All the President's Men (1976)

Directed by Alan J. Pakula

This is the fairly incredible behind the scenes story of how to reporters at The Washington Post broke the Watergate story (and the rest is history).  Here's the the thing about this movie though, it came out basically a year after the events of the Watergate scandal unfolded.  Because the scandal played out in headlines across country, pretty much everyone was very familiar with all the main players in the scandal.  This makes for the main fault of the movie today: If you didn't live through Watergate, read a book about it, or happen to be a poli-sci major, you really don't know who all these players are (and there are a lot of them) and the movie doesn't bother to explain it.  It's not so much the story of the Watergate scandal itself, but the story of the investigative journalism that lead to the story.

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Often categorized under noir and while it's true that it has a noir frame story, the main narrative itself is not particularly noir.  This is really one of those grand rise and fall epics in a style once typical of golden-age hollywood.  Joan Crawford is just brilliant here.  This movie remade her career at a time when she was thought of as "over the hill".

They really don't make movies like this anymore.  It is just a giant and a classic in my opinion that seems to get unjustly overlooked these days.

It Happened One Night (1934)

Directed by Frank Capra

Frank Capra practically invented the now well worn romantic comedy formula with this movie.  A man and woman can't stand each other but are stuck together due to circumstantial reasons and end up falling in love.  But honestly that doesn't do this film justice because it is a very funny charming movie.  The famous scene is one where they are on the road trying to hitch a ride.  Clark Gable is trying to man'splain ride hailing technique when Claudette Colbert gives him a lesson in the power feminine allure.

Marty (1955)

Directed by Delbert Mann

One of the most gentle, kind-hearted movies I have ever seen.  Marty is thirty-something and lives at home with his mother who regularly gets on his case about going out and meeting a nice girl.  He's tired of the whole exercise but reluctantly goes out anyway.  But this night things don't go as he expected.  The characters have a real authenticity and the movie doesn't look down upon them.  Surprisingly for such an unassuming movie, it won four Oscar's including Best Picture and the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

The Treasure of The Sierra Madre (1948)

Directed by John Huston

John Huston won a Best Director Oscar for this film.  And he absolutely deserved it because it's a superbly directed film.  My opinion differs somewhat on the story, but others love it.  Over the course of the movie the characters go from rags to riches, or so it seems.  There is trouble brewing ahead.  You can see how this influenced the genre of the heist film.  Stanley Kubrick's The Killing being one example.