Carrie Coonhas been turning in strong performances across stage, TV, and the silver screen for years now, working in both the indie space and the blockbuster mainstream. She turned inone of her best performancesyet in the most recent season ofThe White Lotusas Laurie and will reprise her role as the demanding Bertha Russell later this year for the third season ofThe Gilded Age.
Coon is as much a cinephile as she is a performer. Duringher recent trip to the Criterion Closet, the actress picked out a fantastic mix of titles, leaning toward restrained drama and romantic comedy. Whether it’s an underappreciated arthouse gem or a cult classic with emotional bite, her taste spans borders, decades, and genres.Here are some of Carrie Coon’s best movie recommendations.
10’My Night at Maud’s' (1969)
Directed by Éric Rohmer
“Chance plays a part in all our lives. But destiny lies in our character.” Coon recommended practically all of directorÉric Rohmer’s work, includingthis quiet, snow-draped gem.My Night at Maud’s centers on Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a devout Catholic engineer living in Clermont-Ferrand, who finds himself stranded on a wintry Christmas Eve and invited to spend the night in the apartment of the luminous, atheist divorcée Maud (Françoise Fabian).
What follows is a long, philosophically charged conversation about love, Pascal’s Wager, and whether virtue can survive temptation.My Night at Maud’s is the fourth installment in the director’sSix Moral Tales, all of which are worth checking out. It’s a movie where almost nothing “happens,” and yetevery line of dialogue feels weighty and real. Overall,My Night at Maud’sisn’t necessarily the most accessible entry point for newcomers to Rohmer’s work, but it’s still a rich, cerebral experience.
My Night at Maud’s
9’A Tale of Summer' (1996)
“That’s what I like about you. You say silly things, but you mean them.“A Tale of Summer(akaA Summer’s Tale) is another great flick from Rohmer, this time focusing on Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud), a young musician on holiday in Brittany, who stumbles between three different women over a few sun-soaked days: Léna (Aurelia Nolin), his aloof girlfriend; Solène (Gwenaëlle Simon), a confident local he meets by chance; and Margot (Amanda Langlet), a friend who maybe wants more.
There are no grand confrontations or dramatic betrayals, just conversations, walks, and the slow, awkward dance of youth trying to sort through feelings.Rohmer’s gift is to make the mundane shimmer, and here, summer isn’t a time of freedom but a pressure cooker for identity.A Tale of Summermakes for one ofthe filmmaker’s more conventional movies, meaning that those curious about his filmography may do well to start here.
A Summer’s Tale
8’Naked' (1993)
Directed by Mike Leigh
“It’s not the end of the world, you know. It’s just the end of you.“Nakedis one ofthe best movies from British directorMike Leigh, the brains behindLife is SweetandAnother Year. It’s a bruising, apocalyptic character study anchored by a volcanic performance fromDavid Thewlisas Johnny, a nihilistic drifter who returns to London and unravels over several sleepless nights. Johnny is whip-smart, charismatic, and absolutely monstrous, careening through philosophical monologues while wreaking emotional havoc on everyone around him.
Viewers who only know Thewlis for his warm role as Remus Lupin inHarry Potterneed to see this movie.He’s simply fantastic, in a dark, broken way. Johnny is unpredictable from moment to moment, at once repellent and magnetic, an intellectual misanthrope, someone who has spent far too long brooding on his cynicism and resentment. “Extraordinary Mike Leigh film,” Coon said simply.
7’The Mother and the Whore' (1973)
Directed by Jean Eustache
“I’m not a woman. I’m a crowd.“This French filmis a three-and-a-half-hour post-1968 hangover, sprawling and defiantly intimate. It follows Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a young Parisian intellectual who drifts between the love of two women: the nurturing Marie (Bernadette Lafont) and the emotionally volatile Veronika (Françoise Lebrun). Through long, digressive conversations and brutally honest monologues, directorJean Eustacheunpacks not just a complicated romantic triangle but an entire generation’s existential disillusionment.
It’s araw, challenging exploration of anger, guilt, narcissism, desire, and collapse— a film about youth that is anything but youthful in its temperament. The late 1960s were a turbulent time in France, marked by protests and anger from millions of young people.The Mother and the Whoreexamines that generation with remarkable frankness (even if the story does lose momentum in certain stretches). “Who doesn’t want transgressive, intimate dialogue?” Coon said of it. “It’s veryWhite Lotus.”
The Mother and the Whore
6’Godzilla vs. Biollante' (1989)
Directed by Kazuki Ōmori
“Godzilla is still alive… in our hearts!“Godzilla vs. Biollanteis one of the strangest, most conceptually wildentries in thekaijucanon. A direct sequel toThe Return of Godzilla, this movie pits the radioactive lizard against a bizarre new adversary: Biollante, a massive plant-like creature infused with Godzilla’s DNA and the soul of a dead girl. Yes, really. It’s a bold blend ofsci-fi horror, genetic engineering ethics, Cold War tension, and straight-up monster madness.
While the 1980s were not the franchise’s golden age,this one stands out with its inventiveness.Kazuki Ōmori’s direction takes the mythos in a more cerebral, even poetic direction, treating the monster fights with visual grandeur but never letting the weirdness dissolve into camp. There’s genuine melancholy beneath the mayhem. “My son is obsessed with Godzilla and Universal Horror, and we have a whole Godzilla book, a whole big collection of them,” Coon explains.
Godzilla vs. Biollante
5’Crossing Delancey' (1988)
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver
“He may be a pickle man, but he’s not a pickle!“Crossing Delanceycenters on Isabelle (Amy Irving), an intellectual Jewish woman living uptown, whose grandmother tries to set her up with Sam (Peter Riegert), a Lower East Side pickle vendor. Isabelle resists—she’s got her sights set on a brooding author—but Sam’s unassuming kindness slowly begins to cut through her biases. What could have been a cliché matchmaking tale becomes a beautifully observed story about identity, class, and the limits of romantic fantasy.It’s a love story that doesn’t shout—it listens.
“This isone of the most underrated romantic comedies,” Coon said. “[Joan Micklin Silver] was an amazing filmmaker. She didn’t get to make enough films. ButCrossing Delanceyis special to me because I used to watch movies at my grandparents' house, and this film was one of my grandfather’s favorite movies. It’s a stunning film and really captures an era in New York.”
Crossing Delancey
4’Paris, Texas' (1984)
Directed by Wim Wenders
“I walked out. I walked out the door. And I never came back.“Harry Dean Stantonleads this one as Travis, a man who reappears from the desert after years of silence and estrangement, searching to reconnect with the son he left behind and, eventually, the woman he still loves.What unfolds is a road movieturned elegy—a meditation on broken families, guilt, and the impossibility of erasing the past.
Few films manage to capture loneliness so clearly. Wim Wendersand screenwriterSam Sheparddon’t just tell a story—they unravel a wound.Paris, Texasis a movie that strips you bare, raw, aching, and vulnerable, but leaves you with the fragile hope of healing. That it does so without ever becoming melodramatic is all the more impressive. “This is a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton performance,” Coon said. “He was one of the greats. One of the great character actors. He gets a lot to do in this.”
Paris, Texas
3’Wanda' (1970)
Directed by Barbara Loden
“I don’t have anything. Never did, never will.“Barbara Lodenwrote, directed, and stars in this quietly shattering character study, a milestone of independent cinema. The title character is a drifting woman in Pennsylvania coal country who walks away from her family and stumbles into an aimless existence alongside a small-time criminal (Michael Higgins). The film isspare, unsentimental, and unrelentingly bleak, yet it burns with a kind of fractured grace.
The performances are deeply authentic, especially Loden’s, which considerably elevates the movie over similar, more middling dramas.Wandafirmly rejects gloss or neat emotional arcs, instead leaning into messy reality. This approach did not earn the movie many fans on release, but it has since been recognizedas being ahead of its time. “This movie is extraordinary,” Coon said. “If you haven’t seen this and you haven’t seen this performance, then you should stream it on the Criterion Channel right now.”
2’The Cremator' (1969)
Directed by Juraj Herz
“Death is only the beginning of immortality.“The Crematoris a pitch-black fever dream of a movie,a psychological horror wrappedin nightmarish surrealism. Set in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia, it centers on Mr. Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrušínský), a seemingly benign crematorium director who slowly descends into madness and fascist ideology.The movie turns him into a symbol for complicity with evil. The horror here isn’t just in what Kopfrkingl does—it’s in how banal it all seems to him.
DirectorJuraj Herzamplifies this grim subject matter with a visual style that’s disorienting and hypnotic, using wide-angle lenses, jarring cuts, and internal monologues. “We’re living through interesting times and this is, apropos of nothing, about the rise of authoritarianism in Czechoslovakia,” Coon said. “Just might be worth a look. It’s one of the best uses of narration that I’ve ever experienced in film. It’s a very deft performance here and a terrifying film.”
The Cremator
1’Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling' (1986)
Directed by Richard Pryor
“You better get up off your Black ass and do something. You’re not dead yet!“Richard Pryor’s directorial debut is a deeply personal, uneven, but undeniably affecting reflection on fame, addiction, and self-destruction. Here, he plays a lightly fictionalized version of himself, very much drawing on his real life: Jo Jo is a famous comedian who burns himself in a drug-fueled accident and, while in recovery, revisits the painful chapters of his past.
From here, the movie skips across time, exploring Jo Jo’s childhood in a brothel, his rise in show business, and his ceaseless emotional struggles even after finding success. What’s remarkable is how Pryor manages tokeep a sense of humor even when diving into the darkest recesses of his psyche. The finished product isa blend of satire and confession, occasionally raw to the point of discomfort. “What a gift of a man and a performer he was,” Coon said of Pryor.
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling
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