(Martin Scorsese, US 1982, 129 min.)

It’s hard to imagine a more visceral, physical performance than Robert De Niro’s as Jake La Motta. Scorsese’s rendering of the self-destructive boxer and his trials with his brother (Joe Pesci), wife (Cathy Moriarty), and career is a transcendental moment in cinema that’s often cited as the best American movie of the 1980s.

(BRONENOSETS POTYOMKIN, Sergei M. Eisenstein, USSR 1925, 69 min.)

Eisenstein’s epic of revolution still packs a wallop more than 80 years after its debut. Detailing the horrendous conditions that led to the mutiny aboard the Potemkin in 1905 Czarist Russia, Eisenstein used an equally revolutionary editing technique, juxtaposing images to create a stream-of-consciousness slaughter. Live piano by Philip C. Carli.

(Fred Niblo, US 1920, 107 min.)

Douglas Fairbanks, the screen’s first action superstar, stars as Don Diego Vega, aka Zorro, the witty, sword-wielding masked champion of the oppressed in old Spanish California. The enormous success of this Zorro paved the way for a series of more smash-hit swashbucklers starring Fairbanks, like Robin Hood, The Thief of Baghdad, and The Black Pirate. Live piano by Philip C. Carli.

(Martin Scorsese, US 1976, 113 min.)

Robert DeNiro, in a tour-de-force, is Travis Bickle—a super-alienated NYC cabbie, Vietnam vet, and dutiful diary writer. Travis’s psychotic fantasies ultimately lead him to violence as he attempts to “save” child prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster). Scorsese’s moody visuals are enhanced by the seductive saxophone in Bernard Herrmann’s final score.

(LE DERNIER MÉTRO, François Truffaut, France 1980, 131 min., French/subtitles)

Gérard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve star as members of a French theater company living under the German occupation during World War II in director Truffaut’s gripping, humanist character study. Against all odds—a Jewish theater manager in hiding, a leading man who’s in the Resistance, and the increasingly restrictive Nazi oversight—the troupe believes the show must go on. Equal parts romance, historical tragedy, and even comedy, The Last Metro is Truffaut’s ultimate tribute to art overcoming adversity.