"You gotta rob to get rich in the Reagan era."

Packed with plenty of great quotes and B-movie crime film tropes, New Jack City is the swan song of the classic era of blaxploitation films, with stylistic updates for the rapidly changing social and cultural scene of the early '90s. However, it's far and away at its best when looking at it for its slick style and often goofy depiction of street crime, rather than for any of its commentaries…

Distinctively designed and immediately recognizable, Fantastic Planet has essentially become the poster child for arthouse animation. Evoking a much earlier style but adding a fluidity that predecessors may have lacked, the film has a somewhat thematically simple narrative but thrives off of worldbuilding and creative detail, allowing viewers to take in an almost retrofuturistic take on science fiction. If there's a major criticism, it's the structure of the conflict between the film's two factions, which never seems to instill the…

If you go into High Plains Drifter expecting it to be even vaguely reminiscent of a conventional Western in anything but setting, you'll probably be disappointed. Perhaps the greatest distinction from more typical entries in the genre is the film's complete amorality - no character is innocent and virtually all act out of a sense of self-interest, greed or revenge. Much of the film is deliberately frustrating, as the motivations, intent, and actions of Eastwood's nameless drifter are constantly tossed…

Part scholarship, part social criticism, part satire, and part shock value, Häxan maintains a surprisingly high degree of quality to its sets and practical effects, with particular praise due to its costumes and unique dioramas. There is an underlying sincerity and acidity for the logic and practices of the past that should place this film as one of the earliest iterations of a social history of women put to film; consider that this film was released only two years after…