Directed by Curtis Hanson • 1990 • United States
Starring Rob Lowe, James Spader, Lisa Zane

Weak-willed Los Angeles yuppie Michael Boll (James Spader) finds his life transformed when he meets a mysterious stranger named Alex (Rob Lowe), whose charm and confidence gradually rub off on him. As Ale...

Directed by Vincente Minnelli • 1958 • United States
Starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine

Master stylist Vincente Minnelli applies his spectacular visual flair to this feverish melodrama, a scorching indictment of small-town hypocrisy that sets every inch of the CinemaScope fram...

Directed by Henry Hathaway • 1953 • United States
Starring Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters

Marilyn Monroe dazzles in her star-making turn as a devious femme fatale in this sultry tale of seduction and murder. While on vacation at Niagara Falls, Rose Loomis (Monroe) plots to murder her...

Directed by Vincente Minnelli • 1960 • United States
Starring Robert Mitchum, Eleanor Parker, George Peppard

Vincente Minnelli’s baroquely stylized melodrama casts Robert Mitchum as the patriarch of a wealthy Texas family who must confront their hidden secrets when his philandering ways come bac...

Directed by Stephen Herek • 1989 • United States
Starring Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin

It’s a totally bodacious odyssey when slacker SoCal teens Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves)—in danger of failing their high school history report, with potentially disastrous consequences f...

Directed by Lewis Allen • 1947 • United States
Starring John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster

Lurid Technicolor, deep-dish melodrama, and gay subtext abound in this pulpy noir firecracker. In the desert town of Chuckawalla, Nevada, tempers flare, passions spark, and violence erupts when Pa...

Directed by John Schlesinger • 1990 • United States
Starring Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine, Michael Keaton

It’s the ultimate yuppie nightmare when a young couple rents their spare apartment to a psychopath in this twisted thriller starring a memorably villainous Michael Keaton. After renovati...

Directed by Steven Spielberg • 1977 • United States
Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon

Pure movie magic of the highest order, this beloved science-fiction landmark from Steven Spielberg gazes, with awe-inspiring wonder, into the infinite unknown. In the night skies near his Mun...

Directed by Joel Coen • 2000 • United States, United Kingdom, France
Starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson

The Coen brothers’ (extremely loose) take on Homer’s “Odyssey” is a marvelously freewheeling journey through the Depression-era South overflowing with comic adventure, ir...

Directed by Sofia Coppola • 2006 • France, United States, Japan
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis

Sofia Coppola brings Converse sneakers and a dreamy synth-pop soundtrack to eighteenth-century Versailles for this exuberantly subversive, extravagantly stylized anti-biopic of o...

Directed by David Lynch • 1990 • United States
Starring Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe

David Lynch throws pulp melodrama, THE WIZARD OF OZ, surreal-kinky violence, and Elvis into a cauldron and brews this nightmarish soap opera in which outlaw lovers Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura...

Directed by Miloš Forman • 1996 • United States
Starring Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton

Director Miloš Forman brings his slyly subversive sensibility to this wickedly entertaining, stranger-than-fiction look at one man’s notorious public persona and unconventional private life. Wo...

Directed by David Lynch • 1999 • United States
Starring Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Harry Dean Stanton

In between the dark, florid surrealism of the LA-set neonoirs LOST HIGHWAY and MULHOLLAND DR., director David Lynch took a detour to America’s heartland for this surprisingly down-to-eart...

Directed by Luis Mandoki • 2002 • United States, Germany
Starring Charlize Theron, Courtney Love, Stuart Townsend

When their daughter (Dakota Fanning) is abducted and taken for ransom by a gang of serial kidnappers, a young doctor (Stuart Townsend) and his wife (Charlize Theron) are held hostage...

Directed by Dorothy Arzner • 1931 • United States
Starring Judith Wood, Dorothy Hall, Charles “Buddy” Rogers

Dorothy Arzner offers a snappily entertaining, socially perceptive look at female solidarity in this Depression-era tale of young women striving to succeed in their careers and in love. N...

Directed by Ranald MacDougall • 1955 • United States
Starring Joan Crawford, John Ireland, Betsy Palmer

Joan Crawford delivers a ferocious performance in this scorching domestic melodrama. She stars as Eva Phillips, a Southern socialite who, though she appears to be the epitome of grace and char...

Directed by Taylor Hackford • 1984 • United States
Starring Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward, James Woods

Based on the same novel that inspired Jacques Tourneur’s dark noir diamond OUT OF THE PAST, this steamy update infuses the classic story of betrayal, murder, and doomed love with a vivid sensuality...

Directed by Billy Wilder • 1960 • United States
Starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray

Jack Lemmon stars in one of Billy Wilder’s most beloved films as C. C. Baxter, a company man anxious to please his superiors at the New York insurance firm where he works—enough to let his boss...

Directed by Paul Schrader • 1982 • United States
Starring Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard

Paul Schrader’s kinky-stylish reworking of the 1942 Val Lewton classic transfers the action to a voodoo-spooky New Orleans, adds an incestuous undercurrent, and ups the sex and gore. Nastassj...

Directed by Christian Nyby • 1951 • United States
Starring Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite

Reputedly directed in large part by Howard Hawks (officially credited as the film’s producer), this chilling touchstone of 1950s sci-fi horror unleashes otherworldly terror in an isola...

Directed by Leo McCarey • 1939 • United States
Starring Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya

Golden-age Hollywood’s humanist master Leo McCarey brings his graceful touch and relaxed naturalism to this sublime romance, one of cinema’s most intoxicating tear-wringers. Irene Dunne and Char...

Directed by David Lynch • 1980 • United
Starring John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft

David Lynch brings his eye for the uncanny to this sensitive retelling of the life of John Merrick (John Hurt), a Victorian-era British man whose severe facial deformities made him a social outcast, but ...

Directed by Robert Altman • 1992 • United States
Starring Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward

A Hollywood studio executive with a shaky moral compass (Tim Robbins) finds himself caught up in a criminal situation that would be right at home in one of his movie projects, in this biting industry ...