Curated playlist
Censored films
- Psycho (1960 film)Psycho, the 1960 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, opens on a specific Friday: December the Eleventh, in Phoenix, Arizona. A real estate secretary named Marion Crane has just stolen forty thousand dollars from her employer and is driving…
- A Clockwork Orange (film)A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film that opens with a young man staring directly into the camera, a glass of milk-plus raised to his lips, and the audience already unsettled before a single act of violence occurs. That young man is Alex…
- Ben-Hur (1959 film)Ben-Hur, the 1959 epic directed by William Wyler, arrived at a moment when Hollywood was fighting for its life. Television had eaten into ticket sales, and the consent decree of 1948 had forced studios to sell off their theater chains. MGM…
- HellraiserHellraiser arrived in British cinemas on the 10th of September 1987 with a premise so strange it barely fit a logline: a puzzle box opens a door to a dimension of extreme sensation, and the beings who answer that door cannot tell pain from…
- Fight ClubFight Club, the 1999 film directed by David Fincher, opens on a scene that still unsettles viewers: a gun barrel pushed down the throat of an unnamed man, held there by a figure who turns out to be a projection of his own mind. That image…
- Star Wars: The Rise of SkywalkerStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalker carried a net budget of about $490.2 million. That made it the second most expensive film ever produced. The price tag hints at how much was riding on one movie. J. J. Abrams directed the film. He was…
- Paths of GloryPaths of Glory opens in 1916, in the trenches of Northern France, with a snare drum playing rhythms that recall wartime newsreels. Stanley Kubrick's 1957 film follows Colonel Dax, a French officer who watches soldiers sent into an…
- Everything Everywhere All at OnceEverything Everywhere All at Once was originally written for a man. The script's first version had a male lead, conceived specifically with Jackie Chan in mind. Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert reconceived the protagonist as a…
- The Birth of a NationThe Birth of a Nation arrived in American theaters in 1915 and immediately changed what cinema could do. D. W. Griffith directed this silent epic, and within weeks it had been screened at the White House, cheered by the entire Supreme…
- Barbie (film)Barbie, Greta Gerwig's 2023 satirical fantasy comedy, drained the entire remaining global supply of a specific shade of pink paint during production. Its supplier, Rosco Laboratories, had been weakened by COVID-19 supply-chain problems and…
- Battleship PotemkinBattleship Potemkin arrived in cinemas in 1925 and has spent the century since being voted one of the greatest films ever made. At the 1958 World Expo in Brussels, an international gathering of critics named it the single greatest film in…