Recommend a movie

10 posts

Cornelio
Check the other good Schrader films (the list below is 100% Thomas777 certified):

- Yakuza (writer)
- Hardcore (writer & director)
- Mishima (writer & director)
- Bringing out the dead (writer)

Warning: Alongside these veritable masterpieces, Schrader created some really weak films.

(I guess Affliction deserves at least a honorable mention).
Jude

Children of Men

There's the ever-present Leftist moralizing throughout the film, but Cuaron does a great job of immersing you in a rapidly collapsing Britain. upload_2016-12-21_9-59-24.png

Content Creator

Aguirre the wrath of God

One of my all time favourites. Herzog masterfully immerses you in the atmosphere. You start to feel like you're hopelessly beholden to Aguirre, sweltering in the heat, being led on a doomed quest. Kinsky menacingly swaggers around and truly has a threatening presence. The final scene really hit me the first time I watched it. Subsequent viewings have been less powerful but the brilliance isn't diminished.

Jude
Niccolo and Donkey
Jude

What is this movie about?
Jude

Its an old shockumentary about violent crime in the US. This is before we started warehousing our criminals in the prison-town archipelago.

Roody

Hell In the Pacific (1968)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/hFLRXThL0YU

This is a terrific movie. Directed by John Boorman and featuring only Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, it is the story of an American and a Jap both thrown together onto a (beautiful) desert island during WWII. Although initially in contest for dominance, the two eventually work together to conquer the sea and escape the island. However, upon regaining "civilization" they realize that the war is still raging. The American laughs when he realizes that they forsook paradise for another Hell in the Pacific.

Amadis
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/-WIhU4-hcv0

The Last Valley (2014)

An Austrian Western set in the 19thC Alps, where a mysterious stranger rides into the titular valley, just before winter cuts it off from the outside world, and comes into confrontation with the violent family who rule it. It's a stark, joyless film - gorier than it needs to be and with the very modern focus on sexual perversion - that succeeds due to the glorious scenery, unusual setting and narrative minimalism. Some of the stylistic quirks work, like modern songs, whilst others don't, like the use of blood spray on the camera or slow motion. Not a great film but a very watchable and unique one.
chairman
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cs2dYAlbINY

TIMBUKTU (2014)

Depiction of Timbuktu under the control of ISIS. Very well made, more subtle than I expected. Very engrossing visually and an interesting depiction of the cultural/ethnic milieu. Most impressive for its depiction of how poorly organized and stupid the jihadists are; of course it also shows them as savages, hypocrites, whatever, and in a subtle and realistic way without explicit moralizing. The dominant narrative through this background is a conflict between a sub-Saharan fisherman and a Berber-looking herdsman with a beautifully shot climactic scene. Social structure of a third-world backwater with its ancient ethnic hodgepodge, subsistence economics and social roles with modern technology and ideology awkwardly superimposed over it. Strong recommendation, one of the best films I've seen from the current decade.
Smile

Edward Yang's "A Brighter Summer Day". Easily one of the greatest films ever made, it's a sprawling (4 hours long) coming-of-age epic with a novelistic scale that depicts the effect of globalization and modernization and the tragedy that can occur when the national identity of a people is stolen. Highly recommended.