Sunday afternoons have their own particular quality of light and stillness. The right film slots into that feeling perfectly - unhurried, absorbing, a reason to stay on the sofa a little longer.
Go back far enough and you find films that had no idea they'd become classics. The 80s and 90s produced more of them than any other era.
The best crime films understand that most criminals aren't monsters. They're people who made a series of choices.
Times are tough at Premiere Properties. Shelley "the machine" Levene and Dave Moss are veteran salesmen, but only Ricky Roma is on a hot streak. The new Glengarry sales leads could turn everything around, but the front office is holding them back until these "losers" prove themselves. Then someone decides to take matters into his own hands, stealing the Glengarry leads and leaving everyone wondering who did it.
A veteran cop and an unstable detective become partners who must put their differences aside in order to bring down a heroin-smuggling ring run by ex-Special Forces.
When the bumbling Lieutenant Frank Drebin investigates events following the shooting of his partner, he stumbles upon an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II.
A girl who halfheartedly tries to be part of the "in crowd" of her school meets a rebel who teaches her a more devious way to play social politics: by killing the popular kids.
Dolores Claiborne was accused of killing her abusive husband twenty years ago, but the court's findings were inconclusive and she was allowed to walk free. Now she has been accused of killing her employer, Vera Donovan, and this time there is a witness who can place her at the scene of the crime. Things look bad for Dolores when her daughter Selena, a successful Manhattan magazine writer, returns to cover the story.
These films don't romanticise crime - they examine it. The best of them leave you uncertain about who you were rooting for.
Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
The owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.
Tired of the crime overrunning the streets of Boston, Irish Catholic twin brothers Conner and Murphy are inspired by their faith to cleanse their hometown of evil with their own brand of zealous vigilante justice. As they hunt down and kill one notorious gangster after another, they become controversial folk heroes in the community. But Paul Smecker, an eccentric FBI agent, is fast closing in on their blood-soaked trail.
Yuddy, a Hong Kong playboy known for breaking girls' hearts, tries to find solace and truth after discovering the woman who raised him isn't his mother.
Having witnessed his parents' brutal murder as a child, millionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne fights crime in Gotham City disguised as Batman, a costumed hero who strikes fear into the hearts of villains. But when a deformed madman known as 'The Joker' seizes control of Gotham's criminal underworld, Batman must face his most ruthless nemesis ever while protecting both his identity and his love interest, reporter Vicki Vale.
There are films that remind you, without sentimentality, that people are capable of extraordinary things. These are some of them.
These films work because they take their characters seriously - even the ones doing terrible things.