Directed by Alex Cox • 1987 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Dick Rude, Sy Richardson, Courtney Love

Four hapless bank robbers attempt to hide out in a depopulated desert town only to discover that it’s not really deserted at all in director Alex Cox’s wildly surreal send-up of the spagh...

Directed by Robert Altman • 1978 • United States
Starring Desi Arnaz Jr., Carol Burnett, Geraldine Chaplin

Robert Altman’s penchant for sprawling ensemble play and genre revisionism led him naturally to put his own iconoclastic spin on the wedding comedy. Here he wrangles perhaps the most expans...

Directed by Risa Bramon Garcia • 1999 • United States
Starring Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Dave Chappelle

A constellation of some of the buzziest young stars of the 1990s—including Ben Affleck, Dave Chappelle, Janeane Garofalo, Kate Hudson, Courtney Love, Christina Ricci, and Paul Rudd—assemble ...

Directed by Alex Cox • 1987 • United States
Starring Ed Harris, Peter Boyle, Marlee Matlin

A hallucinatory biopic that breaks all cinematic conventions, WALKER, from British director Alex Cox, tells the story of nineteenth-century American adventurer William Walker (Ed Harris), who abandoned a s...

Directed by Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV • 2020 • United States
Starring Peter Elwell, Michael Martin, Shay Walker

It’s last call at the Roaring 20s, a beloved Las Vegas dive bar where the regulars—a patchwork family of misfits, whiskey-soaked philosophers, and all-American oddballs—convene for ...

Directed by Sean Baker • 2000 • United States
Starring David Ari, Fred Berman, Henry Beylin

Sean Baker’s feature debut is an acerbic, hilarious portrait of college-aged men unwilling to jettison the raucous immaturity of adolescence. It’s three in the morning as a group of friends, on break from...

Directed by Jill Sprecher • 1997 • United States
Starring Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow

Something of a female-driven precursor to OFFICE SPACE, Jill Sprecher’s lost indie gem stars Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Toni Collette, and Alanna Ubach as a quartet of temp workers who bond over th...

Directed by Hal Ashby • 1971 • United States
Starring Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort

With the idiosyncratic American fable HAROLD AND MAUDE, countercultural director Hal Ashby fashioned what would become the cult classic of its era. Working from a script by Colin Higgins, Ashby tells the story of the emo...

Directed by Mary Bronstein • 2008 • United States
Starring Greta Gerwig, Mary Bronstein, Amy Judd

A defiantly lo-fi, ripe-for-rediscovery transmission from the early-aughts microbudget boom, Mary Bronstein’s rawer-than-raw portrait of toxic friendship traces the emotional fallout that follows a ...

Directed by Ronald Bronstein • 2007 • United States
Starring Dore Mann, Mary Wall, Carmine Marino

A nightmare transmission from the grungiest depths of the New York indie underground, the visceral, darkly funny, and totally sui generis debut feature from Ronald Bronstein is a dread-inducing visi...

Criterion Collection Edition #941

Directed by Susan Seidelman • 1982 • United States

Susan Seidelman established her distinctive vision of New York City with this debut feature, the lo-fi original for her vibrant portraits of women reinventing themselves. After escaping New Jersey, the quintess...

Directed by James Gray • 2008 • United States
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw

Set in the insular world of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, this timeless romantic drama features a remarkably raw, vulnerable performance from Joaquin Phoenix as Leonard, a charismatic but troubled y...

Directed by Jeff Lieberman • 1988 • United States
Starring Kevin Dillon, Deborah Goodrich, Jennifer Tilly

Cult director Jeff Lieberman (BLUE SUNSHINE, JUST BEFORE DAWN) pays homage to the heyday of 1950s science fiction with a sublimely schlocky, awesomely ’80s alien-invasion satire. When video-...

Directed by Jane Schoenbrun • 2021 • United States
Starring Anna Cobb, Michael J. Rogers, May Leitz

“I want to go to the World’s Fair.” Isolated teen Casey (Anna Cobb) repeats this cryptic mantra three times into the eerie glow of her laptop screen, initiating herself into the viral World’s Fair...

Directed by Alile Sharon Larkin • 1982 • United States

In this poetic, groundbreaking work from LA Rebellion trailblazer Alile Sharon Larkin, Alana (Margot Saxton-Federella), a Black art student, sets out to reclaim her body image and self-worth from Western, patriarchal beauty standards and, in...

Directed by Horace Jenkins • 1982 • United States
Starring Richard Romain, Tommye Myrick, Carol Sutton

Written, produced, and directed by the late, trailblazing director Horace B. Jenkins and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, this luminous, recently rediscovered landmark of ...

Directed by Whit Stillman • 1990 • United States
Starring Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Taylor Nichols

One of the great American independent films of the 1990s, the surprise hit METROPOLITAN, by writer-director Whit Stillman, is a sparkling comedic chronicle of a young man’s romantic misadven...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 2009 • United States
Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer

Two of contemporary cinema’s most electrifying eccentrics, Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage, join forces for a thoroughly unhinged pulp fever dream. Not—despite the title—a remake of or sequel to the si...

Directed by Charles Burnett • 1999 • United States
Starring James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave, Margot Kidder

Virtually unseen for years only to reemerge as a lost gem of American independent cinema, this surprising, ineffably tender romantic comedy from master director Charles Burnett (KILLER OF S...

Directed by Bette Gordon • 1983 • United States
Starring Sandy McLeod, Will Patton, Richard M. Davidson

The provocative, sexually charged tale of a woman’s journey of self-discovery, Bette Gordon’s independent landmark offers a bold challenge to conventional notions of feminism and pornography. ...

Directed by Michael Roemer • 1980 • United States
Starring Elizabeth Huddle, Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth Franz

Having chronicled the last days of terminally ill people for his documentary DYING, director Michael Roemer channeled his experiences making that film into this emotionally raw and wre...

Directed by Michael Imperioli • 2009 • United States
Starring Steve Schirripa, Sharon Angela, Emory Cohen

The directorial debut from “Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli is an intense, emotionally raw portrait of lost souls attempting to fill the spiritual voids at the center of their lives. Over t...

Directed by Todd Haynes • 1991 • United States
Starring Edith Meeks, Larry Maxwell, Susan Norman

Inspired by the writings of Jean Genet, Todd Haynes’s debut feature deftly interweaves a trio of transgressive tales—“Hero,” “Horror,” and “Homo”—that build towards a devastating climax. “Hero,” shot...

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson • 1997 • United States
Starring Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Nick Stahl

One of the great but long-unheralded debut films, Tim Blake Nelson’s first feature is an emotionally shattering tale of existential desolation in a small Oklahoma town. Unfolding in a fractur...