Oscar-winning Parasite announced Bong Joon-ho as a master of genre-switching, but what really made the film resonate was its dissection of class, inequality and family. Shoplifters approaches the same themes from a different angle – quieter, more humane, and arguably more devastating.

Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, the film follows a group of people living together on the fringes of Tokyo society, surviving through petty crime and mutual care. Like Parasite, it challenges the idea that morality is neatly aligned with wealth or legality. But where Bong’s film is architecturally precise and explosive, Kore-eda’s unfolds gently, allowing relationships to deepen before pulling the rug from beneath you. Replacing shock with empathy, it will stay with you.

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Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley perfected the glossy psychological thriller: beautiful locations, immaculate tailoring and a protagonist whose charm conceals something dangerous. 

Based on the same Patricia Highsmith novel, René Clément’s Purple Noon stars all-time menswear great Alain Delon as a colder, more enigmatic Tom Ripley. The Mediterranean setting dazzles, but of course the beauty is deceptive – a façade for envy, obsession and moral emptiness. Unlike its modern counterpart, Purple Noon resists over-explanation, trusting stillness and silence to create unease.

For anyone who admired Ripley’s atmosphere and ambiguity, Purple Noon is a masterclass in restraint. Watching it now reveals how much contemporary cinema owes to European elegance and psychological subtlety. It’s beautifully shot too.

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Call Me By Your Name felt revolutionary in its softness – a love story defined by touch, atmosphere and emotional openness. Maurice, adapted from EM Forster’s novel, is a deeper historical counterpart that reveals just how radical such tenderness once was.

Set in Edwardian England, starring a very fresh-faced Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves, the film explores a relationship constrained by rigid class structures and the criminalisation of homosexuality. Unlike Guadagnino’s sun-drenched Italian idyll, Maurice exists in a world of repression and consequence, where love must be negotiated in secrecy.

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Blade Runner 2049 expanded the original Blade Runner universe by leaning into mood and introspection, using sci-fi to ask questions about memory, identity and belonging. Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris does the same, just with far fewer visual comforts.

Set aboard a space station orbiting a mysterious planet, Solaris confronts its characters with physical manifestations of their guilt and grief. The future here isn’t sleek or technological; it’s heavy, slow and emotionally unresolved. Tarkovsky replaces spectacle with stillness, demanding patience in exchange for profound insight.

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Whiplash electrified audiences by framing ambition as a kind of violence. The Novice transplants that same brutal philosophy into the world of elite collegiate rowing, with equally punishing results.

The film follows a freshman determined to earn her place on the team, pushing body and mind beyond safe limits in pursuit of validation. Like Whiplash, it’s less interested in the sport itself than in the psychology of obsession: the need to prove worth, the seduction of suffering, and the blurred line between discipline and self-destruction. If Whiplash left you wondering whether greatness is worth the cost, The Novice confirms it’s an open question.

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