The Greatest Independent Films
Every independent film reviewed on this site, ranked. Eight debuts, three Lynch pictures, three Coen brothers films, and the horror revival that came out of the same funding model.
Tag: Art House
Art house cinema trusts audiences with difficulty: slow burns, open endings, and form as meaning. This tag collects reviews of art house films and essays on what patience buys a viewer.
Art HouseThe Greatest Foreign Language Films
Every foreign language film reviewed on this site, ranked. Soviet montage, Italian neorealism, Bergman, Kurosawa, the French New Wave, Hong Kong action and the Iranian films that work under restriction.
1970sKings of the Road (1976) Review
Kings of the Road (1976) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two men drive a repair truck along the East German border servicing dying cinemas, for a hundred and seventy-five minutes, with almost no plot. It was…
1960sL’Avventura (1960) Review
L'Avventura (1960) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A woman vanishes on a yacht trip and the film loses interest in finding her. Jeered at Cannes, given a jury prize by the same festival, and on best-of…
1930sVampyr (1932)
Characters appear and vanish. Vampyr earns its 8 as the strangest, dreamiest, and most genuinely uncanny vampire film ever made, a 1932 work by the Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer that abandons plot and logic in favor of pure nightmare.
1970sNosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Werner Herzog remakes Murnau as a tragedy, and Klaus Kinski's Dracula is the genre's saddest monster. The vampire here is not merely frightening.
1990sNadja (1994)
Nadja earns its 6.5 as a singular artifact of nineties downtown independent cinema, a black-and-white art-house vampire film that filters the Dracula mythology. Michael Almereyda made it cheaply in 1994 with Hollywood backing from David Lynch, who also appears in…
1980sVamp (1986)
Judged as a complete film it is mediocre. Vamp earns its 5.5 as a stylish, uneven eighties horror comedy that is worth seeing almost entirely for one unforgettable element, Grace Jones as a vampire stripper who never speaks a word…
2020sNosferatu (2024)
Robert Eggers brings obsessive period craft to the third great Nosferatu, with a ferocious Lily-Rose Depp at its center. Nosferatu earns its 8 as the most beautiful and uncompromising vampire film in years, Robert Eggers bringing his obsessive period craft…
1970sBlood for Dracula (1974)
Paul Morrissey reimagines Dracula as a dying aristocrat starving for virgin blood in a changed world. The film's central joke is also its central tragedy.
2010sCave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
The production received exceptional access to the otherwise sealed cave, with Herzog's small crew filming the paintings using lightweight equipment that conventional documentary could not deploy. Cave of Forgotten Dreams shows how documentary could function through treatment of material whose…
2000sIn the Mood for Love (2000)
Wong Kar-wai's 2000 1960s Hong Kong romance. In the Mood for Love is Wong Kar-wai's 2000 Hong Kong romantic drama depicting the unconsummated relationship between Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen, neighbors in 1962 Hong Kong who discover their respective spouses…