It should come as no surprise that Scott Cooper began his career in cinema as an actor, because he has a preternatural gift for eliciting great performances in the films he’s made as a director—his first, 2009’s Crazy Heart, earned star Jeff Bridges an Academy Award for Best Actor. And because Cooper gets the best from his actors, it’s equally unsurprising that Christian Bale, a committed, chameleonic performer in constant pursuit of greatness, keeps coming back to work for Cooper. To mark the forthcoming release of the third and latest collaboration between actor and director, The Pale Blue Eye, we’re looking at the movies that came out of this serendipitous meeting of talents, and also screening films that inspired them—the kind of well-crafted, intelligent mainstream movies that have become an endangered species, and the same kind of movies that Cooper and Bale are doing their best to keep alive.