Legendary director Douglas Sirk's (Written on the wind, Imitation of life) La Habanera is a lushly poetic and boldly modern musical drama decades ahead of its time. Working at Germany's famed UFA Studios (Metropolis), under the very noses of the Nazi authorities that would later force him into Hollywood exile and eminence, Sirk transformed a glossy musical vehicle for UFA's "new Garbo" Zarah Leander into a dark and intimate anti-colonial melodrama....

DW Griffith is properly esteemed as the Father of Film from his years of discovery making short films at the pioneer Biograph Company and for such pioneering features as The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East and Orphans of the Storm, but his later films - several of them lost or almost unavailable - are often dismissed as back efforts of a talent in decline. Griffith's 1928 comedy-drama The Battle of the Sexes belies this...

Francis Ford Coppola's stylized teen melodrama is based on the popular novel by S. E. Hinton. In 1960s Tulsa, the "right" and "wrong" sides of the tracks are represented by rival gangs, the upscale Socs and the underprivileged Greasers. Darrel Curtis (Patrick Swayze) is doing his best to raise his two younger brothers, Sodapop (Rob Lowe in his first film role) and Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell). Sensitive Ponyboy is a budding writer in love with Cherry...

"One of the most personal film by Guillermo del Toro ... is also among his most frightening and emotionally layered. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, it tells the tale of a twelve-year-old boy who, after his freedom-fighting father is killed, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro expertly combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish melange that, like his later...

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman's life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

"Criminal on the run, Marion Crane (Anne Heche) takes refuge at the motel operated by Norman Bates (Vince Vaughn)--a troubled man whose victims encounter a grisly fate at the hands of his 'mother.' Marion soon becomes the next victim and her disappearance prompts inquiries from her sister (Julianne Moore) and a private investigator (William H. Macy). They both soon discover the morbid bond linking Norman to his mysterious 'mother' at the Bates Motel"--Container...

Cartier GG Timmons and Monya Money White were born to teenage mothers who were also best friends. The two young neglectful mothers allowed Moneys alcoholic grandmother to raise their daughters. At 15, GG formed her own crew aptly named the Cartier Cartel. The main and only vision of the crew GG, Money, Bam, Lil Mama, and Shanine was to do petty crimes in order to wear the flyest gear. While Money loves boys, clothes, and cash (in that order), GG is...