb Stuart, sent to Kansas to quell an abolitionist rebellion led by the pious John Brown (Raymond Massey). The film pairs Flynn with future president Ronald Reagan as…
Keeper of the Flame (1942)

Keeper of the Flame (1942)

[5] In the second of their nine pairings, Spencer Tracy plays a highly-regarded journalist investigating the death of Katharine Hepburn's husband, a beloved national war hero. At first, information is hard to come by. But once he begins talking with…
Make Mine Music (1946)

Make Mine Music (1946)

[4] If musical animated shorts had to audition to be part of Disney's Fantasia, then Make Mine Music is a compilation of the rejects. Without an overarching narrative to connect these shorts in any way, the film hinges on the…
The Lady Gambles (1949)

The Lady Gambles (1949)

[5] Barbara Stanwyck catches the gambling bug something fierce in this melodramatic film co-starring Robert Preston as her worried husband. Stanwyck dips her toes in a Las Vegas casino during a vacation and quickly falls under the spell of craps…
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1948)

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1948)

[5] Cary Grant is playboy artist who attracts the unwanted attention of a lusty seventeen-year-old (Shirley Temple) after giving a lecture at her school. The girl's sister, played by Myrna Loy, uses her position as a judge of the courts…
Bambi (1942)

Bambi (1942)

[10] With relatively little dialogue and an abundance of montage, Walt Disney's Bambi plays out like a beautiful tone poem on rites of passage, death and rebirth. There's a 'circle of life' undercurrent to the film that makes it especially…
Fantasia (1940)

Fantasia (1940)

[7] Walt Disney was somewhat ahead of his time experimenting with music and animation in Fantasia, an experimental achievement of artistry, craftsmanship, and innovation in animation. It's essentially a series of MTV-style music videos -- some narrative, some more abstract…
My Reputation (1946)

My Reputation (1946)

[6] Barbara Stanwyck stars as a recently widowed woman who causes a stir in her social circle when she finds new love with an army major (George Brent). She's prepared to defy her friends and mother, but when her twelve…