The Movies canon

Sourced and screened.

Every film chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.

Belle de Jour

Directed by Luis Bunuel
1967

Bunuel's most seductive film, and the role Deneuve never quite escaped: a bored bourgeois wife takes afternoon work in a brothel, and her fantasies blur in without warning.

★ 7.5

Beau Travail

Directed by Claire Denis
1999

Denis turned Melville's Billy Budd into something closer to dance than to drama: Foreign Legionnaires drilling in the Djibouti heat, all bodies and sun and things nobody will say.

★ 8.2

Stalker

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
1979

Nothing else in cinema moves this slowly and holds this completely: Tarkovsky walks three men into a forbidden zone for nearly three hours, and almost nothing happens.

★ 8.3