(FAH TALAI JONE, Wisit Sasanatieng, Thailand 2000, 113 min., Thai/subtitles)

A handsome yet shy bandit falls hard for a high-society beauty, but her father and his gang members make the road to true love a rocky one. A visual dazzler with its striking saturated colors, this highly entertaining Thai Western/musical/melodrama is one of the most original movies of the decade.

(David Fincher, US 1992, 115 min.)

Former music video director Fincher made his feature debut with the third installment of the enormously successful sci-fi/horror franchise. Sigourney Weaver returns as the much put-upon Ripley, who now finds herself on a barren penal colony planet, leading the inmates in battling yet another of the vicious, acid-blooded title characters. The stark and primitive prison provides an unusual, anti-techno backdrop for the series.

(Edward Dmytryk, US 1944, 95 min.)

Dick Powell is the big screen’s first Philip Marlowe in this adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. Detective Marlowe is hired by ex-con Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to track down the woman he loves, but the private eye soon finds himself entangled with a blonde femme fatale (Claire Trevor) and implicated in murder. Atmospheric, hard-edged, and nightmarish, Dmytryk’s masterwork is the granddaddy of ’40s detective noir.

(Gonzalo Arijon, France 2008, 126 min., Spanish/subtitles, Digital Projection)

In 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team to a game in Chile crashed in a remote part of the Andes. Stranded recreates the extraordinary experience of the young men who survived the initial crash, followed by two months of cold, hunger, and despair. Now decades later, the men who found their way out of this frozen hell tell their own story in a film that eschews both sensationalism and sentimentality. These events were the subject of a worldwide bestseller as well as two feature films, but Stranded is the definitive, haunting version of this profoundly moving drama.

(LÅT DEN RÄTTE KOMMA IN, Tomas Alfredson, Sweden 2008, 113 min., Swedish/subtitles)

Plagued by school bullies, 12-year-old Oskar finds a friend and his first crush in Eli, a seemingly young girl who lives in his working-class apartment block. What Oskar doesn’t know is that his protective new friend is an ageless vampire and an ongoing local murder spree is the result of her thirst for human blood. Director Alfredson’s scary—and surprisingly touching—new genre hybrid has already developed a considerable international fanbase and won several awards at major film festivals around the world. Don’t miss your chance to see it on the big screen.