This is partially inspired by @UsedJavelin's thread about Seven Samurai.
I watched a lot of the Western "film canon" when I was younger, and lately I've just been craving some good "artistic" movie content. But I don't trust the :reddit-logo: crowd nor the letterboxd nerds for serious recommendations, so I turn the question to my comrades
A lot of older Hollywood movies are really good. Casablanca is a banger. Most of Hitchcock's movies are really good. The first horror film in a given genre is usually worth watching if you're a horror fan. Halloween for instance seems a little trite now because it's the OG movie everyone else was copying.
Kubrick's movies are generally really good. Dr. Strangelove is a classic about American insanity. 2001 is just beautiful.
Godfather is genuinely really good.
A lot of the old Errol Flynn adventure movies were a lot of fun. Errol was a great athlete and a lot of his stunts still look impressive today. If he'd been making movies in the '10s he would have been doing his own parkour.
The old Spartacus movie is a classic.
Citizen Kane is definitely worth seeing if you're more than casually interested in film.
One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest. I'm not sure how it reads now but my understanding is that at the time it did a lot to bring the plight of people confined to asylums to public attention.
Bullit has hands down one of the best car chases in cinema. It was the first and few have matched it.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a classic. Probably some cringe racism but you're going to get a lot of that in older movies.
Fantasia is just gorgeous. Pure visual porn.
Charlie Chaplin has a lot of great movies that are worth watching. Same with the Marx brothers. Chaplin's The Great Dictator has an interesting history. From what I remember he made it more or less on his own to try to convince American's that there was a moral duty to intervene in WWII to stop Hitler.
Tombstone is worth it just for Val Kilmer's performance as Doc Holiday.
The 1954 Godzilla is a masterpiece, both as the first Kaiju movie, and as a cautionary tale about the horrors of nuclear war.
The Battle of Algiers is a semi-documentary about the Algerian's final battle to through the French out of Algieria and re-take their country.
Nosferatu is a classic horror movie that really helped shape the genre.
The Seventh Seal is a gorgeous, challenging meditation on the inevitability of death.
Metropolis is one of the first and most influential science fiction movies to really go hard on grand visuals and design.
A Fistful of Dollars is arguably one of the best westerns.
The Day the Earth Stood Still is another classic cautionary tale about xenophobia and nuclear war.
Forbidden Planet is a gorgeous, thoughtful retelling of The Tempest as a science fiction tale. It's also the origina of the saucer shaped UFO myth.
Freaks is in a very strange place. It's a movie from 1932 that focuses on the performers in a circus freak show. It's a horror movie, and certainly exploits then popular disgust for disabled people, but it also manages to be sympathetic and humanistic towards the freak show performers. When it was re-discovered and re-evaluated in the latter half of the 20th century it was judged to be important both as a piece of film history and an example of the humanization of marginalize people in a time where they were openly despised.
The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a great look in to early cold war US paranoia about communist infiltration.
The FBI investigated and nearly shut down It's A Wonderful Life, which should speak in it's favor
Battleship Potemkin is regarded as Eisenstein's masterpiece.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is another western classic.
The Terminator, Terminator 2, Alien, Aliens, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, all classics of science fiction.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is brilliant cinema.
The Matrix is a classic of cyberpunk.
Akira is a masterpiece that everyone should see.
Ghost in the Shell is another classic piece of science fiction.
Jurassic Park was a major innovator in the use of CGI graphics and is fun to this day.
Princess Mononoke, along with most Studio Ghibli movies
The Shaw Brother's Hong Kong Martial Arts movies have had a huge impact on action movies.
The Raid is popularly regarded as having some of the best fight scenes in martial art movie history and invented the "hallway fight".
Amelie is an extremely charming comedy
Heat is a heist movie with some great acting and amazing gunfights
Snatch is a classic British crime movie
Pan's Labyrinth is a beautiful movie by Guillermo del Toro that blends fantasy and horror
The Thing is a tight sci-fi horror thriller with excellent VFX
Trainspotting is a classic movie about the ravages of heroin set in Scotland.
Fargo is an iconic comedy.
The Mad Max series is well worth watching. The first one is a crime exploitation movie, but the second too are really about mutual aid and finding human connections in a hard world. It's a very different kind of post-apocalypse movie than hyper-indvidualistic power fantasies.
Pirates of the Carribean is notable for being a lot of fun, and for being one of the first successful pirate movies since the black and white era
The Iron Giant is a classic animated film about cold war paranoia and friendship
Stalker and Solaris are two of Tarkovsky's best
Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are two Tarantino movies that had a huge impact on the culture of the 90s
You might check out the original Shaft. It's a classic of the Blaxploitation genre and had a powerful effect on the culture
Rocky Horror Picture Show... Has a unique place in history. For a long time it was one of the very few portrayals of queer characters that wasn't overtly negative. That was very powerful at a time when the culture was incredibly, unrelentingly hostile. Also has great songs and is just genuinely goofy fun.
I'm going to put in a good word for Dead Land. It's a movie from Aoteroa set before the arrival of Europeans. It follows a young Maori boy who sets out on a grim quest for revenge with the aid of a mythical, cursed warrior. I'd classify it as a Maori martial arts revenge movie, and I don't think there's really anything else like it. One of the best martial arts films I've ever seen.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is one of the finest Wuxia movies of all time and brought the Genre to western attention.
Y tu mama Tambien is a powerful coming of age movie with some queer themes that was very well regarded
The original Italian Job is a classic
I should get around to watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre . I torrented it after reading this tidbit in Bullshit Jobs.
In 1880 a Protestant “home missionary” who had spent some years traveling along the Western frontier reported that: “You can hardly find a group of ranchmen or miners from Colorado to the Pacific who will not have on their tongue’s end the labor slang of Denis Kearney, the infidel ribaldry of [atheist pamphleteer] Robert Ingersoll, the Socialistic theories of Karl Marx.” Certainly a detail left out of every cowboy movie I ever saw! (The notable exception being The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which does indeed begin with a scene where John Huston, as a miner, explains the labor theory of value to Humphrey Bogart.)
This was the other movie I was going to recommend in this thread! I love that film.
I've just seen it. The plot was good and so were the characters, but my god the colonialist attitude towards Mexicans in the film 🥴
7/10, 8/10 if it didn't have the racism
Great list but calling these classic films is aging me like the Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Ridley Scott's The Duelists is a drama based loosely on the story of two Napoleonic officer's whose vendetta resulted in a half dozen duels over the course of decades. Many HEMA fighters, fencers, and other swordsman regard it as both the best portrayal of realistic swordfighting, and the best artistic use of realistic swordfighting, in cinema
Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon is a must see. As an artist there really isn't anyone comparable to Lee's martial arts performances.
Really nice list
Do you mean the 2011 raid though? Didn't that come out like 10 years after oldboy's hallway fight
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The cartoons are stand-ins for black and immigrant communities who
spoilers
have their neighbourhoods bulldozed to make space for freeways after the destruction of public transport
and it's frankly so much better than the other famous toon-in-real-life movies (Space Jam and Song of the South). The first 3 minutes are pretty annoying though, but otherwise is one of my favourite films.
Casablanca. The only person to die on screen is a nazi. The story itself is pretty sweet and then you can finally see how many shows and movies stole quotes from this one. :meow-popcorn:
But I don’t trust the letterboxd nerds
:theory-gary: very wise indeed. here goes the certified communistic classics list
spoiler
Its a Wonderful Life (CW Christmas) but its anti money-grubbing and charming
Thelma and Louise FUCK COPS
Bonnie and Clyde FUCK COPS
The Red Shoes ballet is pretty RED = COMMUNISM :stalin-shining:
Cool Hand Luke FUCK PRISON
Dr Strangelove :strangelove:
Rear Window is good
Do the Right Thing :anti-italian-action:
im taking 'universally loved classic' seriously here dont make me look like a fool
The olllld Keystone Kops comedies are some great "Fuck cops" movies. It's wild to see police portrayed as complete buffoons with no respect at all.
The fact that Come and See is like the highest ranked movie on Letterboxd automatically makes it better than the bazinga-fest that is imdb
Clockwork Orange. It's extremely edgy and dark though which includes [CW: example of said dark stuff]
spoiler
rape and assault
Battle Royale. The movie that Hunger Games and Squid Game ripped off. Addressed the psychological condition of being thrown into such a situation MUCH better than both the ripoffs while being much shorter as well
Second on Clockwork Orange being dark. Take those content warnings seriously.
When people talk about Battle Royale, I always wonder if I watched the same movie with everyone else. None of the students wanted to kill each other in a battle royale, they just put one "student" in who wasn't a student at all but a psychopath. He does most of the killings.
I LOL'd at the two who committed suicide though. Never change, Japanese.
Modern Times [USA, 1936]
Bicycle Thieves [Italy, 1948]
Court Jester [USA, 1955]
Spartacus [TERF-Island, 1960]
Dr. Strangelove [TERF-Island, 1963]
Batman [USA, 1966] (Perhaps not the best movie, but hilarious)
In the Name of the Italian People [Italy, 1971] (obscure, but good)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail [TERF-Island, 1975] (IMO the life of Brian hasn't aged that well otoh)
Blues Brothers [USA, 1980]
Wings of Desire [West Germany, 1987] (this one is kinda obscure, but a comrade recommended it to me and I loved it)
The 1989 Batman is worth watching. It's one of the OG Capeshit movies but it's a lot more fun that the super-serious modern Batman.
Tim Burton plays Batman as black humor. The movie is full of fun absurdity, self-seriousness to the point of humor, great visual design. It's very different from modern capeshit. The sequel is also very good.
Another OG capeshit movie to check out is Blade. Wesley Snipes is a stone cold badass as the half-vampire vampire hunter Blade. The success of Blade is largely responsible for the resurrection of the comic book movie genre.
The best part is that Prince - yes, Prince! - does the soundtrack. The good 80s Prince no less. There were several hits and good music videos off that one.
#1 has to be Z (1969) by Costa-Gavras, about the fascist coup in Greece in the 60s. Comrade made, you can just feel the anger of all the people involved. People talk about old movies feeling slow, this movie fucking pops. You can watch the whole thing for free in good quality here, honestly if you're not all in after the first 5 minutes, or really after the title card that says "any similarity to real person or events is not coincidental; it is intentional" followed by the speech at the fash gathering in a smoke filled room, then you won't like it.
If you like that, his State of Siege (1972) is also a classic, about when the Tupamaro urban guerrillas in Uruguay abducted US torture specialist Dan Mitrione. Just total :based-department: stuff. Filmed in Allende's Chile.
I'll second the people who mentioned Casablanca and The Bicycle Thief.
Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957) and Wages of Fear (1953) are also cool.
Night Of The Hunter (1955) is one of my favourite movies ever. A pitch black piece of Americana, a cautionary tale about the power of religion, and a genuinely unsettling proto-modern horror movie in lots of ways. It's absolutely beautifully shot in a German Expressionist via Noir mix and created more sinister tropes than most people would ever know. So many moments are etched in my brain forever.
Critics actually mostly panned it at the time, mostly due to moral concerns over religion, but since then it's become considered a classic.
Salt of the Earth
The movie itself was blacklisted during the Red Scare. Which is reason enough but it really holds up and the politics are (unfortunately) still very relevant today.
Not exactly universally loved as such but I would highly recommend Fritz Langs "M".
Thriller about a serial killer of children on the loose in Weimar Germany, the police(aside from the main cop investigator) are useless so their only solution is to harrass the criminal and less savory elements of the underclass relentlessly, which makes the criminal gangs decide that their only real recourse is to find the child killer themselves so the cops stop fucking with them constantly.
So you get not just a well executed police procedural, but also a "crime procedural" of sorts where the criminals start paying beggars to act as a surveillance network and similar stuff, alongside the killer himself going about his business and trying to avoid capture by either.
It has some elements of satirizing the rising nazi party at the time, one of the worst of the criminals is deliberately modeled after Goebbels, and the nazi party even tried to sabotage the filming of it because they thought that the original title, "Mörder unter un"(Murderer Among Us) was referencing them, and that the film would be about the nazi party itself.
It also features social commentary over the then existing criminal underworld in Weimar Germany, that tried to portray itself in a similar manner to the Italian Mafia, with codes of honor and as gentlemanly criminals, rather than murderers and thieves. As well as debates over the death penalty and if someone who is insane can be held criminally responsible for their actions.
Its also just interesting on a technical level, its an early sound film so there is no outside musical soundrack provided, only sound that would exist inside of a scene, which makes for a really eerie and moody atmosphere that is utilised in some very impressive ways.
Weimar era films are a thing I've been meaning to look into more.
I've seen "Kuhle Wampe" (1931) by Brecht a couple of weeks ago and was disappointed by it. Turns out, it was heavily censored by the government for its communist politics and the scenes that were cut out would have made it into a more coherent film. Which explains why it's only 1h 10m long
I haven't seen everything he made but I really like Orson Welles work both as an actor and director
Citizen Kane is obviously his most famous work but my favorite is the movie Black Magic which he starred in as a villainous protagonist who attempts to usurp the throne from the King of France via fomenting revolution
There are a lot of elements that clearly influenced more famous films later on even if the movie itself is fairly obscure, the final sword fight scene really felt like a fight between jedi in Star Wars in some ways
Aside from that, anything by Kubrick
Recently watched the Third Man which features Orson Welles and its a really good noir film.
I've got a very very specific soft spot for films that take a moment in time and space like allied controlled Vienna and set a story in it while not necessarily being "about" that moment, but still having it affect everything about the story. So you get shit like military police squads where France, Britain, America and the USSR have to be equally represented, or the particulars of which area of Austria is controlled by which nation being relevant.
Also the music is entirely jaunty zither tunes which is a very strange choice but memorable.
Is it weird that I think Orson Welles may be Jack Black's biological father? They look so alike
Lawrence Of Arabia is very good.
Truffaut: All
Tarkovsky: Stalker, Andrei Rublev, Solaris
Klimov: Come and See
Bergman: Persona, Seventh Seal
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Herzog: Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Fellini: La Dolce Vita, Amarcord
Fritz Lang: Dr. Mabuse, Metropolis, M
The Battle of Algiers
Jodorowsky: The Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre
Haven't seen anyone mention any Alfred Hitchcock films. North by Northwest is really good, so is Rear Window.
Breakfast at Tiffany's is really problematic for about a million reasons, but it's also a good film and worth seeing to understand the cultural impact it still had on defining the role and expectation of women.
The Graduate is another problematic fave, and another that has value because it can shed some light on how US culture has developed the way that it has.
The Godfather I and II are great films.
2001: A Space Odyssey is my favorite of all time and worth the hype IMO
Haven’t seen anyone mention any Alfred Hitchcock films.
I also liked Rope and yes Rear Window is top tier I really loved that one.
Did you get the Vax? I've heard that it can turn people artistic.
You looking for anything more specific? Like period pieces, dramas, do you have favorite directors or movies to get a sense of what you might be into?
Got any subjects you just can't fuck with?
I liked Chinatown. Taxi Driver is good, it isn’t the movies fault that people think Travis is a cool guy lol.
Escape from Chinatown is also a classic. Uhh... not a "Film Snob" classic, but a classic none-the-less. Before you go in look for some Chinese American analysis bc I think it's worth having an inside voice on the Orientalist themes before you start. It portrays it's Chinese American characters positively, but it was made in the 80s so there's a lot of stereotypes. It's an interesting subversion of the "White Savior" narrative.
