Hong Kong action — Woo, Lam, Tsui, To
The Hong Kong action cinema of the late 1980s and 1990s is one of the most formally inventive genre bodies in film history. John Woo's ballistic ballets — The Killer, Hard Boiled — set the template. Ringo Lam gave it grit and claustrophobia (City on Fire). Tsui Hark produced half the decade at breakneck pace. Johnnie To eventually made the whole thing his own in the 2000s: Election, Exiled, Mad Detective. The list surfaces Hong Kong and Chinese-language action, crime, and thriller films from 1985 onward.
A Brighter Summer Day
foreign gembittersweetgut punch
The Departed
paranoidraw
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
Bullet in the Head
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Police Story
foreign gemplayfuluplifting
The Mission
foreign gemraw
Hero
foreign gemepicuplifting
Fist of Legend
foreign gemepicraw
Kung Fu Hustle
foreign gemcerebralplayful
Ip Man 2
foreign gemrawuplifting
The Legend of Drunken Master
foreign gemplayfuluplifting
Iron Monkey
foreign gemneon soakedplayful
Sleepless Town
foreign gembittersweetoutsider
Big Brother
foreign gemplayfuluplifting
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
foreign gembittersweetepic
Striking Rescue
foreign gemgut punchneon soaked
Election 2
foreign gemneon soakedparanoid
A Better Tomorrow
foreign gembittersweetraw
Operation Red Sea
foreign gemepicraw
The Calm Beyond
foreign gemdreadsurreal
The Red Violin
foreign gembittersweetepic
Running Out of Time
foreign gemparanoidraw
Operation Condor
foreign gemplayful
House of Flying Daggers
foreign gemslow burn
The Wandering Earth II
foreign gemcerebraldread
A World Without Thieves
foreign gembittersweetoutsider
New Dragon Gate Inn
foreign gemepicneon soaked
Weitere Kanon-Sammlungen
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
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