Ever since he burst onto the scene with “Slacker” and “Dazed and Confused” in the early 1990s, Richard Linklater has solidified himself as one of the most essential voices in American cinema as well as an unflagging champion of film preservation, having spent the past four decades curating series as film programmer at his Austin Film Society.

This year, the mastermind behind the Before trilogy and “Boyhood” is making the rounds online once again on the heels of “Hit Man”, a genre-splicing rom-com based on true events that had its hotly-anticipated streaming debut on Netflix on June 7. Led by a star-making turn by burgeoning A-lister Glen Powell, the film tells the stranger-than-life story of Gary Johnson, a meek college philosophy professor posing undercover as a ruthless hitman who falls head over heels in love with one of his targets (Adria Arjona) during one of his assignments.

Praised for its knockout performances and a whip-smart screenplay with enough moral dilemmas and narrative hijinks to make Hitchcock’s head spin, “Hit Man” has already become one of the buzziest film releases of 2024 and is widely being touted as a return to form from one of Hollywood’s premiere directors and a diehard movie geek with an overwhelming movie knowledge. To celebrate Linklater’s latest crowd-pleaser, we have rounded up 10 thriller movies, listed in no specific order, that the Austin-born auteur has spoken highly of over the years, many of which have influenced his own spin on the hitman subgenre.

1. Cutter’s Way (1981)

Neo-noir aficionados looking to fill in their blindspots after watching Linklater’s wry genre pastiche should consider tracking down this criminally underseen deep cut starring young Jeff Bridges in a proto-Lebowski role as Richard Bone, a 30-something slacker-turned-amateur gumshoe who gets roped into a big conspiracy implicating a shady California tycoon after witnessing the disposal of a corpse in an alley.

Named by Linklater as one of the greatest films of the 1980s decade and one of the best sunlit noirs (“right up there with 1974s “Chinatown” by his own admission), “Cutter’s Way” is a fine reworking of classic genre tropes that was unfairly pulled from theaters and widely panned by pundits (including the late Roger Ebert) but has slowly achieved cult status after securing a small but loyal fanbase in the following decades.

While introducing a screening of the movie at his Austin Film Society in 2014, Linklater said that though unfair as it is that “Cutter’s Way” got dumped by the studio for being “way ahead of its time”, it endures today as a “bleak, post-Vietnam political paranoia thriller about powerful forces” that also benefits from a career-best performance by John Hurt in the role of an unstable vet.

2. Body Heat (1981)

The heyday of the classic film noir had long passed when “Raiders of the Lost Ark” screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan took it upon himself to jolt new life into the genre in his first rodeo in the director’s chair. Simmering tension begins to boil over between William Hurt’s feckless small-town lawyer and Kathleen Turner’s cunning femme fatale as they satisfy their libidos and bloodlust during one particularly smoldering Florida summer in this sleazy tale of greed, power, and lust, stewed from bits and pieces from Billy Wilder’s seminal “Double Indemnity” (which also earned a big shout out from Linklater).

In a recent promotional video for Vanity Fair, Linklater generously credited the influence of “Body Heat” in his much-anticipated feature movie and went on to call it a “stone-cold masterpiece” that masterfully blurs the line between good and evil and also helped devise the romantic backbone of 2024s “Hit Man”.

“We don’t live in the moral universe of the Hays Code, where no sin could go unpunished. Put a charming, hot couple in a movie, and they can get away with murder,” Linklater notes. “And they do here.” You don’t have to peer too closely at this ’80s gem to spot the similarities with “Hit Man”, especially given the fact that the latter lifted the memorable bathtub scene in its entirety from the former.

3. The Long Goodbye (1973)

If watching this year’s Glenn Powell-led Netflix’s chart-topper has left you aching for more pitch-black crime comedies anchored by an impossibly charismatic leading man who ends up well out of his depth, we have just the right movie for you. Featuring a career-best turn by 1970s pop-culture icon Elliot Gould, Robert Altman’s tongue-in-cheek adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled novel finds wisecracking L.A. private eye Philip Marlowe scouring for clues throughout Tinseltown after helping an old pal drive south of the border.

Like many of the brand-name filmmakers of his generation, Linklater has a soft spot for this highly influential noir riff, identifying it as one of his four favorite films of all time earlier this year as part of Hit Man’s press cycle in conversation with Letterboxd. The director had previously had a chance to talk about its strengths at length while discussing his early cinema-going days at the 2017 New York Film Festival. During the chat, he praised Altman’s commitment to authenticity, pitch-perfect casting and fluid camera movement and fondly remembered the time he bumped into the maverick auteur and confessed to him that watching this particular film changed his life.

“Talk about moments: “The Long Goodbye” is just one incredible moment after another.”

4. They Live (1988)

Another 1980s masterwork Linklater selected to screen and present as part of his “Jewels in the Wasteland” 2017 series at his Austin Film Society is John Carpenter’s scathing Reagan-era anti-capitalist takedown based on Ray Nelson’s 1963 short story, which finds Canadian professional wrestler Roddy Piper in the role of an unemployed L.A. construction worker who unwittingly stumbles upon a pair of enigmatic sunglasses that reveal hidden, subliminal messages placed by the elite meant to keep the human race subdued and obedient.

During the post-film discussion, Linklater explained that given the big ad push and wide distribution that it got at the time, he came in expecting a big conventional studio flick, but was pleasantly surprised when it turned out that it was pretty low-budget, indie, wonderfully eccentric, clever, action-packed, and fun. “It felt subversive just to be at the mall watching it on opening weekend. Carpenter delivered the goods man! You can tell he had something to say, a big F you to everybody, and he said it with such oomph that, though I loved it at the time, I really wished I was 17 when I first watched it.”

5. This Gun for Hire (1942)

More than just about any other film in this list, this cool slice of wartime American cinema directed by Frank Tuttle feels perhaps the most analogous to Linklater’s latest Netflix hit. Newcomers looking for a solid onramp to brush up on their film noir couldn’t ask for a better jumping board than “This Gun for Hire”, which clocks in at a crisp, tight 81 minutes and tells the story of a professional assassin with a soft spot for cats and blonde bombshells who’s hellbent on exacting revenge on his double-crossing boss after being paid off in marked bills for his last job.

One of the handful of serial killer films Linklater included around the 18-minute mark voiceover montage in “Hit Man”, “This Gun for Hire” served as a key point of reference for what the director tried to achieve in Gary Johnson’s journey from nerdy professor to smitten undercover agent. During an interview with Vanity Fair as part of the film’s press cycle, the mastermind behind “Before Sunrise” and “Boyhood” geeked out over what he considers one of the quintessential entries of the film noir canon and specifically singled out Alan Ladd’s performance as Philip Raven for praise. “Even though he is not really even the lead, that’s what everyone remembers”.

Since he burst onto the scene with “Incendies” in 2010, Denis Villeneuve has been a steady, singular presence at the cinema. With now 11 films under his belt and coming off the back of yet another critically acclaimed barn burner at the box office, the Canadian auteur seems to have further established himself as a true master of large-scale spectacle and easily one of the most exciting filmmakers working today.

To celebrate Villeneuve’s long-awaited return to theaters this year, we have rounded up 10 thriller movies, listed in no specific order, that the mastermind behind “Prisoners”, “Arrival”, and “Blade Runner 2049” has spoken highly of over the years. From Oscar-winning masterpieces that influenced his own work to overlooked arthouse gems that deserve a second look, see the complete list below.

1. Duel (1971)

As is the case with many of the great filmmakers of his generation, Denis Villeneuve has a soft spot for Steven Spielberg and frequently credits him as one of his childhood heroes who ignited his love for cinema at a very young age. In 2022, the Canadian took the stage at the PGA award to acknowledge the huge creative debt he owes Spielberg (who was also in attendance), as a “master storyteller whose work moved me to a chore and first made me realize the mark of a true artist”.

Spielberg was barely 24 when he helmed this made-for-TV road thriller about a middle-aged businessman (Dennis Weaver) traveling across states while being pursued by a reckless truck driver throughout the Californian desert, but the film might just be the skeleton key to his entire oeuvre. It not only set the template for the classic monster-thriller masterpieces that were to come (“Jaws”, “Jurassic Park”) but also left a lasting impression on a young Villeneuve, who fondly recalls discussing it at length at school while wondering who the magician behind the camera was who transformed “trucks into bullies”.

2. Tenet (2020)

While Christopher Nolan has taken home a treasure trove of accolades for his Oppenheimer biopic, few could make head or tail of his previous, and to this day considerably divisive 2020 film. A Bond-inspired sci-fi thriller starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson as two globe-trotting secret agents moving back and forth through time to prevent World War III, “Tenet” may have earned mixed reviews during its pandemic lockdown-era release, but in the eyes of Villeneuve — a massive fan of Nolan’s work who also happens to be a huge advocate for the theatrical experience and premium large formats like IMAX — it was an “incredible cinematic achievement” that blew him away and plays best in theaters.

“The level of mastery of Christopher Nolan is unmatched, he is by far one of the best filmmakers working in the world today,” gushed Villeneuve, who proceeded to brush off comparisons to him while introducing a recent IMAX screening of “Tenet”. In the same conversation, the “Dune” auteur went on to state that it’s a “beautiful compliment to be associated with a filmmaker of that caliber” and that watching him continue to reinvent himself throughout his career is deeply inspiring. “To bring intellectual concepts in that scope to the screen right now — it’s very rare. Every movie that he comes out with, I have more admiration for his work.”

3. A Prophet (2009)

In June 2017, the New York Times asked some notable filmmakers for their favorite movies of the 21st century, including Denis Villeneuve. Though he argued that lists are better suited for grocery stores, the “Dune” director came up with some of his top movie picks since 2000. Along with cinema studies standards such as “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country for Old Men”, one of the lesser-known titles to grace his curated list is this Cannes prize-winner directed by Jacques Audiard, which centers around a fresh-faced young Algerian convict who rises through the ranks of the Corsican mafia while serving a six-year prison sentence.

Not a film for the faint of heart, “A Prophet” offers a gritty, unsparing look at organized crime and the harsh living conditions of French jails that vividly details the lead character’s evolution from low-level enforcer to criminal mastermind as he slowly wins the confidence of his fellow inmates and gets pulled deeper and deeper into the underworld. With Villeneuve himself not being a stranger to slow-burn crime thrillers, it feels very appropriate that the “Prisoners” director geeked out over the film and singled out the scene where a deer is killed in slow motion by a car as “one of the most powerful cinematic shots of the last decade”.

4. Casino Royale (2006)

Contrary to what his global reputation as one of the figureheads of highbrow prestige-fare may suggest, Villeneuve has plenty of respect for mainstream titles that in some quarters are often dismissed as guilty pleasures or crass entertainment. In an interview with BBC Radio 1, the Canadian auteur made no secret of his love for James Bond, declaring himself a massive fan of the decade-spanning spy saga since a very early age and revealing that there’s nothing like a good 007 flick to cheer him up.

Sean Connery first donned the three-piece suit in the early 1960s and is still considered by quite a few to be the quintessential Bond. That said, Villeneuve made a point of saluting Daniel Craig’s recent tenure while arguing that whoever takes up the mantle of 007 next will struggle to measure up to him. And though he doesn’t rule out the possibility of mounting a Bond film in the future, the Canadian noted in a podcast hosted by Josh Horowitz that rebooting the series so soon after Craig’s run would be a tough act to follow, as the English actor “brought something so unique and strong to the character that is probably unmatchable”.

We’ll be first in line opening night if Villeneuve ends up getting the gig. In the meantime, revisit Craig’s first and strongest outing as the womanizing MI6 spy, also featuring a fantastic one-off performance by Mads Mikkelsen in the villain role, in “Casino Royale” — the Bond film that Villeneuve seems to hold in greater esteem.

5. Dogtooth (2009)

As Yorgos Lanthimos becomes increasingly famous and continues to cement himself as one of the most prominent names in the industry to look out for, his early Greek-language breakthrough only seems to grow in esteem with each passing year. In this instant classic in the feel-bad cinema canon, which got a shoutout in Villeneuve’s roundup list of favorite movies since 2000, three adult children who have never left their home are brainwashed and consistently fed lies by their manipulative parents to ensure they never try to run away and escape.

At once startling and morbidly funny, this macabre thriller announced Lanthimos on the world stage and gave audiences a first taste of the Greek provocateur’s now-trademark blend of gruesome violence and pitch-black humor. “The madness in “Dogtooth” is the most refreshing thing I’ve seen in a long time,” wrote Villeneuve in 2017. “I’m still laughing at the crazy adults running to catch airplanes falling into their garden, because their father convinced them that they were fruit dropping from the sky. Yorgos Lanthimos may be one of the most exciting filmmakers working today.”

There are only a small handful of contemporary filmmakers whose work can rival the buzz and anticipation that a new Yorgos Lanthimos movie generates around the globe. After bursting onto the scene with “Dogtooth” 15 years ago, the Greek filmmaker has established himself as a singular presence in world cinema and one in a select line of auteurs working within Hollywood’s studio system who enjoy hefty budgets and complete creative freedom.

Last fall, Lanthimos reunited with frequent on-screen muse Emma Stone in “Poor Things”, an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name about a young woman embarking on a journey of self-discovery and sexual awakening after being re-animated and brought to life Frankenstein-style by an eccentric surgeon in Victorian-era London. Funny, macabre, and thought-provoking, the star-studded film opened to critical acclaim at Venice last summer before receiving 11 Oscar nominations including for Best Picture and directing.

As we await further details in his upcoming anthology film “Kind of Kindness”, we have scoured through interviews to round up ten thrillers that have played a part in influencing Lanthimos’ work and earned his stamp of approval throughout the years. From contemporary American cinema to lesser-known arthouse fare, take a look at 10 favorites from the Oscar-nominated Greek director, listed in no specific order, that deserve your attention.

1. Uncut Gems (2019)

The subtle art of getting under the viewers’ skin is evidently in Yorgos Lanthimos’ wheelhouse, as exhibited in instant classics of feel-bad cinema like “Dogtooth” and “The Killing of a Sacred Door”. With that in mind, it’s hardly surprising to learn that the same filmmaker who’s made a career out of spiking the average moviegoer’s heart rate tenfold would get a kick out of this nerve-racking pressure-cooker starring Adam Sandler as a compulsive New York jeweler who goes on a wild gambling spree in a desperate attempt to pay back all his debts.

Lanthimos holds the A24 release in such high regard that he discussed it at length in a written piece for Variety. “I was always impressed — frankly jealous — by the Safdies’ casting skills and instincts. In “Uncut Gems”, they have utilized all the elements I have loved in their previous films and brought them to a higher level, resulting in a unique cinematic experience that it’s like watching a Robert Altman film that was dipped in acid,” he explained. “The balance they achieved between the naturalistic and heightened elements is masterful, but it’s the human element that stands out and makes everything fall into place, the flawed characters that we love, even in their most embarrassing moments.”

Newcomers will certainly need a strong stomach for this particular ride, but those who haven’t taken the plunge yet are legitimately missing out on one of the most flat-out captivating performances of the century and certainly Adam Sandler’s career best. Take it from Lanthimos himself, who not only considers the Sandman “a truly great actor but also the perfect choice to play this character.”

2. The Long Goodbye (1973)

Like Lanthimos today, Hollywood trailblazer Robert Altman managed to dip his toes in virtually every possible genre throughout his legendary career while always retaining his own sensibilities and unmistakable flair behind the camera. At the peak of his creative powers back in the 1970s, the journeyman director cultivated a reputation as Hollywood’s provocateur par excellence with a formidable streak of off-beat masterpieces. Perhaps none had as much cultural impact or holds up as remarkably well as this wry adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled novel, which finds iconic private eye Philip Marlowe scouring for clues throughout Tinseltown after helping an old friend drive south of the border.

Like many of the brand-name filmmakers of his time, Yorgos Lanthimos has a soft spot for this 1970s genre classic, which would eventually serve as a key inspirational touchstone in modern L.A. neo-noirs like “The Big Lebowski” and “Inherent Vice”. In an interview with UK media outlet Metro, the “Poor Things” director had nothing but praise for what he calls a “reinvention of noir where the screwball, the mumbling, and the zooming all work wonderfully”. But it’s really Elliot Gould holding the fort here with one of the must-see performances of the 1970s and one that Lanthimos rightfully regards as “terribly charismatic”.

3. Le Samourai (1967)

As important and influential as any film from its era, Jean-Pierre Melville’s landmark crime thriller stars the phenomenal Alain Delon as a loner contract killer on the run who’s chased by the authorities and his former associates across Paris after carrying out his last hit.

Ahead of the American premiere of “The Lobster” in late 2015, Lanthimos stopped by the DVD closet of boutique media outlet Criterion to talk about some of his favorite titles featured in the collection. “Melville is an amazing filmmaker that is still so contemporary, you can almost sit down and watch his films today and you’d think they were filmed yesterday,” he said while waxing lyrical about the director’s 1967 classic film, one of the many titles mentioned in the conversation. “And Alain Delon is always great”.

The French silver screen icon oozes cool and charisma in the role of a trench coat and fedora-wearing hitman with a suave demeanor and samurai-like code, while setting the golden standard for the lone-wolf assassin character template that has been subsequently pilfered by countless Hollywood crime flicks, with last year’s Michael Fassbender-led “The Killer” being the latest high-profile example.

4. Branded to Kill (1966)

Japanese New Wave director Seijun Suzuki breathed new life into an often generic and predictable subgenre like yakuza actioners with this conceptually bold and gorgeously shot bullet ballad about a hard-edged contract killer working for the local mob (played with devilish charm by the great Joe Shishido) who becomes a target himself after a botched hit.

A box office bomb that flamed out of national theaters without barely making a dime before gradually becoming a cult hit overseas thanks to home video, “Branded to Kill” left a lasting impression on an impressionable young Yorgos Lanthimos and was one of the many titles the Greek-born director geeked out over during his recent visit to the Criterion closet. In conversation with the prestige boutique label, Lanthimos confessed that he uses Suzuki’s yakuza epic as a source of reference while making films and tends to make a conscious effort to re-watch it whenever he’s gearing up for production.

After getting acquainted with the brand of filmmaking of the pioneering Japanese director, you could then slide straight into some of his other well-known shoot-’em-ups (“Tokyo Drift” and “Youth of the Beast” are both worth tracking down) for another full serving of edge-of-your-seats thrills and dazzling visuals.

5. The Reconstruction (1970)

Before Lanthimos broke through and established himself as a festival circuit mainstay and perennial Oscar contender, one name stood a cut above the rest when it came to Greek cinema at large: Theo Angelopoulos. With a groundbreaking career that spanned over five decades and a bounty of contemplative masterpieces (“Eternity and a Day” and “Landscape in the Midst”, just to name a couple), the Greek maestro single-handedly put his country’s movie industry on the map and laid the groundwork for all his fellow countrymen, with Yorgos being no exception.

Ambiguity is the name of the game in the director’s feature-length debut — a time-shifting, fourth-wall-breaking crime procedural concerning the real-life murder of an adulterous blue-collar worker at the hands of her wife. Bouncing back and forth in time and gradually blurring the lines between fact and fiction, “The Reconstruction” challenges conventions of truth and justice by carefully threading together a murder case told strictly through first-person testimonies.

Though hardly acknowledged overseas, this early-career triumph announced the arrival of a generational talent in Angelopoulos and most recently was identified as a favorite by Lanthimos in conversation with British director Peter Strickland. “It’s an absolutely amazing film, in which you see how and why Greek filmmakers with a distinct voice like Angelopoulos started to be known more internationally and pop up in the history of cinema,” he argued.

In a groundbreaking career that now spans over 30 years, David Fincher has etched a permanent place in movie history as one of the most talented directors of his generation. Ever since bursting onto the scene in the early 1990s, the former visual effects producer and music video director has cultivated a reputation as a notoriously obsessive and demanding craftsman with a meticulous attention to detail.

Fincher’s new thriller finds the American director teaming up with “Se7en” screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker and returning to what is still considered to be his trademark genre that first put him on the map. Based on a graphic novel series of the same name, “The Killer” follows the exploits of a nameless professional assassin (played by Michael Fassbender) who must deal with the bloody aftermath of a botched hit job in Paris.

To celebrate his latest offering — now available on Netflix — we have scoured through interviews to round up ten thrillers, with an emphasis on those of the hitman variety, that the mastermind behind “Zodiac” and “Fight Club” has singled out as noteworthy for one reason or another. From classic French cinema to obscure 1970s gems, take a look at 10 favorites from the esteemed auteur that you should add to your queue after “The Killer”.

1. Le Samouraï (1967)

David Fincher had a brief chat with the British Film Institute while attending The Killer’s world premiere, during which he revealed a short list of titles that served as a jumping board for what he tried to achieve with his latest Netflix movie. And it’s only fitting that legendary French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville, often called the godfather of the modern crime thriller as a kind of shorthand for a cinematic giant who breathed new life into the genre and inspired an entire generation of directors across the pond, would crop up at least once.

Much like Fincher, Melville made his name and reputation with razor-sharp thrillers about ice-cold professional assassins — perhaps none better or as foundational as “Le Samouraï”, about a trench coat and fedora-wearing freelance killer (played with a steely edge by Alain Delon) who finds himself between a rock and a hard place after his last hit goes awry. Leisurely paced and unflappably cool, this Parisian nail-bitter recalls Fincher’s latest in how each deliberately puts the audience in the shoes of a highly competent hitman by carefully detailing their obsessive daily routines and samurai-like code. “I mean, you can’t make a killer movie without at least referencing it,” Fincher told BFI.

2. Get Carter (1971)

It’s a minor tragedy that an entire generation of moviegoers have seemingly grown up knowing Michael Caine as the affable, well-mannered fellow who used to keep popping up from time to time in Christopher Nolan movies instead of the ice-cool, all-around badass on-screen persona he cultivated earlier in his prolific career. To anyone who’d like to see the now-retired silver screen icon at his true apex mountain, though, we suggest you turn to this benchmark of British cinema, another recommendation pulled from Fincher’s BFI interview that served as a key point of reference for this year’s “The Killer”.

“Get Carter” finds Caine in full movie-star mode chewing up the scenery in one of his single best and flat-out enjoyable career turns as Jack Carter, a two-bit London hood who returns to his hometown of Newcastle dead-set on avenging his brother’s murder after refusing to believe the official police report, which claims he died by alcohol poisoning. You never know what’s lurking under the surface in this oft-forgotten man-on-a-mission classic that although rarely mentioned in the same breath as cinema studies standards like “Dirty Harry”, continues to be a guidepost for how to create a solid crime caper.

3. Charley Varrick (1973)

Another underseen gem from the 1970s ripe for rediscovery that Fincher likes and named as influential during his recent press tour interview with the BFI is Don Siegel’s wildly unpredictable, ruthlessly irreverent, and darkly funny “Charley Varrick”.

A heist-gone-wrong shoot-em-up that suggests a cross between “Bonnie and Clyde”, “The Getaway”, and “Reservoir Dogs”, “Varrick” finds Hollywood stalwart Walter Matthau ascend to new heights of performance in the title role as a short-fused and irredeemably self-serving career criminal on the run from the law who robs a small-town bank and must not only evade the cops but the mob and his former associates as well.

Fincher identified the movie as a personal favorite that left a lasting impression when he first saw it as a kid and one that he especially kept in mind during the early production stages of “The Killer”. And if you somehow need even more reason to track down “Charley Varrick”, rest assured — even by modern standards, the drum-tight script, heart-racing chase sequences, and tough-as-nails performances ensure the film still packs a mighty punch.

4. Miller’s Crossing (1990)

Perhaps more than any other contemporary American director besides Fincher himself, the Coen brothers have managed to writhe across genres while always playing by their own rules. Loosely adapted from Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled novels, this Prohibition-era gangster saga about two warring mobs established the Coens as a major creative force in Hollywood and introduced audiences to their tragi-comic sense of the absurd by fusing well-trodden noir tropes with healthy doses of self-awareness and dry wit.

Bullets, fedoras, double-crosses, snappy one-liners and top-caliber performances abound as we watch Gabriel Byrne’s too-clever-by-half henchman try to stay one step ahead after getting caught in a whirlwind of conflicting loyalties and breaking ties with his powerful crime boss. A high-water mark in Nineties American cinema that marked a stride forward in the Coens’ filmmaking craft, “Miller’s Crossing” was recently singled out by Fincher during a post-screening Q&A at LA. The director had nothing but glowing praise for the 1990 thriller, drawing attention to one of its most memorable scenes, in which John Turturro’s slippery bookie begs for his life after being taken to the woods, and remarking that it actually served as a key inspirational touchstone in terms of devising the overall tone for “The Killer”.

5. Notorious (1946)

In this globe-trotting Hitchcock spy thriller Fincher once referred to as a “magic trick of epic proportions”, Ingrid Bergman delights playing against type as the disgraced American daughter of a convicted German war criminal who’s recruited by a suave U.S. intelligence agent (Cary Grant) to seduce a Nazi industrialist hiding out in Brazil.

In Taste of Cinema, we’ll be the first to admit that comparisons between Fincher and Hitchcock, though not entirely without merit, are a bit overblown these days. Film critics and fans are all partially to blame, but it also must be noted that the “Fight Club” director has never tried to hide his admiration for the Master of Suspense and has repeatedly acknowledged the great artistic debt he owes to “Vertigo” among many other Hitchcock genre milestones. After all, Fincher famously credits being taken by his father to see a re-release of “Rear Window” at the tender age of 7 as a formative experience that forever sealed his love for cinema (and perhaps ignited his interest in voyeurism too).

The thinly-veiled Hitchcockian references and stylistic nods littered all over his filmography — including a point-of-view shot in 1997s “The Game” entirely lifted from “Notorious” in which a character blacks out and collapses after drinking covertly spiked coffee — have done nothing if not fuel the comparisons between both.

With Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” around the corner, we’re looking at a rundown of films that the beloved filmmaker has singled out for praise throughout his 50-plus-year career. Having grown up as an asthmatic kid who spent most of his childhood binge-watching movies at the local movie theater while the other kids were playing sports outside, the Queens native has repeatedly acknowledged the great debt he owes to his cinematic heroes, crediting the influence of the many movies that shaped his critical voice while championing up-and-coming directors who are still in the midst of finding their own.

At the age of 80, the legendary director shows no signs of slowing down and already has a number of future projects lined up, including a Jerry Garcia biopic, an adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s novel “Home”, and a movie about the life of Jesus Christ. To mark the release of Scorsese’s latest (in theaters October 20), we have rounded up ten favorites from the bushy-eye-browed director — from classic detective stories to gritty crime thrillers — that you should add to your watch list ahead of “Killers of the Flower Moon”.

1. Sudden Fear (1952)

Scorsese has made no secret of his love for classic film noir, noting in his documentary “A Personal Journey Through American Movies” how crime was a source of fascination for many filmmakers in post-war Hollywood that “allowed them to probe the nature of evil and reveal the dark underbelly of American urban life.”

Joan Crawford earned an Academy Award nomination for her gripping performance in this 1950s movie as successful New York playwright Myra Hudson, who falls in love with a budding actor she just recently turned down for the lead part in her new play. Not long after the two get married in San Francisco, however, Myra begins to suspect her husband might be after her wealth and plotting to murder her.

Not only has this nail-bitter been identified as a personal favorite of Scorsese, landing on his best film noir of all-time list, but the director also likened Margot Robbie’s breakout performance in “The Wolf of Wall Street” to Crawford’s all-bets-off feistiness, raving how both actresses “instantly command your attention any time they enter the frame”.

2. Retribution (2006)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa carved a nice niche for himself at the turn of the millennium with slow-burn psychological thrillers that implant themselves in the mind of the observer, taking real estate there and spreading like a virus long after the credits roll. Though the Japanese director is finally getting his dues overseas, the most glowing praise of all came from Scorsese, who championed him as “an absolute master of light, framing and pacing” all the way back in 2006.

In a piece published for DirectTV, the American auteur geeked out over several films from Kurosawa. Among them is “Retribution”, a murder mystery “filled with a strange dread” in which a careworn homicide detective begins to lose his grip on reality while scouring for clues on his latest case. Scorsese further discussed Kurosawa’s trademark style and pet themes, noting how his films seem to exist in the trenches between the thriller and horror genre. “Something has arrived, no one knows exactly what or how, or for what purpose: Reality is untouched except for a small, unsettling detail or two, which mutates into violence and irrationality.”

3. Wake in Fright (1971)

In this cornerstone of Australian cinema, a young school teacher gets more than he bargained for during his one-night stay on the desolated outback town of Bundanyabba, which stretches into a seemingly endless self-destructive bender after he becomes stranded having lost all his money in a gambling game with no means of resuming his travel.

Scorsese, who vividly recalls being left speechless by Ted Kotcheff’s gnarly thriller when he first watched it when it first premiered at Cannes in 1971, most recently introduced the film in a 2009 screening, describing it as a “deeply unsettling and disturbing movie that gets under your skin one encounter at a time, right along with its protagonist.”

You don’t have to peer too closely at “Wake in Fright” to spot the similarities with Scorsese’s darkly comic Soho fever-dream “After Hours”, which was released 14 years later. The fact that the memorable overhead shot of a coin being tossed in the air featured in Kotcheff’s film was lifted in its entirety in the De Niro-led crime saga “Casino” wasn’t exactly lost on savvy audiences either.

4. Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Scorsese holds Hollywood stalwart Robert Wise in such high esteem that he agreed to take part in a special commentary feature for the home release of his 1949 boxing drama “The Set-Up”. During the conversation, he generously credited the influence of that film on “Raging Bull” and acknowledged working with production designer Boris Leven hoping that some of the man’s experience with Wise would rub off on him.

However, it was this trailblazing crime caper — about three debt-ridden crooks who team up for a big-time heist — that was singled out for praise and hand-picked by Scorsese himself in 2019 when asked to curate a program of films for the New York-based Film Forum. “Film noir was not a specific genre like gangster films, but a mood,” he said in an interview. “These filmmakers were smugglers, transforming routine material into personal expression, bypassing the censors and the strictures of the Production Code whenever they could.”

The obvious draw here is watching Robert Ryan, Harry Belafonte and Gloria Grahame spew venom all over the screen, but don’t sleep on the film’s surprisingly nonconforming commentary on race relations in America.

5. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

Any fan of “The Departed” looking for another hyper-realistic, gritty portrait of the seedy Boston criminal underworld centered around police informants should seriously consider giving this underlooked Seventies gem a watch. A title in Robert Mitchum’s personal catalog still not nearly as appreciated as it deserves, “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” nevertheless features one of the actor’s best late-career performances as a hard-edged, two-bit crook who barely manages to make ends meet and decides to snitch on his criminal colleagues and supply the feds with inside intel to avoid another extended jail sentence.

Martin Scorsese has been an outspoken fan of Mitchum for decades, so much that one of his first creative decisions once he took directing duties to remake J. Lee Thompson’s “Cape Fear” in 1991 was to tip his hat to RKO’s former leading tough guy by bringing him back into the fold in a small supporting role.

When we assess the career of Christopher Nolan, it’s usually in terms of the sphere of cultural influence he’s had during the past 25 years. From “Memento”, the Dark Knight trilogy and “Inception” to “Interstellar”, the London-born filmmaker has left an indelible mark in every genre he’s worked in while singlehandedly revolutionizing the studio blockbuster. A visionary storyteller with a knack for turning big ideas into even bigger spectacles, a populist entertainer whose name is a major box office draw, a Hollywood trailblazer, a huge advocate for the theatrical experience, and a perfect gateway director for young movie lovers — no matter how you slice it, Christopher Nolan has cemented his place among the very highest stratum of today’s Hollywood filmmakers.

“Oppenheimer”, a hugely anticipated WWII-era biopic starring Cillian Murphy as the titular physicist and the father of the atomic bomb, continues to shatter expectations at the box office and generate Oscar buzz. While Nolan’s formative experiences growing up are well-noted — “Star Wars”, “2001”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, to name just a few — he’s cribbed from a fairly eclectic range of films throughout his career. To celebrate the occasion, we have rounded up a collection of nail-biting titles that have played a part in influencing his work and are worthy of your time.

1. The Offence (1973)

Nolan had a chance to stop by the famed French video store Konbini while he was in Paris on Oppenheimer’s promo tour to pick out a selection of films that celebrate his taste and style as a filmmaker. One of the lesser-known films the British director pulled out from the shelves was this stage adaptation by Sidney Lumet, a title in Sean Connery’s catalog still not nearly as appreciated as it deserves to be that happens to feature what Nolan considers the Scottish actor’s finest performance.

“There’s a level of craft from Sean Connery in this movie you wouldn’t see anywhere else”, explains Nolan. “It’s incredible”. A clear inspiration for the iconic interrogation scene between Batman and the Joker featured in the second installment in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, this thorny morality play stars Connery as a grizzled, burned-out cop investigating a series of sex attacks on underage girls who reaches a breaking point while interrogating a suspected child molester. Though he cultivated a reputation for playing unflappable, charismatic gentlemen, Connery’s turn as an emotionally wounded man who can never wash the blood off his hands proves just how versatile the former 007 agent was as a dramatic actor when he didn’t embrace type.

2. Sorcerer (1977)

As the records have it, this high-octane jungle thriller will officially go down as a big-time box office flop, having the bad fortune of debuting exactly one month after George Lucas’ space opera ripped open the entire film industry. That being said, the stock of this English-language remake of the 1953 masterpiece “The Wages of Fear” — a film that laid the groundwork for “Dunkirk” — has only risen over the years, gradually being reassessed by audiences and later reclaimed as a landmark achievement for the New Hollywood wave that stands out in William Friedkin’s rich filmography.

A masterclass in slow-burning tension, “Sorcerer” centers around four fugitive criminals who agree to risk their lives transporting gallons of explosive cargo in trucks from a remote South American town all across the treacherous Venezuelan jungle. Nolan singled out the 1977 testosterone-fueled nail-biter for praise during his recent visit to Konbini’s video store, highlighting the remarkable scenes involving Roy Scheider’s truck on the bridge and Tangerine Dream’s synthy score, the latter of which he considers one of the most influential soundtracks of that time period.

3. JFK (1991)

As yet another talky, three-hour biopic littered with Hollywood A-listers that details a key chapter in modern American history, Oliver Stone’s 1991 courtroom drama feels strikingly analogous to Nolan’s latest. As it turns out, the London-born director commented that rewatching this dramatized account of the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in preparation for “Oppenheimer” was an incredibly powerful experience, revealing that the effectiveness in which the movie builds and sustains suspense strictly through dialogue informed his approach to his own historical epic.

“Nowadays, we tend to think that it’s not possible for moviegoers to think and be entertained at the same time, but I really believe that cinema can return to what the Hollywood DNA must be — modern, innovative, and thought-provoking,” Nolan recently told Paris Match. ‘“JFK” is one of the last great examples of the same type of engaging, disturbing and epic movie that Hollywood has forgotten the last couple of years.” Most of the facts and conjectures posed by Stone’s opus may have been proven wildly inaccurate thirty-two years on from its initial release, but its passionate cross-section of systemic corruption and the pursuit of truth has lost none of its capacity to provoke.

4. Insomnia (1997)

Christopher Nolan has become so synonymous with big, glossy spectacles, huge ensemble casts and high-concept narratives that it’s impossible to imagine Hollywood’s blockbuster mainstream cinema without his blueprint. Long before his budgets started to figure into the triple digits, the Brit director took his first major steps into studio filmmaking adapting this ice-cool Norwegian crime caper, which stars Stellan Skarsgård as a sleep-deprived murder investigator driven by desperation and guilt who tries to keep his sanity while tracking down a fugitive serial killer.

Nolan told The Guardian that when he first saw the original 1997 movie, he thought it was absolutely brilliant and unimprovable. He confessed that in helming the English-language remake, he wasn’t really looking to best the original, but render difficult moral dilemmas and further explore the gray moral areas where the lead cop is torn between pragmatism and idealism. Though Nolan’s 2002 rendition is nothing to scoff at, it’s Erik Skjoldbjærg’s original film that remains essential viewing for fans of gripping and brilliantly cynical whodunits.

5. The Hit (1984)

Ambiguity is the name of the game in most if not all of Christopher Nolan’s movies to date as well as Stephen Frears’ grisly Brit thriller, featuring a gruff Terrence Stamp as a former henchman turned stool pigeon who desperately tries to stay one step ahead after ratting on his mob friends and lying low in a remote Spanish village. Before long, two hit men (John Hurt and Tim Roth) come knocking at his door en route to Paris where he’s expected to meet retribution from the crime boss he helped put away.

Listed as one of his ten favorite titles in the Criterion Collection, “The Hit” has been revered by Nolan and referred to as a daring portrayal of the dynamics between desperate men. “Revenge is a particularly interesting concept, especially the notion of whether or not it exists outside of just an abstract idea,” he said. “That Criterion has released this little-known Stephen Frears gem is a testament to the thoroughness of their search for obscure masterworks.” Even by modern standards, the unbearable tension, powerful cast, and music by Roger Waters and Eric Clapton ensure this tightly constructed Euro-thriller still packs a punch.

With only three directorial efforts under his belt, Ari Aster has already established himself as a brand-name filmmaker with a strong authorial stamp and a cult following, having jolted new life into arthouse and genre cinema alike in recent years. Now, the mastermind behind “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” is once again on everyone’s lips following the hotly-anticipated release of “Beau is Afraid” — a three-hour-long pitch-black comedy starring Joaquin Phoenix as a distraught middle-aged man who embarks on an epic journey to visit her mother.

Ever since bursting onto the scene and putting his stamp on contemporary cinema, Aster has singled out countless films as noteworthy for one reason or another. To celebrate his latest offering and as we wait for a release date for his upcoming Neo-Western, we have scoured through his interviews to assemble ten thrillers, listed in no specific order, that the A24 director has shouted out publicly. From classic British cinema to contemporary South Korean nail-biters, take a look at 10 favorites from the esteemed auteur.

1. Wake in Fright (1971)

Last April, Aster guest curated a program of films at New York City’s Lincoln Center for moviegoers to watch in preparation for “Beau is Afraid”. One of the handful titles that helped inform Aster’s latest mindbender was this underseen Aussie gem, which similarly unfurls like a feverish nightmare and gets under your skin at every moment’s notice, putting us in the shoes of a meek schoolteacher stranded on an isolated town in the Australian outback.

Aster told Dazed that the idea for his Joaquin Phoenix star vehicle was “to make something that’s constantly changing shape and rhythm”. Your appreciation for this unrelenting and increasingly wicked ’70s cult hit will likely correlate with how well you respond to that particular brand of filmmaking. But if, like us, you’re the kind of viewer who gets a kick out of watching Joaquin Phoenix dangle on the edge of oblivion while on a days-long, self-destructive bender, Ted Kotcheff’s landmark thriller should be high on your watch list.

2. Woman in the Dunes (1964)

While visiting the Criterion closet earlier this year, Aster spoke about his love for this underlooked gem of 1960s Japanese cinema. “I revisited “Woman in the Dunes” during lockdown in 2020 and it struck me as the perfect quarantine movie,” the filmmaker explained.

A surreal and Kafkaesque thriller that opens into a potent examination of Sisyphean struggle, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s two-time Oscar nominee takes place within the confined space of a small hut located at the bottom of a sand dune, where an amateur entomologist and a young widow are trapped without an escape route and forced into a life of labor shoveling sand. The film received particularly high praise from Aster, who called it “perhaps one of the greatest films about men and women” before lamenting the fact that the Japanese director “stopped making films to become a florist” shortly after. Certain viewers might be turned off by its spareness at first, but the buildup makes the payoff feel thoroughly earned — providing no quick answers but plenty of reasons to come back and revisit it.

3. Good Time (2017)

In very different ways, Ari Aster and the Safdies are each masters at churning out masterfully tense, claustrophobic films that get your heart pumping and flood your system with adrenaline. Before crashing into the mainstream with the 2019 “Uncut Gems”, the New York-based up-and-comers packaged a similar sentiment in a more streamlined package in the 2017 “Good Time”.

A cross between “After Hours” and “Dog Day Afternoon” as directed by the ghost of John Cassavetes, this unhinged pressure-cooker is best remembered for resurrecting Rob Pattinson’s career by providing him with the role of Connie, a fiendishly self-serving ex-convict who gets roped into chaotic spirals of self-obliteration over and over again. The story unfolds at a frantic pace over one fateful night through New York City’s underworld, with Pattinson’s human dynamo embarking on a cosmic quest across the five boroughs in order to rescue his mentally disabled brother away from police custody. Aster took a page out of the Safdie playbook when he wrote the perennial loser known as Beau Wassermann, so it’s not in the least shocking that he listed “Good Time” as one of his favorite films in a 2019 Reddit AMA.

4. Cul-de-sac (1966)

Ari Aster told Criterion that he often finds himself going back to Roman Polanski’s run of movies from 1965-1971 to “get excited about blocking, staging scenes, and directing”. This period of Polanski’s career includes “Repulsion”, “Macbeth”, and “Rosemary’s Baby”, all of which have been cited by Aster as one big source of ideas for how they brilliantly discard the superficial trappings of the genre and “upend conventions while honoring them”, something he evidently set out to do in his own feature debut.

Any of the aforementioned masterpieces should be required viewing for any thriller aficionado, but it’s the lesser-known gem “Cul-de-sac” that feels in more direct conversation with Aster’s personal catalog with its tonal balance of suspense, horror, and offbeat humor. The story of two injured American gangsters who take refuge at an old beachfront castle in the north of England after a botched robbery, “Cul-de-sac” has been continuously lauded by Aster, who described it as “Polanski’s existential Beckett movie” and noted how it “draws a lot from absurd theater”.

5. You Were Never Really Here (2017)

“Working with Joaquin Phoenix was the best experience I ever had working with an actor,” explained Aster in conversation with AFI’s Barry Sabath. “It taught me the seriousness with which I expect a performer to approach any given part.” The filmmaker just about confirmed he’ll be teaming up with the Academy Award winner again for his upcoming project, tentatively titled “Eddington” and loosely described as a darkly comic neo-Western set in a fictional copper mining town.

A good title to have in your back pocket while we await further details is this taut thriller by Scottish maestro Lynne Ramsay — assembled from spare parts of man-on-a-mission staples like “Taxi Driver”, “Point Blank” and “Rolling Thunder” — which was picked by Aster as one of his favorite ten films of 2017. Joaquin Phoenix’s traumatized vet-turned-ruthless vigilante, who’s hired to track down and rescue an underage girl from a child trafficking network, is every bit as great and convincing as the actor’s leading-man roles in “The Master” or “Beau is Afraid”.

Once dubbed the next Steven Spielberg at the turn of the millennium after bursting onto the scene with the Bruce Willis-led pop-culture hit “The Sixth Sense”, Indian-born director M. Night Shyamalan once again dominates the headlines following the release of his 15th feature film, Universal’s “Knock in the Cabin”.

Loved by many and arduously hated by others, Shyamalan’s name carries a complicated legacy these days—a former cinematic wunderkind that sent shockwaves all across the industry with era-defining crowd-pleasers during the early aughts and who later fell out of favor with a streak of box-office bombs and critical duds. Now almost 25 years removed from his breakout hit, the writer-director is experiencing something of a late-career renaissance that he’s forged by reinventing himself with low-budget genre films that mingle arthouse sensibilities and popcorn thrills.

Both his most devoted fans and harshest critics will probably agree that few modern filmmakers have mastered the art of suspense as much as Shyamalan. Not only is he a gifted craftsman and a skilled storyteller but an outspoken film buff who constantly raves about films and always gives credit where credit is due. With recent news that he’s departed Universal for Warner Bros for his next project—which is currently slated for an August 2024 release—we have rounded up ten personal favorites that his cabal of fans should look forward to after “Knock in the Cabin”.

1. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)

“When I think about some of the people that I looked up to, who are on my walls—the Hitchocks and the Kubricks and all the masters,” Shyamalan told the New Yorker, “What I admire about them is that lack of being able to make them change the cinematic value system that they have, which is so inspiring, and I think it’s why they’ve endured.”

Anyone familiar with M. Night’s brand of filmmaking will likely find the aforementioned quote to be hardly surprising. Admittedly, few directors in film history could withstand unflattering comparisons to the Master of Suspense, but Shyamalan’s trademark style is cut firmly from the same cloth. Featured among his personal collection of Criterion Blu-rays, this classic Hitchcock thriller stars Cary Grant as a U.S. government agent who recruits the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal (Ingrid Bergman) in a high-stakes undercover mission to help bring Nazi to justice. This 1946 nail-biter will be worth your time if you’re looking for good, old-fashioned thrills.

2. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)

Japanese master Akira Kurosawa is widely considered to be one of the most influential directors of all time, whose style and artistic blueprint ripples across the work of George Lucas, Sergio Leone, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola, among many others.

Though he became known in the West for his incredible output of medieval period films, most notably the 1954 epic “Seven Samurai”, it’s this hard-boiled crime procedural that stands out and became one of Shyamalan’s all-time favorites. Centered around a wealthy shoe executive (Toshiro Mifune) who suddenly becomes a victim of extortion following a bungled kidnapping, “High and Low” is a fascinating nail-bitter full of twists and turns that doubles down as a scorching indictment of bourgeoisie privilege and class resentment. Shyamalan has a poster of the film framed over the fireplace in his office and tweeted in 2011 that “High and Low” is a “dissertation on blocking and positioning actors in the frame”.

3. Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1962)

Say what you will about Roman Polanski as a person, but the guy sure used to know how to make great thrillers in his prime. Though this 1962 Polish film sometimes gets a little lost in between “Chinatown”, “Rosemary’s Baby”, and “The Pianist”, it should be respected as one of the finest directorial debuts ever and the film that put the director on the map in the first place.

A married couple decide to spend the afternoon together on the lake when they suddenly bump into a young hitchhiker, supplying the bedrock for a violent power struggle in which tensions and contempt soon come to the fore. “Watched Polanski’s first film last night”, tweeted Shyamalan in 2015. “Incredibly sensual and riveting. Amazing use of foreground photography.” On another occasion, the Indian-born director cited Polanski’s first English-language film, the Catherine Deneuve-led psycho-thriller “Repulsion”, as a huge influence when storyboarding “The Sixth Sense”: “We’d be watching it in my office and marveling at it. So restrained and unnerving.”

4. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

“I am such an admirer of David Lynch, he’s a master storyteller who’s greatly influenced me,” confessed Shyamalan. Throughout the years, the Indian-born director has frequently cited the American auteur as an inspirational touchstone, claiming he revisited his work during the production of the TV series “Sundowning” and “Wayward Pines”—the latter of which he described as Lynchian in tone—and the 2015 film “The Visit”: “I don’t know why he speaks to me at this time, but he accompanied me throughout the film, Lynch’s darkness inspires me more and more”.

In 2016, the director re-watched “Mulholland Drive”, a film famous for its status as one of Lynch’s darker films that some may argue defies genre pigeonholing, not unlike Shyamalan’s own work. “Amazing film! So structurally unique, and to me it’s a horror story,” he tweeted. In burrowing deep into the dark recesses of the troubled headspace of young Hollywood starlet Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), Lynch tapped into the stuff that really keep us at night. “Everyone is so odd and disturbing, it’s almost the opposite of every studio note that’s ever been given,” argued Shyamalan. Any film buff who in the year of our lord 2022 has somehow not seen “Mulholland Drive” has some serious homework to do.

5. Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964)

In the movies of M. Night, the purpose of the traditional horror genre trappings is often twofold—serving first as attention-grabs and doubling down as the baseline to delve deeper into the psychological makeup of the family unit, examining the way grief, trauma, and loss affect individuals.

Considering his trademark obsessions and stylish calling cards, it is barely surprising that this classic British thriller struck a chord with the Indian-born director when he first watched it 11 years ago. One wonders if the mastermind behind some of the biggest jump-scares in modern cinema is fazed by any film at all, but it seems as though Bryan Forbes’ black-and-white psychodrama did the trick. In a 2012 tweet, Shyamalan described “Seance on a Wet Afternoon”—in which a working-class housewife hatches an elaborate kidnapping plot to further enhance her reputation as a spiritual medium with the help of her loyal husband—as a “very creepy film”, noting how its characters are “so dark and conflicted”. Likewise, first-time viewers will have a tough time shaking off this blistering jolt of terror out of their systems.

In one of her last essays for the New Yorker, Pauline Kael turned the criticism inward. She celebrated and lamented having had to write in the pre-rental era, which meant that each “Current Cinema” column responded in real time to a film she had just seen, or it recalled films that remained stuck in the irritated corners of her memory. This, she suggested, lent her writing a sense of “urgency” and “excitement,” but also manifested her greatest flaw: “reckless excess, in both praise and damnation… I often got carried away by words. I’d run on, and I’d hit too many high notes.”

Maybe she underestimated how reckless flourishes and run-ons comprised so much of what readers loved about her writing. It’s what differentiated Kael from the other eminent critics of her time, particularly from Roger Ebert, whose measured, close-knit syntax seemed always to boil a film down to its essential components, leaving little room for embellishment. There’s a reason Kael never slapped a grade on a film. The point of reading her work wasn’t the recommendation, it was the intoxication of conversing with her as she worked through her feelings on the films that challenged her.

Kael seemed to have a special relationship with genre films that rose above lazy B-movie billings. Aside from musicals, thrillers often seemed the most direct way to her heart, and her incisive criticism helped to elevate their status in the public consciousness. She was an early champion for famous young filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma, helping films like Means Streets and Carrie to find mass audiences. She demanded the most of these directors, and so long as their sets were well lit, she had a steel stomach for their goriest tendencies. Over twenty years since her death, her taste in crime thrillers remains fresh, and her writing, as ever, is worthy of rereading.

10. Mona Lisa (1986, Neil Jordan)

Pauline Kael “succumbed” to this film, which is to say that she knew better than to really take its bait but couldn’t restrain her indulgent impulses for long. Despite its considerable acclaim (including a spot on BFI’s “Top 100 British Films of the 20th Century” list), Neil Jordan’s noir thriller Mona Lisa provoked dissonant reactions from some of the 1980s’ most influential critics. At one end of the spectrum was Ebert, who awarded the film with his coveted four-star badge, lauding in particular the atmosphere and the masterful performances from stars Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, and Michael Caine. At the other was Vincent Canby of the New York Times, who dismissed the project as “less a true noir film than a comment on one,” arguing that the overly referential script was “as bloodless as an abstract theory.” It was Kael, though, who had her finger on the pulse of this film. How much one enjoys it might be a factor of one’s willingness to submit to thoroughly constructed “kitsch” (as Canby puts it) for the sake of great lighting and some truly dynamic acting.

With her unique brand of heartfelt acidity, Kael crooned that the film “reeks of intellectualized noirishness”—a writer and director overworking the best of decent material. It’s the actors that enliven the story for her. She’s particularly bullish on the unlikely chemistry of George (Hoskins), an aging Cockney criminal with the sentimental spunk of a Jack Russell terrier, and Simone (Tyson), an upper crust sex worker trying to save her friend from a vicious pimp. They collide when George, owed a favor after serving seven years in prison to protect Lord Mortwell (Caine), is given recompense through a chauffeur job. Mortwell tasks him with bringing Simone from client to client.

As their friendship develops, George’s desire to help Simone (and his desire for Simone) bring them deep into a blackmail scheme predictably run by the truly despicable Mortwell. Even if she had no tolerance for kitsch (and she did have some), Kael would have recommended the film simply for the sake of Michael Caine’s malevolent performance. “I can’t recall a screen star of Michael Caine’s rank,” she praised, “who has had the talent and the willingness to play a man so foul and repugnant.” For acting like that, even Kael succumbs.

9. Dressed to Kill (1980, Brian De Palma)

It’s tempting to wonder what Kael would say about De Palma’s thirteenth feature now, over forty years since its theatrical release. Dressed to Kill is a richly layered thriller with a garish sexual politics that would never be greenlit in 2023. Overtly worshipping and satirizing Hitchcock’s Psycho, Dressed to Kill aligns gender dysphoria with psychopathic violence, a long-standing trope reified repeatedly throughout film history.

At the time, none of this mattered to Pauline Kael, whose standing within queer communities was often tenuous anyway. She spent hundreds of words extolling the famous art gallery scene, the smooth introduction of the split diopter (which quickly became a key component of De Palma’s myth), and the performances of Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, Keith Gordon, and Kate Miller. But ultimately, her review is an enshrinement of De Palma himself, whom she admired as much as any American director in her lifetime. She felt that Dressed to Kill signified the arrival of a fully actualized De Palma, an auteur finally in complete control of the narrative and technical tools available to realize his vision.

8. Eyes of Laura Mars (1978, Irvin Kershner)

Kael wrote about Laura Mars in one of her most famous essays on Americans’ post-Vietnam fear of violence in movies. She analyzed the public’s squeamishness around blood and the vulnerability of the body, particularly of the eyes, positing that slitting a throat does not evoke the moralizing horror in audiences so fervently as an attack on the eye. As its moniker suggests, this film is all about eyes, and Kershner’s camera—the only untarnished eye in the film—keeps its gaze locked on everyone else’s.

The original poster is an image of Faye Dunaway’s face darkened nearly to the point of obscurity, with only her eyes bleached so severely that they radiate demonically upon the viewer. The audience is asked again and again to consider its own vision, to question what it means to gaze upon other bodies, upon violence, and upon the things it finds beautiful.

Dunaway’s titular character is a fashion photographer famous for her sexy, gory, and controversial images that sell widely. She also happens to telepathically inhabit the eyes of a murderous maniac as he stalks and kills (by stabbing them in the eye, of course) the people in her artistic circle. The telepathy is completely outside of her control. The visions become more frequent as the killer closes in on her and her closest friends, slowly driving her toward paranoia and isolation. Desperate, she turns to straight-shooting police lieutenant John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) to help her find the killer. Their ensuing romance both comforts and complicates, culminating in a (highly predictable) twist.

Above all, Kael loved the pace and the performances, as well as the feel of “subterranean sexiness.” She felt that both Dunaway and Jones were perfectly cast: Dunaway because she was “glamorously beat out—just right to be telepathic about killings,” and Jones because of his “cat burglar’s grace, his sunken eyes, rough skin, and jagged lower teeth that suggest a serpent about to snap.” She delights in their chemistry, noting that they are among the most unlikely, yet somehow believable lovers she can recall. And despite being lukewarm on John Carpenter’s script, she ultimately puts the film into conversation with classics like Rosemary’s Baby for its ability to render “justifiable female paranoia” on screen.

7. Pixote (1980, Héctor Babenco)

Labelling Pixote a crime thriller is misleading, although there’s no shortage of crime or shocking (if not thrilling) moments. Héctor Babenco’s hyperreal exploration of poverty, masculinity, queerness, and carcereality in urban Brazil is a brilliant but utterly brutal two hours. This is a film to watch with a blanket and a strong beverage. Prepare to be gutted.

Seen through the eyes of ten year old Pixote (Fernando Ramos da Silva), Babenco takes viewers on a tour of Sao Paolo’s underground for lost boys and trans girls. According to Martin Scorsese (who loves this film), Babenco first attempted to tell this story in documentary form but had to adjust to fiction when a reformatory suddenly stopped cooperating. The film quickly achieved international acclaim, thrusting the Argentinian director into the throes of Hollywood, where he would make prestige movies like Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ironweed.

For her part, Kael was genuinely moved by Pixote, even if she didn’t think it quite raised to the level of a masterpiece. She admired Babenco’s style, spending paragraphs celebrating his atmospheric lighting and the improvisational feel of his images. “The incidents don’t appear to be set up for the camera,” she said, “things just seem to be happening and every image is expressive.” She went on to praise the performances of Jorge Julião as Lilica, a trans girl who partners with and looks out for Pixote, and Marília Pera as Sueli, an eccentric sex worker who plays a key role in the second half of the film. However, while most critics (most notably Vincent Canby) praised da Silva’s acting in the lead role, Kael was less convinced, wondering if the consistently blank stare on his face was more a factor of inexperience than of character.

Any contemporary viewing of Pixote is made all the more devastating by the tragic death of its young star less than a decade after the film’s release. Following the films release, Fernando Ramos da Silva, who came from a background akin to his character’s, was offered roles in prominent Brazilian television shows. Nothing stuck. Scorsese suggests that the teenager was illiterate, which made it difficult for him to memorize lines. After numerous firings, da Silva returned to life on the impoverished margins of Sao Paolo, where he was ultimately killed in a police raid at the age of nineteen. Watching sunset on a Rio beach, Pixote’s friend Lilica sings to him, “The sun still shines on the road I never travelled,” and it hits with a tender, feverish despair.

6. Thieves Like Us (1974, Robert Altman)

Just before she died in 2001, Pauline Kael famously laid bare her feelings about Robert Altman’s peculiar career: “I don’t know how to account for the fact that when he’s good, he’s superb, and when he isn’t good, he’s nothing.” Yet, if she wanted the answer, she needed only to read her own writing from twenty-five years prior. Given her encyclopedic knowledge of American and European film history, perhaps the biggest compliment that Kael could dole out to any director was that they surprised her. Very few filmmakers accomplished this once, let alone repeatedly, but Altman was one of them, and Thieves Like Us, the auteur’s 1974 bank heist thriller, seemed to illuminate to her what made this possible.

“When an artist works right on the edge of his unconscious, like Altman, not asking himself why he’s doing but trusting to instinct (which in Altman’s case is the same as taste), a movie is a special kind of gamble. If Altman fails, his picture won’t have the usual mechanical story elements to carry it, or the impersonal excitement of a standard film. And if he succeeds aesthetically, audiences still may not respond, because the light prodigal way in which he succeeds is alien to them.”

Maybe what seemed alien to Kael about this particular film was that she considered it “the closest to flawless of Altman’s films.” She didn’t like it as much as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, or even The Long Goodbye, but she felt that Thieves Like Us was Altman’s most fully conceived work to date. His clear vision, coupled with star making performances from Keith Carradine and Shelly Duvall (who she said “melts indifference” and makes one “unable to repress your response”), made Kael believe that this film would reach audiences in a way that even his previous successes hadn’t. She felt that it would be almost universally beloved, or at the very least, that one would have to “fight hard to resist it.” But for whatever reason, this prediction did not quite stand the test of time.

The heist thriller set in the ‘30s is among the least seen of Altman’s critical successes. It did minimal business at the box office (especially compared to the success of Nashville just one year later), received no awards buzz, and is impossible to find on any streaming service. However, if one does get their hands on an analog copy, Kael would suggest sitting back and enjoying a legendary director at the peak of his powers.

No director feels better tuned into the wavelengths of modern discourse than Rian Johnson; a cinematic provocateur who’s carved a perfect niche for himself by juggling high art and pulp pleasures almost in equal measure. Make no mistake: “The Last Jedi” and “Looper” might have cemented his reputation as a solid craftsman capable of handling populist studio fare, but it’s within the confines of the thriller—a genre he happily embraces while playfully deconstructing and revamping its formula—where Johnson has earned his chops and found his calling. The director further established himself as a heavyweight entertainer in 2019 with “Knives Out”, a riotous Agatha Christie-inspired surprise-hit that doubles down as a scathing takedown of the upper crust.

Johnson is not only a first-class filmmaker in his own right; he’s also a culture vulture who puts decades of his encyclopedic pop culture knowledge into his movies—a fact most evident by the carousel of easter eggs and references he imbues them with. On the heels of “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”, we have decided to round up ten nail-biters that Johnson has spoken highly of throughout the years that his fans should look forward to after his new release.

1. The Last of Sheila (1973)

If “Glass Onion” didn’t fully satiate your appetite for tightly plotted whodunits in which a wealthy oik invites a bunch of backstabbing old acquaintances to play a scavenger hunt in an extravagant Mediterranean location, we have just the right movie for you.

“This fantastic ’70s movie is pretty much the reason I’m in Greece right now”, confessed director Rian Johnson in a July 2021 tweet while he was shooting the latest Benoit Blanc mystery. Taking the framework of an Agatha Christie novel and bolstered by the same deft sleight of hand as “Knives Out”, this delightful crime caper co-written by “Psycho” actor Anthony Perkins and renowned composer Stephen Sondheim will constantly keep you guessing until the credits roll. Johnson professed his love for the film and credited it as inspiration, noting however that it wouldn’t be good karma to “steal too much from Sondheim”.  And though the composer-writer had an early cameo in “Glass Onion”, the director told EW that he’s proud of how his film goes its own direction. Parallels notwithstanding, this 1973 classic will give you plenty of bang for your buck.

2. Gosford Park (2001)

According to Rian Johnson, no genre is as uniquely suited to talk about class than the whodunit, which by nature creates its own microcosm of society within its cross-section of plausible suspects. The director tactfully keyed into this vital element in his last two movies, both of which featured trenchant critiques of the 1 percent.

An all-time film provocateur saluted another with Johnson raving over Robert Altman in conversation with The Atlantic. Though the mastermind behind “Short Cuts” and “Nashville” is not usually mentioned when discussing whodunits, Johnson described “Gosford Park” as a textbook example of how to seamlessly weave class commentary into an intricate murder mystery. The “Knives Out” director regarded this Altman’s deep cut, which sees a king-sized ensemble of blue-blooded aristocrats gather together at a British hunting resort, as an “all-timer” with gorgeous direction that creates its own power structure and fools the audience to great effect.

3. Murder by Death (1976)

Walking the tightrope between playful homage and scornful genre pastiche, Robert Moore’s glitzy ‘dinner and murder’ movie stands tall as a milestone that laid out the template from which modern whodunits like “Clue” or “Knives Out” descend from, with the director of the latter mentioning it as a personal favorite he watched over and over on cable growing up.

Anchored by a murderer’s row of A-listers, including Peter Falk, Sir Alec Guinness, and Truman Capote in his only ever acting role, “Murder by Death” takes a stab at the detective genre with comic spoofs of famous sleuths like Sam Spade and Hercule Poirot, assembling a handful of them together to see who can crack open a complex murder. Though not every joke has aged well, even the savviest viewers will have a tough time figuring out whom to trust in this unwieldy ensemble. Johnson told SYFY WIRE he still remembers the ending, in which the film pokes fun at common genre tropes, as something he kept in mind while refining his own whodunits: “The danger of having just clue-gathering leading up to a big surprise should be avoided,” he explains, “There should always be something else going on.”

4. House of Games (1987)

There’s something intrinsically fascinating in being shown how professional swindlers operate, meticulously pick up their victims, and roll out an infallible scam step by step. Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of genuinely good con artist films in contemporary cinema that not even Rian Johnson’s 2008 tongue-in-cheek “The Brothers Bloom” managed to fill.

Barring George Clooney’s smooth-talking thief in “Ocean’s Eleven” and Leonardo DiCaprio’s globe-trotting heartthrob in “Catch Me If You Can”, there’s hardly been a more charismatic and mischievous grifter in recent memory than the one anchoring David Mamet’s 1987 opus; a man who seduces a gullible psychologist and always seems to have a trick up his sleeve. Johnson spoke highly of “House of Games”, explaining how it’s a “beautifully constructed story” he loves more and more every time he sees it, and even brought magician Ricky Jay—a Mamet stalwart who appeared on the ’87 film—as the narrator for his star-studded sophomore feature.

5. To Catch a Thief (1955)

That Sir Alfred Hitchcock is the single most influential filmmaker in the history of the thriller genre is a known fact for anyone not living under a rock for the past 70 years or so. Unsurprisingly, Johnson cited the Master of Suspense as a big inspiration in terms of devising his 2019 Netflix mega-hit, explaining to The Atlantic that the initial pitch was as simple as “putting a Hitchcock thriller in the middle of a whodunit, but still turning it back into a whodunit at the end”.

“To Catch a Thief” might be lighter on the suspense adhering to his sky-high standards, but who needs twists and turns when you have Cary Grant and Grace Kelly flirting and wreaking havoc all across the sun-soaked French Riviera for 107 uninterrupted minutes? The romantic scale and grandeur were two main reasons stated by Johnson to revisit the film while shooting one of his own—surprisingly not any of his two murder mysteries but “The Last Jedi” of all things. Come for the shifting web of romance and double-crosses, stay for Grace Kelly’s stellar wardrobe.