Week of December 25-31: Citizen Kane (1941)

Week of December 18-24: It's a Wonderful Life (1946) & The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Week of December 11-17: Rocky (1976) & Gone with the Wind (1939)

Week of December 4-10: Unforgiven (1992) & Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Week of November 27-December 3: Fargo (1996) & My Fair Lady (1964)

Week of November 20-26: Patton (1970) & A Place in the Sun (1951)

Week of November 13-19- The Wild Bunch (1969) & The Searchers (1956)

Week of November 6-12: Platoon (1986) & The Jazz Singer (1927)

Week of October 30-November 5: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) & The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Week of October 23-29: Psycho (1960) & Vertigo (1958)

Week of October 16-22: Frankenstein (1931) & Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Week of October 9-15: Pulp Fiction (1994) & King Kong (1933)

King Kong: While the effects might seem somewhat cheesy now, they were state-of-the-art at the time of the film's release. (The dialogue, however, is irredeemably cheesy.)  Much of the art direction, though, holds up, and the film is still visually arresting--especially the final climactic scene in the NYC skyline. And the film also has some real scares (and surprising violence) as well as genuinely tender moments.

What's unfortunate about the film is it's rampant racism and sexism, from its portrayal of the indigenous population on the island and the "Chinese" cook to its insistence on referring to Fay Wray as a "girl" and aggressively belittling her (and all women, generally) throughout the film.

Week of October 2-8: Giant (1956) & Star Wars (1977)

Week of September 25-October 1: City Lights (1931)

Week of September 18-24: Goodfellas (1990) & Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Week of September 11-17: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Week of September 4-10: Dances with Wolves (1990) & Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Week of August 28-September 3: Ben Hur (1959)

It's a melodrama. It's overacted and overlong. But the lavish costumes and sets (and on-location filming in Rome, Spain, and other real locales) make it nice to look at. And the chariot race is magnificent. Really! I haven't seen the recent Ben-Hur (and I do not intend to), but I suspect that its chariot sequence is largely produced using CGI, and I'm sure it's comparatively lame. Here it's just practical effects and Actual. Freaking. Chariot. Racing. It's about eleven minutes of fast, loud, quick-cut, exciting spectacle. It looks and feels very modern, too--in an otherwise old-fashioned-ish epic.

If you can't handle sitting through the entire three hours and forty minutes, at least skip ahead to the race and prepare to be awed.

Week of August 21-August 27: Amadeus (1984) & Forrest Gump (1994)

Week of August 14-August 20: Schindler's List (1993) & Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Week of August 7-August 13: The Apartment (1960) & Sound of Music (1965)

Week of July 31-August 6: Modern Times (1936) & 2001: A Space Odyssey

Week of July 24-July 30: Doctor Zhivago (1965)