Vacations are exhausting. And what’s most exasperating about German writer/director Maren Ade’s Everyone Else (2009) is that there’s no escaping the claustrophobic world she’s created. The volatile coupling of Chris (Lars Eidinger) and Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr), holed up together at Chris’ parents’ Sardinian villa, defies any expectations for a customary on-screen getaway.

Phantom of the Paradise rewired me. Electrified me. This movie is, in the words of Jessica Harper’s character Phoenix, “special to me.”

When I was growing up, White Jesus was everywhere, but I never thought of him as a real person. He was like Zeus or John Henry or Captain Kirk—iconic figures operating outside my daily life, moving in worlds so far away they were impossible.

Perhaps this is the anthem of Commando as a whole. Don’t think, don’t ask questions, just shut up, watch, and enjoy.

In fact, substance runs aplenty in Elvis cinema if you only know where to look. The films often challenge authority and prove downright fascinating in their portrayal of class dynamics, gender, and sexuality.

How shattering it is to be told by someone you consider a friend that they no longer have room for you in their life. I’m sure you see where this is going. Perhaps this isn’t even your first Banshees break-up piece that you’ve read.

The 1996 cult classic The Craft sets out to be a feminist movie, but like many movies of the late 90s, it loses steam about an hour into the movie, when its main characters, a group of teenage girls, turn on each other and it becomes a movie about what happens when teenagers, shoved together in the hothouse of high school, get too close to one another.

In an age of hollow CGI studio fare, endless superhero battles, and an increasing loss of artisanal talent in film, stop-motion animation provides a unique place for filmmakers and craftspeople to explore their craft and tell stories that feel earnest and unique.

The denizens of the United States have long been accused of being culturally deprived. We are starving, lacking an appreciation of the fine art of mime, Goethe and weinershnitzel. Nothing proves this point as well as the jeremiads delivered on the movie Teen Wolf, first released in 1985, starring a young Michael J. Fox. I offer this apology (in the formal sense), laying forth the visionary nature of the film.

I avoided Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” for years, knowing that it was about the individual experience of being in the military. I knew it was about the Vietnam War and the ensuing cruelty. I knew it was split into two parts, the first part depicting Marine Corps training and the second part in Vietnam itself. And I knew, having served two years in the Singapore Armed Forces, that those topics are rarely things I’m in the mood to watch.