51 DIRTY DANCING (1987) Sixties nostalgia and coming-of-age stories are often reliable commercial ploys, but this one added old-fashioned sex appeal to the mix. As the star-crossed lovers, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey suggested a juiced-up Fred and Ginger, and audiences were only too happy to play voyeur. Real life couldn't (and still can't) compete. (159,615,416)
52 THE TERMINATOR (1984) A fizzle in theaters, James Cameron's sci-fi sleeper was one of the first films to become a success via video and cable-which in turn it helped to popularize. Oh, yeah, it made Arnold a big-name star, too. (158,248,810)
53 CITY SLICKERS (1991) Centered on male-bonding rituals from the Iron John school of back-to-nature mysticism, it could have been insufferable. But deft performances by Billy Crystal and Jack Palance deflated its pretensions. (158,043,182)
54 DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965) Humming the lushly romantic ''Lara's Theme,'' David Lean's three-hour epic of love in the Russian Revolution was a Gone With the Wind for the Cold War generation. A dashing Omar Sharif and Julie Christie at her ripest makes Moscow sizzle. (157,500,000)
55 COCOON (1985) Most of the popularity of this charming old-folks-meet-ETs fantasy comes from tape rentals, and that makes sense: Older audiences tend to favor the peace, quiet, and economy of home viewing over the teen madness down at the movie mall. (153,380,611)
56 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956) Seen in theaters at the time of its original release, this looked like spectacle on an impossibly grand scale. Seen on video today, it looks like something else altogether-a camp hoot on an impossibly grand scale. (153,000,000)
57 UNFORGIVEN (1992) It has the best cast of any Clint Eastwood film, but this revenge epic with no good guys isn't just impeccably made. It's also a rejection of the easy violence of Eastwood's original screen persona. In a bloody and complex world, audiences empathize with Unforgiven's moral ambiguity; it mirrors their own. (151,425,288)
58 RAIN MAN (1988) Tom Cruise began to get serious critical respect after his work here, but the film's real juice comes from Dustin Hoffman as Cruise's autistic brother. This is a high-class disease-of-the-week movie at heart, but its dramatization of a Dysfunctional Family Circus understandably strikes a nerve. (150,778,158)
59 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) This man-meets-alien drama codified the great Spielberg theme: ordinary people in contact with the extraordinary. Both aspects of the story are rendered so convincingly that even viewers who could care less about sci-fi are drawn in. Who can resist the lure of Richard Dreyfuss' everyman with an unquenchable thirst for the transcendent? (148,279,304)
60 HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS (1989) As a commercial proposition, this throwback to earlier Disney wacky-scientist flicks probably couldn't have missed. But thanks to Rick Moranis' performance, it's actually better-a lot better-than it needed to be. (146,612,950)


Add your comment
The rules: Keep it clean, and stay on the subject or we might delete your comment. If you see inappropriate language, e-mail us. An asterisk * indicates a required field.