Close-Ups

Wes Anderson has quickly become one of the auteurs of modern American cinema, creating his own distinctive world with pastel color palettes, meticulous set design, nostalgic soundtracks and a kooky troupe of actors. In this guide, Sophie Monks Kaufman navigates his off-kilter world, strolling across the quadrangles of Rushmore Academy, diving beneath the sea with Team Zissou and checking into the Grand Budapest Hotel to discover how an awkward indie film nerd from Texas became the most celebrated director of his generation.

When F. W. Murnau brought to the screen in 1922 he ushered in the bloody reign of cinema's most venerable villain - the vampire. Nocturnal, fanged and insatiable for human blood, the vampire has infected the public consciousness like no other movie monster. In this guide, Charles Bramesco goes vampire hunting across a century of cinema, stalking around lonely Transylvanian castles, dusty New York apartments and rain-soaked Washington woods to discover why the vampire has become cinema's most enduring villain.

New York has always been one of the world's most filmed cities, with its apartments housing tenants like Rosemary's baby and the Royal Tenenbaums, its skyscrapers scaled by the likes of King Kong and graffiti artists and its rubble-strewn streets prowled by everyone from Travis Bickle to Carrie Bradshaw. In this guide to New York and its movies, Mark Asch explores the Big Apple block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood, jogging past the iconic bench from eating at Katz's Deli from and mooching around the Coney Island boardwalk like one of The Warriors. Retracing the steps of countless iconic actors, cinematographers and directors, he draws up a unique cinematic map of The City That Never Sleeps.