Some critics, including Siskel & Ebert, are on the record stating that Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, the story of boxer Jake La Motta, is the best film of the '80s. Since there are still a number of '80s films that I haven't seen, I don't feel qualified to make such a judgment, but I'll say this without hesitation: Raging Bull is a great motion picture, and I would be surprised if more than a handful of films released between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 1989 come close to its level.

Bio-pics often fall into one of two categories: overblown hero-worship or a dry, dull textbook account. It's rare that a movie with the moniker "based on the life of..." comes across as anything more than sporadically energetic and marginally entertaining. Raging Bull is the perfect counterexample, and a brilliant argument for film makers to continue to work in this genre. The picture takes the life of boxer Jake La Motta, a Middleweight icon from the '40s and '50s, and develops one of the most compelling character studies ever to reach the big screen. For all 129 minutes, director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro (in the title role) have us mesmerized by this individual who is by turns sympathetic, sad, and horrifying.

It has been several years since I've read a book by John Grisham (I believe the last one was The Client). After three or four of Grisham's novels, I grew tired of the predictable repetitiveness and contrived suspense of the narratives. As a result, the intelligence and subtlety of The Rainmaker took me by surprise. I don't know if this is because the novel is better than any of the prolific lawyer-turned-author's previous efforts, or if Francis Ford Coppola has performed a near-miracle in transforming the written pages into a screenplay. Whatever the case, The Rainmaker stands above any other filmed Grisham adaptation, including A Time to Kill, the former holder of that title.

Raise the Red Lantern is one of the more sublimely beautiful and openly disturbing films of the 1990s. It is also the best work to date turned in by the actress/director combination of Gong Li and Zhang Yimou -- and this includes other impressive films like Ju Dou andTo Live. Raise the Red Lantern is one of those all-too-rare motion pictures capable of enthralling audience members while they're watching it, then haunting them for hours (or days) thereafter. With its simple story and complex themes and emotions, Raise the Red Lantern hints at the kind of film a great director like Ingmar Bergman might have made had he attempted a story set in mainland China.

Ultimately, it's of minor import how much of Rob Roy is based upon historical fact and how much has been embellished by the pen of screenwriter Alan Sharp. As a hero of 18th century Scotland, Robert Roy MacGregor is known to have walked through the mists of the Highlands, living by the code that made his name a legend. This film takes the skeletal myth and builds a real person around those bones. As embodied by Liam Neeson, Rob Roy is a tremendous protagonist -- a naive man whose belief in honor and whose love for a woman, family, and clan make him a figure to cheer for.

As thrillers go, The River Wild is a cut below a "white-knuckler," but it still has its share of spills and chills. Crafted by Curtis Hanson with considerably more style and substance than his previous effort, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, The River Wild represents for its audience just about what you might expect from a film with that title.

Director Brian De Palma's earliest, heavily-stylistic films (often with reconstructed scenes from other films) are particularly reminiscent of Hitchcock's tense horror thrillers, with themes of guilt, voyeurism, paranoia and obsession. Similar plot elements include killing off a main character early on, switching points of view, and dream-like sequences, in the following:

To Hitchcock's tribute, there are a number of Hitchcock-like thrillers from other notable directors. All of these films serve up thrilling tales of terror, intrigue, menace, revenge, obsession, and insanity:

No list of suspense or thriller films can be complete without mention of English film-maker/director Alfred Hitchcock. He helped to shape the modern-day thriller genre, beginning with his early silent film The Lodger (1926), a suspenseful Jack-the-Ripper story, followed by his next thriller Blackmail (1929), his first sound film (but also released in a silent version). Hitchcock would make a signature cameo appearance in his feature films, beginning with his third film The Lodger (1926), although his record was spotty at first. After 1940, he appeared in every one, except for The Wrong Man (1956). [See all of Hitchcock's cameos here.] Although nominated five times as Best Director (from 1940-1960), Hitchcock never won an Academy Award.

One of the earliest 'thrillers' was Harold Lloyd's comic Safety Last (1923), with the all-American boy performing a daredevil stunt on the side of a skyscraper. The haunting and chilling German film M (1931) directed by the great Fritz Lang, starred Peter Lorre (in his first film role) as a criminal deviant - a child killer. The film's story was based on the life of serial killer Peter Kurten (known as the 'Vampire of Dusseldorf'). Edward Sutherland's crime/horror thriller Murders in the Zoo (1933) from Paramount starred Lionel Atwill as a murderous and jealous zoologist. And various horror films of the period, The Cat and the Canary (1927), director Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) with Fredric March, and The Bat Whispers (1930), provided some thrills.

Thriller and Suspense Films: These are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, with similar characteristics and features.