Thread: Recommended Movies

Movie: Sedmikrásky AKA Daisies
Year: 1966
Language: Czech
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Director: Vera Chytilová
IMDb link: Daisies (1966)





Story Line:
Two teenage girls, both named Marie, decide that since the world is spoiled they will be spoiled as well; accordingly they embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world about them. This freewheeling, madcap feminist farce was immediately banned by the government.

Movie: Persona
Year: 1966
Language: Swedish
Genre: Drama
Director: Ingmar Bergman
IMDb link: Persona (1966)



Story Line:
Swedish actress Elisabet Vogler, while on stage during a performance of Elektra, becomes mute. The day following, which was three months earlier, she spoke no more and was in a near catatonic state. The doctors in charge of her case diagnose no medical reason that would cause this disability. A nurse named Alma is assigned to be Elisabet's caretaker, she who believes that there is some sort of inner strength that Elisabet possesses to choose not to speak. Since Elisabet is not allowed visits by either her husband or her son, the doctor provides her own secluded beach side summer house as a respite for Elisabet and Alma. To break the silence during the respite, Alma speaks continually to Elisabet, ultimately about personal details of her life. Elisabet responds to Alma's talking, and Alma uses these situations as her own therapy sessions. Alma admires Elisabet and wants to be like her. As the women spend more time alone together, Alma learns more about her patient. But Alma also begins a transformation, which she now knowingly tries to stop because of those things she has learned about Elisabet.

Movie: Sanatorium pod klepsydra AKA The Hour-Glass Sanatorium
Year: 1973
Language: Polish
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Director: Wojciech Has
IMDb link: The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973)



Story Line:
Set in pre- World War II era. A young man is on a strange train to see his dying father in a sanatorium. But the place is going to ruin and recalls a lot of memories from the past. He is beset by soldiers from the past, colonial black mercenaries, girls from his early life, and his parents. It is an interior adventure, with unusual atmospheric flair and extraordinary sets.

Movie: Cléo de 5 à 7 AKA Cleo from 5 to 7
Year: 1962
Language: French
Genre: Drama
Director: Agnès Varda
IMDb link: Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962)



Story Line:
An hour and a half (despite the title) of the life of a singer who learns she is merely being put on display. She visits a fortune teller who predicts stomach cancer (although after she has left), which is what she is afraid of what she might be dying. During this period, she meets with her boyfriend in a room full of cats and swings, then her composers in the same place. After deciding to work against the capriciousness with which the composers pigeonhole her, she puts on a black dress, takes off her wig, and tries to see things from a different perspective, learning much from her friend Dorothée, who poses nude for sculptors, and a passing soldier named Antoine.

Movie: Jules et Jim AKA Jules and Jim
Year: 1962
Language: French
Genre: Drama, Romance
Director: François Truffaut
IMDb link: Jules and Jim (1962)



Story Line:
In 1912, in Paris, the French bon-vivant Jim meets the insecure German Jules and they begin a great friendship. When they meet the fickle and independent French Catherine, they immediately fall in love with her. However the naiveness and fragility of Jules attracts the amoral Catherine and she marries him. With the First World War, the best friends Jules and Jim are separated, but after the war they reunite in Jules's cottage in Germany. Jim stays with Jules, Catherine and their daughter Sabine, and Jules tells his friend that while he has lived with Catherine she has had affairs with several lovers. When Catherine falls in love with Jim, Jules asks him to stay with her at his house. Along the years, Jules and Jim live a triangle of love with Catherine, but never affecting their friendship and respect.

Movie: Network
Year: 1976
Language: English
Genre: Drama
Director: Sidney Lumet
IMDB Link: Network (1976)



Story Line:

Howard Beale is an aging TV anchorman for UBS who is fired, effective in two weeks, after his ratings have been steadily deteriorating. He reacts to this by sensationally announcing on live television his intention to commit suicide on air. In doing so, Beale becomes a major TV icon and one of the most valuable assets to the Communications Corporation of America (CCA), the company that is gradually taking control of UBS. As a result he is given his own show as 'the mad prophet of the air-waves'. He appears live on television every week-day evening to tell the real truth to the people of America. The program is a huge success but Beale uses his power to make startling revelations about CCA, leaving the company executives with a serious problem.

Personal Note: Brilliant black comedy. Funny and prescient.

Movie: prestige
Year:2006
Language:english
Genre:Drama | Mystery | Thriller
Director:Christopher Nolan

Cast:
Hugh Jackman ... Robert Angier
Christian Bale ... Alfred Borden
Michael Caine ... Cutter
Piper Perabo ... Julia McCullough
Rebecca Hall ... Sarah
Scarlett Johansson ... Olivia Wenscombe
Story Line:
In the end of the Nineteenth Century, in London, Robert Angier, his beloved wife Julia McCullough and Alfred Borden are friends and assistants of a magician. When Julia accidentally dies during a performance, Robert blames Alfred for her death and they become enemies. Both become famous and rival magicians, sabotaging the performance of the other on the stage. When Alfred performs a successful trick, Robert becomes obsessed trying to disclose the secret of his competitor with tragic consequences.

Movie: Solaris
Year: 1972
Language: Russian
Genre: Drama,Sci-Fi
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
IMDb link: Solaris (1972)




Story Line:
The movie is about the ultimately futile attempt to communicate with an alien life-form on a distant planet. The planet, called Solaris, is covered with a so-called "ocean" that is really a single organism covering the entire surface. The ocean shows signs of a vast but strange intelligence, which can create physical phenomena in a way that science has difficulty explaining. The alien mind of Solaris is so inconceivably different from human consciousness that all attempts at communication are doomed (the "alienness" of aliens was one of Lem's favourite themes; he was scornful about portrayals of aliens as humanoid). The movie begins with the arrival of the protagonist, Kris Kelvin, at a scientific research station hovering above the surface of Solaris. Research has been ongoing for years, but scientists have been unable to do more than observe the highly complex phenomena on the surface of the ocean, all the while classifying them into an elaborate nomenclature without understanding what they actually mean. When the protagonist and his colleagues become more aggressive in trying to force contact with Solaris, the experiment becomes psychologically traumatic for the researchers themselves. The ocean's response, such as it is, lays bare their own personalities, while revealing nothing of the ocean's. To the extent that the ocean's actions can be understood, the ocean begins experimenting with the researchers' minds by confronting them with their most painful and repressed thoughts and memories through the materialization of complex human constructs: the protagonist is confronted with memories of his deceased lover and his guilt over her suicide. What torments the other researchers is only hinted at (as they are careful to conceal it) but it appears to be much worse.

Movie: The Sacrifice (Offret)
Year: 1986
Language: Swedish
Genre: Drama,Sci-Fi
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
IMDb link: The Sacrifice (1986)



Story Line:
It is Alexander's birthday, and his family have gathered at his remote cottage to celebrate. The celebrations are marred, however, first by conventional family intrigue, then by the terrifying news that the low-flying jet planes signalled the start of a nuclear war between the superpowers. As the family attempts to cope, Alexander is troubled by extraordinary dreams, and then informed by the unfathomable philosopher-postman, Otto, that he has the power to redeem the world, including his dear young son, if only he will visit the solitary Maria, who Otto insists is a witch.