Directed by Claire Denis | 100 mins | 2008
“It’s the best father-daughter movie I can think of. And it’s one of the greatest romances, too… The dance sequence to 'Night Shift' by the Commodores is not able to be described. We are witness to the most magical thing that can happen between two peopl...

Directed by Stanley Kwan | 154 mins | 1991
One of the brightest stars of the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema pays tribute to a predecessor from pre-revolutionary Chinese cinema, as Maggie Cheung passionately embodies Ruan Lingyu (1910-1935), the silent screen icon who committed suicide when hounde...

Directed by Claire Denis | 95 mins | 2017
Claire Denis’s voluptuous riff on "A Lover’s Discourse" by Roland Barthes stars a characteristically radiant Juliette Binoche as Isabelle, a divorced artist in search of swoon-inducing, capital-L love. What she finds, via a series of comedy-laced liaisons...

Directed by Lynne Ramsay | 98 mins | 2002
A sensory odyssey packed into an intimate story of love, death, and theft, Lynne Ramsay’s second feature stays close to its impossibly distant title character, played with a transfixing inscrutability by Samantha Morton. Passing off the work of her suicid...

Directed by Paul Morrissey | 99 mins | 1984
Brazilian diva Marília Pêra, fresh from her international breakthrough in Héctor Babenco’s "Pixote," is the queenly matriarch of a dope-dealing dynasty in Morrissey’s marvelous, grimly funny Alphabet City melodrama, concerning a turf war between rival d...

Directed by Peter Greenaway | 126 mins | 1995
Made from animal skins, parchment has been used as a medium for language since ancient times; in Peter Greenaway’s sumptuous, Hong Kong–set fabulation, the human body is the preferred site of expression, and the act of inscription an erotic rite. Vivi...

Directed by Claire Denis | 130 mins | 2004
One of Claire Denis’s most ambitious, complicated, and exhilaratingly daring films charts an itinerary traveling from the snowy Alps to Korea to Tahiti, following an old mercenary (Michel Subor, from "Le Petit Soldat" and "Beau Travail") in search of bot...

Leaving December 1

Directed by John Dahl | 110 mins | 1994
Skipping town on her husband Clay (Bill Pullman), Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) sets about seducing a series of men into abetting her lethal money-making schemes. The fact that this erotic thriller played initially on TV meant that ...

Leaving December 1

Directed by Alan Rudolph | 111 mins | 1985
Alan Rudolph’s underseen noir oddity soaks in the grimy ambiance of Rain City, where Hawk (Kris Kristofferson)—a former cop, more recently a convict—is readjusting to the straight world and struggling young father Coop (Keith Carradin...

Leaving December 1

Directed by Elfi Mikesch | 88 mins | 1982
Frank Ripploh appears as an oleaginous con man, one of a rogue’s gallery of criminals, sociopaths, and blighted romantics (others played by Heinz Emigholz, Carola Regnier, and Fritz Mikesch) that populate Mikesch’s sui generis undergro...

Directed by Mary Stephen | 5 mins | 1973
Two identically dressed women, one white, one Asian, negotiate winding, maze-like corridors. This experimental, oneiric work dating from Stephen’s time in Canada plays as a cinematic meditation on cross-cultural identity, an exploration of the psychologica...

Directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu | 116 mins | 2009
A Tokyo waiter’s sex doll (Korean star Bae Doona) comes to life in this bittersweet modern fairy tale from the director of "Shoplifters" and "Nobody Knows." Her wide-eyed wanderings bring out the loneliness of the metropolis—shot by Hou Hsiao-hsien’...

Leaving December 1

Directed by Dick Richards | 95 mins | 1975
In this handsome adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel, noir icon Robert Mitchum meets one of the genre’s quintessential figures, Detective Philip Marlowe. The search for a missing girlfriend and a stolen jade necklace brings hi...

Directed by Tsai Ming-liang | 118 mins | 1994
Tsai’s second feature is a masterful evocation of urban loneliness and longing, quietly devastating even in its forays into something like slowed-down slapstick. A love triangle takes shape when three people—including a repressed funerary salesman pla...

Leaving December 1

Directed by Michael Winner | 99 mins | 1978
The second screen adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel transposes the notably labyrinthine plot to 1970s London, with a deliciously weathered Robert Mitchum reprising the iconic role he’d recently assumed in "Farewell, My Love...

Leaving December 1

Directed by Frank Simon | 68 mins | 1968
Welcome to the 1967 Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant, held at New York’s Town Hall! Simon’s essential document of queer history takes us backstage to rehearsals and dressing rooms at a drag competition organized by Flawless Sabrina...

Leaving December 1

Directed by Toshio Matsumoto | 105 mins | 1969
Part of the storied output of Japan’s radical Art Theatre Guild, Matsumoto’s dazzling voyage through Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood centers on two gender-nonconforming divas at “Bar Genet” but also doubles as a record of Japan’s av...