Drive in 35mm

The story of a computer programmer who gets transported into a video game was scored by the legendary composer Wendy Carlos, a key figure in the electronic music world, and has developed a cult following for its sequences in vibrant, electric colors, achieved using backlit animation and matte techniques. A film with a presence in both the museum’s Color in Motion and Cyberpunk exhibitions—on view through July 13, 2025 and April 12, 2026, respectively—Tron embodies the importance of developing a distinct aesthetic as well as the wonder that emerges from speculative fiction.

Now a classic of Italian horror cinema, Dario Argento’s Suspiria is a fantasia of Gothic imagery, shocking deaths, and vibrant color. Backed by an eerie score from Italian progressive rock group Goblin, the film’s style and atmosphere take the lead in this tale of an American ballerina sent to a prestigious dance school in Germany plagued with bizarre, supernatural occurrences. The heavy use of color is at times reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), but Argento has said the color and lighting in the Disney animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) most influenced his work on Suspiria and inspired him to make the film using the classic Technicolor process.

On Halloween night, depressed artist George Miller (Dennis Lipscomb) attempts suicide by leaping off the roof of his apartment building, only to survive the fall. Welcomed home from the hospital by his eccentric but caring neighbors, led by kind-hearted sex worker Angel (Suzanne Snyder), things start looking up. But Miller’s recovery takes a turn when he feels compelled to visit people and places he has no connection to and begins having nightmares of grisly murders. Director Guy Magar plays with color throughout the film—even fitting in a visit to a gallery for neon art—and employs hues of green, red, and blue in ample doses, occasionally tinting the entire image on-screen to emphasize mental torment and the presence of evil.

A high-tech safecracker (James Caan) tries to pull off one final score before settling down to a normal life in this stylish neo-noir, loosely based on the memoirs of a real-life cat burglar. Thief was the first feature written and directed by Michael Mann and was a remarkably assured filmmaking debut, demonstrating all the hallmarks of his later work: striking nighttime urban cinematography (courtesy of Donald Thorin), sleek synthesizer music from Tangerine Dream, and a vividly authentic supporting cast including Robert Prosky, Dennis Farina, and music legend Willie Nelson as Caan’s former cellmate.

In his immediate follow-up to the box office success of 48 Hrs. (1982), writer-director Walter Hill drew on his love of cars and comic books for this rock ‘n’ roll fable set in a dystopian version of the 1950s. Named for the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, Streets of Fire opens with a charged musical performance led by Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) and her band the Attackers just before she’s kidnapped by a malicious gang, led by Raven (then-newcomer Willem Dafoe). This electric world of exaggerated realism loses none of its high-octane steam across its many car chases, biker brawls, and decibel-blasting performances lit throughout by explosive flames and buzzing nighttime neon.

Expanded from stories originally conceived for his anthology film Chungking Express, writer-director Wong Kar-Wai takes viewers on a journey through the nightlife of 1990s pre-handover Hong Kong in Fallen Angels. Filmed by cinematographer and frequent collaborator Christopher Doyle, the subjects of the film’s intertwining stories dwell in dark interiors illuminated by fluorescent bulbs and nighttime exteriors aglow with the neon signs of a bustling twenty-four-hour city. The filmmakers’ striking use of glowing colors washing over characters and their surroundings heightens the emotional narrative of outsiders looking for connection. Like the lives of its complex characters, Wong's final film to be shot entirely in Hong Kong is violent and tragic one moment then silly and touching in the next.

Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-Hsien reteamed with screenwriter Chu T’ien-wen for this stylish ode to Taipei at the beginning of the 21st century and its drifting millennial inhabitants. Set in the year of the film’s release, protagonist Vicky (Shu Qi) indicates we are watching her memory, recounted in voice-over from the year 2011, of two men in her life: the self-absorbed Hao-Hao (Duan Chun-hao) and sensitive gangster Jack (Jack Kao). Ensconced in blacklight from pulsing dance floors and neon from the city’s countless nightclubs, this hypnotic work is punctuated by Tu Duu-chih’s bumping soundscape, for which the sound designer won the Technical Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

Four college girlfriends, too broke to enjoy their spring break, hold up a nearby restaurant for travel funds. Using the cash to get to Florida, besties Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith live out every imaginable party fantasy until a brush with the law brings them closer to local baddie Alien, who takes them under his odious wing. An early success for distribution powerhouse A24, Harmony Korine’s polarizing crime comedy holds an unflinching mirror to the mindless consumerism that dominates pop culture. Set to an unrelenting score by Cliff Martinez and Skrillex, peak MTV aesthetics find resonance on the big screen thanks to Benoît Debie, the cinematographer who lensed Enter the Void three years earlier.

This story about tensions between a reggaeton dancer, a choreographer, and their adopted-then-abandoned pyromaniac child is carefully constructed as a charged, impressionistic vision of modern Chile by one of contemporary cinema’s ultimate stylists. On the heels of Naruda (2016) and Jackie (2016), director and cowriter Pablo Larraín stages both massive performances and intimate rehearsals bathed in colorful light, mimicking the nighttime streets of Valparaíso, a port city popular with artists and the film’s primary location. Part dance film, part family drama, part portrait of an artist, the vibrant Ema pulses with vivid hues and thumping electronic music by Darkside founder Nicolas Jaar.

Director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney adapted McCraney’s unfinished play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue for this Best Picture–winning tale of sensitive Chiron coming of age in Miami’s violent and homophobic drug culture. A trio of actors play the protagonist at three stages of his life, and Mahershala Ali won his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his moving performance as the boy’s unlikely father figure. To achieve the visual language for the film, Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton worked with digital colorist Alex Bickel to imitate different film stocks in each of the film’s sections: a Fujicolor palate for Chiron’s childhood, Agfacolor for his teenage years, and Kodak when he becomes a young adult.

Shot primarily in first-person point-of-view among the dark alleys, nightclubs, and tiny apartments of Tokyo’s Kabukichō district, Gaspar Noé’s self-proclaimed “psychedelic melodrama” takes its visual cues from the director’s own experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.

In the 1990s, the aesthetic of hip-hop was forever changed by visionary director Hype Williams, whose music videos for Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, LL Cool J, and dozens of other artists created an entirely new visual style. Near the end of that decade, Williams directed his only feature film, Belly, which, despite making its modest budget back at the box office threefold, was derided by critics for its complicated depictions of Black male characters. Though accused of being style over substance—the film is replete with gorgeous black- and redlight washes—contemporary audiences have embraced the film as a cult classic, reappraising it for shifting the trajectory of both hip-hop and Hollywood before the industry could see what was coming.

Writer-director Steven Soderbergh and producer James Cameron teamed up for this stylish adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 sci-fi novel that was also the source for Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic 1972 film of the same name. When psychologist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is sent on a mysterious mission to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris, he finds unthinkable mysteries, as well as an impossible encounter with the love of his life (Natascha McElhone). Soderbergh’s film is romantic, thought provoking, and a feast for the eyes with dazzlingly colorful visual effects, Philip Messina’s lived-in production design, and Soderbergh’s moody widescreen 35mm cinematography (shot under the pseudonym Peter Andrews).