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 Jacques Tourneur • 1942 • United States
Starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith

The first of the horror films producer Val Lewton made for RKO Pictures redefined the genre by leaving its most frightening terrors to its audience’s imagination. Simone Simon stars as a Serbian émigré in Manha...

Directed by Jim McBride • 1983 • United States
Starring Richard Gere, Valérie Kaprisky, Art Metrano

Remaking Jean-Luc Godard's French New Wave landmark (itself an homage to American gangster films) was surely one of the more audacious cinematic gambits of the 1980s, but director Jim McBride (DAV...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • France • 1960
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger

There was before BREATHLESS, and there was after BREATHLESS. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspi...

Directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton • 1988 • United States
Starring Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Charlotte Rampling

Time is running out for university professor Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid). He has just twenty-four hours to unravel the bitter truth surrounding his own poisoning. In his despe...

Directed by Rudolph Maté • 1949 • United States
Starring Edmond O’Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler

Noir fatalism is at its most potent in this tightly wound thriller about a man on a quest to solve his own murder. After he discovers he’s been poisoned, California accountant Frank Bigelow (Edm...

Directed by John Carpenter • 1982 • United States
Starring Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter

John Carpenter’s terrifying remake of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD boasts some of the most impressively gory special effects in all of horror cinema. When scientists at an Antarctic research st...

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 Roger Donaldson • 1987 • United States
Starring Gene Hackman, Kevin Costner, Sean Young

Based on Kenneth Fearing’s classic suspense novel THE BIG CLOCK (famously the basis for the 1948 Ray Milland/Charles Laughton noir), this gripping, inspired reimagining resets the story against th...

Directed by John Farrow • 1948 • United States
Starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan

One of the finest suspense thrillers of the 1940s, THE BIG CLOCK stars Ray Milland as a hapless crime-magazine editor plunged into a web of danger when he begins being systematically framed ...

Directed by Bob Rafelson • 1981 • United States
Starring Jack Nicholson, Jessica Lange, John Colicos

Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange smolder in this erotically charged take on James M. Cain’s hard-boiled novel, kicking off the wave of stylish neonoirs that would proliferate in the 1980s. She’s ...

Directed by Tay Garnett • 1946 • United States
Starring Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway

Lana Turner and John Garfield set the screen ablaze with their smoldering chemistry in this erotically charged noir classic based on the novel by James M. Cain. Down-and-out drifter Frank Chambers ...

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 Jacques Tourneur • 1947 • United States
Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas

Everything you want in a film noir you’ll find in OUT OF THE PAST: a tenacious detective (Robert Mitchum) spinning his wheels to make good, a drop-dead beauty (Jane Greer) up to no good, and a m...

Directed by Neil Jordan • 1989 • United States
Starring Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Demi Moore

Director Neil Jordan and screenwriter David Mamet, masters of dramatic intensity, take a detour into comedy—albeit of the dark, cynical variety—with this oft-overlooked remake of the 1955 Humphrey Bogar...

Directed by Michael Curtiz • 1955 • United States
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov

This wickedly offbeat Christmas comedy gives Humphrey Bogart a rare chance to display his lighter side. He stars alongside Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray as one of three escaped convicts from Devil’s ...

Directed by Blake Edwards • 1983 • United States
Starring Burt Reynolds, Julie Andrews, Kim Basinger

Hollywood sophisticate Blake Edwards transplanted François Truffaut’s French sex comedy to 1980s LA for this ruefully funny portrait of a playboy facing a midlife crisis. David Fowler (Burt Reyno...

Directed by François Truffaut • 1977 • France
Starring Charles Denner, Leslie Caron, Nelly Borgeaud

In this bittersweet late-career charmer, director François Truffaut revisits his recurring themes of love and romantic obsession from a poignantly reflective perspective. Charles Denner stars as t...