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WHAT IT’S ABOUT

Ani (short for “Anora”) is a highly skilled exotic dancer working at a Manhattan gentleman’s club. One night, she meets Vanya (Edelshteyn), a young Russian who claims to be 21 but looks and acts younger. Flush with cash, it turns out he’s the son of an oligarch. Ani agrees to be his paid girlfriend for a week, and after tons of wild partying, the young couple impulsively decides to get hitched in Vegas. But how will Vanya’s parents back in Russia react to his marrying a New York call girl?

WHY WE LOVE IT

Baker’s “Anora” is several things at once, all complementary- an uproarious comedy, affecting drama, and unlikely romance. Madison is the heart of the film, delivering a fearless, star-making turn as Ani. The older and wiser of the pair, she should know better but gets swept up in the possibility of true love and a better life. And we love her for it. The rest of the cast is note-perfect, particularly Karagulian as Toros, the oligarch’s local chief, and Borisov as Igor, the Russian bodyguard who takes a shine to Ani. Location shooting in Manhattan, Vegas, and Brighton Beach adds flavor. “Anora” is unmissable- a movie that restores your faith in what film can do and be.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

Hired by glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (Dunaway) to snap incriminating photos of her husband, private dick J.J. “Jake” Gittes (Nicholson) thinks he’s on a routine investigation of spousal infidelity. It turns out Evelyn is actually the daughter of powerful baron Noah Cross (Huston), and the seamy revelations only mount from there, drawing Jake deeper into a hornet’s nest of incest, betrayal, and corruption in seedy 1930’s Los Angeles.

WHY WE LOVE IT

Cynical, brooding, and knotted with mystery, Polanski’s “Chinatown” is an inspired update of the private eye picture that equals most anything Bogart did in the forties. The cast, of course, can’t be beat: Nicholson puts his own stamp on the familiar character of a private eye in over his head; Dunaway excels playing a dangerous woman that most men would walk off cliffs for; and Huston delivers a titanic performance as the arrogant Cross. Watch for Polanski himself as a knife-wielding thug with a grudge against nosy people. “Chinatown” earned eleven Oscar nods, but snagged only one win (for Robert Towne’s dense, twisty script). Viewed today, it’s all too clear: it should have won more.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

The groundbreaking “Pulp Fiction” tracks various Los Angeles lowlifes such as Vincent Vega (Travolta) and Jules Winfield (Jackson), two loquacious, eccentric hit-men who work for underworld boss Marsellus (Rhames). As the movie unfolds in Altman-esque style, where the lives of each character somehow intersect, we meet (among others) Marcellus’s dangerous wife Mia (Thurman), a boxer in a jam named Butch (Willis), and two inept robbers who are madly in love (Roth and Plummer). It may not all make perfect sense, but who cares?

WHY WE LOVE IT

Tarantino’s best film to-date is a genre-twisting, savagely funny tour-de-force, with vignettes of bantering hit-men, crooked boxers, petty thieves, and an alluring gangster’s wife, all cutting back and forth in time. Its sharp, Academy Award-winning script contains a stew of pop-culture references, courtesy of Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avary. Boasting six other Oscar nods, including Best Picture, Actor (Travolta), Supporting Actor (Jackson) and Supporting Actress (Thurman), “Pulp” earns its status as one of the most influential films of the 1990s. For those able to tolerate its blend of pitch-black comedy and brutal violence, it’s a must-see film. (“Pulp” both cemented Tarantino’s bankability and resuscitated Travolta’s rapidly fading career.)

I will always remember the pure exhilaration I felt watching Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” for the first time in a theater thirty years ago.

The memory is so clear of first realizing that I was experiencing an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, deliriously entertaining but also completely fresh and unique. What made “Pulp” so exciting and distinctive?

For a start, even though the movie was comprised of familiar plotlines, the film’s structure was unconventional for the time. Sequences seemed vaguely related to each other yet were presented out of order. Still, each scene managed to stand on its own, so there was no confusion.

In addition, the film was by turns unspeakably violent and laugh-out loud funny, and those opposing characteristics merged seamlessly. You went from shock to laughter and back again, seemingly in a nanosecond.

Most intriguing was the fact that “Pulp Fiction” didn’t seem to be based on real life but on other movies. How many pictures have been made about a boxer who throws a fight? Or about a gangster who falls for the boss’s wife? The short answer is plenty.

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Sometimes love is grand, sometimes it’s a kick in the teeth, and sometimes it can be more than a little strange. The relationship between the beautiful Isabella Rossellini and “Tsar of Bizarre” director David Lynch lands squarely in that third category.

I’m no Hollywood gossip-monger (well, maybe a little), but when I heard that their painful breakup in 1990 was blamed partially on Lynch’s phobia concerning kitchen smells – well, I couldn’t just let that alone, could I?

To begin with, there’s the meet-cute tale of how the Lancome model and the director first became acquainted. Reportedly, it’s a story Lynch just loves to tell. The two were introduced at a restaurant during a break in the casting process of Lynch’s soon-to-be-cult hit, “Blue Velvet” (1986).

When he first spotted Isabella, Lynch told her: “Hey, you know, you could be the daughter of Ingrid Bergman.” A friend nearby informed him, “You idiot, she IS Ingrid Bergman’s daughter.” (Reminds me of that classic Lana Turner restaurant scene in 1997’s “L.A. Confidential.”)

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Over the course of movie history, there have been the great actresses, women who light up the screen with charisma and character, like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Meryl Streep.

There have also been women whose special gifts had more to do with the sexual allure they projected. Hey fellas, you must have noticed them, right?

Brace yourselves then — here are our picks for the top twenty female cinematic sex symbols of all time. (Drum roll).

1950s – Marilyn Monroe

Really, we could begin and end this entire list with Marilyn, who embodies everything we mean when we talk about a sex symbol. That shimmering blonde hair (dyed, but who cares?), those sleepy eyes, that Botticelli body! Her voice, somehow always sounding like she’d just rolled out of bed. Just watch her in the two films she did with Billy Wilder: “The Seven Year Itch” (1955), and the gender-bending masterpiece, “Some Like It Hot” (1959).

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