Sid & Nancy

British director and co-writer Alex Cox (Repo Man) has said that his biographical drama of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, was less about punk rock and more a cautionary tale about drugs. No kidding. A then-unknown Gary Oldman is riveting as one half of the ill-fated couple that seems bent on self-destruction in a way that’s far worse than Nicolas Cage’s alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas. Yes, it’s set in the British punk scene that spawned the Pistols in the 1970s, with all its nihilism in full glory (and some cool cameos from Iggy Pop, Nico and Courtney Love), but the couple’s inability to pull itself out of a downward spiral of drugs and alcohol is the real cautionary tale Cox tells powerfully in this now 40-year-old cult classic. — Doug Pullen