Korean cinema essentials beyond Parasite
Bong, Park Chan-wook, Lee Chang-dong are the obvious names. South Korean cinema is deeper than the three — the slow burn of Hong Sang-soo, the chillers of Kim Jee-woon, the body horror of Park Hoon-jung.
Break the Silence: The Movie
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My First Client
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Sprout
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Bride in Sneakers
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Squid Game: Making Season 2
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Burn the Stage: The Movie
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Pawn
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A Melody to Remember
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Bring the Soul: The Movie
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BTS World Tour: Love Yourself in Seoul
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Inseparable Bros
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BLACKPINK: Light Up the Sky
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Be With You
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The Handmaiden
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Silenced
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20th Century Girl
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Swing Kids
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Everyone Is There
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Remember You
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Birthday
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Memories of Murder
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1987: When the Day Comes
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Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds
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A Taxi Driver
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The Way Home
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My Annoying Brother
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Keys to the Heart
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Cheer Up, Mr. Lee
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Castaway on the Moon
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The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion
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Otras colecciones canon
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
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
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