by oldlightnewshite 38 Replies latest social entertainment
Downfall (VERY good German film about the last days of Hitler)
Outsourced (great little Indie comedy, now being turned into a TV show)
A Midnight Clear
Jason and the Argonauts (circa 1962, great adaptatin of the myth)
Zulu, and Zulu Dawn - two really good movies about the the Battles of Isandlwana and Rourke's Drift. Well done and historically accurate
Shawshank Redemption
The entire cast was awesome in this movie but Timothy Hutton's performance was phenomenal. No matter how many times I see this movie I still tear up.
LRG
Ticket to Heaven (1981)- about the indoctrination and deprogramming of a Moonie - good JW parallels
The Secret In Their Eyes (2009)- Police drama set in Argentina (english subtitles) EXCELLENT (and relatively new).
Cthulhu (2007) - A history professor travels back to his family home on the Oregon coast, which is overrun by members of an unspeakable cult.
One that I've mentioned before but misspelled the title of - I thought it was "Mae" - is
"May" (2002) - Psychological horror/dark comedy about a lonely young woman traumatized by a difficult childhood, and her increasingly desperate attempts to connect with the people around her.
...and, as Frank N. Furter himself said, "If you want something visual that's not too abysmal, we could take in an old Steve Reeves movie."
I enjoy dark comedies - no movie is darker than real life - and I like movies about the occult and creepy stuff if they are well executed. (A pun!)
One such I mentioned in the post just above is "Cthulhu", and another one I've recently enjoyed is
"Colour From the Dark" (2008) - Pietro and Lucia live on an isolated farm with Alice, Lucia's younger sister. Their life is peaceful and good, in spite of the hard work. One day, while drawing water from the well, Pietro and Alice accidentally free something from Earth's womb. A strange and alien color flashes underwater, at the well's bottom, then disappears. From that moment on, inexplicable and unpleasant events start happening all around the farm... Based on the H. P. Lovecraft story "The Color Out of Space."
I really enjoy horror, but not gore. In fact, as I get older I think I'm getting a little bit more squeamish. I feel that gore does not necessarily equal horror. Few things are gorier than an autopsy, but to me an autopsy contains no elements of horror - no more than a butcher's shop does, anyway. To me, H. P. Lovecraft is like the antimatter version of Pastor Russell. Lovecraft felt that as we learned more about the nature of the universe, we might find it is more horrible than we imagined. He posited forms of intelligence that were completely alien to the mainstream Protestant mind; intelligences from beyond space and time, or from the depths of the sea, that were completely uninterested in the fate of humanity.
In other words, good stuff.
Enjoyed watching Twelve Angry Men recently, a classic courtroom drama. (Jury room actually)
Just want to say thanks to everyone for their contributions. I'm in the process of downloading a lot of these that I haven't got. I'll list some of my favourite films, and see if you get the flavour of the kind of stuff I like. If they remind you of anything similar, please let me know!
Forrest Gump, Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Braveheart, Pulp Fiction, The English Patient, Beetlejuice, Final Destination, The Descent, Braveheart, Gladiator, Memphis Belle, Ghost, The Bourne Trilogy, Coming To America, Return To Neverland, Star Wars, Borat, Little Big Man, The Jerk, Aliens, The Color Purple, Debbie Does Dallas
Cheers!
Ordinary People? The film that was apparently more Oscar-worthy than Raging Bull? Yeah, and Dances With Wolves was better than Goodfellas...
(grumble grumble... damn Academy... nothing personal...)
Off my soap box, then. Wanna REALLY cry at a movie? Try The Straight Story with the incomparable Richard Farnsworth. IMHO David Lynch's best and most underappreciated film (far better than the tragicomically overrated Mulholland Drive)...
I thought mary tyler moore was outstanding in orinary people
Failsafe
The Bedford incident
Dr.Strangelove
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
The Thing ( john carpenters version )
7 Brides for 7 Brothers
The Boston Strangler ( tony curtis )
smiddy
BTW I'm not a Costner hater, I liked him in Mr. Brooks as well. And Wyatt Earp (I know, I'm the only one)
