Directed by Brian De Palma • 1976 • United States
Starring Sissy Spacek, John Travolta, Piper Laurie

The very first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel remains one of the finest—a still-shocking horror classic that has engraved itself onto the pop-culture consciousness thanks to the operatic...

Directed by Todd Haynes • 2007 • United States, Germany
Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin

How can a film portray the many sides of the shape-shifting enigma that is Bob Dylan? Director Todd Haynes’s audacious gambit is to enlist six actors to play him in this innovati...

Directed by Martin Scorsese • 1991 • United States
Starring Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange

Martin Scorsese fuses his bravura stylistic command and personal themes of sin and guilt with the pulp-pleasure mechanics of genre filmmaking for this brutally effective thriller, a morally unse...

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1970 • United States
Starring Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Rod Taylor

Italian art-cinema titan Michelangelo Antonioni delivered a jolt of jarring modernist abstraction to Hollywood with this startling journey into the 1960s counterculture, one of the most d...

Directed by George Armitage • 1990 • United States
Starring Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward

Based on the novel by crack crime writer Charles Willeford and produced by Jonathan Demme, this marvelously offbeat, black-comic caper features a totally unhinged performance from Alec Baldw...

Directed by Ken Russell • 1975 • United Kingdom
Starring Roger Daltrey, Sara Kestelman, Paul Nicholas

Directed by Nicholas Kazan • 1993 • United States
Starring James Spader, Mädchen Amick, Fredric Lehne

What begins as a dream relationship gradually turns into a nightmare in this sultry psychological thrill ride. Successful architect Ray (James Spader) is reeling from a recent divorce when he me...

Directed by Charles Laughton • 1955 • United States
Starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, i...

Directed by Kasi Lemmons • 1997 • United States
Starring Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Samuel L. Jackson

“The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old . . .” So begins Kasi Lemmons’s spellbinding feature debut, an evocative journey into the maze of memory steeped in fragrant southern-gothi...

Directed by Bill Pohlad • 2015 • United Kingdom
Starring Paul Dano, John Cusack, Paul Giamatti

The rare musician biopic to compellingly convey the process of artistic creation, this sublime portrait of Beach Boys visionary Brian Wilson jumps back and forth in time between the 1960s, as a young W...

Directed by Floria Sigismondi • 2010 • United States
Starring Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Michael Shannon

With this authentically scuzzy take on the rise of original punk girl group the Runaways, director Floria Sigismondi captures the mix of grit, glam, and adolescent abandon that propelle...

Directed by Robert Altman • 1973 • United States
Starring Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden

Robert Altman updates Raymond Chandler for the liberated, hedonistic 1970s in this brilliantly idiosyncratic adaptation of one of the writer’s most renowned novels. Elliott Gould brings a ...

Directed by Ringo Lam • 1989 • Hong Kong
Starring Chow Yun-fat, Cherie Chung, Tommy Wong

A loose remake of Peter Weir’s WITNESS as reimagined through the heightened emotional intensity of Hong Kong genre cinema, this propulsive blend of crime thriller and romantic drama finds director Ringo Lam ...

Directed by Anton Corbijn • 2007 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Sam Riley, Samantha Morton, Alexandra Maria Lara

With this bleakly beautiful immersion into the legendary 1970s Manchester postpunk scene, photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn evokes the agony and ecstasy of Ian Cur...

Directed by Ringo Lam • 1999 • Hong Kong
Starring Sean Lau Ching-wan, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Amy Kwok

Director Ringo Lam puts an eerie supernatural spin on his celebrated crime thrillers with this fascinating fusion of police procedural and psychological horror. After he’s kidnapped, tortured, and d...

Directed by Don Siegel • 1971 • United States
Starring Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman

This chilling, Civil War–set western casts Clint Eastwood stars as a wounded Yankee soldier who finds himself convalescing in a Confederate all-girls school, a charged setup that precipitates...

Directed by Elia Kazan • 1956 • United States
Starring Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach

One of the most controversial films of the 1950s, this scorching black comedy was condemned by the National Legion of Decency and singled out as “just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture...

Directed by Pat Jackson, Anthony Pelissier, and Harold French • 1951 • United Kingdom
Starring Glynis Johns, Nigel Patrick, Kay Walsh

Following QUARTET and TRIO, this equally captivating anthology film offers three more drolly amusing, morally perceptive stories drawn from the pages of W. Somers...

Directed by Todd Haynes • 1998 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Ewan McGregor, Toni Collette, Christian Bale

A CITIZEN KANE for the glittering, hedonistic glam-rock explosion, Todd Haynes’s deliriously flamboyant third feature follows journalist Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) as he launc...

Directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli • 2017 • Belgium, Italy
Starring Trine Dyrholm, John Gordon Sinclair, Anamaria Marinca

Built around a transcendent performance from Trine Dyrholm, NICO, 1988 follows the legendary singer-songwriter as she approaches fifty, leading a solitary existence in Manchest...

Directed by Julien Duvivier • 1952 • France
Starring Dany Robin, Michel Auclair, Hildegard Knef

This enchantingly inventive comic jewel—the inspiration for the Audrey Hepburn remake PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES—is built around a delightfully self-reflexive premise: two screenwriters, torn over whether ...

Directed by Steve Rash • 1978 • United States
Starring Gary Busey, Don Stroud, Charles Martin Smith

An Oscar-nominated Gary Busey gives one of the most electrifying portrayals of a musician ever committed to the screen in this irresistible portrait of Buddy Holly, the bespectacled genius from Lu...

Directed by Luis Buñuel • 1977 • France
Starring Fernando Rey, Carole Bouquet, Angela Molina

Luis Buñuel’s final film explodes with eroticism, bringing full circle the director’s lifelong preoccupation with the darker side of desire. Buñuel regular Fernando Rey plays Mathieu, an urbane widower, ...

Directed by J. Lee Thompson • 1962 • United States
Starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen

Screen legends Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum face off in this terrifying tale of revenge built around one of the screen’s all-time great villains. Mitchum is mesmerizingly menacing as Max Cad...