It doesn’t get much better than the great Stanley Kubrick-directed Spartacus (1960).  Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier lead a cast for the ages.

Clive Owen in Croupier (1998) transcends the cliché about a writer writing a movie about a writer looking for ideas about which to write. I’ve spent plenty of time in casinos in my own life, and Owen’s performance strikes a chord. I was also impressed at how realistic the film portrays gamblers, dealers, and the general day-to-day ongoings inside the casino.

If you are in the mood for a well-acted dark comedy, Secretary (2002) is as bold as it gets. James Spader, one of my favorite actors, stars as an overbearing lawyer towards his emotionally vulnerable secretary Maggie Gyllenhaal. The two soon cross over the line from work relationship to a sexual, sadomasochistic one. Kudos to another favorite actor of mine, Jeremy Davies (of Justified fame), for a harder-than-it-seems to pull off performance.

An excellent World War II/Holocaust film that does not get nearly the credit it deserves is the Louis Malle-directed French masterpiece, Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987). Gritty and gripping, the film follows a French boarding school run by priests that seems to be isolated from WWII. That all changes when a secret emerges that one of the boys is Jewish.

This is an autobiographical film, written, produced, and directed by Malle.

Check it out.

He has a strong collection of films to his name, but Trainspotting (1996) is right up there with the best of Director Danny Boyle’s works. Based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting follows a group of heroin addicts in depressed Edinburgh and their struggles and mayhem. The film is gritty, stylish, and gripping right from the memorable opening scene

Lost in the “gangsploitation” genre of the early-mid 1990’s, including Boyz n the Hood (1991) and Menace II Society (1993), was New Jersey Drive (1995). New Jersey Drive, unlike the aforementioned marquee films of that time based in South Central Los Angeles, is set in downtown Newark, New Jersey, the unofficial car theft capital of the world.

The mixture of gritty drama and dark comedy with an east coast wit make this a hidden gem in an otherwise wildly popular genre from the 1990’s.