Set against the decaying grandeur of the American South, these sweltering sagas of family secrets, repressed desires, and twisted love are steeped in the region’s vibrant folklore and haunted history. Featuring adaptations of definitive southern writers like Tennessee Williams (BABY DOLL) and Fla...

When rock stars get the Hollywood treatment, the result is often a lackluster re-creation of their career’s most famous highs and lows. But the best musical biopics do more than just cover their subjects’ greatest hits, adopting unconventional modes of storytelling that go deeper than mere mimicr...

The vast, arid landscapes of the American Southwest become hallucinatory expanses of existential reckoning in these sun-blasted journeys into a harsh, unforgiving no-man’s land. From the counterculture disillusionment of Michelangelo Antonioni’s ZABRISKIE POINT to the aching desolation of Wim Wen...

Urgent, eye-opening dispatches from the front lines of American class struggle, these galvanizing documentaries by Barbara Kopple—both winners of the Academy Award for Best Documentary—are among the most essential films ever made about organized labor. Filmed over several years, HARLAN COUNTY USA...

In its midcentury heyday, Hollywood melodrama wallowed in blazing Technicolor, operatic plot twists, gloriously bad behavior, and even foul play. These films’ surging emotions push their characters toward outright violence, infusing the women’s picture with noirish thrills. In the hands of master...

With his lean, hangdog face and sunken, soul-weary eyes, Harry Dean Stanton—born one hundred years ago this month—was one of the all-time great character actors. He inhabited the cinematic margins for more than six decades, imbuing his portrayals of drifters, down-and-outers, mystics, and all-Ame...

1967–1968 • United Kingdom

Long before TWIN PEAKS beamed prime-time surrealism into the American living room, there was THE PRISONER, the 1960s British cult sensation that pushed television into new realms of unsettling, Kafkaesque mystery. Series creator Patrick McGoohan stars as a nameless spy...