With a moral authority as commanding as his technical precision, the young Stanley Kubrick delivers a devastating anti-war polemic with this early WWI-set masterwork. The film’s relentlessly staged tracking shots through no-man’s-land pandemonium rank among the director’s most visceral set pieces.

Assembled with the exquisite precision of a master watchmaker, Stanley Kubrick’s tightly wound heist thriller elevates its genre with characteristic ingenuity. Considered by the director to be his first signature film, The Killing counts Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan among its devotees.

Made with funds raised by a local chemist, Stanley Kubrick’s pugilistic noir—his second feature—announced the arrival of an era-defining artist. Benefitting from the exacting eye Kubrick had developed as a photojournalist, KIller’s Kiss captures a bygone 1950s New York in cold, shadowy monochrome.