In these 44 critical reviews, contributors examine American, European, and international films as artifacts of their times, as indicators of changes and innovations in ways of thinking about and approaching reality, and as influences upon each other and on the viewer. Starting with the silent but startling Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat of 1895 and ending with the sometimes silent but many times more startling All About My Mother of 1999, and including every director from Griffith to Keaton, Eisenstein to Capra, Welles, Ford, De Sica, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Ray, Bergman, Truffaut, Kubrick, Fassbinder, Scorsese, Polanski, Zhang Yimou, Spike Lee and Julie Dash, the critics give undergraduates a basic idea of the contexts, contents, themes, narrative devices, and critical reactions for each film, and references for further reading.