During its release, this was the most popular film of all time in its native Italy. A typical Roberto Benigni comedy of mistaken identity, this 1991 work stars the actor-director in two roles, one a tough mafioso named Toothpick and the other a meek bus driver who is the gangster's look-alike. When the bad guy's girlfriend comes on to the clueless innocent--and she brings him along to her Sicilian ...

Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
Starring: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Paolo Bonacelli, Gaetano Campisi, Alessandro De Santis
Directed By: Roberto Benigni

This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Jacques Balutin, Alan Bates, Jackie Blanchot, Robert Blome, Pierre Brasseur

Shot on location in numerous countries, this ambitious Wim Wenders fantasy takes Sam Neill, Solveig Dommartin, William Hurt, and a ragtag group in pursuit around the world and back again. Though set in 1999 under the shadow of impending disaster as a wobbly nuclear satellite threatens to Chernobyl the planet, the leisurely gait of their worldwide escapades has a distinctly '40s-era decadence. The ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Pietro Falcone, Enzo Turrin, Chick Ortega
Directed By: Wim Wenders

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Richard Chamberlain, John Houseman, Sara Botsford, Robin Gammell, Gary Reineke
Directed By: Michael Anderson

Costa-Gavras's Z, winner of the 1970 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, is a classic political thriller, combining intrigue with raw emotional power. The story turns on the investigation of the assassination of a left-wing Greek politician (Yves Montand), and his government's attempts to cover up the murky circumstances. Montand receives death threats as he prepares to give a speech ...

Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Starring: Yves Montand, Irene Papas, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Perrin, Charles Denner
Directed By: Costa-Gavras

At three brief hours, La Dolce Vita, a piece of cynical, engrossing social commentary, stands as Federico Fellini's timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini (extraordinarily played ...

Manufacturer: Republic Pictures
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux, Magali Noël
Directed By: Federico Fellini

Manufacturer: Live / Artisan
Starring: Chelton, Jacob, Nanty

Long (148 minutes) military mystery set among the high command of Nazi Germany in occupied Poland and elsewhere in the Third Reich. A prostitute in wartime Warsaw has been brutally murdered and a German military investigator narrows his field of suspects to three German generals. But the war--and the sense of preening Prussian arrogance--interferes with his investigation, even as he begins to home ...

Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Starring: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay, Donald Pleasence, Joanna Pettet
Directed By: Anatole Litvak

Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, C. Thomas Howell, Kim Cattrall
Directed By: Richard Lester

French filmmaker Claude Lelouch continues to take critical heat for this 1966 international hit, which has been labeled "schmaltzy" and dismissed as overly stylized for its simple story line. While it certainly can't be mistaken for a masterpiece of the French New Wave (Lelouch was left in the dust that year by such wonders as Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Feminin), A Man and a Woman ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Pierre Barouh, Valérie Lagrange, Antoine Sire
Directed By: Claude Lelouch