10 feature movie recommendations

[Empedocles]

Well the Rochambeau thread last week reminded me of some of the good movies I've seen, and I decided to make this thread after the weekend so... here it is.

Purpose of the thread should be clear... what 10 movies have you seen yourself, that you would recommend to others?

There are three guidelines that I would appreciate people follow when making up their short list:

1) No recent Hollywood big movies, such as The Dark Knight. The reason is not that they aren't great movies, it's just that well, thanks to the modern day it's very easy to reach millions indirectly through the internet. So if you aren't aware of it or haven't already seen it, well.... I dunno what to say to that. I don't mind originals that have a high profile remake, if many may be unaware that the popular one is in fact based on a previous movie. Iconic older movies are fine as well, as many people know the reference, but have not actually been told to watch it.

2) No movies that have a franchise behind them. Again, it's not that they aren't good, it's that through other media or sequels they have a very high visibility.

3) If the movie has had remakes or re-edits, please clarify (In terms of remakes, the main actor/actress' or director's name is generally good enough) which version you are recommending.

Hope it's a little clearer with my 10 (I am making these links to IMDB) These are in no particular order, first one I hope is obvious.

1. Das Boot. (The Boat)
2. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
3. Donnie Darko. Not certain how publicised this was in the US. I've read that it went quite under the radar.
4. GATTACA
5. The Bridge On The River Kwai
6. 七人の侍 (Seven Samurai. Thank you Ketaru for the kanji.)
7. Scarface Paul Muni as lead actor. Considering the time of it's filming, it's actually quite brutal in my opinion.
8. Dog Day Afternoon
9. Falling Down Again, not sure how publicised this was in the US.
10. Circle Of Iron I absolutely love the ending of this movie.

So... post yours! It can be any genre, live action, Supermarionation, animated, hell it can even be sock puppets.

[Ketaru]

Re: 10 feature movie recommendations

Not that I want to rain in on your parade, but we already have a movie recommendation thread of sorts. If you can't get peoples' interests by including descriptions about the movie, you definitely aren't going to get their interest by just listing their titles.

3. Donnie Darko. Not certain how publicised this was in the US. I've read that it went quite under the radar.

It was under the radar when it was first released. Now it's like the signature cult film darling of the decade.

[Durahansolo]

Re: 10 feature movie recommendations

It was under the radar when it was first released. Now it's like the signature cult film darling of the decade.

There is a sequel to Donnie Darko out called S. Darko. It came out earlier this year direct to DVD iirc.

[Empedocles]

Re: 10 feature movie recommendations

If you can't get peoples' interests by including descriptions about the movie, you definitely aren't going to get their interest by just listing their titles.

(I am making these links to IMDB)

If someone cannot recognise a link on the internet, it's probably a good thing I don't have their attention.

Not that I want to rain in on your parade, but we already have a movie recommendation thread of sorts.

There are no older/less known recommendation threads in the first three pages of this section of the forums... do I need to go even further back? I think you are confusing recommendation with review. Even if you do somehow assume the two are one in the same, again, there are no threads for older movies. The only I see is Omgwtfbqq's animated one, and that's a different type of discussion.

[Ketaru]

Re: 10 feature movie recommendations

There are no older/less known recommendation threads in the first three pages of this section of the forums... do I need to go even further back? I think you are confusing recommendation with review. Even if you do somehow assume the two are one in the same, again, there are no threads for older movies. The only I see is Omgwtfbqq's animated one, and that's a different type of discussion.

Well, if you want my opinion, I think people are suspicious of list threads. I'm suspicious of list threads. We've all seen 'em before on other forums on the internet: "Post Your Top 10 Favorite Aniime" "Post Your Top 5 Favorite Songs" "Post Your Top 13 Favorite Music Artists". And they all end up doing the same thing, becoming contests to see who can post the most obscure (but not too obscure, to give you some credibility) items.

And it just so happens I am one of the more active repliers in that Movie Review thread, so you know? My list is going to actually look uncannily like all of the things I reviewed and recommended anyway. But hey, one more hit for whenever somebody Googles "Fan Chan".

If You Are the One
Fan Chan
Dorm
Hormones
God Man Dog
The Love of Siam
Amelie
Citizen Dog
A Boy Named Charlie Brown
Castle in the Sky

6. Shichinin No Samurai (Seven Samurai. I am unsure of the kanji required for this. If someone can PM or post it so I can copypaste, I'd appreciate it.)

七人の侍
Copied and pasted from Wikipedia.

[fairyoracle75]

Re: 10 feature movie recommendations

Hmm...

Since I'm most people will be reccommending things from 1960+ I'm going to post my top 10 classics:

1) Laura- From the hey-day of Noir this is a movie about a hard boiled dective (Dana Andrews) that manages to fall in love with the woman who's murder he's investigating. There is a pretty neat twist plus you get to see a young Vincent Price in one of his earlier roles before he became the king of B horror movies.

2) The African Queen- Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn star in this amazing tale of a World War I missionary running from the enemy that turns to a river boat captian to smuggle her out of Africa.

3) Casablanca: If you've never heard of this movie I'd be shocked. Its still some of the best script writing I've heard in a movie. Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart star in another war time tale of refugees and tragic love.

4) Golden Earrings- The last on my list involving wartime (though the movies themselves aren't really war movies). A spy hiding from the Germans is hidden by a Gypsy. Staring Marlene Dietrich and Ray Milland.

5) The Heiress- Honestly this is I think one of the best acting performances I've ever seen by anyone. Oliva De Havilland is an unattractive, naivee young heiress that becomes the target of a con man. Its an adaptation of the novel "Washington Square".

6) North By Northwest- Hitchcock's best with tons of amazing iconic imagery that you might know even if you don't know the movie (even Family Guy spoofed scenes from it). Carey Grant is a man mistakenly thought to be a secret agent and must find a way to prove he isn't who the bad guys think he is.

7) Gaslight- A Scotlandyard Inspector (Joeseph Cotten) becomes suspicious of the goings on around a young woman that seems to be loosing her mind (Ingrid Bergman) and her controlling husband (Charles Boyer) while investigating a crime. Plus Angela Lansbery is in her first movie role here at the age of 18!

8) Jason and the Argonauts- In the infancy of special effects in movies Ray Harryhausen was king. This was the movie that pushed the envelope on what could be done and energized effects as a field to be explored. Ray Harryhausen's work has earned him the title of Father of Special Effects. Stop motion and minatures and newly discovered camera techniques were used to tell this tale from Greek myth. Jason and the Argonauts is still a fun watch today especially the skelaton fight though the effects are dated in the computer age.

9) Bringing Up Baby- Not at all what is sounds like! This is a screwball comedy which was a genra where every crazy thing that could happen did and all the quirky characters you could find are thrown into a plot. This was a very popular type of movie in the 1940s and is still fun. Bringing up Baby tells the tale of how a mild mannered palentologist's (Carey Grant) life is turned upside down by a chance encounter with a mad-capped heiress (Katherine Hepburn) and her aunt's leopard named Baby.

10) Secret Life of Walter Mitty- Another screwball comedy starring Danny Kay. What happens when the crazy fantasies of a daydreamer seem to be blending with reality? Is he really crazy or is it real?

[TheGrandMom]

Re: 10 feature movie recommendations

I'm too old to have a list of just 10. lol I've seen WAY too many awesome movies in my lifetime. One movie that holds a very special place in my heart for the shear magnitude of it is Gone With the Wind. It still holds its own to this day and I find that to be a huge testament to how well made it is.

[Empedocles]

Re: 10 feature movie recommendations

Thanks for your recommendations

Ketaru:
Unfortunately due to the high amount of FAIL when it comes to hunting down South Eastern film in NZ (It's like the morons here are only aware of Japan and China as being Asia or 'the East'... bastards) it will be some time before I can watch most of your recommendations. However, I have put Castle In The Sky in my queue for the online rental site that I use, so I'll be watching that after Code Geass (Because my brother watches it as well <.<") I've seen it on anime trailers before but as the industry can be biased towards itself, I don't really trust anime magazines etc, and I've never had someone recommend it... until now

fairyoracle75:
I'll probably hunt down North By Northwest first, because it's well.... Hitchcock! But, I think I'll also hunt down Casablanca, Gaslight and The African Queen, and keep an eye out for a couple of the others..

TheGrandMom:
Just post one or two from each genre then! Oh, my mum told me that in Gone With The Wind, one of the female characters (I think it was a female) is a real... well bitch, playing all the guys off each other. XD Guess it's another movie I'll have to hunt down, even though I'm not really a romance movie person...

Edit: Hopefully we can get more people to post theirs :D

[Ketaru]

Re: 10 feature movie recommendations

Ketaru:
Unfortunately due to the high amount of FAIL when it comes to hunting down South Eastern film in NZ (It's like the morons here are only aware of Japan and China as being Asia or 'the East'... bastards) it will be some time before I can watch most of your recommendations. However, I have put Castle In The Sky in my queue for the online rental site that I use, so I'll be watching that after Code Geass (Because my brother watches it as well <.<") I've seen it on anime trailers before but as the industry can be biased towards itself, I don't really trust anime magazines etc, and I've never had someone recommend it... until now

( '-')

Ah, but when I reviewed, I did most of that work for people and provided links for places to buy them. I don't know if you dislike buying on the internet, but here are most of them. I guess you might need a specialized DVD player for some of them too, since some of them are region coded.

That is hardly my grievance with DVD seller. That is really a result of (1) Anime having finally successfully crossing over into western appeal (2) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon being a success in America and distributors taking that as a cue in the wrong way. They could've used the opportunity to bring in a diverse set of eastern films. Instead, they used it as an opportunity to bring more of the same ol' shit here: Hero, House of Flying Daggers (neither of which I thought were particularly good) you get the idea. Zoom forward a couple of years and suddenly there are remakes of movies like The Ring or Ju-On: The Grudge or Shutter. Shutter is a southeast Asian film, but rather than show the originals in theaters, they showed remakes.

As a result, when people think of Asian films, they think extreme niche like Horror or Martial Arts.

Meanwhile, If You Are the One beats Titanic as number 1 grossing film in China of all time. That's pretty huge considering Hollywood domination of cinema around the world. The number 1 grossing film in a country that makes up a hefty size portion of the world's population, and it goes straight to DVD when it crosses the Pacific with little or no fanfare. If You Are the One recently lost that position to a certain movie about transforming cars that should've been eligible for the Cash for Clunkers program.

Then there's Fan Chan, a movie that costed only $542,000 to make, but went on to become the highest grossing domestic films in Thailand in 2003 (especially surprising because, in this world, it is unheard of for a Childhood Drama to do that). When I think about that it...why, it makes me want to smack the producer of Avatar! It also catapulted the careers of 6 up and coming directors, one of whom also directed Dorm and Hormones, both of which I also recommended. I hear it also became quite popular in India and Indonesia.

If you want my opinion, start with Fan Chan and If You Are the One. I consider both landmark movies in the pop film scene in Thailand and China respectively. You probably weren't looking for popular movies when you wanted recommendations, but then you also added the qualifier "Hollywood", so har har.

Fan Chan (Region Free, NTSC, English/Chinese subtitles)
Dorm (Region 1, NTSC, English/Spanish subtitles)
Hormones (Region Free, PAL, English/Chinese subtitles)
God Man Dog (Region 2, PAL, English subtitles)
Love of Siam (Region 1, NTSC, English subtitles...not sure what else, I don't own this version)
Citizen Dog (Region free, NTSC, English/Chinese subtitles)
If You Are the One (Region 1, NTSC, English/Chinese subtitles)

Side Note- I've thought about perhaps trying to see an Indian movie, just to see what's up with all this "Bollywood" talk. But I heard Indian movies are practically a different type of movie all together and I'm too intimidated to start somewhere...