Film

Meg Ryan received one of her richest and most complex roles to date in Jane Campion’s fascinating adaptation of a novel by Susanna Moore about a New York City writing professor who begins a dangerous liaison with a detective investigating the brutal murder of a young woman. Turning genre conventions on their head, Campion offers a mesmerizing, subversive deconstruction of the erotic thriller from a distinctly feminist perspective that was critically maligned on its release and remains ripe for reevaluation.

Jane Fonda is iconic in an Oscar-winning performance as a Manhattan call girl who finds herself at the dangerous center of the hunt for a killer. Riffing on classic noir tropes, the first in Alan J. Pakula’s celebrated cycle of Nixon-era paranoia thrillers doubles as a gritty-glam time capsule of the fashion, design, and sexual politics of 1970s New York.