The first in Takashi Miike's career-making Triad Society Trilogy. Set in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, rogue cop Kippei Shiina puts himself between local yakuza and a gay Taiwanese mob; cue cocaine-fuelled blow jobs, anal rape and old ladies having their eyeballs plucked out. A Hollywood remake seems unlikely.

Paul Schrader's simmering 1991 study of a drug dealer's midlife crisis remains the script closest to his own heart. A maturer Travis Bickle, Willem Dafoe's loser is confused when "employer" Susan Sarandon goes legit, and panic-stricken when an ex-girlfriend dies and gunplay's required. Meditative rather than action-packed, it's grown over time.

A punchy and intelligent tale, co-written by Michael Tolkin, about an unethical yuppie lawyer (Ben Affleck) locked in a battle of wills with a troubled divorcee (Samuel L Jackson). Toni Collette and Sydney Pollack lead the heavyweight supporting cast, and director Roger Michell delivers a bracing state-of-the-nation bulletin in the vein of Falling Down.

Veteran producer Irwin Winkler's 1990 directorial debut, recreating the paranoid climate that enveloped early-'50s Hollywood during the anti-communist witch-hunts. Robert De Niro is the fictitious RKO director watching lives, morals and ethics come apart under the strain. A clear-eyed and heartfelt history lesson, with a Martin Scorsese cameo that's a barely disguised portrait of blacklist exile Joseph Losey.

Wim Wenders may be struggling to land a gig these days, but this 1977 noir thriller was his big-screen breakthrough. Adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel (and remade this month as Ripley's Game, see p145) it finds Dennis Hopper for once understated as art dealer Tom Ripley, who persuades dying Berliner Bruno Ganz to become a hitman.

Giuseppe Tornatore's Oscar-winning ode to cinema revolves around a famous film director returning to his native Sicilian village to attend the funeral of a local cinema projectionist who'd befriended him as a young boy and cultivated his love of film. Pure magic.

A pair of '70s cops, undercover, become miserably hooked on smack in this impressively unflinching '92 drama. Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh star, both grittily serving notice that they're prepared to sweat, shiver and sacrifice goody-goody mainstream careers. The despair's draining, but its influence was to prove widespread.

Bob Fosse surprised everyone in '74, showing there was more to his dark vision than nimble dance steps. He riffs permissively on Lenny Bruce's stand-up routines (which were never routine), and Dustin Hoffman's rarely been bolder. Somehow nominated for loads of Oscars while railing against the establishment's buffoonery.

Ling (Samuel Hui) and his tomboy sister are charged with keeping a sacred scroll from the clutches of their self-serving Sifu and the scarier-than-they-sound Royal Eunuchs. With multiple directors and more characters than it can handle, the cracks show, but the swordplay and comedic touch proved popular enough to spawn two sequels.

Maria Ripoll's handsome 2001 remake of Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman is anchored by the highly watchable Hector Elizondo as the widowed kitchen maestro with three wayward daughters and a frisky neighbour (Raquel Welch) who clearly wants to turn him into a naked chef. The plot has been sweetened a little, but the performances are fine and the photography sumptuous.