Spaghetti westerns — Leone, Corbucci, Sollima, and the second tier
Leone defined the form: the trilogy with Eastwood, then Once Upon a Time in the West, then the gangster elegy of Once Upon a Time in America. But Sergio Corbucci made Django and The Great Silence — both bleaker and stranger than Leone. Sergio Sollima's trilogy is tighter than it gets credit for. Morricone scored most of it. The second tier runs deep: Damiani, Castellari, Petroni, Questi. The list filters Italian-language westerns and action films from the genre's working years, 1964–1978.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
foreign gemepicraw
Once Upon a Time in the West
foreign gemepicneon soaked
A Fistful of Dollars
foreign gemneon soakedraw
They Call Me Trinity
foreign gemcomfort cultplayful
The Great Silence
foreign gembittersweetdread
Trinity Is Still My Name
foreign gembittersweetcomfort cult
The Big Gundown
foreign gemoutsiderraw
My Name Is Nobody
foreign gembittersweetcozy
Django
foreign gem3am cultneon soaked
Day of Anger
rawunhingedoutsider
Death Rides a Horse
rawunhingedneon soaked
Keoma
dreadraw
The Mercenary
rawunhingedgut punch
Ace High
cozyplayfuluplifting
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
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