Slow cinema — the long-take canon
Long takes, minimal cuts, contemplation as method. Tarr, Akerman, Costa, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, Reygadas. If you can sit through a single shot for ten minutes, this is where you live.
The Godfather Trilogy: 1901-1980
bittersweetepicslow burn
The Green Mile
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Harakiri
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The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer
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Once Upon a Time in America
bittersweetepicslow burn
The Pianist
gut punchslow burntender
High and Low
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Princess Mononoke
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A Brighter Summer Day
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Le Trou
foreign gemslow burn
Once Upon a Time in the West
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The Shining
dreadmindfuckparanoid
Be With You
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Red Beard
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The Human Condition I: No Greater Love
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Undercurrent
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Seven Weeks
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Scenes from a Marriage
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Paris, Texas
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Stalker
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Incendies
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Das Boot
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Memories of Murder
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The Best of Youth
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Oppenheimer
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The Wages of Fear
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After the Quake
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Satantango
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Barry Lyndon
bittersweetepicslow burn
Lawrence of Arabia
epicoutsiderslow burn
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
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