The Great Race (1965)

Classic slapstick comedy is almost a lost art. Comics like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the team of Laurel and Hardy mixed well-timed pratfalls with moments of great pathos in a way that captivated audiences from silent films up until the 1940s. The Great Race is an affectionate homage to their work. Director Blake Edwards (The Pink Panther) and screenwriter Arthur Ross cleverly construct an episodic yarn around a 22,000-mile auto race from New York City to the Eiffel Tower in Paris set in 1908.

The two key competitors are the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis), a squeaky-clean hero always dressed in white, and the evil Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon), who sports a black handlebar mustache and continually bullies his long-suffering assistant Max (Peter Falk). They are also rivals for the affections of a beautiful suffragette (Natalie Wood) who's also entered the race. Their adventures include a Western-style bar-room brawl, rampaging Indians, sinking icebergs; sword-fighting duels and an epic pie fight. Although it's occasionally overdone, the laughs are non-stop.

Bataan (1943)

The United States suffered several setbacks in the Pacific during World War II before the tide turned, and the courage and spirit of sacrifice our troops displayed during these dark hours helped lead to our later victories. Bataan is set in the Philippines in early 1942 when the Japanese forced the American forces commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur into a humiliating retreat. The stoic Sgt. Bill Dane (Robert Taylor) leads a heroic rear-guard action in the jungle to cover MacArthur's movements. Dane's hastily assembled unit must hold off the enemy by destroying a bridge that the Japanese keep rebuilding.

Director Tay Garnett (China Seas) pulls no punches as he shows how tactical miscalculations, enemy fire and disease slowly kill off many of Dane's men.