Directed by Oliver Stone • 1986 • United States
Starring Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger

Director Oliver Stone drew from his own experiences for this searing antiwar epic, one of the most brutally realistic Hollywood films made about the horrors of the Vietnam War. Alongside an impress...

Directed by Paul Verhoeven • 1995 • United States, France
Starring Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan, Gina Gershon

Unbound by musty notions of “good taste,” SHOWGIRLS goes farther than any other film of the 1990s in its orgiastic depiction of consumerism, crass spectacle, and the dark side of t...

Directed by Brian De Palma • 1989 • United States
Starring Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, Don Harvey

One of the most harrowing Hollywood films to confront the legacy of the Vietnam War, CASUALTIES OF WAR is based on the true story of a squad of soldiers caught in a moral quagmire. Witness to a vile ...

Directed by Cameron Crowe • 2001 • United States
Starring Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz

Cameron Crowe’s heady remake of Alejandro Amenábar’s Spanish science-fiction hit OPEN YOUR EYES reunites him with JERRY MAGUIRE star Tom Cruise as a man on a mind-bending search for his soul. Young,...

Directed by Jacques Rivette • 2001 • France
Starring Jeanne Balibar, Marianne Basler, Sergio Castellitto

One of director Jacques Rivette’s most purely delightful works, this fanciful tale of love and art trains a wittily ironic eye on the intersecting relationships between a coterie of bohemian ...

Directed by Hải Ninh • 1974 • North Vietnam
Starring Lan Hương, Trà Giang, Thế Anh

Haunting and indelible, this landmark of Vietnamese cinema depicts the horrors of the Vietnam War from the point of view of a young girl (Lan Hương) as she searches for her family amid the rubble-strewn streets of...

Directed by Stanley Kubrick • 1987 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D’Onofrio

Director Stanley Kubrick rips the skin from the face of war to expose the dehumanizing effect of the military on the people fed into its meat grinder in this lacerating and...

Directed by Wen Muye • 2018 • China
Starring Xu Zheng, Zhou Yiwei, Wang Chuanjun

Based on the true story of a Robin Hood–esque people’s hero who took on big pharma, this rousing blend of comedy and social drama was a box-office smash in China that actually effected change in government policy re...

Directed by Đặng Nhật Minh • 1984 • Vietnam
Starring Lê Vân, Nguyen Hữu Mười, Nguyễn Minh Vương

Widely regarded as one of the greatest Vietnamese films ever made, this deeply moving exploration of grief and trauma centers on Duyên (Lê Vân), a young woman whose husband is killed in Vietnam’s post...

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola • 1966 • United States
Starring Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Peter Kastner

Francis Ford Coppola’s oft-overlooked second feature is a zanily offbeat entry in the 1960s sex-comedy canon. Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner), a naive nineteen-year-old virgin li...

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar • 2006 • Spain
Starring Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Yohana Cobo

Pedro Almodóvar’s VOLVER is set in Madrid’s lively working-class neighborhoods, where three generations of women survive wind, fire, and even death, thanks to goodness, audacity, and a limitless vital...

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 Joseph Sargent • 1974 • United States
Starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam

One of the definitive cinematic time capsules of New York in the good-bad old days of the 1970s, this crackling urban-jungle thriller begins when a quartet of gunmen in trench coats—led by the c...

Directed by Diao Yinan • 2014 • China
Starring Liao Fan, Gwei Lun-mei, Wang Xuebing

Bone-deep disillusionment and startling moments of visual invention suffuse this noir immersion into the seedy underbelly of contemporary Chinese society, winner of the Golden Bear at the 2014 Berlin Film Festiva...

Directed by Barbara Sonneborn • 1998 • United States

In this powerful and poetic documentary, the legacy of the Vietnam War is explored from a perspective rarely acknowledged: that of the survivors whose lives continue to be impacted by the loss of their loved ones. Twenty years after her husban...

Directed by Bridgett M. Davis • 1996 • United States
Starring Jake-Ann Jones, Ron Cephas Jones, Patricia DeArcy

A long-unseen jewel of 1990s Black independent filmmaking, Bridgett M. Davis’s fearless exploration of Black female agency centers on Cicely (Jake-Ann Jones), the daughter of a former ...

Directed by Naghmeh Abbasi • 2022 • Iran, Canada

Through an interrogation of the landscape of Iran’s Shaho Mountain, LANDSCAPE SUSPENDED reflects on the sociopolitical history and violence that surround the people who reside in the region.

Directed by Jia Zhangke • 2018 • China
Starring Zhao Tao, Liao Fan, Diao Yinan

Visionary director Jia Zhangke’s mesmerizing, decade-plus spanning journey through China’s criminal underworld features a tour-de-force performance from his frequent star Zhao Tao as Zhao Qiao, the swaggering girlfrie...

Directed by Jacques Rivette • 1995 • France
Starring Marianne Denicourt, Nathalie Richard, Laurence Côte

During a sultry Paris summer, the lives of three young women—shy librarian Ida (Laurence Côte), searching for her birth parents; wealthy Louise (Marianne Denicourt), looking for her footing a...

Directed by Ray Yeung • 2015 • United States
Starring Jake Choi, James Chen, Elizabeth Sung

The romantic comedy gets a queer culture-clash twist in this tender, entertaining tale of love and identity. Ryan (Jake Choi) is a handsome fashion stylist living in New York City who rejects his traditio...

Directed by Ján Kadár • 1970 • United States
Starring Zero Mostel, Harry Belafonte, Ida Kaminska

Ján Kadár, codirector of the Oscar-winning Czechoslovak New Wave touchstone THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET, made his Hollywood debut with this unique, long-overlooked adaptation of a Bernard Malamud story, ...

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar • 1999 • Spain
Starring Cecilia Roth, Penélope Cruz, Marisa Paredes

This Oscar-winning melodrama, one of Pedro Almodóvar’s most beloved films, provides a dizzying, moving exploration of the meaning of motherhood. In an instant, nurse Manuela (Cecilia Roth) loses the t...

Directed by Barry Shear • 1972 • United States
Starring Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Franciosa

Evocatively shot on location in 1970s Harlem, this gut-punching crime drama combines film noir and blaxploitation tropes into an explosive portrait of simmering social and racial tensions. Yaph...

Directed by Li Yu • 2022 • China
Starring Ma Sichun, Karry Wang, Fan Wei

A searing saga of capitalist corruption, revenge, and a woman’s relentless pursuit of justice, this socially conscious crime drama begins when a bridge in the busy Chinese city of Huangque collapses in broad daylight. From ...