The first of Kaurismaki’s ‘Proletariat’ trilogy is where it all crystallised very close to the fullest form and style of the Finnish director’s subsequent films as a garbage truck driver meets a supermarket cashier.
Yang’s complex, metaphysical tale of intersecting narratives continues his fascination with urban relationships—of people and spaces—in this competently-constructed stunner.
Assayas’ first feature isn’t really great but it still is an enigmatic treatise on the tension between youthful idealism and fatalism as a group of friends with music ambitions rethink their existence after a plan goes awry, leaving blood in their hands.
One of Cronenberg’s very best films, this is a peak culmination of his body horror exploits with a rare emotional and human core to its storytelling.
A girl with a sought-after magic crystal falls from the sky in this underrated early gem from Miyazaki, packed with action, comedy and fantasy in what could be his purest, most exhilarating adventure.
A poor man experiences wealth for the first time as Ripstein’s hard-hitting if straightforward drama depicts the soul-crushing consequences of greed and self-aggrandization.
The great 17th-century Italian painter is given the screen treatment in Jarman’s idiosyncratic, if at times anachronistic, deconstruction of a brilliant but tormented figure, featuring an indelible supporting performance by Tilda Swinton in her acting debut.
This early underrated work from Stanley Kwan may seem like it is all over the place in terms of tone and storytelling, but he just about pulls it off in its depiction of wasted youth and listlessness.
Godard collaborates with Jean-Pierre Leaud in this rarely-seen TV movie whose reach would have surely escaped its audience as the iconoclastic auteur philosophises the end of cinema, complications of production and the malleability of video aesthetics in his inimitable esoteric style.
The second film of Angelopoulos’ ‘Trilogy of Silence’ sees acting icon Marcello Mastroianni deliver a quiet, wrenching performance that is one of his very best.
Eternality Tan