Harvey is one of a kind

5 second plot: Elwood P. Dowd has an imaginary friend. A six foot something white rabbit. His sister and her daughter want to have him committed to a nuthouse. Elwood is a very warm and generous man and somehow, together with his rabbit, he brings people together and makes their lives more interesting.

5 second review: Now that's something you don't see every day. An imaginary huge white rabbit... The movie is pretty nuts, there are more misunderstandings than there are minutes of playtime. But a couple of times, and certainly at the ending, it's simply taken too fare and the story misses it's curve.

IMDb score: 8,1/10
Our score: 6/10

La Strada is horribly outdated

5 second plot: A mentally challenged girl is sold by her mother to a travelling artist. He treats her bad. But she still stays with him because she doesn't know any better.

5 second review: This was a struggle for me. This movie is not fit for a modern audience, only for real hardcore old movie lovers. It looked terrible to me: poorly acted, horrible sound and a story that did not withstand the test of time.

IMDb score: 8,2/10
Our score: 0/10

Anatomy of a Murder is a type of movie you don't see often anymore

5 second plot: A small town lawyer takes up the defense in a big murder case. It seems impossible not to get convicted, but they plead 'not guilty' anyway. The murder was done in an act of rage, as a reaction to the rape of the defendant's wife.

5 second review: The movie is more than 60 years old, so I didn't always understand where everyone was getting so excited about. Different times, different ways. But I did find the smart ass questioning and slow preparation of the case the defense tries to make, very interesting.

IMDb score: 8,1/10
Our score: 6/10

M is really really.... well... old

5 second plot: A child murderer is terrorizing a town. The police can't seem to find him. The (very well organized) crooks of the town are sick of the fact that the police searches for the murderer in their ranks. So they decide to search for the killer themselves.

5 second review: It felt more like watching a history documentary, then like watching a fictional movie. Because there's no way around the fact that 1931 was a long time ago. Nonetheless, this movie was way ahead of his time. It's an amazing technological accomplishment and storytelling-wise a milestone in movie history.

IMDb score: 8,5/10
Our score: 6/10

Metropolis is memorable

5 second plot: In a - not so bright - future the son of the leader of a big city falls in love with a girl from the lower working class. At the same time, a crazy scientist is developing a robot. He wants to use this robot to destroy the world, basically. He needs a human soul to start up the robot. And he has one particular girl in mind.

5 second review: This is mostly a lesson in cinematic history. It's not really an entertaining feature. The overacting is really horrible. But the science fiction was way ahead of its time. The ideas used in this 1927 movie are still used in movies today. There are quite a few legendary iconic scenes you will find in every movie history book.

IMDb score: 8,4/10
Our score: 5/10

The Best Years of Our Lives is awesome

5 second plot: Three World War II veterans just got home from the war. A lot has changed in the years that they were gone. And so have they. It doesn't all come as easy as they had hoped. But they have each other. And a great family they can rely on.

5 second review: Although this is a really long movie, it never feels like a stretch. It feels like a great story about good guys that just needed to be told. It's made with great cinematography and amazing actors. The Academy did not overlook these facts and gave the movie 7 Oscars in total.

IMDb score: 8,2/10
Our score: 8/10

Yojiro is a lot of the same

5 second plot: A lone samurai comes to a town torn apart by a feud between two gangs. He decides to clean up the mess by having the two parties kill each other. And he will take care of the few that will be left standing. His plan doesn't go as smooth as he thought it would.

5 second review: The main character is pretty cool at first, like a lone ranger. It actually kinda feels like a western set in Japan. The gang members look like morons. The make-up department overdid it a little bit. And it's too much of the same for too long. It kicks in again at the end, but I was already dosing off by then.

IMDb score: 8,4/10
Our score: 5/10

Touch of Evil drove me nuts

5 second plot: A car explodes in a Mexican border town. The American police officers venture across the border to do what ever the hell they want. And then there is also a DEA agent who is there on his honeymoon. He seems to be involved someway or another.

5 second review: What a terribly overcrowded mess. The focus is only on the style of the movie. It's screaming to be looked at. I hate that. This movie drove me nuts.

IMDb score: 8,2/10
Our score: 0/10

Sunset Blvd. is a great title

5 second plot: Joe is a screenwriter in financial trouble. He can't get enough work to pay for his rent. One day he accidentally ends up in the house of Norma Desmond, a (very rich) actress from the golden age of the silent pictures. She is planning a return to the big screen and asks Joe to help her with a screenplay.

5 second review: Oh man, I can't stress enough that Gloria Swanson's acting seriously got on my nerves. It's so over the top... she simply takes it too far. It's horrible. But William Holden and Nancy Olson do a great job. They look really good together.

IMDb score: 8,6/10
Our score: 3/10

The Night of the Hunter is really weird

5 second plot: A crazy mass murderer, pretending to be a preacher man, is after a stolen 10.000 dollar. The only ones who know where it is are two kids. But they promised their dad, who was sentenced to death, not to tell anyone. The killer goes nuts when they refuse to let him in on their secret.

5 second review: It's weird to watch pure evil go after two innocent little kids. It felt totally inappropriate. What I did like was the sound editing and the composition of the images. There is now way looking past the fact that this is really special. And the LOVE - HATE tattoo? Classic.

IMDb score: 8,1/10
Our score: 2/10

Witness for the Prosecution is silly old

5 second plot: A man is accused of killing a rich woman. The fact that he will inherit all her money is not favorable to his case. He hires the best attorney there is, but this guy is so old, fat, sick and not giving a shit about his health, it would be a miracle that he makes it to the end of the trial.

5 second review: Nowadays, a fat arrogant douchebag with nasty teeth could never be a lead character, but in the '50s he was good to go. The story is not bad. The twist isn't either. But the stupid gags and the theater acting are.

IMDb score: 8,5/10
Our score: 5/10

The Seventh Seal is memorable

5 second plot: A knight returns from the Crusades and finds his home country overrun by the black plague. He is dying and in his last days he searches for the meaning of it all while playing chess with Death himself.

5 second review: I did not expect it, but this movie is totally watchable. It deals with real stuff. Of course there is also a lot of arty blabla, but there's not too much of it. The movie is also filled with memorable images, that will remain in your memory (Death, Bibi,...) forever.

IMDb score: 8,3/10
Our score: 7/10

Diabolique takes its time to get scary

5 second plot: An a-hole head principal has got a wife and a mistress. He treats them like garbage. They decide to kill him. They succeed but then the body disappears and strange things start to happen. Boo!

5 second review: It takes forever for the strange things to start to happen (and they're not very shocking anymore in this day and age). It’s not very plausible that an asshole like that would have a pretty wife and mistress. No way. Them French folk sure like to talk a lot. My god… they just can’t stop. It’s an interesting mystery, but before you get some answers you’ll be bored to death. Or no longer watching. 

IMDb score: 8,2/10

Our score: 2,5/10

It Happened One Night is charming

5 second plot: A spoiled rich girl gets married without her controlling father knowing about it. He tries to have the marriage annulled and takes her with him on his boat. She escapes and tries to get to her husband. On her road trip she meets a reporter. He will help her get to her hubby in exchange for the story. But it’s a long way to go.

5 second review: What a great chemistry between these charming actors. There are some really funny sketches in this movie (the hitchhiking part, the outsmarting everyone). This is a movie that will still be great 100 years from now: it’s timeless. 

IMDb score: 8,3/10
Our score: 8/10

The Manchurian Candidate is strangely outdated

5 second plot: A group of American soldiers is captured in Korea and brainwashed.  One of them is assigned to be a killer (without knowing it himself). He will be 'activated' later on. Once back home, one of his war buddies feels something is wrong and tries to figure it out.

5 second review: The outdated storytelling feels strange. For me it simply did not withstand the test of time. It's not the subject that feels off, but the continuity and the introduction of some characters.  But I was glad that most of the weird twists and turns got untangled at the end. And it's always great to see Sinatra in good form.

IMDb score: 8,1/10
Our score: 3/10

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance did not convince me

5 second plot: A man recalls the start of his career as a senator. He was almost beaten to death by the guy in the title. And then he stood up to him, saved the town, made some new best friends and found the woman of his dreams.

5 second review: Too bad there isn't much real western in this western. A couple of characters really got on my nerves (like the sheriff). James Stewart did not convince me to be a young fellow (he was 54 in real life). John Wayne is 100% like everyone imitates him. The entire cast looks over-rehearsed: they already start answering before the question is fully asked.

IMDb score: 8,1/10
Our score: 2/10

The Killing is not a really good title

5 second plot: This movie isn't really about a killing, but about a race track heist. There are some killings, but that's not really the central theme. There is one smart bloke organizing the heist. He finds a bunch of other guys who are desperate to get their hands on the big bucks. It all looks perfect, but they still need a good dose of luck to pull it off.

5 second review: It's a shame that the main character, Johnny, doesn't have a lot of charisma. A stronger lead would have made a more interesting picture. I don't know if I liked the extreme moral lesson of the story. It all goes so sour that it's more a comedy instead of a film-noir.

IMDb score: 8,1/10
Our score: 4/10

Wild Strawberries is nice

5 second plot: An angry old man sets out for a road trip with his daughter-in-law. They visit places from his past and they meet people that make him remember key moments and evaluate his life. He realizes he made a lot of mistakes and shouldn't be so grouchy all the time. But it's never too late to learn.

5 second review: The cinematography did not pass the test of time for me (a lot of film buffs will disagree), but the story sure did. It builds up wonderfully and is brought to life by an amazing set of actors that make this movie a true classic.

IMDb score: 8,3/10
Our score: 6/10

Notorious is as suspenseful as expected

5 second plot: It's 1946. WW II is just over but the Germans are still up to something. The US government asks Alicia (who's father was convicted for being a spy) to go undercover in Brazil and find out what they are up to. The fact that she falls in love with her contact, complicates things quite a bit.

5 second review: This is a typical Hitchcock: great visual work and a very suspenseful story. It's on a somewhat smaller scale. The story develops (mostly) in the heads of a handful of characters. No big effects: no birds flying to our heads and no airplane neither. Just smart spy stuff.

IMDb score: 8,2/10
Our score: 6/10

Rashômon is a seriously boring story

5 second plot: A samurai is found dead. The story of the investigation to find the killer is told by two witnesses. All the involved tell a different tale. One of them is the dead guy (through a medium). And even he tries to twist the truth.

5 second review: Watching this felt like a never ending story. After a while, I couldn't care less what actually happened. It's totally boring and uninteresting. How in the world did this movie end up so high in the IMDb top 250? The hysterical laughing is extremely annoying. And the samurai sucks at being a samurai. Jesus.

IMDb score: 8;4/10
Our score: 1/10

Paths of Glory brings the ugliest side of war

5 second plot: The story is set in 1916 in France, WW I is raging. A general gets angry because he believes his men did not obey his order to execute an impossible attack. He wants to set an example. By executing his own men.

5 second review: This movie is visually stunning. It's amazing how every scene is crowded with details. You could watch this movie 10 times and still notice new elements every time. It's not really about the horror of war (a little bit maybe) but about the horror of incompetent men being responsible for lives of other human beings and not giving a rat's ass. It's looked at with a magnifying glass to make sure we get it. That French sure does resemble English a lot, doesn't it? Luckily they at least get the German right at the end.

IMDb score: 8,5/10
Our score: 6/10

Planet of the Vampires is seriously boring

5 second plot: When two spaceships make an emergency landing on a foreign planet strange things start happening. The crew has to figure out what's going on and find a way to get back home.

5 second review: This movie is excruciatingly boring. The only thing good about it is the title. I didn't see any vampires though. The actors have to act out everything (like 'gravity') but sometimes I really didn't know what in the world they were doing. Score on the test of time: 0.

IMDb score: 6,4/10
Our score: 1/10

Stalag 17 needs another setting

5 second plot: It's the story of a group of American prisoners of war in Germany during WWII. They suspect there is a snitch in their midst because if they plan something (like an escape) the guards always seem to know everything upfront. The question is: who is it?

5 second review: For me personally the mix of fiction and reality with a touch of comedy is inappropriate for a WWII movie like this. Maybe I'm being silly about it, but for me the WWII setting was a bad move. The movie should had been set in another time and place. Because the story itself is really good. Maybe a bit slow (the guys dancing takes forever).

IMDb score: 8,1/10
Our score: 3/10

Rope gets right to it

5 second plot: Two young men kill a fellow student to prove the fact that they are 'superior'. To defy the odds, they invite friends and family over for diner, while the body is in the room. But there is one person they had better not invited, and that's James Stewart.

5 second review: Typical for Hitchcock to let the audience know from the start what has happened and then let everyone in the movie figure it out. That James Stewart is a smart fella. He can spot clues where there aren't any. Amazing.

IMDb score: 8,1/10
Our score: 4/10

Persona luckily has two pretty leads

5 second plot: A woman with psychological issues who can't seem to talk anymore gets help from a nurse. They become real close friends. But then the nurse starts going nuts all of a sudden. And after a while the entire situation goes completely crazy.

5 second review: I don't really like this experimental stuff. The subject isn't all that interesting neither. I think the director realized that from the start and hired two beautiful women to ease the pain. And then a bit of sex talk to keep our attention sharp. I did like the twist. It took me a while before realizing it. Well, I hope I understood it correctly. There's no telling what the director may have really meant.

IMDb score: 8,2/10
Our score: 3/10