The Stranger

Bah na na na naa. When it comes to the big screen, nobody knew how to super-size it like Sergio Leone. Despite scads of imitators, the director's patented style of mammoth closeups, endless panoramas, and decade-spanning gunfights have proven impossible to replicate. For the TBS-deprived, the plot involves an unheroic trio of treasure hunters (Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and the badder-than-badass Lee Van Cleef) seeking buried loot amid the wreckage of the Civil War. After a slight detour to win the war for the North, the quest climaxes in a magnificent triple-finale staged in the world's bleakest graveyard. It may be narratively light and proudly amoral (Eastwood's character is "good" in only the most liberal sense of the word), but any such concerns pale next to the director's colorful worldview, in which small town streets stretch wider than eight-lane freeways, gargoyle-faced henchmen lurk behind every tumbleweed, and Ennio Morricone's majestic electric coyote score rules over all. By Andrew Wright