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7. "Phar Lap" (1983)

Over in Australia, in the late '20s and early '30s, a horse once described as "a cross between a sheepdog and a kangaroo" becomes a racing phenom, a "red terror" that wins so effortlessly that the powers-that-be take to handicapping him with heavy weights. Like Seabiscuit, Phar Lap (Thai for "lightning") wasn't born a winner; his money-hungry trainer rides "laziness" -- and nearly the life -- out of the colt, uphill on sand dunes. Then a stablehand ("The Man from Snowy River"'s Tom Burlinson) who loves the horse taps into Phar Lap's unstoppable competitive streak by holding him back, behind other horses, then letting him run. The magnificent red horse gallops away with every race -- beautifully photographed, often in slo-mo -- even when injured and carrying extra weight. "Phar Lap" is a heartbreaker, contrasting the great heart of a noble beast who would run to win "even if his legs were cut off" with the unworthy wheeling and dealing of the greedy men who own and race horses: "If something's good, that's O.K. But if something's too good, that upsets the entire system."

6. "National Velvet" (1944)

If you've never seen this showcase for 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor (her fifth film), give yourself a treat and take a gander at the violet-eyed child who truly "lights up" the screen with her oversized passion for horses. Along with the handsome English countryside -- all saturated color, quaint village, stone fences and ocean-side green fields that Velvet gallops over -- there's a supporting cast to die for: Anne Revere, as Velvet's wise, sweetly feminist mother (Oscar, Best Supporting Actress); Donald Crisp as her often befuddled dad; Mickey Rooney as a bad boy surreptitiously reformed by Mrs. Brown, Velvet and a horse named Pie. Watch Taylor cantering on her back in bed, "reins" attached to her feet, crying "Faster! Faster!" and listen to her ardent "I'm in love with him! This is the real thing!" -- and there's no doubt that director Clarence Brown fully grasped the erotic bond between adolescent girls and horses. Taylor plays Velvet full-throttle, her hunger for Pie a harbinger of hormonal excesses to come in "A Place in the Sun," when the 18-year-old turns those incredible eyes on Montgomery Clift.

5. "The Silver Brumby" (1993)

Adapted from a novel Elyne Mitchell wrote for her teenaged daughter's pleasure, "The Silver Brumby" is a spectacularly beautiful visual poem, full of gorgeous weather, landscapes and horses, courtesy of the High Country in Victoria, Australia. In the 1950s, a single mother teaches her daughter natural lore, spinning a tale about the life of a legendary silver brumby (wild horse) to wile away stormy evenings. Growing from creamy little foal bouncing about its palomino mother like an equine jack-in-the-box to magnificent stallion, the brumby is relentlessly pursued by The Man (a very young Russell Crowe, just a few years after his breakout roles in "Proof" and "Romper Stomper"). But it's in the undisturbed world of the wild brumbies that the film delivers some of its most exhilarating images: against a backdrop of black-and-white winter woods, a hulking pewter-gray stallion rears and snaps at his longtime red rival, the silver's father; an old stallion felled on a dark night, his death signaled by the slow disappearance of his visible breath; the silver brumby and the golden mare The Man has used to bait him cantering side by side over the high, rolling hills.