Starring: Robert De Niro, Cybil Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel

Adrift in New York City after the Vietnam War, socially awkward loner Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) takes up a job prowling the city’s streets as a taxi driver to deal with his insomnia. Exposed to no one but a rogues gallery of pimps, hustlers and perverts, Travis begins seeing the world as putrid and in need of cleansing. Through awkward, fumbling attempts at romance, Travis isolates himself further, leaving him alone to mull over his obsessions: guns, a phony presidential candidate, and a roughed-up underage prostitute.

Martin Scorsese’s masterwork, Taxi Driver is a brute of a film, one that scrapes characters from the gutter of New York City and rakes them out into the sun to see how they react. Essential on every level.