Music City Mondays

Growing up in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, aspiring artist Rocket uses his passion for photography to observe and avoid a life of drugs and crime. Through Rocket — as well as gang leaders Lil Zé and Knockout Ned — the film tells the story of the rise of organized crime in the ‘70s, and was a breakthrough hit in 2002, churning with energy and punctuated by a propulsive era soundtrack.

The ’70s at their grungiest are captured by Uli Edel’s 1981 film with Natja Brunckhorst as 14-year-old David Bowie-obsessed junkie crashing in West Berlin’s Zoo Station. Bowie himself appears in a concert performance, and the film’s soundtrack is a virtual compendium of the epochal musician’s celebrated “Berlin period” — and a perfect sonic evocation of nightclubbing’s dark side.

Forty years later, the magnum opus of teenangst dramedies — THE BREAKFAST CLUB — remains one of the most beloved films about friendship, love, and sticking it to the man.

A bored New Jersey suburban housewife's fascination with a kooky character she's read about in the personal columns leads to her being mistaken for the woman herself. Starring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette. Directed by Susan Seidelman. New 40th Anniversary Restoration

Facing a mid-life crisis, a Memphis pimp and drug pusher tries his hand at rap stardom, aided by a sound engineer, a local musician, and one of his own working girls. Earning acclaim from critics and audiences alike — winning both the Audience Award at Sundance and the Oscar for Best Original Song. Written and directed by Memphis native Craig Brewer.

Three years in the making, this 2004 documentary provides a fascinating, in-depth portrait of the most successful and enduring heavy metal band of all time — following the eponymous group over a productive, but tumultuous period in the early Aughts. Striking in its intimacy and riveting in execution, Joe Berlinger’s film is quite simply one of the great rock docs of all time.

With a nod to our current Hong Kong Classics series, and CITY ON FIRE in particular, Quentin Tarantino looked to the East in his 1992 sendup. When a botched robbery indicates a police informant, and the pressure mounts in the aftermath at a warehouse, crime begets violence as the survivors unravel.