Thelma & Louise
The titular duo played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon start out looking to go fishing, but end up in gleeful transgression, happily abandoning their own lives and striking out against the male testosterone-ocrisy that previously dominated their lives. Ridley Scott's criminal road trip has its highs and lows, but in the end, the mighty oppressive hand of manhood comes calling for the runaways.
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino's first feature as director is a heist movie without the heist, with the central job having already gone horribly awry. As they wait for a full rendezvous in their spartan fallback spot, the professional criminals turn on each other, knowing that someone in their midst is an undercover cop. Shenanigans ensue.
Dog Day Afternoon
You know when you try to rob a bank in order to pay for your boyfriend on the side's sex change, but it all goes awry and you end up at the center of a media circus hostage situation that can't end well for you? That's the case in this masterpiece from the late Sidney Lumet, which features incredible performances from Al Pacino and John Cazale.
Breaking Bad
Okay, okay, this is against the rules, because Breaking Bad is a television series on AMC, but come on. Bryan Cranston is Walter White, a milquetoast chemistry teacher who, upon being diagnosed with terminal cancer, starts cooking meth for his family's financial future. This wildly inadvisable choice kickstarts a journey from law-abiding family man to nefarious mastermind, with each frantic decision taking Walter deeper into a moral sinkhole.
Touch of Evil
Charlton Heston is a narc on his honeymoon with Janet Leigh in a Mexican border town. One car explosion later, and Heston's irrevocably involved in all manner of illegal craziness. Plump writer-director Orson Welles plays corpulent local lawman Quinlan, and this story is a reminder of his power as a cinematic storyteller.
The Usual Suspects
The principal criminals in Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie's twisty tale are pretty smooth operators for the most part, but when they get mixed up with mythical, possibly fictitious crime lord Keyser Soze, they're forced to take on a suicidal task in order to hopefully save their skins and the hides of those close to them.
City of God
Fast Five made illegal endeavors in Rio de Janeiro look like a whole lot of fun, but this movie figuratively hoists you into the air and breaks your back over its knee. The protagonist in City of God is keeping himself straight as a photographer, but the almost indescribable corruption and cruelty of the setting provide a host of examples of potent, dangerous desperation.
Mean Streets
You knew Martin Scorsese, the director behind Goodfellas and Casino, had to show up eventually. While the swaggering gangsters of those films certainly aren't on the up-and-up, Harvey Keitel's Charlie in the pre-Taxi Driver drama Mean Streets starts out a small-time hood, and his exploits in Little Italy lead to a destiny that feels pretty much inevitable.
The Asphalt Jungle
In John Huston's masterful 1950 noir, a big heist goes off more or less without a hitch, but in its aftermath, the participants find themselves falling victim to a variety of calamities both big and small that add up to a sort of tragedy for pretty much everybody involved.
A Prophet
Yes, it's French, but it's also brutal, uncompromising, and brilliant. Une Prophete tells the epic story of Malik, an illiterate eighteen year old Arab starting his first stint in brutal grown-up prison. It's a monumental movie, one that anyone who grooves to Scarface will almost certainly love.
13 hits select theaters on Friday, October 28th before arriving on Blu-ray and DVD November 8th.
