It is 1971, and journalist Raoul Duke barrels toward Las Vegas—accompanied by a trunkful of contraband and his slightly unhinged Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo—to cover a motorcycle race. What should be a cut-and-dried journalistic assignment quickly descends into a feverish psychedelic odyssey. Director Terry Gilliam and an all-star cast, headlined by Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, show no mercy in bringing Hunter S. Thompson’s excoriating dissection of the American way of life to the screen, creating a film both hilarious and savage.

Before they blew the world’s mind with The Matrix, Lana and Lilly Wachowski delivered a jolt of pure pulp pleasure with their hyperstylish debut, which puts a deliciously sapphic spin on a crackerjack caper premise. When butch plumber Corky (Gina Gershon) catches the eye of alluring femme (fatale) Violet (Jennifer Tilly), little does she know she’s about to be drawn into both a torrid affair and a high-stakes heist that will pit the pair against the mob. With crackling dialogue, luscious neonoir cinematography, and live-wire performances by Gershon, Tilly, and Joe Pantoliano, Bound is a genre-reimagining joyride that keeps both the tension and the erotic heat rising through each crazily careening twist.

A treasure of Mexico’s cinematic golden age, this deliriously plotted blend of gritty crime film, heart-tugging maternal melodrama, and mambo musical is a dazzling showcase for iconic star Ninón Sevilla. She brings fierce charisma and fiery strength to her role as a rumbera—a female nightclub dancer—who gives up everything to raise an abandoned boy, whom she must protect from his ruthless gangster father. Directed at a dizzying pace by filmmaking titan Emilio Fernández, and shot in stylish chiaroscuro by renowned cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa amid smoky dance halls and atmospherically seedy underworld haunts, Victims of Sin is a ferociously entertaining female-powered noir pulsing with the intoxicating rhythms of some of Latin America’s most legendary musical stars.

Home from college, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) makes an unsettling discovery: a severed human ear, lying in a field. In the mystery that follows, by turns terrifying and darkly funny, writer-director David Lynch burrows deep beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town life. Driven to investigate, Jeffrey finds himself drawing closer to his fellow amateur sleuth, Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), as well as their person of interest, lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini)—and facing the fury of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath who will stop at nothing to keep Dorothy in his grasp. With intense performances and hauntingly powerful scenes and images, Blue Velvet is an unforgettable vision of innocence lost, and one of the most influential American films of the late twentieth century.

A monumental reimagining of American history, Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2016 novel is a harrowing and rhapsodic journey through a still-echoing past. Weaving together historical fiction with moments of magical realism, The Underground Railroad is a full sensory immersion into the world of Cora (Thuso Mbedu), who, fleeing slavery, embarks on a treacherous quest for freedom—and is menaced by violence, supported by a clandestine community fighting for liberation, and haunted by the people she loses along the way. With images of searing power and stirring poetry, Jenkins delivers an epic saga of survival and resilience that pushes the limited-series format to new heights of cinematic transcendence.