Back Some Movies You Might Like If this is the sort of thing you like (but how did Nina Schwartz come up with all these names in 30 minutes?)

• Adjuster, The (Canadian, Atom Egoyan, dir. The pleasures of insurance work. You'll feel better about working in an office.)

• After Dark, My Sweet (James Foley dir., Jason Patric. Cheesy, dark, and funny 50s-style pulp fiction; based on a Jim Thompson novel.)

• Alien (Ridley Scott dir. The original with Sigourney Weaver and John Hurt.)

• Amateur (Hal Hartley dir., Isabelle Huppert and Martin Donovan. Hartley's a smart, funny guy; all his movies are great.)

• Apartment Zero (Martin Donovan dir. [not the same guy as above], Hart Bochner and Colin Firth. Great politico-psycho thriller set in Argentina.)

• Badlands (Terence Malick dir. Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek. Based on a true story. Great voice-over)

• Betrayal (Harold Pinter screenplay w/ Ben Kingsley and Jeremy Irons. Mediated desire, smart and funny.)

• Birds, The (Hitchcock; interesting relation between mother and son.)

• Blade Runner (Ridley Scott dir., Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer. The problem of semiotics in sci-fi thriller form.)

• Blood Simple (Coen Brothers dir. Their first; dark and funny.)

• Blow Out (Brian de Palma dir., John Travolta and Nancy Allen. One of de Palma's & Travolta's best; a take on Blow Up, French movie based on Cortazar story. Very meta-)

• Blue Velvet (David Lynch dir., Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini)

• Bob Le Flambeur (French, Jean-Pierre Melville dir. A Frenchman named "Bob"; how could you not want to see it?)

• Body Double (Brian de Palma dir., Melanie Griffith before she became a joke.)

• Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan dir., William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. Sexy, bleak, really good.)

• Breaker Morant (Australian, Bruce Beresford dir. About the Boer War, a colonial scuffle everyone should know.)

• Breathless (the French version, Jean-Luc Goddard dir.)

• Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles dir., Joe Morton. Morton's great; the movie's weird and funny.)

• Chan is Missing (American, Wayne Wang dir. A very deconstructive film. Lots of fun. Wang's earliest.)

• Chinatown (Roman Polanski dir., Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Everyone at their best.)

• Chocolat (French, Claire Denis dir. Great movie about colonialism.)

• Choose Me (Alan Rudolph dir., Keith Carradine and Genevieve Bujold. Nice mix of sentiment and cynicism.)

• Comfort of Strangers, The (Paul Schrader dir., Helen Mirren & Christopher Walken. The death drive plus more; spooky.)

• Conformist, The (Italian, Bernardo Bertolucci dir. Italian fascism with an interesting sexual twist.)

• Conversation, The (Francis Ford Coppola dir., Gene Hackman. Voyeurism again, the auditory kind.)

• Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, The (Peter Greenaway dir., Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon; great and sexy, even if it is about over-40s.)

• Corrupt (Roberto Faenza dir., Harvey Keitel and John Lydon [Johnny Rotten]; great version of dialectical reversal)

• Coup de Torchon (French, Bertrand Tavernier dir., Isabelle Huppert. French colonialism, based on a sleazy Jim Thompson novel.)

• Daddy Nostalgia (French, Tavernier dir. A beautiful sad movie about the disease of the nuclear family.)

• Dangerous Liasons (Stephen Frears dir. Glenn Close, John Malkovitch, Michelle Pfeiffer. Need I say more?)

• Days of Heaven (Terence Malick dir. Richard Gere, Brooke Adam, Sam Shephard. Good story, nice visuals, great accents.)

• Dead Calm, (Australian, Philip Noyce dir. Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, a scary Billy Zane. The death drive: be careful what you wish for because, if you get it, it might end up as a very dangerous American boy.)

• Dead Ringers (David Cronenbergh dir., Jeremy Irons and Genevieve Bujold. You'll never feel comfortable at the gynecologist's again.)

• Diner (Barry Levinson dir. Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser. Great dialogue.)

• Diva (French, Jean-Jacques Beineix dir.)

• Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee dir. Lee's best.)

• Don't Look Now (British, Nicolas Roeg dir., Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. One of the creepiest movies ever about death, loss, desire; fantastic.)

• Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant dir. Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, William S. Burroughs. The film that admits that drugs are a source of pleasure. A smart movie.)

• Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (American, Ang Lee dir. The guy who should have gotten the Academy Award last year for "Sense and Sensibility" instead of that jerk Mel Gibson for his jerky movie "Braveheart." Another story about family, very sad, very funny.)

• Eraserhead (David Lynch, dir., very early; very difficult to watch; weird, but worth taking a look at.)

• Exotica (Atom Egoyan, dir. Wonderful: voyeurism, the mobility and displaceability of desire; sexy, but not the way you'd expect.)

• Farewell My Concubine (Chinese, Chen Kaige dir. Gong Li. About the revolution.)

• Fargo (Coen brothers again. Vies with Miller's Crossing as their best.)

• Fearless (Peter Weir dir. A brilliant movie about jouissance, a French psychoanalytic version of the oceanic.)

• French Connection, The (John Frankenheimer dir. Gene Hackman. Classic chase sequence.)

• Grifters, The (Stephen Frears dir. Angelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Benning. Jim Thompson again.)

• Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino dir., Kris Kristofferson, Genevieve Bujold; the film that destroyed Cimino's career and brought down a studio. Check it out.)

• Hills Have Eyes, The (Wes Craven dir. Breaks all the rules; rude, crude, and scary. Don't see it alone.)

• Hitcher, The (Robert Harmon dir., Rutger Hauer. About the death drive, literally.)

• Hunger, The (Tony Scott dir. David Bowie; Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon as lesbian vampires resisting compulsory heterosexuality. Great.)

• In the Realm of the Senses (Japanese, Oshima dir. A love affair that definitely goes too far; I mean really too far. Check it out; see if I'm wrong.)

• Ju Dou (Chinese, Zhang Yimou dir. Gong Li, naturally. She's in everything he does, and she's fantastic.)

• Kaspar Hauser or Everyman for Himself and God Against All (German, Werner Herzog dir. About a "wild child's" acquisition of language in 19th C. Germany)

• Knife in the Water (Polanski dir. Really good early Polanski.)

• La Balance (French, Bob Swaim dir. The uses of delinquency. Be sure to get the subtitled version.)

• Lady Vanishes, The (Hitchcock)

• Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci dir., Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. The original X-rated flick. Gotta see it.)

• Last Wave, The (Australian, Peter Weir dir.)

• Lone Star (John Sayles, dir. Very smart movie about history, social and familial.)

• Long Good Friday, The (British, John Mackenzie dir., Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren)

• Marnie (Hitchcock dir. The most repulsive representation of the heterosexual relation you've ever seen; I swear.)

• McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman dir. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. Altman's best?)

• Mean Streets (Martin Scorcese dir., Harvey Keitel and Robt. de Niro. Early Scorcese.)

• Miami Blues (Jonathan Demme dir. The best thing Alec Baldwin ever did. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Fred Ward)

• Miller's Crossing (Coen Brothers dir., Gabriel Byrne. Those Coen brothers, boy.)

• Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges dir. One of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Sturges is much funnier, smarter, and less sentimental than Frank Capra.)

• Moderns, The (Alan Rudolph dir., Keith Carradine, John Lone, Genevieve Bujold and Linda Fiorentino; the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction -- Benjamin)

• Murmur of the Heart (French, Louis Malle dir. Very good film about incest; heartwarming even.)

• My Beautiful Launderette (British, Stephen Frears dir. Daniel Day Lewis with blonde hair. Alternative sexualities and coiffures.)

• Night Porter, The (Italian, Liliana Cavani dir. Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling. Sado-masochistic relationship between ex-Nazi and a former concentration camp inmate. Classic, and I mean really.)

• Night Moves (Arthur Penn dir. Gene Hackman, 14 yr. old Melanie Griffith.)

• Palm Beach Story, The (Preston Sturges dir. About the wiener king; who wouldn't laugh?)

• Parents (Bob Balaban dir. Mary Beth Hurt, Randy Quaid; your worst nightmare about your parents confirmed.)

• Parting Glances (Bill Sherwood dir. Steve Buscemi. Smart movie about AIDS and ordinary life in which characters' gayness is taken for granted. One of the best I've seen; Buscemi is great.)

• Peeping Tom (British, Michael Powell dir., excellent early film about voyeurism, violence, and murder. Ruined Powell's career.)

• Piano, The (Jane Campion dir., Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel. The oceanic, castration, and desire. Fantastic!)

• Providence (British, Alain Resnais dir. Dirk Bogarde, John Gielgud, Ellen Burstyn. Another nice movie about family. Bogarde is always wonderful)

• Psycho (Hitchcock)

• Raise the Red Lantern (Chinese, Zhang Yimou dir. Gong Li. Chinese patriarchy. Compulsory heterosexuality and foot massage.)

• Raising Arizona (Coen Brothers dir., Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter. One of the funniest movies ever made?)

• Rashomon (Japanese, Kurosawa dir. Toshiro Mifune. The semiotic problem in murder-mystery format. Classic.)

• Rear Window (Hitchcock; compulsory heterosexuality for men; Jimmy Stewart at his best.)

• Red Sorghum (Chinese, Zhang Yimou dir., Gong Li. All Zhang's movies are great, but the best are the earliest.)

• Red, White and Blue (Polish-French, Kieslowski dir. Three different and compelling movies, all with beautiful actresses. Expand your horizons; check them out.)

• Repo Man (Alex Cox dir., Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton. Funny and smart.)

• Repulsion (Polanski dir. A very young Catherine Deneuve goes mad before your eyes.)

• Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino's first; even better than P.F.)

• Road Warrior, The (Australian, George Miller dir., Mel Gibson before he became a jerk.)

• Rosemary's Baby (Polanski dir. Still scary after all these years.)

• Seven Samurai, The (Japanese, Kurasawa dir. Toshiro Mifune. "The Magnificent Seven" was based on this one.)

• Servant, The (British, Joseph Losey dir., Dirk Bogarde and James Fox. Hegel at his best.)

• Silence of the Lambs, The (Jonathan Demme dir. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. A must-see if you haven't.)

• Simple Men (Hal Hartley dir. "Jumpy women are great.")

• Something Wild (Jonathan Demme dir., Ray Liotta and Melanie Griffith. The title isn't lying.)

• Spanking the Monkey (dir. by the same guy who's just done Flirting with Disaster; great companion piece to Murmur of the Heart)

• Spider Stratagem, The (Bernardo Bertolucci dir. Based on a Borges story; about retroactive understanding.)

• Stranger than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch dir. John Lurie. The more you travel, the more things look the same.)

• Sweetie (Australian, Jane Campion dir. A film that asks the question: is there a difference between family and psychosis? Wonderful and scary.)

• Swimming to Cambodia (Demme dir. Spalding Gray's monologue about the making of "The Killing Fields.")

• To Live (Chinese, Zhang Yimou dir. Gong Li. Another great film about the revolution.)

• Trouble in Mind (Alan Rudolph dir., Keith Carradine, Kris Kristofferson, Lori Singer. Watch Carradine's hair through this one.)

• Trust (Hal Hartley dir.)

• Twisted Obsession (Fernando Truebo dir. Jeff Goldblum, Miranda Richardson. Really good Eurotrash about a boy and his sister.)

• Unbelievable Truth, The (Hal Hartley dir., his first.)

• Usual Suspects, The (Brian Singer, dir. Great; a fabulous plot. Who is Kaiser Soze?)

• Vertigo (Hitchcock; compulsive heterosexuality [Hitchcock's favorite theme] and then some; creepy but good)

• Year of Living Dangerously, The (Australian, Peter Weir dir., Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. Great film about early 60s Indonesian political situation.)

• Yellow Earth (Chinese, Chen, Kaige dir. The guy who did "Farewell My Concubine.")

• Wedding Banquet, The (American, Ang Lee dir. Very funny story about very compulsory heterosexuality.)