Okay, I'll try to keep is that un-pretentious as possible, yet at the same time, there are a list of movies give or take that any film student drop out will tell you (and it's mostly true) are recomended viewing... They drone on and on about it though, so it gets a bit academic and boorish, in short some of them are titles such as...
...
The Bicycle Thief,
Umberto D,
Eyes without a face,
Blowup,
400 Blows,
Fritz Lang's Metropolis,
Solyaris,
Citizen Cane,
Psycho.
Here is my own personal list, which is probably just another man's list of pretentious esoterica all the same...
Yi Yi (2000) (dir: Edward Yang)
It's hard to describe this movie to people. It is a three hour long movie about a upper-middle class Taiwanese family that starts with a wedding, ends with a funeral, and touches on among other things a murder in between--- It's a grandiose film that never feels like it took on more than it could chew--- It's touching, it's my favourite film, and unless you have a heart of stone, its ending will make you cry the way a good movie makes you cry. You'll see also, its where my avatar comes from.
Badkonake sefid (1995)
(The white balloon) (dir: Jafar Panahi)
The story of a little Iranian girl who is given money by her financially strapped family (her mother) to buy a goldfish for New years day, the story of how people try to hustle this money from her and how she tries to regain it... simply beautiful, a great movie.
Alien (1979) (dir Ridley Scott)
Okay, Myc touched on Bladerunner (actually made in '82, not '84, which makes it all the more ahead of it's time...). One of the other really great movies by Scott was of course Alien... You can skip all the sequells as they are basically crap... But from the look and feel and gradual tension and horror that was obtained in this film (on practically a shoestring.... they built the craft interiors out of old discarded areoplanes...) is amazing... Along with Bladerunner possibly one of the two best sci-fi films ever made along with being one of the best horror films ever made. Watch this movie and think: "1979", its by war without equal even today.
Maadadayo (1993) (dir: Kurosawa, Akira)
This review is a little bit tricky... This movie tells the story of 'real-life' author & essayist, Uchida Hyakken (1889-1971) as a man who retires from teaching to publish his litterary work during a pre & post WWII Japan & the students who idolize him and take care of him. It's a very touching and very Japanese film... It hints at a lot of nationalistic qualities, and is outwardly sentimental for an older time. It's also Kurosawa's great homage to...
himself... If you can get over this fact, and you can watch it for its more austere qualities, I think you'll like it... Kurosawa's final film.
China Town (1974) (dir: Roman Polanski)
You should credit Bob Town (who wrote the original screenplay) and Polanski who directed rather than Robert Evans the prodcuer of this film, but this was Evan's first picture under his own company for Paramount... This is a fantastic private eye film staring Jack "Irish" Nicholson, who uncharacteristically wears a bangage across his face for a good portion of he film. I agree with Evan's when he calls this the "quintessential private eye film..."
Marathon Man (1976) (dir: John Schlesinger)
This is another picture produced under the Evan's banner... Staring Dustin Hoffman, it's a great suspensfull pesudo-espionage flick, with one of the most gut-wrenching interogation scenes in any film I've seen. Stylistically, it looses some points, & doesn't age well--- but for overall presesence & theme its well worth the viewing, and should be considered "recommended".
Nogiku no gotoki kimi nariki (1955) (dir: Keisuke Kinoshita)
The title of this film ---you might notice that the Japanese in the title is of an antiquated vernacular, is "You were like the wild Chrysanthemum". This is I think one of Japan's premier films---- It tells the story in parts, of the village life of two harrassed and chastised individuals whos friendship grows to become something of a more adult form of love. Simple, sentimental, but in the end, still touching & scincere.
Dare mo shiranai (2004) (dir: Hirokazu Koreeda)
Everyone knows this movie, asides from the adult actors, of which one of my favourite celebrities, "You", as the mother is included, the children were all amatuer actors, none of whom had any sort of script to read. This is the fictionalised true story of a mother who abandons her children in Tokyo to chase after her own selfish needs as an aging materialistic woman. One of the interesting things about this film is that the characters in it actually age as the film progresses, voices change--- and the children grow. This film gets mentioned time and time again on this forum, and it shouldn't be missed. Its dialogue and scenes, everything about it yields an almost documentary feel of sorrow and loss, only briefly puncutated by the types of childish outbursts oddly shared by the mother of the children.
...okay, that's
a few of my favs.
)
