Downfall
Hitler's last days.
The Lives of Others
About the secret police and life in East Berlin in the mid 1980s.
Posted on 10/28/2009 6:22:03 AM PDT by Skooz
For a myriad of reasons, I have spent the last few months watching a movie most every weeknight. I have finally gotten my money’s worth from my Netflix account.
But, lately I have had trouble finding movies I think I will like. I scour Netflix and am having a hard time finding movies that interest me, though I know they are out there.
My interest runs from war movies to action flicks to quirky indy films to foreign art things.
Some of my favorite movies I have seen the past few months are Defiance, all of the Sean Connery Bond films, Sleeper, The Right Stuff, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Riding Giants, a Hard Day’s Night, and a few foreign artsy films whose names I don’t recall.
By far my favorite movie I have seen lately is Everything is Illuminated.
I have no interest in horror flicks, romance movies, teen gross out flicks or most movies made in the 1960s.
Could anyone be so kind as to suggest a good movie or two?
Thanks
sw
I loved “Atonement”.
I second the Firefly series and Serenity. The best writing I have seen in a long time.
It is hard to believe it was canceled.
World’s Fastest Indian, Door to Door, Fracture, Second Hand Lions, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Juno.
Caddyshack.
One of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time that I finally watched last year was “Ronin” with DeNiro and Jean Reno. One of the best car chase scenes since Bullitt.
My top 10
1. Koyaanisqatsi
“Life out of balance”: a two-hour minimalist music video, no actors, no script, just the mesmerizing arpeggios of Philip Glass bolstering a portrayal of city life on a scale you rarely perceive - and how, someday, it must tragically collapse. I just can’t see this one enough, and have done so at least 8 time (once with live introduction by Glass).
2. Being Human
A forgotten film, portraying Robin Williams as Everyman across the ages. Set in four eras, we see different parts of the same life (as most lives are mostly the same) played out in vastly different eras. Moving, capturing love lost, gained, and all in between - including the eternal quest for shoes that fit.
3. Braveheart
Powerful portrayal of manliness: total devotion to family and country at the cost of total personal sacrifice. FREEEEDOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!
4. The Truman Show
Good stories depict the arc of personal discovery and change; what could be more so than discovering one’s entire life is the set and subject of a TV series, recorded and broadcast by thousands of cameras, and everyone around is a hired extra? Moody music by Philip Glass as a bonus.
5. Ghost Dog
A loser in the ‘hood is, by momentary shoulder-shrugging whim, saved from death by a mobster. Thereafter said loser reads the ancient samurai text Hagakuri, and immediately devotes himself fully to the samurai way - and the perplexed thug who saved him. Leveraging this resource, this mid-level mobster uses him as an assassin ... and when the hits make things too complicated, the mob tries to take him out. Unusually, the script brings out the mobsters as the dingy losers they are, and portrays the tragedy of a devotee of a Way without any teacher to guide him.
6. Blade Runner
Gritty, messy, intense thriller that asks what it means to be human. “Time to die” ends one of the great on-screen pontifications. Subject to inappropriate editing in earlier releases, find the “Final Cut” version, done as the director intended.
7. Babette’s Feast
A lovely, gentle tale (yes, I have a soft side) of secluded life in a religious commune, and the effect that good food can have on lives.
8. La Femme Nikita
Lost to society and subject to the death penalty, our dysfunctional heroine is trained to be a dark betrayer and agent of society: a spy. Particularly striking, among the gritty setting and tragic consequences, is how we the audience are _not_ privy to the whys and wherefores of her assignments. (The American remake of this French film fails precisely because we _do_ get answers and see consequences.)
9. The Lord of the Rings
A grand portrayal of the fantasy epic. Abridged (focusing on the high action, neglecting the art and scenery along the way), and flawed (director Peter Jackson should stick to filming stories, not altering them), but otherwise captures the vast scale and grandeur of the tale.
10. The Matrix
Whoa. Fantastic kick-butt sci-fi heady action. Not insightful, just way cool.
Honorable mentions:
Equilibrium
The Matrix meets Farenheit 451 meets 1984 in this stylized future of governmental eradication of anything emotionally stimulating. Preposterous, but very cool. In the commentary track, the director observes “action is how men express romance on film. Whether it be romance for family, wives, children, king, country, it doesn’t matter. They express their love by whipping ass in the name of one or the other of the above.”
Pi
Cube
The Blair Witch Project
El Mariachi
I have a fondness for ultra-low-budget movies: given very little to work with, and forced into thinking way outside the box (or, in the case of Cube, being stuck inside a very small box), capturing the essence of a _good_ story is a remarkable achievement.
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
The MTV-modern depictions of these classics show how well Shakespeare captured the essence of timeless human existence. Transplanted into modern-time alternate-universe settings of Verona Beach CA and Denmark Corp. respectively (where much is as life is now save for everyone speaking Elizabethan English, and Post Haste Delivery & Elsinore Castle Apartments are socially well-known), the essence of the Bard’s works still shines.
The Last Days of Sophie Schöll
The Lives of Others
The Longest Day
The Downfall (Der Untergang)
Conspiracy (HBO Films)
Der Tunnel
Katyn
Piece of Cake (miniseries)
Foyle’s War (series)
Enemy at the Gates
Stalingrad
The Pianist
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
“Taken” with Liam Neeson
I watch quite a few movies. You mentioned quirky. In the past few years there’s a few movies that are memorable due to being thought provoking and “quirky”. I’m not going to say these are GREAT films or perhaps even good films. They are films that are just plain weird or quirky...but memorable.
In no particular order.
Sunshine
The Fountain
Code 46
Requiem for a Dream
PI
Primer
Yes, three Aronofsky movies. He makes weird stuff.
You have superb taste. The car chase scenes in Ronin are off the hook. Bullitt is excellent too.
TCM shows lots of film noir on a regular basis. Some good recommendations: Out of the Past, DOA, Double Indemnity, and so on and so on. Wikipedia actually has some pretty good listings of film noir movies.
And for the record, I'm not an old fuddy-duddy -- these films were made 20+ years before I was born.
I really liked Second Hand Lions. I just added it to our queue for another watch.
“Conspiracy” with Kenneth Brannaugh and Stanly Tucci.
One of my all-time favorites: Bridge at Remagen (1969) with George Segal, Robert Vaughn and Ben Gazzara. Great music and scenery, too.
Defiance
The Inner Circle
Excellent.
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