The Wages of Fear
(Henri Georges Clouzot, 1953)
Four down-and-outs must drive a convoy of nitro-glycerine through the South American jungle. The slightest bump on the treacherous roads could mean death, but Clouzot’s gripping thriller favours psychological portraits over action, exploring the desperate rivalry, greed and ironic fates of his tough-guy characters.
Wall Street
(Oliver Stone, 1987)
The dependably oily Michael Douglas offers up a time-capsule 80s role as corporate raider Gordon “Greed” Gekko. Stone displays that unnerving talent to have his cake and eat it, filling Gekko’s mouth with delectably Mephistophelian patter, while just remembering to fashion Wall Street into a “morality tale”. No one quotes Charlie Sheen, of course.
The War Game
(Peter Watkins, 1965)
A nightmare scenario nobody wanted to think about: a nuclear attack on Britain. But Watkins’ “documentary” made it too compelling and too horrific to ignore, with its scenes of firestorms, mass panic, police crackdowns, wounded children, all accompanied by impassive commentary.
Wargames
(John Badham, 1983)
Ultimate cold war hacker fantasy disguised as a teen movie. Computer whiz kid hacks into the US military’s nuclear arsenal control site and decides that a showdown with Russia would be enormous fun. Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy lend Brat Pack credibility.
The Warriors
(Walter Hill, 1979)
Hill’s vision of New York youth gangs may not be especially realistic – clown-faced baseball freaks, etc – but he packs enough of a punch to have you rooting for the heroes no matter how silly their enemies may look. The decaying Big Apple of the 1970s has never looked so dark or oppressive.
Way Down East
(DW Griffith, 1920)
A fantastic, sprawling melodrama that is among most barnstorming achievements of silent cinema. Lilian Gish is almost preternaturally realistic as the betrayed wife doing her damnedest to make her way in the world; that climactic scene where she really looks like she’s going over the waterfall is still a killer.
Wayne’s World
(Penelope Spheeris, 1992)
Two metal slackers host a cult cable show until they sell out to network TV with dire consequences. You can either pick up some superbly annoying catchphrases (eg, the cruel postscript “Not” to indicate that your previous compliment was not entirely honest), or play spot the filmic reference. This extended Saturday Night Live sketch is chock full of both.
Werckmeister Harmoniak
(Bela Tarr, 2000)
Hungarian director Bela Tarr is famous, or notorious, for his inordinately long, black-and-white movies of unutterable gloom. His longest, Satan’s Tango, clocks in at seven hours. This is manageable, at around two: a mesmeric, dream-like tale of a bizarre circus, consisting of a vast corrugated-iron shed, containing a dead whale, which incites a zombie-like uprising among the townsfolk. Truly strange.
West Side Story
(Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise, 1961)
There are people who still say the stage show was the only way to see it, but the film won plenty of awards, and the cast boasts George Chakiris and Rita Moreno as well as Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood. Robert Wise and choreographer Jerome Robbins collaborated on direction.
What’s Up, Doc?
(Peter Bogdanovich, 1972)
Bogdanovich’s homage to the screwball comedies of the 1930s has klutzy Iowa professor Ryan O’Neal and wacky dropout Barbra Streisand fetching up at a hotel where any number of identical suitcases get mixed up, creating slapstick mayhem. It doesn’t match, say, Bringing Up Baby, but it’s brimming with witty, cartoonish energy.
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
(Robert Aldrich, 1962)
Following years of public feuding, ageing screen legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were paired for the first time on the silver screen, with Davis thoroughly enjoying her sadistic turn as Jane, the decrepit former child star whose jealousy of movie star sister Blanche sees her torture and starve Crawford with (presumably) real-life relish.
When Father Was Away on Business
(Emir Kusturica, 1985)
Kusturica really put himself on the map with this, his second film: it won the Palme d’Or and got an Oscar nomination. It’s a child’s-eye view of communist Yugoslavia; father is in fact in a labour camp. Made only a few years before the break-up of the country and the bloody siege of Sarajevo, it now stands as a vision of a harmonious society that’s been irrevocably destroyed.
When Harry Met Sally
(Rob Reiner, 1989)
Arguably the last pitch-perfect romantic comedy made. Every note rings true as a chronically wry Billy Crystal and perky-but-repressed Meg Ryan flirt with the relationship continuum. Sharp dialogue and keen observation on gender difference make this a perfect hetero date movie. Also contains the most fondly remembered orgasm, fake or otherwise, in film history.
When We Were Kings
(Leon Gast, 1996)
The natural cinematic charisma of Muhammad Ali shines out of this wonderful documentary about his legendary 1974 fight against George Foreman, staged in Zaire: the Rumble in the Jungle. It is about sport, about race politics and about Africa itself. The masterly mix of newsreel footage and talking-head contributions made Gast’s film a masterclass in journalism and history.
Where Eagles Dare
(Brian G Hutton, 1968)
Sneering Nazis, impregnable fortresses, imprisoned generals, cable-car ascents … Where Eagles Dare takes bullet-riddled plot elements and constructs one of the most rousing of second world war action films. That’s mostly due to a sinuous, unusually well-managed plot, lifted intact from Alistair Maclean’s novel, allowing Clint Eastwood to chalk up the biggest body-count in his oeuvre.
The White Balloon
(Jafar Panahi, 1995)
Few films portray kids as single minded as this. As a result it’s one of the sharpest attempts from a director to get into the mindset of a child. The young Iranian girl who spends most of the running time trying to retrieve money from the drain so she can buy a goldfish isn’t good or bad. Or wise beyond her years. She’s just childlike, which is what children obviously are.
White Heat
(Raoul Walsh, 1949)
Nearly 20 years after his first gangster roles, Jimmy Cagney was back as Cody Jarrett, the meanest and craziest gangster of them all – except for his mother. A superb tribute to self-destruction, with Cagney exploding at the end and shouting “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
(Robert Zemeckis, 1988)
The Chinatown of animation uses the famous postwar plot to rid an increasingly automotive city of its metro trains as the springboard for a million clashing concerns, not all of them exclusively of interest to the under-nines. A technical landmark in the integration of live-action and brilliant animation.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(Mike Nichols, 1966)
A censor-baiter that hastened the collapse of the Hays Code, Woolf remade Elizabeth Taylor for her later, blowsier years and found the venom in an atypically retiring Burton, as Taylor’s semi-castrated, speccy academic husband George.
The Wicker Man
(Robert Hardy, 1973)
One to bring out the inner pagan in us all. This horror film – a true curio of cinema – ditches the typical 70s Hammer gothic kitsch, dropping Edward Woodward’s pious copper off on a sun-worshipping Scottish isle instead. Something indispensable happens to the tone en route: the atmosphere is queerly heightened rather than just tense, and the gruesome finale bizarrely uplifting.
The Wild Angels
(Roger Corman, 1966)
Peter Fonda won his counterculture spurs as the out-of-control gang leader of the Heavenly Blues in this exploitation flick about a marauding gang of Hell’s Angels. B-movie maestro Corman amps up the irresponsibility, showing the Angels as a brawling, pill-popping, abusive outfit, but their amorality is contagious, as evidence by the line sampled by Primal Scream (“We wanna be free..”) for their hedonistic club anthem Loaded.
The Wild Bunch
(Sam Peckinpah, 1968)
Peckinpah’s great western is a strictly a last-chance saloon affair: a gang of hunted outlaws set in the dying days of the free west, made just as late-60s America was losing self-belief. So it breathes elegiac desperation, from the opening scene of kids butchering scorpions to the climactic Gatling-gun massacre, which made the director’s name for prettified violence.
The Wild One
(László Benedek, 1953)
Source of the postwar biker mystique, the Wild One has a lot to answer for. Loosely based on the Hollister biker outrages of 1947, it relies for its power mainly on the effeminate rebelliousness of Brando, then at his most iconic, and benefits hugely from a semi-feral Lee Marvin in support.
Wild Strawberries
(Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Opens with one of the best dream sequences in cinema history, and is both utterly frank and very tender in its treatment of its elderly but vain protagonist. Like Scrooge, the professor (Victor Sjostrom, himself a noted silent-film director) en route to receive an honorary degree is able to look back on his life and finally to begin to understand just which missteps he has taken along the way.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
(Baz Luhrmann, 1996)
Bardolaters might not approve of the camp excess, but Lurhmann’s adaptation captures some of the bawdy zeal of the original (minus the RSC enunciation). A radiant Claire Danes and engaging Leonardo DiCaprio are a perfect centrepiece, but this is an ensemble act. Look stage left for more extraordinary performances.
The Wind
(Victor Sjostrom, 1928)
The pioneer Swedish director Victor Sjostrom came to Hollywood and made this magnificent fable about a woman (Lillian Gish) who sees the prairie wind as the sexuality that terrifies her. Silent film at its most powerful and eloquent, with Gish breaking our hearts.
Wings of Desire
(Wim Wenders, 1990)
Two angels in overcoats watch over Berlin, but are unable to interact with people – until one becomes smitten with a circus acrobat in distress and decides to become human. Shot in a striking mix of black and white and colour, Wenders’ elusive modern fairytale includes a sterling performance by Peter Falk, and now stands as a hymn to a divided city.
Wise Blood
(John Huston, 1979)
The movie that gave us weirdo Brad Dourif in full flight, Wise Blood is fully in the well-worn Southern Gothic tradition that oddball Savannah writer Flannery O’Connor deepened and darkened – she used to knit little jackets for her chickens, you know. John Huston delivers one of the strangest movies about God and religion ever made.
Witchfinder General
(Michael Reeves, 1968)
Less than a year after this was released, Reeves died of a barbiturate overdose. This is a fine legacy for his talent, a morbid tale of total power wielded by the unjust, and never-better, Vincent Price sniffing out witches in civil war England. The sweeping use of starkly beautiful landscape almost makes this the UK equivalent of a western, but the angry mobs and torture remind you that this is most definitely a horror film.
Withnail & I
(Bruce Robinson, 1987)
The dank cult student favourite seems to have an unlimited capacity for rewarding repeat visits: the creeping poetry of Robinson’s script and Richard E Grant’s draw-string mannerisms as “resting actor” Withnail soaking in more deeply with every visit. Every character feels like an old friend (or a foe); every line is a peach.
The Wizard of Oz
(Victor Fleming, 1939)
No matter how many times you’ve been down the yellow brick road, this children’s classic hasn’t lost its ruby slipper magic. Sure, there’s no place like home, but nothing beats the thrilling moment when Judy Garland, as Dorothy, first steps out of her cyclone-battered black and white room into the dazzling technicolor of Oz.
Woman of the Dunes
(Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
The sheer macabre strangeness of this erotic Japanese movie pushes it over the line into demented-genius category. An entomologist wanders the dunes looking for rare specimens; he is persuaded to spend the night in a beautiful young widow’s tumbledown shack at the bottom of a pit. The next morning the rope-ladder has disappeared, and he must spend the rest of his life there, baling and shovelling the sand that continually drizzles in – and having sex with the widow. Dream-like and compelling.
Women in Love
(Ken Russell, 1969)
Despite the then notorious naked wrestling match between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates, Russell largely reins in his sensationalist instincts for this adaptation of DH Lawrence’s novel. With Oscar-winning Glenda Jackson and Jennie Linden making up the foursome who find more pain than pleasure in love, it’s a beautifully acted, highly evocative work.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
(Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)
Crazed Spanish farce about three tottering women – Carmen Maura’s pregnant, spurned mistress; girl-on-the-run Maria Barranco; and would-be murderess Julieta Serrano – plus an early appearance by Antonio Banderas: the plot is more convoluted than a drunken bullfighter’s footwork, but this wildly funny movie made Almodóvar’s name outside Spain.
The Women
(George Cukor, 1939)
Not a man in sight, it’s women going to Reno for divorces. It’s also a benefit film for actresses denied work on Gone with the Wind – Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, plus Rosalind Russell. George Cukor directed and the dialogue crackles along.
Working Girl
(Mike Nichols, 1988)
Feminism with a twist in Mike Nichols’ gender politics comedy saw Melanie Griffith embody the helium-voiced blonde role that would haunt her entire career. That the dumb blonde should actually have a brain was less impressive than the ruthless deviousness both Griffith and rival Sigourney Weaver used to rise to the top in a man’s world.
