An exquisitely understated ode to the thrill of romantic possibility, the inaugural installment of The Before Trilogy opens with a chance encounter between two solitary young strangers. After they hit it off on a train bound for Vienna, the Paris university student Celine and the scrappy American tourist Jesse impulsively decide to spend a day together before he returns to the U.S. the next morning. As the pair roam the streets of the stately city, Richard Linklater’s tenderly observant gaze captures the uncertainty and intoxication of young love.

John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Little Richard, The Doors, Alice Cooper, and other legendary musicians performed at the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival music festival. This behind-the-scenes look at “the second most important event in rock and roll history” culminates in John Lennon’s first public performance with The Plastic Ono Band, triggering his decision to leave The Beatles.

Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PlayTime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the lovably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a baffling modern world, this time Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, PlayTime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.

One of the most notorious films of the 1980s, this controversial crime noir thriller directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) stars Al Pacino as Steve Burns, an NYPD officer who goes undercover in Manhattan’s Leather-bar underground in order to track down a serial killer targeting gay men. But as Stevebecomes immersed in club hopping, he begins to identify with the subculture more than he expected. Meanwhile, the police force’s homophobia becomes apparent and the killer remains at large.