One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most fascinating, psychologically complex works, MARNIE finds the filmmaker employing expressionistically stylized mise-en-scène to evoke the fractured interior world of a compulsive thief who becomes entangled in a sadomasochistic relationship with the man she attempts ...
Two groundbreaking portraits of women grappling with mental illness offer bracing insights into the workings of mid-twentieth-century psychiatry. Credited with leading to actual reform in America’s psychiatric institutions, Anatole Litvak’s intense drama THE SNAKE PIT features a riveting performa...
With VAMPYR, Carl Theodor Dreyer channeled his genius for creating mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, unsettling imagery into a singularly haunting, dreamlike entry into the cinematic vampire canon. The Danish master’s only foray into the realm of horror was cited by indie existentialist Jim Jar...
J-horror innovator Kiyoshi Kurosawa (CURE) has consistently pushed the boundaries of the genre by imbuing his haunting thrillers with searching philosophical and metaphysical themes. This pairing of two his finest—the surreally apocalyptic alienated-youth odyssey BRIGHT FUTURE and shocking murder...
Two frustrated housewives begin to unravel under the pressures of their everyday lives in these searing looks at the crushing constraints of domesticity from the 1970s—both of which earned their lead actors Academy Award nominations. Carrie Snodgress is brilliant as a woman who seeks respite from...
A zippy screwball farce from Hollywood’s golden age and an absurdist home-invasion comedy from the Australian New Wave revolve around a topic sorely under-explored on-screen: the challenges of finding a good plumber. Jennifer Jones shines in a rare comedic turn as the irrepressible, plumbing-obse...
The dingy, decaying landscapes of Britain’s seaside towns mirror the trajectories of the unforgettable misfits at the center of these darkly funny character studies. Built around one of Laurence Olivier’s most arresting performances, Tony Richardson’s THE ENTERTAINER casts the stage and screen ti...
The story of Joan of Arc has been told many times, many ways, over many centuries—but we guarantee you’ve never seen it as envisioned by the ever-surprising French provocateur Bruno Dumont. First, the iconoclastic director reimagines the future saint and savior as the star of an ecstatic heavy-me...
Something sinister simmers beneath the summer sun when Alain Delon gets mixed up in murder in a pair of sultry, Mediterranean-set thrillers. The French actor with the steely blue gaze was at his most impossibly beautiful when he got his star-making breakthrough playing duplicitous charmer Tom Rip...
One of the most virtuosic and versatile directors working today, Norwegian auteur Joachim Trier displays his remarkable range and richly novelistic style in a quietly powerful family drama and a spellbinding supernatural thriller. Featuring a haunting performance by Isabelle Huppert, Trier’s firs...
Tumble down the rabbit hole with two darkly imaginative takes on Lewis Carroll’s timeless tale “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” First, Czech animation legend Jan Švankmajer blends live action and stunning stop motion to create ALICE, a strikingly original interpretation that crosses the absurd...
Femme fatales of ’49 and ’94: an underseen B-noir gem and a deliciously wicked neonoir revolve around unforgettably ruthless women mixed up in high-stakes robbery and dangerous double crosses. Costarring a memorably menacing Dan Duryea, Byron Haskin’s pulp firecracker TOO LATE FOR TEARS gives hus...
Tom DiCillo takes hilarious, caustic aim at the absurdities of the entertainment industry in a pair of whip-smart showbiz satires that pull back the curtain to reveal the inflated egos and relentless hustle behind the glamorous facade. Informed by the director’s early experiences working in the i...
Spend Mother’s Day with two rich, illuminating explorations of the challenges women face in balancing the demands of motherhood with their complex, often hidden emotional lives. Drawing from the actor’s own letters, diary entries, photographs, and home movies, Stig Björkman’s revealing documentar...
The hit-man thriller gets a shot of postmodern cool in a pair of stylish crime dramas built around solitary, Zen heroes. A razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and Japanese lone-warrior mythology, Jean‑Pierre Melville’s LE SAMOURAÏ features a career-defining performance from Ala...
Master directors Wim Wenders and Joseph Losey paint sinister portraits of moral corruption in a pair of spellbinding, coolly stylized tales of unscrupulous art dealers embroiled in dangerous underworlds. Wenders’ gripping Patricia Highsmith adaptation THE AMERICAN FRIEND casts Dennis Hopper as th...
Kathleen Collins’s independent landmark LOSING GROUND is a luminous, brilliantly perceptive portrait of a marriage at a crossroads and a woman’s emotional awakening. One of the first films to explore black female desire with nuance and philosophical complexity, it contains a key allusion to actre...
Jean Renoir and Akira Kurosawa, two of cinema’s greatest directors, transform Maxim Gorky’s classic proletariat play “The Lower Depths” in their own ways for their own times. Renoir, working alongside the Popular Front in France while Hitler rose in Germany, took license with the dark nature of G...
Samuel Fuller and Orson Welles bring a mischievous sleight of hand to these slippery accounts of some of history’s most notorious scammers, cheats, and cons. Based on a stranger-than-fiction true story, Fuller’s offbeat western-noir gem THE BARON OF ARIZONA stars Vincent Price at his unctuous bes...
From the side streets of 1950s Rome to the punk-rock underground of 1980s New York, two women drift through the margins of society with only themselves to rely on. In Susan Seidelman’s DIY classic SMITHEREENS, a New Jersey punk hits the streets of downtown New York in ruthless search of fame—no m...
With his 1948 HAMLET, director-star Laurence Olivier created what remains the definitive screen version of the Bard’s venerable drama, a vividly cinematic, psychologically charged interpretation that garnered Oscars for both best picture and best actor. Less likely to win any awards is the hilari...
Jacques Demy’s candy-colored, enchantingly romantic musical THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG may not seem like an obvious pairing with a fast-and-furious swordplay spectacular filled with glinting blades and bloody vengeance. Nevertheless, LAST HURRAH FOR CHIVALRY’s director, John Woo, counts the swoon...
The fascinating and elusive matinee idol turned art-house actor Dirk Bogarde gives complex and morally ambiguous performances in both of these controversial, ahead-of-their-time dramas.
Two career criminals attempt to go straight, only to get sucked back into the underworld in Seijun Suzuki’s delirious pop-art spin on the yakuza genre and John Mackenzie’s gripping gangster film starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren.
