what was the last 'classic film' you watched and were knocked out by?

Exotica is all about evoking a place and a feeling

I feel this in Egoyan's intimate, small-scale movies like Next of Kin and Calendar, but most of his well-known movies feel too mannered to be evocative. He's like the jigsaw puzzle maker who's more concerned with how the pieces fit together than the picture itself.

High and Low is my favourite Kurosawa, and mentally I always connect it with The Bad Sleep Well as contemporary thrillers, but there's a crushing inevitability to the latter that maybe makes it less exciting.

I tend to confuse those Kurosawas.

The Old Dark House

I love the pre-code stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Dark_House_(1932_film)

Old Dark House is great, kind of a comedy but also truly grotesque.

The James Whale specialty.

When Saul is released from the room - at first he seems so harmless but quickly becomes one of the more strangely terrifying characters in film history