Fire up those Netflix queues. Lucas Joaquin recommends films to watch during the recession.

“Wages of Fear” (1952, Henri-Georges Clouzot)

Yves Montand is a drifter who’s come to a dreary oil town in Venezuela with hopes of striking it rich. He and his friends spend most of their time in a dingy town bar drinking and waiting for their big break; then suddenly it comes—an offer of two thousand dollars to drive a truck full of nitro-glycerin over treacherous roads to the other side of a jungle. One false move and—BOOM—the whole rig’ll blow sky-high. The best suspense set-up ever (sustaining the constant risk of death through a whole picture), and another relentless portrait of a world where money always trumps a man’s life, and humanity itself is worthless. Also, the only sequence in movies where a man drives a truck to the rhythm of “The Blue Danube Waltz.”