Japanese New Wave — the essentials
The 1960s-70s wave that broke from the studio system. Imamura, Oshima, Yoshida, Suzuki, Wakamatsu — political, formally restless, often shot in colours that look like they're trying to leave the print.
Godzilla Fantasia
Wolfman vs. Godzilla
Hero of the Red Light District
Harakiri
The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer
High and Low
Tomorrow's Joe The Movie
The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity
Woman in the Dunes
Samurai Rebellion
Red Beard
The Human Condition I: No Greater Love
Yearning
The Izu Dancer
Yojimbo
Space Runaway Ideon: Be Invoked
The Naked Island
Ran
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Ken
Space Battleship Yamato
Portrait of Hell
Throne of Blood
An Autumn Afternoon
Bamboo Doll of Echizen
The Burmese Harp
Foundry Town
The Face of Another
The Battle of Okinawa
Proof of the Man
Autres collections canon
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
Wuxia and martial arts — flying swords, hidden masters