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
atmospheric
Hacksaw Ridge
devastatingslow burn
Memoir of a Snail
devastatingcozy
Mary and Max
cozycultdevastating
Holding the Man
devastating
Waltz with Bashir
fever dreamforeign gemdevastating
Mad Max: Fury Road
neon soakedmindfuck
Better Man
slow burndevastating
Threads
autumnaldevastatingcult
Hotel Mumbai
devastatingdread
Moulin Rouge!
devastatingcultcozy
Control
cultdevastating
Upgrade
neon soakeddreadmindfuck
Elvis
slow burndevastating
The Lego Movie
cozyautumnalatmospheric
Predestination
neon soakeddreadmindfuck
Harvie Krumpet
cozycultdevastating
Mad Max 2
cultneon soakeddread
The Piano
dreadweirdcult
Shine
cultdevastating
The Great Gatsby
slow burndevastatingcozy
Saving Mr. Banks
devastating
Dark City
dreadneon soakedcult
Red Dog
devastatingcozy
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
weirdcozycult
Wake in Fright
cultdevastatingdread
War Machine
dreadmindfuck
The Lego Batman Movie
cozylate night
Ride Like a Girl
devastating
Picnic at Hanging Rock
atmosphericslow burncult
Altre collezioni canone
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