Calcutta (dir. Louis Malle, 1969) “With minimal narration by the director and very little context this is a kaleidoscope of stunning visuals from Calcutta, a city of 8,000,000 in the late 1960's: rich and poor, exotic and mundane, secular and religious, children and adults, animate and inanimate. Given only the images, the viewer can read any meaning she or he wants into the film.”
What Have I Done To Deserve This? (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1984) “A dysfunctional family in Madrid: Gloria is a cleaning lady, hooked on No-Doze, living in a crowded flat with Antonio, her surly husband, a cabby who adores an aging German singer he used to chauffeur; he's also a forger. One teen son sells heroin, the other sleeps with men. Her mother-in-law keeps bottled water and cupcakes under lock and key, selling them to the family. Two alcoholic writers cook up a plot to sell a manuscript as Hitler's memoirs, if Antonio will transcribe it in Hitler's hand. He won't, so they ask the German singer to intercede. Meanwhile, Gloria has given away one son to a sex-crazed dentist, and grandma picks up a pet lizard. Can this chaos be tamed?”
Night on Earth (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1991) “A collection of five stories involving cab drivers in five different cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki.”
London (dir. Patrick Keiller, 1992) “A travelogue by architect-turned-filmmaker Patrick Keiller captures a year in the life of England's capital through the eyes of the enigmatic Robinson, whose literary reflections and historical speculations are voiced by an unnamed, unseen narrator.”
Café Lumière (dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003) “Commissioned by the Japanese studio Shochiku as an homage to its famous house director Yasujiro Ozu, it's a haunting look at Tokyo and the overall drift of the world that's slow to reveal its secrets and beauties.”
Kontroll (dir. Nimród Antal, 2003) “The massive labyrinthine netherworld that is the Budapest subway system provides the stunning setting for Kontroll, a high-style, high-speed romantic thriller in which the lives of assorted outcasts, lovers, and dreamers intersect and collide. One handsome young hero, one mysterious maiden, and one particularly nasty killer must conduct a race against time, trains, and destiny itself in their frantic pursuit of one another.”
Le voyage dans la lune (dir. George Méliès, 1902)
This short film from the earliest days of the cinema follows a group of astronomers on a journey to the moon.
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) (dir. Robert Wiene, 1920)
The great Expressionist classic with Werner Krauss as Caligari, the fairground showman who hypnotizes his servant (Conrad Veidt) into committing murder at night.”
M (dir. Fritz Lang, 1931)
“A series of schoolgirls are murdered by a psychopath who terrorizes a large city and is hunted by the police through a network of beggars. Inspired by the real-life 'vampire of Dusseldorf,' Fritz Lang's great film is one of the key films of German Expressionism. Peter Lorre's performance as the murderer is one of the great screen performances of all time.”
Things to Come (dir. William Cameron Menzies, 1936)
“A global war begins in 1940. This war drags out over many decades until most of the people still alive (mostly those born after the war started) do not even know who started it or why. Nothing is being manufactured at all any more and society has broken down into primative localized communities. In 1966 a great plague wipes out most of what people are left but small numbers still survive. One day a strange aircraft lands at one of these communities and its pilot tells of an organisation which is rebuilding civilization and slowly moving across the world re-civilizing these groups of survivors. Great reconstruction takes place over the next few decades and society is once again great and strong. The world's population is now living in underground cities. In the year 2035, on the eve of man's first flight to the moon, a popular uprising against progress (which some people claim has caused the wars of the past) gains support and becomes violent.”
Swamp Women (dir. Roger Corman, 1955)
“The film follows undercover police officer Lee Hampton after she infiltrates a prison, befriends three female convicts, and helps them all escape. In reality, this planned escape is part of a larger plot to find a diamond stash hidden deep within the swamps of Louisiana.”
Atom Age Vampire (dir. Richard McNamara, 1960)
“A stripper is horribly disfigured in a car accident. A brilliant scientist develops a treatment that restores her beauty and falls in love with her. To preserve her appearance the doctor must give her additional treatments using glands taken from murdered women. His unexplained ability to turn into a hideous monster helps with this problem but does nothing to win her love. The doctor's woes multiply as the police and the girl's boyfriend begin to close in on him.”
For this series, just one film: The World (2004) directed by Jia Zhangke.
Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum gives us his blurb: “Suggesting at different moments a backstage musical, a failed love story, a surreal comedy, and even a cartoon fantasy, this beautiful, corrosive, visionary masterpiece by Jia Zhang-ke is a frighteningly persuasive account of the current state of the planet. Set in an eerie Beijing theme park--a kind of Chinese Las Vegas, with scaled-down duplicates of the most famous global landmarks--it follows a bunch of workers as they labor, carouse, couple, and uncouple, but it's really about propping up extravagant illusions through alienated labor.”
If that doesn't temp you to seek it out, perhaps its trailer will.
The Incredible Shrinking Man (dir. Jack Arnold, 1957)
After an accidental exposure to radiation, Scott Carey begins to shrink. Confounding doctors, his family, and himself, he must nevertheless cope with the realities of his downgraded scale: cats and spiders morph into Godzillas, salt shakers into skyscrapers, a dollhouse into an American homestead, and sex into an Almodovar fiesta (or so we think).
Fantastic Voyage (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966)
A team of scientists is miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream of a famous physicist in an attempt to destroy a clot that threatens his brain. One of the most visually lush SF film.
The Andromeda Strain (dir. Robert Wise, 1971)
When a deadly alien virus turns up in a New Mexico town, a team of scientist is dispatched to isolate and neutralize it before it. They must do so in just a few days or else their research complex, and they, gets pulverized by a nuclear blast.
Tron (dir. Steven Lisberger, 1982)
The inner workings of the computer is reimagined as a totalitarian state.
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (dir. Joe Johnston, 1989)
An inventor devises a gizmo that accidentally shrinks his kids and their friends. The real treat is the suburban backyard transformed into an endless jungle fraught with dangers, fantamagical creatures and thrilling adventures.
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (dir. Errol Morris, 1997)
The stories of four unconnected individuals: a lion tamer, a topiary gardener, a mole-rat specialist, and a robot scientists.
The plots are inconsequential. The reason to see these movies are the spectacular musical numbers, Hollywood's secular reinterpretation of Michelangelo's Genesis and Last Judgement frescos in the Sistine Chapel, directed and choreographed by Busby Berkeley.
Surely no one would be able to resist watching dancing skyscrapers; gravity-defying pianos in architecture-less, scale-less spaces; eroticized bodies writhing in pastoral landscapes like Michelangelo's damned souls; Depression-era New York; a hotel filled with pre-Code connubial flesh; anti-Taylor spatial organization; and phantasmagorical stage settings that only Matthew Barney seems fit to appropriate.
The Kid from Spain (dir. Leo McCarey, 1932)
“But We Must Rise” and “Oh, What a Perfect Combination”
42nd Street (dir. Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” “Young and Healthy,” and “42nd Street”
Gold Diggers of 1933 (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)
“Pettin' in the Park,” “Shadow Waltz,” and “Remember My Forgotten Man”
Footlight Parade (dir. Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
“Honeymoon Hotel,” “By a Waterfall,” and “Shangi Lil”
Dames (dir. Ray Enright, 1934)
“I Only Have Eyes For You” and “Dames”
Gold Diggers of 1935 (dir. Busby Berkeley, 1935)
“The Words Are in My Heart” and “Lullaby of Broadway”
Greed (dir. Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
Miner-turned-dentist John McTeague could have been happily married if it were not for his wife winning the lottery, but of course, the money paves the way for their downfall with a desultory climax in Death Valley.
Playtime (dir. Jacques Tati, 1967)
Monsieur Hulot fumbles his way through modern Parisian architecture, landscape, and leather furniture.
Aguirre: The Wrath of the God (dir. Werner Herzog, 1972)
The search for the mythical El Dorado in the jungles of South America degenerates into a nightmare.
My Own Private Idaho (dir. Gus van Sant, 1991)
Two hustlers try to survive in the Pacific Northwest. While one is searching for his family, the other is fleeing his.
The Thin Red Line (dir. Terrence Malick, 1998)
Guadalcanal provides the setting for one of the most poetic films of the 90s.
The Wind Will Carry Us (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1999)
A media “engineer” from Tehran travels to northern Iran to document the funeral rites for an old woman. But she hasn't died yet, and so must wait and find something to occupy his time around the village.
