Locke (2014)

Featuring Tom Hardy's best performance to date, this one-man show is set entirely in the confines of a moving car as it speeds out of London and into the countryside towards its driver's date with destiny. As a study of a man who is mobile and imprisoned in the same instant, the film approaches an existential profundity, while its star holds our attention from beginning to end with a series of looks, gestures and brilliantly precise line readings placing him in Britain's great theatrical lineage.
 
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Kill List (2011)

The British director Ben Wheatley moves between genres like a truly free man, but if he ever does make another horror movie, he'll be hard pressed to top his 2011 breakthrough. Kill List is a genuinely nightmarish tale of hitmen who stumble upon a conspiracy far more sinister than your run-of-the-mill organised crime syndicate. By turns hilarious, grotesque and devastatingly sad, this is one of the millennium's legitimate masterpieces – watch it if you dare. 
 
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Dead Again (1991)

Kenneth Branagh's beautifully goofy reincarnation thriller is filled with gimmicks, switching between eras, genres and colour schemes with reckless finesse. The director stars as a private eye trying to unravel the mystery of a dazzling, amnesiac mute woman (Emma Thompson). The leads are wonderful, but there are great actors at the edges of the frame – look out for a marvellous (unbilled) cameo by Robin Williams as a foul-mouthed psychiatrist with some funny ideas about karma.
 
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D.O.A. (1949)

One of the tightest, most propulsive thrillers ever made, this classic film noir is the story of a man trying to solve his own murder before a lethal poison in his bloodstream finishes him off once and for all. He knows he's done for; what he's after is revenge. Shot in near-real time and pioneering the kind of lean, claustrophobic intensity that Christopher Nolan would harness for Memento, D.O.A. holds up 70 years after its release. For a something old-something new contrast, watch it in a double bill with Jason Statham in Crank, which hotwires the same plot.
 
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A Perfect Getaway (2009)

Words can barely describe the pulpy satisfactions of David Twohy's sadly underrated, island-set action thriller, featuring a pair of honeymooning couples dealing with the presence of a murderer in their midst. Lots of B-movies turn on radical plot twists but it's rare that any of them have anything left in the tank afterwards. A Pefect Getaway shows its hand and then actually gets better during its superbly choreographed climax. Brilliantly entertaining stuff.
 
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The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) 

This is a lean, mean portrait of New York in the 1970s, as a hijacked subway car stops the city and its 8m residents in their tracks on a dog day afternoon. Walter Matthau is wonderful as our hangdog hero. Robert Shaw is even better as the efficiency-expert villain, whose plan to hire mercenaries and give them colour-coded nicknames was borrowed by Quentin Tarantino for Reservoir Dogs. It all builds to one of the all-time great final shots: a freeze frame that's a happy ending, a gotcha moment and a punchline all at the same time.
 
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They Live (1988)

Evil hides in plain sight in John Carpenter's visionary horror comedy; all you need to see it is the right pair of sunglasses. A devastating satire of Reagan-era conformity yoked to cheesy B-movie stylings and topped off with a killer synth score, They Live casts a pro wrestler (Roddy Piper) as the only guy around with a grip on reality. It just gets funnier and more surreal from there. Without compromising his silly sci-fi set-up, Carpenter makes us consider the effects of subliminal advertising (and political rhetoric) within an increasingly visual culture. 
 
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