Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen • 2010 • United States
Starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Josh Brolin

Originally filmed in 1969 as a John Wayne vehicle, Charles Portis’s classic western novel gets a truer, grittier adaptation courtesy of the Coen brothers. Jeff Bridges is marvelously ...

Directed by John Carpenter • 1980 • United States
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins

Long-buried secrets come back to haunt a small town in this triumph of atmosphere and creeping unease from genre great John Carpenter. Drawing inspiration from the moody masterworks of Val L...

Directed by Ben Stiller • 1994 • United States
Starring Winona Ryder, Ben Stiller, Ethan Hawke

Arguably the definitive Gen X cinematic statement, this zeitgeist-defining comedic drama captures the anxiousness and uncertainty of postcollege life in the 1990s with sharp wit and generational insigh...

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 Joel Coen • 1991 • United States
Starring John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis

The Coen brothers’ darkly surreal journey through 1940s Hollywood casts John Turturro as the titular, Clifford Odets–esque New York playwright who moves to LA to work as a screenwriter for Capitol Pictu...

Directed by Joel Coen • 1990 • United States
Starring John Turturro, Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney

A Roaring Twenties gangster saga that only the Coen brothers could concoct, MILLER’S CROSSING marries the hard-boiled sensibility of classic noir fiction with the filmmakers’ trademark savory dialog...

Directed by Michael Winner • 1978 • United States
Starring Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Richard Boone

Robert Mitchum steps into the gumshoes of detective Philip Marlowe in this bold 1970s reimagining of the Raymond Chandler classic set in England. When Marlowe takes on what appears to be a routi...

Directed by Martin Scorsese • 1993 • United States
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

No filmmaker captures the grandeur and energy of New York like Martin Scorsese. With this sumptuous romance, he meticulously adapted the work of another great New York artist, Edith Whar...

Directed by Joel Coen • 1987 • United States
Starring Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman

The delightfully sophomoric sophomore feature from the Coen brothers stars Nicolas Cage as a dim-bulb bandit whose solution to the infertility of his ex-cop wife (Holly Hunter) is to babynap one fourth...

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen • 1998 • United States
Starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore

With its ultraquotable dialogue and unforgettable characters who have imprinted themselves onto pop culture, this outrageously entertaining comedy has taken its place as one of the def...

Directed by Dario Argento • 1977 • Italy
Starring Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci

One of cinema’s most potent hallucinogens, Dario Argento’s witchy freak-out is a sustained spectacle of outrageously stylized violence and eye-popping art direction. When doe-eyed American ballerina S...

Directed by Elia Kazan • 1954 • United States
Starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb

Marlon Brando gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turned-longshoreman Terry Malloy in this masterpiece of urban poetry. A raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and soc...

Directed by Richard Benjamin • 1990 • United States
Starring Winona Ryder, Cher, Bob Hoskins

Cher, Winona Ryder, and Christina Ricci make for a memorably unconventional family in this wry, winningly offbeat coming-of-age tale. Set in 1963 (with a period-perfect soundtrack to match), MERMAIDS cen...

Directed by Tom Surgal • 2021 • United States
Starring John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra

Although the free-jazz movement of the 1960s and ’70s was met with heated controversy, its pioneers—brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane—are toda...

Directed by Mati Diop • 2012 • France
Starring Henriette Nhung, Ghe Büi, Mike Nguyen

After she walks off her own set, a French-Vietnamese director shooting a film in Marseille journeys through the city in search of her past.

Directed by Jesse Lauter • 2021 • United States

In 1970, Joe Cocker undertook what became a storied musical experiment—a traveling rock ’n’ roll commune that crisscrossed the country on a private jet. This meteoric tour came and went over a magical two months, and as a one-time-only experience i...

Directed by Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini • 2012 • United Kingdom
Starring Noel Clarke, George Sargeant, Pauline Pearce

Rudyard Kipling’s famed poem “If—” is updated for the streets of contemporary London in this hip-hop-inflected urban fantasia shot in stylish black and white.

Directed by Mike Leigh • 2012 • United Kingdom
Starring Eddie Marsan, Samantha Spiro, Sam Kelly

Mike Leigh offers a humorous look at the sport of everyday life in this slice-of-life portrait of a harried London car salesman and his family.

Directed by Terence Fisher • 1961 • United Kingdom
Starring Oliver Reed, Clifford Evans, Catherine Feller

Having found success with their gothic reimaginings of classic movie monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy, Britain’s legendary Hammer studios embarked on their one and only for...

Directed by Jack Arnold • 1954 • United States
Starring Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning

In this pulp-horror classic (originally shot in 3D), American scientists on an Amazon expedition get more than they bargained for when a dark tributary turns up a prehistoric man with gills. Hal...

Directed by James Whale • 1931 • United States
Starring Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles

“A monster science created—but could not destroy!” Considered by many to be the greatest horror film of all time, James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN tells the at once terrifying and poetic tale of a maniacal scie...

Directed by Abel Ferrara • 1990 • United States
Starring Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, David Caruso

Renegade director Abel Ferrara—working in collaboration with his regular screenwriter Nicholas St. John—brings his murky moral worldview and eye for pulp imagery to this kinetic, stylish...

Directed by Sameh Alaa • 2020 • Egypt, France
Starring Seif Eldin Hemida, Nourhan Ali Abdelazez

After a long separation, a young man will do whatever it takes to be reunited with the one he loves in this affectingly spare Egyptian winner of the Short Film Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Directed by John Carpenter • 1983 • United States
Starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul

A high-school nerd’s (Keith Gordon) possessive and possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury unleashes its jealousy in a diabolical killing rampage in this sleek horror joyride from genre master John Carpe...