Refine search

Our Picks

The Sublime on Celluloid (65 titles)

Images of remarkable beauty, extra-ordinary composition or startling impact. Not a list of the greatest movies of all time, more a compendium of mind-boggling filmscapes. In no particular order.

by: A fan

Rate this
80
from 136 members

Mirror

The obvious first choice. Yawn: what a platitudinal and predictable bore, I know.

Mirror on DVD (1974)
Starring: Margarita Terekhova, Larisa Tarkovskaya, Ignat Daniltsev
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Certificate:
Writer-director Andrei Tarkovsky draws on episodes from his own life in this story of a dying man reflecting on his relationships with his parents, wife and son. The film includes a number of reflections on the Russian people and their history, using the life of one man to consider the Russian ..read more »
- Rate this
- 70
- from 2908 members

Werckmeister Harmonies / Damnation

Tarkovsky, but with a better sense of rhythm and a much, much darker heart...

Werckmeister Harmonies / Damnation on DVD (2001)
Starring: Djocko Rossitch, Janos Derzsi, Hanna Schygulla
Director: Bela Tarr
Certificate:
- Rate this
- 70
- from 485 members

Cries and Whispers

Bergman's use of light, colour and atmospheric tembre stagger

Cries and Whispers on DVD (1972)
Starring: Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson, Liv Ullmann
Director: Ingmar Bergman, Ingmar Bergman
Certificate:
Watch now: Unavailable
Cries and Whispers stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Thulin as the sisters of dying cancer patient Harriet Andersson. Both sisters have already had brushes with death: Ullman has had an affair which prompted her husband's suicide, while Thulin has long wanted to do away with herself, at one point ..read more »
- Rate this
- 70
- from 2575 members

Could this be the greatest movie of all time? Nothing but the pure logic of images, the most outstanding female performance ever captured on celluloid AND a cameo from Antonin Artaud for those who care about such things. Wow.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Starring: Maria Falconetti, Eugene Silvain, Andre Berley
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Certificate:
The sufferings of the martyr, Jeanne D'Arc (1412-1431) during her imprisonment.
- Rate this
- 80
- from 210 members
Not available for rental

2001 - A Space Odyssey

Who would have thought Richard Strauss and waltzing space ships would combine so gracefully? This man, obviously...oh and a profound (neo-Nietzschean) message to boot. Can one ask more of a movie?

2001 - A Space Odyssey on DVD (1968)
Starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Certificate:
Watch now: Unavailable
Stanley Kubrick's celebrated sci-fi treatise uses Strauss' 'Blue Danube', amongst other classical pieces, to add gravity to the film's weightless musings. At the dawn of Mankind, a tribe of ape-like beings are visited on Earth by a large black monolith. Thousands of years later, in the year 2001, ..read more »
- Rate this
- 70
- from 34,457 members

Mother Joan Of The Angels

Claustrophobic camera work and unforgettable images in this masterpiece that is still not widely enough viewed.

Mother Joan Of The Angels on DVD (1961)
Starring: Mieczyslaw Voit, Lucyna Winnicka, Anna Ciepielewska
Director: Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Jerzy Kawalerowicz
Certificate:
Set in the 17th century. A convent in a small town is being visited by high-ranking Catholic official trying to exorcise the nun supposedly possessed by demons. A local priest have been burnt for creating this condition by sexual temptation of the nuns, especially the Mother superior who bring on ..read more »
- Rate this
- 70
- from 401 members

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ... and Spring

Utilising fixed shots, repetition, symbolism, ritual and an imagistic and narrative aesthetic that relies upon a deceptively understated simplicity, this mesmerising allegory of the life cycle manages to capture, vissually and narratively, the ascetic beauty of buddhism and the natural world. Stunning.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ... and S... on DVD (2004)
Starring: Min Choi, Ki-duk Kim, Yeong-su Oh
Director: Kim Ki-Duk, Ki-duk Kim, Ki-Duk Kim
Certificate:
Watch now: Unavailable
Meditative coming-of-age drama by Korean director Kim Ki-duk. The film, which is divided into five sections to reperesent the stages of a man's life, is set entirely on and around a remote mountain lake where a tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft amidst the breathtakingly beautiful landscape. ..read more »
- Rate this
- 70
- from 8067 members

Amelie

Not exactly 'sublime', but gorgeously photographed and just generally adorable.

Amelie on DVD (2001)
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Yolande Moreau
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Certificate:
When Montmartre-dwelling Amelie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) discovers a hidden collection of childhood toys in her apartment and conspires to return them to their now-elderly owner, the happiness on the old man's face is enough to start her on a campaign of further good works. Thus she sends her father'..read more »
- Rate this
- 80
- from 75,830 members

Trilogy - The Weeping Meadow

Another member of the Tarkovsky school of cinema, this film is hard work but more than repays visually. I actually would have chosen another of his movies, but they're simply not available in the UK. Mutter.

Trilogy - The Weeping Meadow on DVD (2004)
Starring: Giorgos Armenis, Vassilis Kolovos, Thalia Argiriou
Director: Theo Angelopoulos
Certificate:
First volume in Greek director Theo Angelopoulos' trilogy about the Greek people in the 20th century. In 1919 a family of Greek refugees flee Odessa in the wake of the anti-Jewish pogroms, eventually settling in a village near Thessalonika. Eleni (Alexandra Aidini), a young girl the same age as the ..read more »
- Rate this
- 60
- from 858 members

Faust

Seems to operate on the level of the collective unconscious: upon viewing, you are struck with the feeling that you are seeing things you have already encountered in your dreams

Faust (1926)
Starring: Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn, Frida Richard
Director: F.W. Murnau
Certificate:
Watch now: Unavailable
F.W. Murnau's classic silent version of the German folk story. Faust (Gosta Ekmann) is an alchemist and scholar who becomes an unwitting pawn in a wager made between the Devil (Emil Jannings) and the Archangel Michael. The Devil sends a plague upon Faust's village, and Faust manages to find a cure, ..read more »
- Rate this
- 70
- from 998 members
Not available for rental