Three of Buñuel's berserk best, ridiculing bourgeois values and 'normal' sexuality. Diary Of A Chambermaid (1964) sees Jeanne Moreau as the social climber playing on the fantasies of the affluent. The Milky Way (1970) follows two tramps on a pilgrimage who encounter loopy heretics and priests. Belle De Jour (1967), with Catherine Denëuve, is, of course, the strangest, most haunting erotica of its age.

Damning documentary on American fast-food overkill cuts to the bone

France's answer to Mean Streets, Trainspotting and Do The Right Thing all rolled into one...

Brian De Palma called the first Star Wars movie "gibberish". But George Lucas' vision, Harrison Ford's gruff charm, the Irwin Kershner-directed/Leigh Brackett-scripted The Empire Strikes Back and, of course, Darth Vader—one of cinema's great villains —ensure the trilogy's immortality. Just don't mention the prequels.

Alexandre Rockwell's graceful '92 satire about a wannabe new-wave film-maker

Crispin Glover scintillates in otherwise unremarkable horror remake

Suburban horror comedy from the creators of warped sitcom Spaced. When a mysterious plague strikes London, Shaun (Simon Pegg) has to battle hordes of blood-crazed zombies to rescue his mum and girlfriend. The zombie sequences pastiche the genre, adding genuinely witty slapstick, and the script is as good as Spaced or better. A delight.

Definitively 'zany' '60s farce, written by Woody Allen, with Peter O'Toole as a Paris fashion editor inundated with willing, eager ladies. This sends him to mad shrink Peter Sellers, who's jealous. Meanwhile, Allen longs for O'Toole's fiancée. Basically an excuse for thousands of hit-and-miss jokes, strippers, much daft over-acting and Ursula Andress. Fantastic.

In a New Jersey backwater, Fin (Peter Dinklage), a dwarf fed up with the way the world reacts to him, moves into the derelict train station he's inherited and tries to ignore offers of friendship from a lonely snack-van man (Bobby Cannavale) and a divorced artist (Patricia Clarkson). Tom McCarthy's gem has something like the drift and precision of early Jarmusch—nothing much happens, except life.

Tony Richardson's 1968 version of the military disaster mirrors the decade it was made in, with a strong anti-war theme. David Hemmings is a young trooper, Trevor Howard his brutal commanding officer and John Gielgud the high-ranking buffoon who orders the attack. An ambitious mess, but still compelling.