The Wild Bunch

(1969; screens Thursday at 7 p.m.)

Not even the violence of Bonnie and Clyde prepared viewers for the glimpse of the abyss Sam Peckinpah offers here before the end of the opening credits. Almost 30 years later, these images still have the power to impress, and now it's easy to see The Wild Bunch as one of the first and best films to fuse the exhilaration and sublimity of violence with a recognition of its horror and its consequences.