Library

The American Dream as family business. Brando, Pacino, the baptism sequence. Cinema doesn't get better than this.

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." Scorsese's kinetic camera, Liotta's narration, that tracking shot through the Copacabana.

Tarantino reshuffled the deck of cinema. The dialogue, the structure, the soundtrack. Changed everything.

First rule: you don't talk about it. Consumerism, masculinity, identity. Misunderstood by half its audience, which is part of the point.

"You talkin' to me?" De Niro's Travis Bickle is American alienation incarnate. Scorsese and Schrader at their darkest.

Heart of Darkness up the Mekong. "The horror." Coppola nearly died making it, and it shows in every frame.

A man with no short-term memory hunts his wife's killer. Told backwards. Nolan's debut announced a new kind of filmmaker.

Dreams within dreams. The spinning top. Nolan made a blockbuster that requires a flowchart.

Two magicians destroy each other. "Are you watching closely?" Double twist that rewards rewatching.

Heath Ledger's Joker elevated the genre forever. "Why so serious?" A comic book film that's actually about something.

A father leaves his daughter to save humanity. Black holes, relativity, Hans Zimmer. I cried.

The man who built the bomb, destroyed by the machine he served. Cillian Murphy channels genius and guilt. 3 hours that fly.

HAL 9000, the monolith, "Open the pod bay doors." Cinema as pure visual philosophy. Still unmatched.

Alex and his droogs. Ultra-violence set to Beethoven. Can you cure evil by removing choice?

"Here's Johnny!" Jack Nicholson, the Overlook Hotel, the twins. Kubrick weaponized steadicam.

Two films: boot camp hell, then Vietnam hell. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is cinema's greatest drill instructor.

"Tears in rain." Replicants, Harrison Ford, Los Angeles 2019. Defined cyberpunk aesthetics forever.

A sequel that expands the original without diminishing it. Visually the most beautiful sci-fi ever made.

Red pill, blue pill. Bullet time. "I know kung fu." Changed action cinema and became a philosophy meme.

Three characters, one question: is she conscious? Chamber drama as sci-fi. The dance scene is iconic.

"Remember, remember the 5th of November." Ideas are bulletproof. The mask became a symbol.

Imprisoned 15 years without knowing why. The hallway hammer fight. The twist that destroyed me.

Clarice and Hannibal. "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti." Hopkins won the Oscar with 16 minutes of screen time.

The shower scene. Norman Bates. The Bates Motel. Hitchcock killed the star in the first act and cinema was never the same.

Desmond Doss saved 75 men without touching a weapon. "Please Lord, help me get one more." Faith as action.

The first 20 minutes at Omaha Beach changed how war is filmed. "Earn this."

Mogadishu 1993. 18 hours of chaos. Immersive, relentless, no politics—just soldiers trying to survive.

Oskar Schindler saves 1,100 Jews. The girl in the red coat. Black and white, devastating, necessary.

"Are you not entertained?" Russell Crowe's Maximus. Revenge in the Colosseum. Revived the sword-and-sandal genre.

"FREEDOM!" William Wallace, face paint, kilts. Historically dubious but emotionally undeniable.

Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, alone in Tokyo. The whisper we never hear. Jet lag as emotional state.

Erasing the memory of love. Kaufman's script, Gondry's visuals, and two heartbreaking performances. "Meet me in Montauk."

"I drink your milkshake!" Daniel Day-Lewis is Daniel Plainview, capitalism incarnate. PTA's masterpiece.

Chigurh's coin toss. The cattle gun. McCarthy's nihilism through the Coens' precision. Evil as force of nature.

A man cleans Tokyo toilets. His routine: cassettes, books, trees. Finding meaning in repetition. Quiet and profound.

Man falls in love with his AI. Prescient about our relationship with technology. Melancholy pastel future.

Władysław Szpilman survives the Warsaw Ghetto. Adrien Brody's silent devastation. Music as survival.

John Nash's genius and schizophrenia. Russell Crowe disappears into the role. The twist reframes everything.

"It's not your fault." Robin Williams, Matt Damon, a janitor who's a genius. Damon and Affleck wrote it at 25.

Kevin Spacey's midlife crisis. The plastic bag, the rose petals, suburban emptiness. Defined late-90s cinema.

DiCaprio investigates a disappearance at a mental institution. Which would be worse: to live as a monster, or die as a good man?

Father and son cross a dead America. Bleak, beautiful, devastating. "Carrying the fire."

Color-coded criminals, ear scene, "Stuck in the Middle with You." Tarantino's debut was a bomb going off.

The Bride's revenge. Anime sequences, samurai swords, spaghetti western. Tarantino's most purely entertaining work.

Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa. The opening scene, the bar scene, the cinema. Every scene is unbearable tension.

Freed slave becomes bounty hunter. DiCaprio's Candie, Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen. Bloody, cathartic, problematic, brilliant.

"The Dude abides." Bowling, White Russians, a rug that tied the room together. Gets funnier every rewatch.

Goodfellas in Vegas. De Niro, Pesci, Sharon Stone. 3 hours of mob excess and downfall.

Jordan Belfort's rise and fall. 3 hours of cocaine, Quaaludes, and excess. DiCaprio's most unhinged performance.

Rio favela across three decades. Kids with guns, a photographer who escapes. Kinetic, brutal, essential Latin American cinema.

Retired clerk writes a novel about an old case. The stadium sequence, the ending that destroys you. Best Argentine film ever made.

Six stories of Argentines pushed to the edge. The road segment, the wedding. Cathartic violence, pitch-black comedy.

Two con artists, fake stamps, Buenos Aires. Who's scamming whom? The twist is perfect.

Girl trapped in spirit world. Miyazaki's imagination is boundless. Every frame a painting, every creature unforgettable.

Two children in WWII Japan. The saddest animated film ever made. You will cry. I guarantee it.