Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)

"God help the poor uninitiated soul who, in turning on Turner Classic Movies and encountering Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940) for the first time, knows not enough about this dizzying reshuffle of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page to at least take a few deep breaths before jumping in. It’s hard to imagine a faster, more breathless and whip-quick movie, from any genre, that all at once feels so fleet, dense and confident, without betraying even the slightest whiff of desperation, as this one." ~ Dennis Cozzalio

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale)

"Bride of Frankenstein might have been the first ever sequel to follow a masterpiece that actually improved upon its predecessor. James Whale's second Frankenstein film is very much the same type of creature feature as the first, with striking design work and a campy plot providing plenty of chills and thrills. But it's also a lot more, one of the first science fiction movies to demonstrate that movies don't need to be about people in order to explore what makes us human." ~ James Frazier

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)

"Jean Vigo was 28 when he started filming L'Atalante, and, by most accounts, was fully aware that his time on this earth was almost over. With this film he gave us a deeply humane insight into the ways in which we learn to communicate not only with words, but with pictures that can pierce the heart, and enlighten the soul. ~ Donald G. Carder

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)

"Together the Marx Brothers made 13 features, ranging from classics like Monkey Business to shrugs like The Big Store. What is it that separates Duck Soup from their other films and elevates it into the comedy pantheon?" ~ Jeff McMahon

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)

"It’s not every day an old, black-and-white comedy from the 1930s gets me all aroused. But that’s what happens every time I watch Trouble in Paradise, one of the funniest – and sexiest – farces I’ve encountered in my movie-viewing lifetime." ~ Craig D. Lindsey

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: City Lights (1931, Charlie Chaplin)

"[City Lights] encompasses everything we dream about when we go to the movies. Yes, the... final shot is one I would quickly identify as the most iconic of all-time, the one above all that moves us to the core of our being. What elevates it even further is the extraordinary lyrical and swelling score that Chaplin wrote himself for the film." ~ Sam Juliano

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, Stanley Kubrick)

"The comic elements of Strangelove walk a tightrope above a bottomless abyss, as reinforced by its production design and cinematography. From the expressionistic 'war room'/cathedral, to the dials and switches of a B-52 bomber, to the military base where a deranged general attempts to bypass protocol and invoke world war, the film portrays an admittedly heightened reality, but undeniably a recognizable one." ~ Patrick Williamson

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