This silent, classic example of German expressionism relates the tale of a fairground showman who hypnotizes a villager and compels him to commit fiendish murders. Not rated. 91 minutes.
Short films: Un Chien Andalou (1929) & Mindscape (1976).

This 1950 film by Akira Kurosawa is more than a classic: it’s a cinematic archetype that has served as a template for many a film since. (Its most direct influence was on a Western remake, The Outrage, starring Paul Newman and directed by Martin Ritt.) In essence, the facts surrounding a rape and murder are told from four different and contradictory points of view, suggesting the nature of truth is something less than absolute. The cast, headed by Kurosawa’s favorite actor, Toshiro Mifune, is superb. Not rated. 88 minutes.

Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist’s imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder. Rated PG. 112 minutes.

An elderly college professor sets out in his car to receive an honorary degree—and takes a trip instead through his own past and subconscious—in this bittersweet but ultimately tender and understanding film by Swedish master Ingmar Bergman. Casting Swedish star Victor Sjöström in the lead, Bergman, then at the height of his powers as an international filmmaker, uses flashbacks and bright, lyrical storytelling to capture the full arc of one man’s life: the successes that seem fleeting, the disappointments that linger in the memory, the regrets that never seem to let go. Not rated. 91 minutes.

Roman Polanski was still a newcomer to the world of cinema when he unleashed this unforgettable exercise in skin-crawling terror. Repulsion was the Polish director’s first film in English, but that hardly mattered: much of the movie is as wordless (and as weird) as the silent Nosferatu. The young Catherine Deneuve plays a Belgian girl stranded in ‘60s London, a shy beauty with no social skills. When her sister leaves their shared flat, Deneuve goes gradually, quietly, completely mad. Her world becomes Polanski’s paintbox, as the devilish director distorts reality via a series of surrealistic touches (grasping hands that protrude from elastic walls) and out-and-out murderous horror. Very few films cast the kind of eerie spell that this 1965 classic achieves, and it clearly points the way toward Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Not rated. 104 minutes.

Based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, “Don’t Look Now’’ stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as an art restorer and his wife who repair to Venice after their young daughter drowns. Instead of solace, they find reminders of their tragedy. After 25 years, “Don’t Look Now” still has the power to frighten and disorient—to suggest a world that’s perilous, cruel and out of control. Roeg, who already had directed “Performance’’ and “Walkabout,’’ created an atmosphere thick with portents and subliminal clues and edited the film in a fractured manner that distorts time and perception. Rated R. 110 minutes.

Kit Carruthers and his girlfriend Holly Sargis are on the run after killing Holly's father who disagreed with their relationship. On their way towards the Badlands of Montana they leave a trail of dispassionate and seemingly random murders. An intriguing narrative without judgements, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Rated PG. 95 minutes.

Federico Fellini's delightful, visually inventive fantasy is about a bored Italian housewife (Giulietta Masina, Fellini's real-life wife) who finds relief from the mundane--and her philandering husband (Mario Pisu)--through sensual escapades in the spirit realm. This fantastic world just happens to be in Juliet's subconscious and is populated with people both from her past and her imagination. As Juliet spends more time in touch with her desires, she slowly gains more independence. Fellini's first color film is, unsurprisingly, a stunning spectacle that makes the most of its incredible premise. Awash in both bold colors and eroticism, the film favors the visual over the narrative and dreams over reality. Not rated. 137 minutes.

In Terry Gilliam's Orwellian vision of the future, the populace are completely controlled by the state, but technology remains almost as it was in the 1970's. Sam Lowry is a civil servant who one day spots a mistake in one of the pieces of paperwork passing through his office. The mistake leads to the arrest of an entirely innocent man, and although Lowry attempts to correct the error, it just gets bigger and bigger, sucking him in with it. Rated R. 131 minutes.

No one can create an atmosphere or set a mood quite like David Lynch, and few actors can play bizarre and dangerous as well as Dennis Hopper. Put the two together and you have one of the best films of the 1980s. The classic and disturbing film about dark secrets behind the doors of small-town America also stars Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini. Rated R. 120 minutes.

In 1941, New York intellectual playwright Barton Fink comes to Hollywood to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. Staying in the eerie Hotel Earle, Barton develops severe writer's block. His neighbor, jovial insurance salesman Charlie Meadows, tries to help, but Barton continues to struggle as a bizarre sequence of events distracts him even further from his task in this Coen Brothers classic. Rated R. 116 minutes.

New York postal worker Jacob Singer is trying to keep his frayed life from unraveling. His days are increasingly being invaded by flashbacks to his first marriage, his now-dead son, and his tour of duty in Vietnam. Though his new wife tries to help Jacob keep his grip on sanity, the line between reality and delusion grows steadily more and more uncertain. Rated R. 115 minutes.

Based on the infamous 1954 matricide in New Zealand involving two ninth-grade schoolgirls, Peter Jackson's film tells the story of an uncommonly powerful love. When Pauline and Juliet are together, the wind is filled with butterflies and the trumpet call of Mario Lanza, "the greatest tenor in the whole world!!" Their universe is an exclusive realm of two, existing half in reality where they are ostracized as peculiar, half in fantasy, where they escape to a highly evolved system of dream lovers and romantic alter egos. Rated R. 99 minutes.

Film noir has never been so labyrinthine. Leonard is a mystery even to himself. Expensively-suited, driving a chic sports car, yet living precariously in seedy motels, he seems to be on a desperate quest to find his wife's killer and avenge her death. The structure of Christopher Nolan's fascinatingly original second film is determinedly non-linear. It is edited like a random pile of mosaic tiles, but when the last one has snapped into place, a surprise sets the whole intrigue in motion again. Rated R. 113 minutes. Showing before the feature is The Critic.