First features by directors who later mattered
The film a director made before they were famous — usually rougher, sometimes more daring, almost always more revealing of what they actually cared about before the studio paid them to polish.
The Godfather
devastatingslow burn
Madonna: The Immaculate Collection
cult
Castle Under Fiery Skies
foreign gemcultslow burn
12 Angry Men
devastating
Leave it to Kero!
foreign gemcozycult
Sprout
foreign gemdevastating
City of God
foreign gemdevastating
Cinema Paradiso
foreign gemcultdevastating
Haikyu!! the Movie: The End and the Beginning
foreign gemcozydevastating
Burn the Stage: The Movie
foreign gematmospheric
Stop Making Sense
cultatmospheric
WWE WrestleMania 21
cultslow burndevastating
Perfect Blue
dreadforeign gemcult
Tomorrow's Joe The Movie
foreign gemcultslow burn
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
surrealweirdforeign gem
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
surrealweirdforeign gem
The Lion King
devastatingcozy
Night and Fog
foreign gemcultatmospheric
The Matrix
neon soakedmindfuck
The Matrix
neon soakedmindfuck
Bicycle Thieves
foreign gemcultdevastating
Alien
late nightdreadmindfuck
The Usual Suspects
mindfuckneon soakeddevastating
Silenced
foreign gemdevastating
Senna
atmospheric
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
cozy
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
devastatingmindfuckcozy
Big Deal on Madonna Street
foreign gemcozycult
Das Boot
foreign gemdevastatingcult
Dave Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly
cozycult
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
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
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