Wuxia and martial arts — flying swords, hidden masters
From King Hu's A Touch of Zen (1971) — the film that proved martial arts belonged at Cannes — through the Shaw Brothers factory, the golden age of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, to Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger (2000) and Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002). The wuxia tradition is older than cinema itself, rooted in Chinese knight-errant literature. On screen it produced some of the most kinetically beautiful filmmaking ever attempted. Start with King Hu, then go wherever the choreography takes you.
Ne Zha 2
foreign gemepicuplifting
The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion
foreign gembody horrorneon soaked
Let the Bullets Fly
foreign gemoutsiderplayful
Ip Man
foreign gemrawuplifting
A Touch of Zen
foreign gemepicslow burn
Bullet in the Head
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, The Movie
foreign gemcozyplayful
Police Story
foreign gemplayfuluplifting
The Mission
foreign gemraw
Hero
foreign gemepicuplifting
Fist of Legend
foreign gemepicraw
Kung Fu Hustle
foreign gemcerebralplayful
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
foreign gemplayfultender
Ip Man 2
foreign gemrawuplifting
The Legend of Drunken Master
foreign gemplayfuluplifting
Iron Monkey
foreign gemneon soakedplayful
Big Brother
foreign gemplayfuluplifting
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
foreign gembittersweetepic
Striking Rescue
foreign gemgut punchneon soaked
Enter the Dragon
uplifting
Southpaw
gut punchuplifting
A Better Tomorrow
foreign gembittersweetraw
Operation Red Sea
foreign gemepicraw
Drunken Master
foreign gemoutsiderplayful
Running Out of Time
foreign gemparanoidraw
House of Flying Daggers
foreign gemslow burn
Operation Condor
foreign gemplayful
The Wandering Earth II
foreign gemcerebraldread
Snake in the Eagle's Shadow
foreign gemoutsiderplayful
A World Without Thieves
foreign gembittersweetoutsider
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
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