Yeah, yeah… Buster Keaton, classic silent cinema, blah blah blah. But guess what! Buster Keaton's work holds up better than ANY of the so-called classic screen comedians—Chaplin, Lloyd, the Marx Brothers (all of whom I'd take a bullet for)—and The General holds up better than most Keaton films. Buster plays Johnnie Gray, a Dixie boy who loves only three things: the South, his train, and a girl named Annabelle Lee. When the war of Northern aggression breaks out, all three of his loves fail him--the Confederacy tells him he's more important as an engineer than a soldier, Annabelle thinks him a coward, and his train is stolen by Yankees. Spoiler alert: He prevails, hilariously. by Sean Nelson