Good Time (2017)

I don’t want more movies to be like Good Time, I want every movie to be Good Time. The low stakes, high intensity crime thriller from the Safdie brothers, which includes moments of tragic pain and touching beauty amidst a plot which hinges on a Dominos bathroom and a Sprite bottle full of LSD, is a one night odyssey into a lurid world of fuck-ups and the people they fuck over.

Silence (2016)

Nearly 30 years after The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese returns with another religious epic – the magnificent, heartrending, humanist Silence. Of course, nearly every film Scorsese made in the intervening years dealt with faith, guilt, and redemption, but you can’t help but feel that these two films, which place the subtextual concerns front and center, are perhaps the most crucial of the director’s career. Silence is staggeringly, almost painfully wrought with emotion and pain, fully shaped by the filmmaker’s vulnerabilities, hopes, and fears.

The Third Man (1949)

This postwar film noir classic is magnificent on all levels. Graham Greene’s screenplay, based on one of his own novels, is alternately hilarious and painfully insightful, often simultaneously. The result is a darkly comic masterpiece, effective both as a plot-driven murder investigation and as a poignant treatise on the morals and mindsets of a handful of lost, unforgettable characters stumbling around war-torn Vienna.

L’Avventura (1960)

Antonioni’s L’Avventura, a somewhat polemic masterpiece of ‘60s European arthouse cinema, is a wonderfully odd and prescient film. In it, Antonioni depicts (and dissects) romance, sexuality, and relationships with the detached precision and biological curiosity of a nature documentarian. As the film’s characters compulsively flirt, fight, and vie for one another’s attention, these inescapably human follies render them distressingly alien.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s sumptuous, nihilistic epic about duplicitous brothers – particularly that most duplicitous pair of all, business and religion. There Will Be Blood is gorgeously filmed, stunningly scored by Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, and anchored by a once-in-a-generation performance from Daniel-Day Lewis

Manhattan (1979)

My favorite Woody Allen movie, gorgeously shot in black and white and scored to sumptuous George Gershwin. Woody at his apex, Manhattan is hilarious and wistful and poignant, revolving around the hopelessly foolish attempts of a group of New Yorkers to find happiness.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)

Journalist and lawyer descend into druggy madness during Vegas trip.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Woman suffers PTSD from time spent with mysterious cult.

Margin Call (2011)

36 frenzied hours at Wall Street investment bank facing crisis.

Moon (2009)

Increasingly odd occurrences beset a lonely moon-harvester.