NOTORIOUS (1946)

Alfred Hitchcock takes some very standard materials and somehow makes an amazing movie out of them… a great performance by Ingrid Bergman at the center helps, too.

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)

It is the original full-length animated movie, and helped to launch a media empire. For me it holds up today, um, intermittently?

THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA (1937)

A very old-fashioned biopic (sort of) about a French writer and his fight to save an army officer wrongly accused of treason. I found myself drawn in despite myself.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

The ultimate feel-good movie, or harrowing exercise in existential angst? Possibly both.