Blaxploitation — Shaft, Pam Grier, and the 70s Black cinema boom
A genre born from the collision of 70s exploitation budgets and Black cultural assertion. Shaft (1971) and Super Fly (1972) opened the floodgates. Pam Grier became the genre's biggest star through Coffy and Foxy Brown. The soundtracks — Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, Bobby Womack — are as important as the films. Some aged badly, some aged into cult classics, a handful are genuine cinema. Tarantino's Jackie Brown is a late love letter. The list surfaces action, crime, and thriller films from the era with Black leads or directors.
The Godfather
devastatingslow burn
The Godfather Part II
slow burndevastating
Star Wars
mindfuck
A Clockwork Orange
mindfuckslow burn
Taxi Driver
neon soakedslow burndevastating
The Sting
cultdevastating
Chinatown
neon soakeddevastatingcult
Paper Moon
cozycultdevastating
Papillon
cultslow burndevastating
Dog Day Afternoon
cultdevastatingdread
All the President's Men
cultslow burndevastating
Sleuth
cultdreadslow burn
Jaws
devastatinglate nightdread
The Warriors
cultdread
Halloween
late nightdread
Serpico
cultdevastating
The Day of the Jackal
cultdread
The Conversation
dreadcultdevastating
The French Connection
dreadcult
Badlands
cultdevastatingcozy
Enter the Dragon
cult
Duel
cultdread
The Omen
late nightcultdread
Dirty Harry
neon soakedcultdread
The Long Goodbye
neon soakedcultdevastating
Sorcerer
liminaldevastatingcult
Carrie
dreadlate nightcult
Deliverance
weirdcultdevastating
Assault on Precinct 13
dreadcult
The Driver
neon soakedcultdread
Other canon collections
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
Dogme 95 — von Trier, Vinterberg, and the vow of chastity
Australian New Wave — Weir, Miller, Armstrong, Campion
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