Directed by John Woo • 1992 • Hong Kong
Starring Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Teresa Mo

Violence as poetry, rendered by a master—brilliant and passionate, John Woo’s HARD BOILED tells the story of jaded detective “Tequila” Yuen (played with controlled fury by Chow Yun-fat). Woo’s dizzying ...

Directed by Alejandro Amenábar • 2001 • Spain, United States, France
Starring Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan

A remote manor; hushed, candlelit atmosphere; and shivery, supernatural menace. With his first English-language feature, Chilean Spanish writer-director-composer ...

Directed by John Carpenter • 1988 • United States
Starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster

The ultimate Reagan-era rebuttal, John Carpenter’s subversive science-fiction satire follows a drifter (pro-wrestling legend Roddy Piper) who discovers that America is being controlled by yuppie alien...

Directed by Robert Zemeckis • 2000 • United States
Starring Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Diana Scarwid

In Robert Zemeckis’s tense and twisty supernatural thriller, Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer play a seemingly happily married couple who uncover a secret so disturbing it threatens to ...

Directed by Charles Burnett • 1994 • United States
Starring Michael Boatman, Lori Petty, Ice Cube

Charles Burnett’s powerful police drama follows J. J. Johnson (Michael Boatman), an idealistic rookie cop and the only Black officer in an all-white precinct, as he confronts racism and corruption w...

Directed by John Carpenter • 2001 • United States
Starring Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Pam Grier

Dispatched to an abandoned Martian mining town to capture a serial killer (Ice Cube), a squad of space cops make a horrifying discovery: a phantom force that turns victims into goth-like zombies. R...

Directed by John Carpenter • 1987 • United States
Starring Donald Pleasence, Lisa Blount, Victor Wong

When a Catholic priest (Donald Pleasence) asks a physics professor (Victor Wong) and his research students to come to an old abandoned church, they don’t expect to find a large glass canister of...

Directed by Kira Muratova • 1967 • Ukraine, Soviet Union
Starring Nina Ruslanova, Vladimir Vysotskiy, Kira Muratova

Kira Muratova’s first solo feature already displays her sui generis approach to cinema, in an impressionistic portrait of women at work and in love. Through an intricate play of fl...

Directed by Ken Russell • 1980 • United States
Starring William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban

With its totally unrestrained, mind-bending use of special effects, Ken Russell’s visionary first foray into Hollywood filmmaking is one of the most intense, exhilarating stylistic achievements of the ...

Directed by Lucky McKee • 2002 • United States
Starring Angela Bettis, Jeremy Sisto, Anna Faris

By turns disturbing, darkly humorous, and curiously moving, this slasher take on the Frankenstein myth follows misunderstood misfit May (Angela Bettis) as she attempts and continuously fails to connec...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1961 • France
Starring Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy

With A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, compulsively innovative director Jean-Luc Godard presents “a neorealist musical—that is, a contradiction in terms.” Featuring French superstars Anna Karina, Jean-Paul...

Directed by Bill Gunn • 1973 • United States
Starring Duane Jones, Marlene Clark, Bill Gunn

Straining the conventions of blaxploitation and horror through a singular avant-garde sensibility, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent landmark GANJA & HESS is a highly stylized and utterly original tre...

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 Ching Siu-tung • 1987 • Hong Kong
Starring Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong, Wu Ma

In this beloved cult-classic fantasy, a traveling tax collector (Leslie Cheung) short on funds opts to take shelter in a seemingly abandoned temple. He is surprised to discover a young woman (Joey Wang) there,...

Directed by John Woo • 1989 • Hong Kong
Starring Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh

,Hong Kong’s preeminent director, John Woo, transforms genres from both the East and the West to create this explosive and masterful action film. Featuring Hong Kong’s greatest star, Chow Yun-fat, as a killer wit...

Directed by Kira Muratova • 1971 • Ukraine, Soviet Union
Starring Zinaida Sharko, Oleg Vladimirsky, Yuri Kayurov

With its daring formalist freedom, Kira Muratova’s pointillist family portrait so perplexed and unnerved Soviet censors that it effectively halted her career for years afterward. A ki...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1963 • France
Starring Marino Masé, Patrice Moullet, Geneviève Galéa

Coscripted by Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard’s fifth feature is not only a caustic antiwar satire, but a surreally subversive deconstruction of the very idea of the war film that anticipates t...

Directed by John Carpenter • 1974 • United States
Starring Brian Narelle, Dan O'Bannon, Cal Kuniholm

John Carpenter made his feature debut with this gleefully gonzo science-fiction satire, which began life as a student film and went on to become a cult classic. Onboard the titular spaceship, a t...

Directed by Ringo Lam • 1987 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Ka-fai, Chow Yun-fat, Roy Cheung

Director Ringo Lam explores potent themes of loyalty, authority, and corruption in this tough-as-nails crime drama set within the simmering confines of a prison. When he is incarcerated for accidentally...

Directed by John Carpenter • 1996 • United States
Starring Kurt Russell, Stacy Keach, Steve Buscemi

In this wildly anarchic sequel to John Carpenter’s dystopian classic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, eye-patch-sporting antihero Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) returns, this time on a kamikaze mission throug...

Directed by Dennis Yu • 1987 • Hong Kong
Starring Lau Kar-leung, Tang Lai Ying, Mark Cheng

Bonkers even by the anything-goes standards of Hong Kong genre cinema, this head-spinning killer-kitty horror comedy bursts with outrageous supernatural shenanigans and off-the-wall action. Every fifty yea...

Directed by Kira Muratova • 1989 • Ukraine, Soviet Union
Starring Olga Antonova, Sergei Popov, Galina Zakhurdayeva

Widely considered Kira Muratova’s masterpiece, THE ASTHENIC SYNDROME is also Soviet cinema’s grand avant-comic opus, a deconstructive portrait of the nation in the final, frenzied s...

Directed by Jean Rollin • 1979 • France
Starring Franca Maï, Jean-Marie Lemaire, Brigitte Lahaie

Jean Rollin’s erotic masterpiece is often described as a vampire film—yet, more than nearly any other horror movie, its true subject is blood fetishism. Set in 1905, the story concerns a group of ari...

Directed by Jean Rollin • 1972 • France
Starring Marie-Pierre Castel, Mireille Dargent, Philippe Gasté

With its scenario dredged from director Jean Rollin’s subconscious and a script written in only two days, the dreamlike horror fantasia REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE was cited by its maker as his pures...