North by Northwest (1959)
There's little denying the genius of Alfred Hitchcock and his absolute mastery of the entertaining thriller. Heck, his filmography alone will attest to that statement. But perhaps one of his most accomplished works might be this one. Is it as tense as 'Psycho' or as disturbing as 'The Birds'? No. Is it as big a mystery as 'Vertigo'? Again: no. But what this one does better than most is meld all of those different takes into one cohesive story, giving us one of the funniest thrillers ever made. That has to count for something, right? Cary Grant is Roger Thornhill, an executive of a firm that is a bit of a blowhard who still dotes on his mother. During a lunch meeting, he is mistaken for a man named Roger Kaplan and kidnapped. He is then brought to a mansion where he tries to convince the people there that he is not this Kaplan, to no avail. They fill him up with booze and then want him to have a car accident, but through sheer luck he survives. Things only ...
