Movies that make you think
 

Two that are running tonight on FX:

Crash
American History X

Saw both when they came out, but watching again now. Man they are powerful movies.

Mike

"Crash" made me think of someone trying to manipulate me at every turn.

Wag the Dog

Was Deckard a replicant?

Full Metal Jacket put me into a daze for days....

I don't want to think when I watch movies, I want to be entertained. Crash and Brokeback made me think the Academy is off its rocker.

- Apocalypse Now (good, drags a bit towards the end)
- Blade Runner
- Collateral (Tom Cruise right before he cracked, very good acting by him here)
- Children of Men (I particularly enjoyed this one)
- Out of Africa
- Taxi Driver
- Le Samouraï (It's in French, but there's not much dialogue anyway)
- Easy Rider
- Wag the Dog
- George Washington

Crash I didn't really like. It tried to make its points a little too overtly, sacrificing things like plot in the process. I suppose you could say the same thing about a couple of the films I have on my list, though.

There is a place for movies that entertain and movies that make you think. The best ones do both equally well, and make it look easy. But speaking as someone who's tried it, film-making is indescribably frustrating.

I've gotta agree on this, though I think that's what got my attention as I'm a fairly dopic individual with lot's of stuff. :yes:

"Fight Club" anyone??

"Jacob's Ladder"

Babel. Its a must see if you haven't seen it yet.

"I am in a world of shit....."

One of my favorites.... Very much a thinker movie.

"American Me"
Ultra-violent, brutal, and thought provoking.

I agree on Crash. It was a decent movie but Best Picture of the Year - No.

The Usual Suspects really made you think.

12 monkeys

:banana:

American Beauty.......Schindler's List.

Hows's that for diversity?...............R1

things i learned watching American Beauty....


Even girls with huge natural cans want a boob job.
Fathers actually give their sons piss tests.
Girls who act like sluts can actually be virgins.
Nothin beats getting nailed by the real estate king.
Filming dead birds can be a turn on.
You best get out when Colonel Fitts goes into his karate stance.
Ricky is the best piece of ass in three states.

2001: A Space Odyssey. I watched the movie, and then went online to figure out what the heck just happened. Especially the last 23 minutes. Too much thought for a movie, geez. I want to be entertained, not confused with extended metaphors within metaphors and wrapped with parallelism...

The Day the Earth Stood Still
A Boy and His Dog
A second vote for Schindler's List

I too used to agonize over the ending. But, then after watching an interview with Arthur C. Clark about (among other things) the meaning of 2001, I realized there was no cut and dried ending. If anything, Clark gave no answers or clues. It's just one of those things, I suppose. So, I don't let it bother me.

Now, if someone comes up with an answer that makes sense to me, I'll consider it. But, for all this time, I'm not gonna sweat it.

Most of the movie is pretty straightforward, and the space scenes are some of the most realistic looking. Even the beginning "The Dawn of Man" is easy to comprehend.

Greatest flick without an "ending" I ever saw. :yes:

Don't know if this exactly fits the topic, but I'll toss it out FWIW:

A movie that haunted me for years is "The Wicker Man". The one from the seventies starring Edward Woodward. Just plain DISTURBING. I saw it in about 1987 and it STILL unsettles me when I think about it.

Haven't seen the recent version of the title starring Nicholas Cage. Can anyone compare/contrast the two?

Had to add this:
Solaris starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone
Genre: Science-Fiction
So many questions, so little time.:scratch2:

The book is really far more clear than the movie. Kubrick tries to take the movie places where the book can go quite easily, but in film - it's like putting wheels on a sailboat and driving it on the freeway. You can do it - but you need to be very clever and more than a little bit lucky to pull it off. In the end trying to toss visual metaphors and so on into film is usually more trouble than it's worth, since it's a lot of work to get right and nearly everyone in the audience is going to totally miss it anyway.

I only saw the recent Nicholas Cage version. Overall, I enjoyed it very much. The flick had a good suspiciousness & eeriness throughout most of the film. Only part I had a hard time with was the ending. Some of the women didn't really "seem" evil enough and came across as "indifferent" for lack of a better word, and the final burning scene looked as though they were watching a baseball game...... :no:

I want to watch the 1987 version. Thanks for the info.

How about all the "paranoia" flicks from the 70s?

Parallax View - trippy
Three Days of the Condor - man-on-the-run
Marathon Man - Is it safe?
All the President's Men - Nixon
The Conversation - institutional corruption
Klute - evil masked by authority
Chinatown - "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown"
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - weird soundtrack

Suburbia has always been one of my cult favorites... Gotta love Flea! :D

http://imdb.com/title/tt0086589/

While arguably not Spheeris' best work, it was her first, and in my opinion, most ambitious. The film was shot on a threadbare budget with non-professional actors, with most of the action taking place in an abandoned tract house in a suburb slated for demolition (the area is now a highway). The punk rockers are outcasts from society who attempt for form a "family" of their own, that they call "The Rejected" (The irony of it all, outcasts being anti-social together). The film bogs down at times, and often relies on reversed clichés, but was a very good effort for a documentary film-maker who was making her first dramatic feature (Some of the themes of being an outsider were used, with greater success, in Spheeris' feature DUDES). Yes, it could be called "punxploitation", but I was one of those scruffy kids with a ragged haircut and ripped jeans when this film was released, and I identified with it. (Not to be confused with Richard Linklater's "subUrbia").

whoa!
 

I had forgotten that movie, man it was a heavy-duty piece of art.

1984.

Animal Farm.

Read the books and saw the movies. Both newer and older versions.
(Bought the newer version of 1984.)

Anything by Orwell. Once you get into Orwell, it becomes hard to trust authority, no matter what type of authority you're facing. It's really kind of creepy. Probably why I like it?

Brother Dave

"Witness for the prosecution". A great court drama.

No kidding, very well said. I read the book before I saw the movie, otherwise I could've been lost in more than one place. Very trippy though.

I hate to say this, but I just saw Spiderman 3 and was surprised to see life lessons in it.

Pete

Hm....

Silent Running
The Station Agent


'Wag the Dog' was done better. Look up Sean Connery movies.

Executive Action,,,Burt Lancaster,,A movie that puts a different spin on the Kennedy assasination,,,,,Deer Hunter,, 12 Monkeys

Memento, kept me off balance all the way as I remember it. I might just have to watch that now.

Also Bringing out the Dead, thought that was pretty deep in its way

"Waking the Dead" with Jennifer Connelly and Billy Crudup.

Is she really dead or...?? Not a horror flick. But a mind bending drama/thriller type.

Yup.
"Ridley Scott, after remaining coy for twenty years, stated in 2000 that Deckard is a replicant,[23] and has reinserted a unicorn sequence into the Director's Cut indicating Deckard has false memories like Rachael.[24]"
#23 Scott, Ridley (2000) video clip of Ridley Scott confirming that Deckard is a replicant http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...28243172902888
#24 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/825641.stm Retrieved on 2007-07-27.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner

"Failsafe" the original made me stop and think about it...
The remake made me wonder "Why did they bother"

Irreversible

Sicko