What movies should be compulsory?

[Netzach]

pleease please please Schindler's List people see the Pianist.

 

[FurryFury]

I don't think any movie should be compulsory.

I did show my husband a lot of my fav movies when we first got together because I do love sharing movies with people that I love but it wasn't compulsory.

I was very tired and pregnant when we first got together. I have this damnable need to entertain and fear of someone being bored so this was one way I compensated.

If I fell asleep, it was no big, cause I'd seen the movie before. Hopefully he was enchanted with something he'd never seen. The discussions afterward were always good.

A few of the movies I showed him were:

All That Jazz
Brigadoon
Night of the Comet
Embryo
and
The Journey 1959​

 

[tanijaana]

I vote for Johnny Got His Gun. It's about a teenager that goes to war after his father spends his entire upbringing glorifying it, then gets caught in an explosion that blows all his limbs off and renders him deaf, mute, and blind. Teaches a LOT of good lessons.

 

[Netzach]

I vote for Johnny Got His Gun. It's about a teenager that goes to war after his father spends his entire upbringing glorifying it, then gets caught in an explosion that blows all his limbs off and renders him deaf, mute, and blind. Teaches a LOT of good lessons.

That's a phenomenal old flick, good pick.

 

[saw_man1]

To Kill a Mockingbird .

I concur. Atticus Finch is one of the great heroes of the silver screen.

In an age of increasing intolerance, it's central theme is as apropos today as it was when it was first released.

 

[midwestyankee]

A few that provide some opportunities for learning:

The Best Years of Our Lives (dir., William Wyler) – see Netzach’s eloquent description.

The Candidate (dir. Michael Ritchie) – because politics is never what we think it is nor what we want it to be.

La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) (dir., Jean Renoir) – yes, that Renoir family; because at the root of things we all are just trying to survive the game.

City Lights (dir., Charlie Chaplin – because humility and kindness are necessary for the survival of the species.

Das Boot (The Boat) (dir., Wolfgang Petersen) – because our enemies are people.

Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman) (dir., Claude Lelouch) – because love is always hard and always surprising.

Le roi de coeur (King of Hearts ) (dir., Philippe de Broca) – because the inmates really can run a better asylum.

 

[Netzach]

Das Boot (The Boat) (dir., Wolfgang Petersen) – because our enemies are people.

I forgot that, or left it out because if I start getting seriously into Foreign art/house I'm screwed. Beautiful film.

I'll throw in Garden of the Finzi-Continis for a really interesting window into how people react to the world crumbling around them.

 

[EmpressFi]

And the Band Played On. It's based on the Randy Shilts book about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, but it's not as cerebral as the book. The cast is star-studded, which should tell you something about how important this movie is. Alan Alda, Phil Collins, Richard Gere, Anjelica Huston, Steve Martin, Ian McKellen, Lily Tomlin, BD Wong, and so on. IMHO this is the single most important movie of all time. It was originally an HBO special feature but it's now available on VHS and DVD. I have listed this as my top all-time favorite movie for many years and I do think everybody should see it

I loved this movie so much my husband bought the book for me as well. Every time I watch it, I think my friend who died in the 90's from complications of HIV/AIDS... it's a very moving film

 

[midwestyankee]

I forgot that, or left it out because if I start getting seriously into Foreign art/house I'm screwed. Beautiful film.

I'll throw in Garden of the Finzi-Continis for a really interesting window into how people react to the world crumbling around them.

I'll see your Garden of the Finzi-Continis and raise you a Children of Paradise.

 

[JMohegan]

pleease please please Schindler's List people see the Pianist.

I've seen it - Brody's performance is amazing.

I agree with your take on Best Years of Our Lives and American Beauty, though the latter may only be of benefit to those in Western/industrialized countries.

I vote for Johnny Got His Gun. It's about a teenager that goes to war after his father spends his entire upbringing glorifying it, then gets caught in an explosion that blows all his limbs off and renders him deaf, mute, and blind. Teaches a LOT of good lessons.

Haven't seen it, but it certainly sounds like a good pick to be "compulsory for the entire human race". I'll try to find it somewhere.

Das Boot (The Boat) (dir., Wolfgang Petersen) – because our enemies are people.

Great film, great choice.

Emotionally confusing as hell to watch - and important for just that reason.

 

[Etoile]

I loved this movie so much my husband bought the book for me as well. Every time I watch it, I think my friend who died in the 90's from complications of HIV/AIDS... it's a very moving film

I'm so happy someone else has heard of it. I was sorry to find that the book was very different from the movie; I originally tried to read it when I was about 14 but it was way over my head. Perhaps it would be more accessible to me now.

 

[neonflux]

I'm so happy someone else has heard of it. I was sorry to find that the book was very different from the movie; I originally tried to read it when I was about 14 but it was way over my head. Perhaps it would be more accessible to me now.

And the Band Played On is absolutely must reading, I think. The film was good, but the book was so much more comprehensive and complex! Aimée and Jaguar was a great film! Neon

 

[EmpressFi]

Compulsory...

The Princess Bride - it's a mainstay in our family, as in most of us can quote it. It shows the pleasure in just being silly

The others, I dont really have "reason" just that I enjoy them and those I've shown them to enjoy them too (well some do *smirk*)

My Favorite Wife (Cary Grant version)
A Letter to Three Wives - awesome mind fuck movie from the 1950's
Any musical from the golden era (Brigadoon, South Pacific, Oklahoma, etc)
Silence of the Lambs
Pride and Prejudice, the new one
Sense and Sensibility
The Count of Monte Cristo
Interview with a Vampire (I swear there's not much blood *wink*) I told my ex husband this the day I saw this movie. I'd gone by myself because he hated vampires. it was only when he went with me that I began to notice exactly how wrong I was.
The Waking of Ned Divine


God, my list is too long

as live acts go.. I seriously suggest watching Eddie Izzard's: Dressed to Kill. This performance literally had me crawling to the bathroom to keep from peeing my pants

 

[Netzach]

Eddie Izzard gives me hope that the badass smart people form enough of an audience to allow an awkward androgyne massive fame and dough.

And yes, freaking funny.

"This jam was made by groovy people and fruit that volunteered"

 

[intothewoods]

And the Band Played On is absolutely must reading, I think. The film was good, but the book was so much more comprehensive and complex! Aimée and Jaguar was a great film! Neon

I so agree. I thought the movie was mediocre, but the book was absolutely riveting.

 

[neonflux]

pleease please please Schindler's List people see the Pianist.

I cannot agree with you more. I am sure that I will get blasted for this, but I dislike all of Spielberg's "serious" films, beginning with The Color Purple. He makes it too easy, allows us to walk away patting ourselves on the back for how “good” we are without ever forcing us to examine the moral complexities of the events/times around which the films center. That Spielberg is among the greatest filmic craftsman of his generation only makes his "transgressions" feel more egregious to me - I always find myself crying at his films despite myself and despite understanding his manipulations as they fill the screen.

Are you familiar with Shoah?. This 9-hour documentary (film fests usually show it in either 2 or 8 parts) was made over ten years tracing and interviewing survivors from the extermination camps of Treblinka, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Chelmno and Belzec and also includes interviews with former German SS officers and Polish peasants. Two other films, told from "the other side," which certainly had me questioning what any of us might be capable of, given the right circumstances: Man to Man, starring Tilda Swinton and based on the true story of a German woman who lived as a man throughout the 3rd Reich, joining the SS because they didn't require physicals, and the more recent Downfall, about the last days of Hitler and his closest followers (in the Berlin Bunker).

Neon

 

[neonflux]

Did absolutely love Spielbert’s AI. And one more film recently added to my list: The Lives of Others, now in U.S. indie theatres. It's a German film about a Stasi agent who is assigned to get something, anything, on a prominent playwright in East Germany, five years before the collapse of communism. From one review, "It’s a moving, deeply humane and profound film which is about both heroism and human frailty and failings in difficult circumstances." (Won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.) Neon

 

[intothewoods]

No blasting from me - I don't care for Spielberg's serious movies either. I didn't care for Schindler's List.

 

[neonflux]

Ingmar Bergman, died today at age 89

Ingmar Bergman, Master Filmmaker

From the NYT, Front Page 7/31/07:

"Mr. Bergman was widely considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history. For much of the second half of the 20th century, he stood with directors like Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa at the pinnacle of serious filmmaking. Mr. Bergman dealt with pain and torment, desire and religion, evil and love. In his films, 'this world is a place where faith is tenuous; communication, elusive; and self-knowledge, illusory at best,' Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times Magazine in a 1983 profile of the director."

His films included:

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) (Sommarnattens leende)
The Seventh Seal (1957) (Det sjunde inseglet)
Wild Strawberries (1957) (Smultronstället)
The Virgin Spring (1960) Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film)
Through a Glass Darkly (1961) won Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film)
Hour of the Wolf (1967)
The Touch (1971)
Cries and Whispers (1973)
Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
The Magic Flute (1975)
From the Life of the Marionettes (1980)
Fanny and Alexander (1982) (won 4 Academy Awards, including one for Best Foreign Language Film)

Neon

 

[Blushing Bottom]

I thoroughly enjoyed both movies...red coats and jam will be embedded in my mind forever.

...but on a more primal level of survival and culture differences one should see the original Time Machine.

Darwin really did know what he was talking about.

pleease please please Schindler's List people see the Pianist.

 

[minx1]

Schindlers List

Chocolat

Whale Rider

sense and sensibility

its a wonderful Life.......yeah I know lol

Cyrano de Bergerac

Life is sweet - Mike Leigh

Amelie

Babettes Feast

and Under the Tuscan Sun - just because its a feel good film that helped me through my divorce with lines like.....

'Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.'

and now as I am about to leave my home and any stability again lol

'What are four walls, anyway? They are what they contain. The house protects the dreamer. Unthinkably good things can happen, even late in the game. It's such a surprise.'

 

[neonflux]

Minx, I adore Mike Leigh. One other of his that I love - Secrets and Lies.

 

[minx1]

Minx, I adore Mike Leigh. One other of his that I love - Secrets and Lies.

Neon I always knew you were a woman of good taste!

Damn I haven't seen Secrets and Lies yet...but soon I hope!

 

[RJMasters]

Eddie Izzard gives me hope that the badass smart people form enough of an audience to allow an awkward androgyne massive fame and dough.

And yes, freaking funny.

"This jam was made by groovy people and fruit that volunteered"

Eddie Izzard on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPML-n1kRnY - Army

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEx5G-GOS1k - Flag

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjC3R6jOtUo - US films vs Brit films

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNjcuZ-LiSY - Cake or Death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K9811LaivA - Empires

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJyS6ov3j0g - Snowboarding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6C_HjWr3Nk - Encore performance on Computers

Sheer genius

 

[saw_man1]

One for Parents

A Clockwork Orange.
Apart from its artistic merits I think it would show parents that no matter how bad their kids are, it could always be worse.