More than a century after the Lumière brothers made their first movie, the magic of the silver screen refuses to fade. Even silent era classics, such as the futuristic Metropolis, still retain the power to astonish. The talkies introduced new genres-- among them the special-effects blockbuster, first seen in King Kong and reinvented in the 1980s with Steven Spielberg's Jaws-- that continue to inspire and enthrall. In more recent years, technological...