#9. Berlin Alexanderplatz

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15½-hour epic — a sensation and a scandal when it premiered on German TV in 1980 — is finally on DVD, in a digital restoration much cleaner than any other version, including the original broadcast. In adapting Alfred Doblin's 1929 novel, the German wunderbrat created a fresco of Weimar Berliners ground down by their base appetites and that form of bad luck known as Fate. But the movie is no downer. Fassbinder was every bit as much entertainer as artist, and this, his masterpiece, is a tonic experience. Save it for a long winter's night, and savor its meticulous vision of malefic glamour.