Australian New Wave — Weir, Miller, Armstrong, Campion
The Australian film revival of the 1970s and 1980s produced some of the most visually distinctive cinema of the era. Peter Weir made Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave before Hollywood called. George Miller went from a $400K budget on Mad Max to reinventing action cinema. Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford, Fred Schepisi. Jane Campion crossed from New Zealand into the same orbit. Later: Baz Luhrmann, David Michôd, Jennifer Kent, Justin Kurzel. The landscape itself is a character — heat, emptiness, red dirt, wrong turns. Australian-produced films scored 6.5 or above.
Dominion
dreadgut punchraw
Hacksaw Ridge
rawtenderuplifting
Memoir of a Snail
bittersweetslow burntender
Mary and Max
bittersweetoutsidertender
Holding the Man
bittersweetgut punchtender
Waltz with Bashir
foreign gembittersweetcerebral
Mad Max: Fury Road
epicrawunhinged
Better Man
gut punchrawbittersweet
Threads
dreadgut punchslow burn
Hotel Mumbai
gut punchrawdread
Moulin Rouge!
unhingedbittersweetplayful
Control
bittersweetgut punchtender
Upgrade
body horrormindfuckneon soaked
Elvis
bittersweetneon soakedunhinged
The Lego Movie
cozyneon soakedplayful
Predestination
bittersweetcerebralmindfuck
Harvie Krumpet
3am cultplayful
Mad Max 2
epicrawunhinged
The Piano
bittersweetrawsexy
Shine
cerebralgut punchtender
The Great Gatsby
bittersweetneon soakedtender
Saving Mr. Banks
bittersweettender
Dark City
cerebraldreadmindfuck
Red Dog
bittersweetcozytender
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
bittersweetplayfultender
Wake in Fright
dreadrawsurreal
War Machine
raw
The Lego Batman Movie
cozyplayfultender
Ride Like a Girl
cozytenderuplifting
Picnic at Hanging Rock
slow burnsurreal
Altre collezioni canone
Comfort-cult — the ones you rewatch forever
Deep-cut rewatchables — off the beaten path, on endless repeat
Japanese New Wave — the essentials
80s horror everyone has forgotten
Giallo — Italy's blood-red mystery genre
Korean cinema essentials beyond Parasite
Post-Soviet cinema — Russia & Eastern Europe after 1991
The Romanian New Wave
Essential anime that isn't Studio Ghibli
Slow cinema — the long-take canon
70s American paranoia — the post-Watergate canon
First features by directors who later mattered
Documentaries that hold up as cinema
Scandinavian noir beyond the Stieg Larsson franchises
Iranian new wave — Kiarostami, Farhadi, and the rest
Argentine cinema — beyond Wild Tales
British kitchen-sink and what it became
First features directed by cinematographers
German New Wave — Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, Schlöndorff
Hong Kong action — Woo, Lam, Tsui, To
Spaghetti westerns — Leone, Corbucci, Sollima, and the second tier
Mumblecore — the American indie movement nobody named
Czech New Wave — Forman, Chytilová, Menzel, before they fled
French New Wave — Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Rivette, Rohmer
Blaxploitation — Shaft, Pam Grier, and the 70s Black cinema boom
Dogme 95 — von Trier, Vinterberg, and the vow of chastity
African cinema — Sembène, Sissako, Mambéty, and beyond
Italian neorealism — the rubble and the real
Commedia all'italiana — Italy laughing at itself
German expressionism — shadows, angles, madness
Taiwanese New Cinema — Hou, Yang, Tsai, and the island's quiet revolution
New Queer Cinema — Haynes, Araki, Van Sant, and the 90s insurgency
Wuxia and martial arts — flying swords, hidden masters