New Queer Cinema — Haynes, Araki, Van Sant, and the 90s insurgency
B. Ruby Rich named it in 1992. Todd Haynes made Poison (1991) for nothing. Gregg Araki made The Living End (1992) about two HIV-positive men on a crime spree. Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) put River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves on the streets of Portland. Derek Jarman in the UK. Rose Troche's Go Fish (1994). Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman (1996). These films refused to apologise, refused to explain, and changed what independent cinema could talk about.
Mommy
foreign gemgut punchraw
Good Will Hunting
bittersweetcerebraltender
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
foreign gemsexyslow burn
Pride & Prejudice
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Before Sunrise
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Before Sunset
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Brokeback Mountain
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Mysterious Skin
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The Bridges of Madison County
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Groundhog Day
comfort cultbittersweetcerebral
Eat Drink Man Woman
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All About My Mother
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10 Things I Hate About You
bittersweettendercozy
Love Don't Co$t a Thing
cozyplayful
Talk to Her
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Gattaca
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True Romance
comfort cultneon soakedplayful
Moulin Rouge!
unhingedbittersweetplayful
Carol
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The Skin I Live In
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Volver
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The Road Home
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Bram Stoker's Dracula
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Pretty Woman
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I Killed My Mother
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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
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EverAfter
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Sense and Sensibility
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Summer of 85
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Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
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Weitere Kanon-Sammlungen
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
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
Wuxia and martial arts — flying swords, hidden masters