American History X – Edward Norton is an actor of admirable decorum. In this role, he sheds the baby-faced persona for a head shaved to the skin and Nazi ideology. Some of the scenes may not sit well with all audiences but this movie is not without charm. Norton’s character exonerates himself of his past wrongs by attempting to drag his brother away from his Neo-Nazi warpath. If Norton hasn’t been on the cover of GQ yet, he should be.

Director: Tony Kaye
Released: 30 October 1998
Cast: Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Beverly D’Angelo and Avery Brooks

American Psycho – Patrick Bateman, inspired by Ted Bundy, is a character that redefines the appellation of gentleman. He’s fastidious, obsessed with excellence in fashion, fitness and household ornamentation. He orchestrates threesomes and shames his more pragmatic colleagues. There’s but one blemish on his otherwise unmarred visage – he’s a cannibalistic serial killer. Learn a thing or two about dress and dining from Bateman, but please, abstain from misogyny and multiple homicide.

Director: Mary Harron
Released: 14 April 2000
Cast: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Chloë Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon and Willem Dafoe

Angel Heart – Lisa Bonet’s fall from Bill Cosby’s good graces, and subsequent exile to the cast of A Different World, was caused by this film. Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro co-star as a private investigator and his enigmatic employer respectively. Taking from the film-noir and horror traditions, Angel Heart features scenes of incest, witchcraft and implied cannibalization, did all it could to achieve an R-rating upon release. De Niro’s turn as the mysterious Louis Cyphre is perhaps one of his most under-rated roles to date.

Director: Alan Parker
Released: 6 March 1987
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro and Lisa Bonet

Bad Lieutenant – Harvey Kietel dives headfirst into the titular role, giving us a taste of desperation, and man’s attempt to grasp at personal redemption in the face of struggle. In some cases, perhaps the best measure of a man isn’t in the clothes he wears or the lifestyle he leads, but the lifestyle he wants to lead.

Director: Abel Ferrara
Released: 20 November 1992
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Paul Calderon, Leonard L. Thomas, Frankie Thorn

The Blair Witch Project – Extremely innovative for it’s time, The Blair Witch Project successfully creates a fiction that feels like reality. Imagine you and your friends decide to go into a forest, camp out and film the proceedings. Once you get into the forest, things just go horribly awry and some supernatural force kills you. The tape is found and voila, the horror you just recorded unfolds.

Director: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
Released: 30 July 1999
Cast: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams

Crash – The confluence of racial tensions in inner-city Los Angeles lives on the big screen. It sounds original, it borders on groundbreaking, but is it? Yes. Crash flashes the minutia of subversion with the trappings of the cosmopolitan. The characters are politicians, police officers, street thugs and locksmiths. Quite a motley assortment yes, but good for a trinity of Oscars?

Director: Paul Haggis
Released: 6 May 2005
Cast: Karina Arroyave, Dato Bakhtadze, Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Art Chudabala, Tony Danza, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito

Evil Dead II – Sam Raimi, before the fame stemming from Spider-Man, directed this film to successfully blend horror and humor in a campy yet charming manner. Bruce Campbell, in his starring role, is always a pleasure to watch but when its broken down to its simplest form, Evil Dead II is all about watching the main character be put through hell and seeing how he deals with it.

Director: Sam Raimi
Release date: 13 March 1987
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Denise Bixler, John Peakes

The Exorcist – The first, and perhaps last, truly effective horror film The Exorcist handles superstition, divine intervention and demonic possession in ways no other film has managed to do since. This is a canonical movie. A film-buff would have this on his DVD rack for the same reason he would have Ulysses on his bookshelf.

Director: William Friedkin
Release date: 26 December 1973
Cast: Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Jason Miller

Memento – A man suffering from anterograde amnesia relies on a body laden with tattoos and Polaroids to help solve the murder of his wife. Without the ability to form new memories, Guy Pearce tattoos every clue to his body to help him. Movies like this exist to remind us that the tattoo is not only the indulgence of pariahs but also an investigative tool for the vigilante.

Director: Christopher Nolan
Released: 11 October 2000
Cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano

Run, Lola, Run – A cinematic masterpiece which explores the possibilities of alternate realities without a time machine or drawn out sci-fi back story. Franka Potente stars as Lola who must somehow find 100,000 marks in order to save her boyfriend from a violent fate at the hands of local gangsters. Its track record at the world’s film festivals: Nominated for 41 awards, won 26 including the Audience Award at Sundance. All of which only serves to solidify the film’s status as a modern classic.

Director: Tom Tykwer
Released: 18 June 1999
Cast: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup and Nina Petri

Se7en – A creative serial killer murders those he feels perpetrate the seven deadly sins. Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey serve as the triad of prowess in the best suspense film of this epoch. Those three actors imbue the film with acumen too great to be ignored by the refined viewer.

Director: David Fincher
Released: 22 September 1995
Cast: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, R. Lee Ermey

The Shining – Any movie that showcases the thespian brilliance of Mr. Nicholson is worthy of mention. A young, bedraggled Jack Nicholson plays the role of a scribe in the pangs of writers block. He decides to take his wife, and toddler son with him to a ski lodge where he’s to act as janitor for the off-season. The lodge is abandoned for a few months every year. What soon becomes apparent is that this lodge is rife with malevolent apparitions.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Released: 23 May 1980
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd

The Silence of the Lambs – Hannibal Lecter is the single most couth cannibalistic, ingenious serial killer to pervade our collective consciousness. Clarice Starling uses Hannibal as an investigative tool in order to track down another killer who skins his victims. Hannibal’s mastery of psychology and diction should draw those of refinement to Silence of the Lambs like moths to an open flame.

Director: Jonathan Demme
Released: 14 February 1991
Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn

Zodiac – A murderous masked villain terrorized the state of California during the mid-sixties, he was dubbed the Zodiac. This movie does justice to the havoc that transpired, as a beleaguered cartoonist takes the reigns of his own case against the Zodiac. This film gives new definition to the term ‘vigilante.’

Director: David Fincher
Released: 2 March 2007
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr. and Brian Cox