"The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford": Not "old" but I heard/read reviewers talk about this in the same breath as "Unforgiven", "Tombstone", etc. Downbeat and a little long but worth the watch.
"Judgement At Nuremberg": I saw this once as a teenager but I didnt appreciate it until seeing it with my dad a couple of weekends ago. Montgomery Clift's part as the mentally challenged man who was sentenced to castration was one of the movie's best performances.
"Belle De Jour": Dreamlike and I liked Catherine Deneuve's wardrobe.
"The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds": I admit I just wanted to check this out based on the title alone.
"Night And The City": Richard Widmark's character is a slime, but I sympathize with his desire to just want to make something of his life.
"Harold And Maude": Both darkly humorous and uplifting. What I needed.
"Dead Alive": I can't get with campy horror comedy usually but I had to see it just for the excessive bloodletting
"The Fly" ('86 remake): another Cronenberg crossed off my list. Damn, that fingernail scene...
"How The West Was Won": watching this on a 48" flatscreen was the best I could do for this one.
"Heavy Metal": Finally saw this after all these years hearing rave "it changed my life" reviews from people. So I rented it a few days before attending the 40th anniversary opening night art gallery show in my area where many of the namesake magazine's OG artists were in attendence. Wicked stuff.
Just been watching a load of Ingmar Bergman jernts like I was a refined stemware-owning chin stroker and not a scuzz bag. They've been doing one a week on my Mubi subscription and I never bothered with them before.
Summer With Monika - was OK, pretty modern feeling for the year it was made ('53) but shows little of the hardcore philosophically challenging questions asked in later stuff.
Seventh Seal - again OK but didn't blow me away considering how heavily this is ridden for in film snob circles. The "game of chess with death" concept that is the first thing people say about this movie seems like the least important thing.
Wild Strawberries - Here I was getting more on board with this stuff. This one is a road and memory trip... completely missed the fact that two significant female characters (one from the flashbacks and one from the current day storyline) were both played by the same actress.
Through a Glass Darkly - Was intense and dope. A woman descends into mental illness in the face of an absent (or silent) deity. Absolutely deserves the Oscar it won, especially when you consider the dreck that was getting made in 1961 and how it stands up now.
Persona - The only film of his I'd seen before, in film school. This was a stupid one to start us on in school, but building up to it with his earlier stuff this time made it a lot more watchable. Still not as affecting to me as Through a Glass Darkly, it reminds me a little too much of Lynchian dream-illogic stuff that is open for interpretation but to me never actually rewards interpretation. Makes sense that it was a big influence on Lynch but he took the things I liked least about it and made a career with them. The filmmaking metaphors feel unnecessary. The most compelling stuff is the character work in between the formal experimentation.
Cries and Whispers - A super hard and brutal watch. There are scenes in this where you feel like you shouldn't be seeing this onscreen. Animalistic depictions of dying in pain, surrounded by psychologically destroyed, cold and unfeeling relatives. Not something you'd watch for fun but really unforgettable.
Just been watching a load of Ingmar Bergman jernts like I was a refined stemware-owning chin stroker and not a scuzz bag. They've been doing one a week on my Mubi subscription and I never bothered with them before.
I ride for Hour of the Wolf, it starts off slow but by the end it's kinda
A lot of them seem to go that way - Fanny and Alexander definitely being one. Watched it last night. Looong opening introducing you to this massive family in this unbelievable lavish house, and it's only hours 2 and 3 where it focuses down to the titular characters and how they're affected by all these people we saw cavorting through the first hour. But I think it's only because you got used to the family in that first hour that the rest of the story has the effect it does. Really strong, big questions, no answers, as usual. A lot of thematic echoes with Cries and Whispers too (the dead revisiting the living, family dynamics that are maybe less than loving, house servants bringing life to otherwise cold homes).
I guess I gotta check Hour of the Wolf... next up on my subscription (and final one I think) is After the Rehearsal, which sounds a bit like a "minor" Bergman.
Believe it or not, I finally watched "Scarface." Granted I've seen bits and pieces of it and would always catch parts of it when it was on TNT or TBS back in the day, but it wasn't till the other day that I finally sat down and watched it all the way through.
It's Mubi subscription roundup time, this time I've watched a few (not all) of the Wim Wenders joints they've been putting out each week.
The Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick Psychotic disaffection of some footballer. Feels pretty 70s in that 70s disaffected way. Not enthralling.
Paris, Texas Every shot is beautiful and the story held my interest much better. I can see why this is so beloved although not going to revisit it for a while or ever. Maybe if I have a kid and they grow up to be into movies I'd watch it with them in like 20 years. The ending confrontation is the most riveting piece of acting I've seen in a while, but I don't think the middle hour and a half needed to be an hour and a half.
Tokyo-Ga Probably the "slightest" of the ones I've watched recently but I kind of enjoyed it the most. It doesn't hurt that Ozu's Tokyo Story came up on the ol' streaming subscription a couple months ago - this is a tribute to Ozu but it's also mixed with travel diary style observations of modern (1983-era) Japan, and without trying to shoehorn everything into holding together as one topic, he just keeps it pretty separate and it's fine. Werner Herzog and Chris Marker cameo, and there's a really touching interview with Ozu's longtime cameraman.
I'm listening to the incidental music on the soundtrack to "3 In The Attic" now. I remember "Scarface" on TBS as well. "Where'd you get the beauty scar, tough guy? Eating pineapple?"
"Koyaanisqatsi" and "Powaqqatsi": Thankfully, I somehow over the years managed to be completely unfamiliar with these two aside skimming over a glowing Leonard Maltin review in one of his books from several years ago. It's a visually arresting journey.
"Koyaanisqatsi" and "Powaqqatsi": Thankfully, I somehow over the years managed to be completely unfamiliar with these two aside skimming over a glowing Leonard Maltin review in one of his books from several years ago. It's a visually arresting journey.
I once watched Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi and then Chronos, Baraka and Samsara all in one weekend... My brain felt like it was going to melt. I mean I've seen them all before, but over 30 years. Compressing them all into a weekend, it was tough to turn my mind off after.
billbradleyYou want BBQ sauce? Get the fuck out of my house. 2,906 Posts
The Virgin Spring Another Bergman, this one based on a folk tale about jealousy and revenge, pretty brutal really. As always with his movies it looks beautiful and has a lot of issues swirling around in it to cogitate on, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed it as much as Wild Strawberries or Through a Glass Darkly. Very simple story, which is no bad thing considering his later movies are more difficult to watch.
Oh yeah and a while back I was gonna see "After the Rehearsal" and forgot to report that it was definitely "minor Bergman" as I put it before.
Beasts of the Southern Wild Controversial take alert, but I kinda really didn't like this. First, the good - the setting, photography, 16mm film use, and the attempt to make climate change into a tangible part of the narrative of life. Unfortunately the soundtrack mega let it down, the whole thing sounds like one of those bank ads where 30 people say the same meaningless aphorism in different voices and you don't know what it's advertising until a logo comes up in the last 3 seconds. Actually the whole thing is kind of written that way too. I absolutely can't rag on Quvenzhané Wallis' performance considering she was fuckin' six years old at the time, BAYLESS: Absolutely ME: BUT! her nomination for an Oscar was a stunt. The most gifted six year old child actor just can't act as well as an adult. The movie banked on her remarkable ability to read voiceover lines to a not-dogshit, but unconvincing, level of naturalistic. Onscreen, she pretty much just looked at stuff and benefits largely from having a particularly determined-looking stare. The camera searches her face throughout each scene while she looks at stuff. When she has to talk with people onscreen the acting lets the scenes down, so I get why you'd use the voiceover technique to get through that. The PROBLEM, then, is NOT her acting or voiceover-reading skills, which are still world class for a six+ year old, but the fact that the voiceover lines that are supposed to work around having a young child lead rung really, really false. It's just bad writing to me.
"When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me flying around in invisible pieces."
"All the time, everywhere, everything's hearts are beating and squirting, and talking to each other the ways I can't understand. Most of the time they probably be saying: I'm hungry, or I gotta poop. But sometimes they be talkin' in codes."
There's also the notion that those lines in that particular AAVE approximation were written by a Manhattan born Little Ivies educated white dude that rubs me the wrong way. And as the story goes on it carries a hint of "noble savage" cliches. But that's just me bringing outside knowledge into the experience. Maybe the fact that it was so hyped for awards and by people around me at the time fed into my reaction too, but what can you do.
"Ivan's Childhood" (preteen spy with a vengeance joins the Soviets during WW2) "Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors" "Land In Anguish" (poetry and Brazilian politics) "Hamlet" (Laurence Olivier one. Ahhhnold murdering everyone in "Last Action Hero" brought me here) "The Bad Sleep Well" (inspired by 'Hamlet') "The Iceman Cometh" (Lee Marvin's monologue!) "Solaris" (the final father-son scene...) "The Devil's Backbone"/"The Deserter" (insensitive but well-cast "Dirty Dozen"-inspired Western) "Bird" (late 80s isn't "old" but a great biopic; up there with "Malcolm X" and "Ray") "L'Atalante": Jean Vigo sure had a brief career. An antique collector and record enthusiast helps his ship captain superior, an abusive asshole husband, patch things up with his wife during the honeymoon.
"Pauline at the Beach" - an early 80s movie by Eric Rohmer who was a new wave-r who continued (much later than his peers) making movies people wanted to see, unlike, say, Godard whose 80s movies are doooogggshiiiiiit. But this one didn't grab me, it felt really didactic for the topic it was about - a teenage girl who, unlike all the older people around her, doesn't talk bullshit or hearsay. The rest of them have awful, unhealthy relationships come together and fall apart, and she just like makes out with another teenager she meets on the beach once. It's like an anti-gossip morality tale. Much of the movie was the adults bullshitting their views about love to each other while Pauline sits around silently in the back of shot. It felt kinda on the nose. The 80s beach vibes were nice to watch in a dark northern November though.
I can't believe it's taken me this long to watch Belly. I think I expected it to be terrible when it came out and I was living overseas and wouldn't have been very engaged with the culture at that point. But yeah, it was surprisingly great! Very original and cohesive aesthetic for a film (even if not for a music video) and I was just into it the whole way.
I was on the edge of my seat every time Ox came through. Sadlly, Louie Ranking died in a a car accident here in Ontario last Fall. :(
The Hills Have Eyes - aka Shit! I'm Being Hunted A Family of Inbred Cannibal Hillbillies (CZ) I'd never seen this before and having a new child in the house made me a lot more sensitive than I think I ever would've been to the baby-in-peril plotline. Cannibals talking about how they were gonna section and eat this baby and such. It has that 70s mood of oddness that almost nobody seems able to capture now. Maybe something to do with actually having shot in Death Valley, and actually casting a guy with a strange condition where he has no hair or nails or sweat glands.
The Kid With A Bike Dardenne brothers social realism... kinda. But also kind of plays out like a myth. A young boy, rejected by his father, acts out and hurts people in a search for a surrogate figure, and is hurt in turn. I liked it but it felt kind of "pure cinema" in a way I'm not sure I needed in this kind of story. Like, all of the action felt real and affecting, and it was a pretty physical movie, lots of biking, running, fighting, climbing fences, etc. But the main character in the boy's life isn't shown to have any motivation to be in his life, and the kid's own motivations for changing are left pretty opaque. I'm sure that's on purpose but I'm not sure that's enough for me.
The Hills Have Eyes - aka Shit! I'm Being Hunted A Family of Inbred Cannibal Hillbillies (CZ) I'd never seen this before and having a new child in the house made me a lot more sensitive than I think I ever would've been to the baby-in-peril plotline. Cannibals talking about how they were gonna section and eat this baby and such. It has that 70s mood of oddness that almost nobody seems able to capture now. Maybe something to do with actually having shot in Death Valley, and actually casting a guy with a strange condition where he has no hair or nails or sweat glands.
The Kid With A Bike Dardenne brothers social realism... kinda. But also kind of plays out like a myth. A young boy, rejected by his father, acts out and hurts people in a search for a surrogate figure, and is hurt in turn. I liked it but it felt kind of "pure cinema" in a way I'm not sure I needed in this kind of story. Like, all of the action felt real and affecting, and it was a pretty physical movie, lots of biking, running, fighting, climbing fences, etc. But the main character in the boy's life isn't shown to have any motivation to be in his life, and the kid's own motivations for changing are left pretty opaque. I'm sure that's on purpose but I'm not sure that's enough for me.
I remember the remake being pretty good too but I haven’t seen it since it came out.
The hills have eyes, the walls have ears, a river has a mouth. You could potentially have a metaphor face if you build in the right spot.
The Kid With A Bike Dardenne brothers social realism... kinda. But also kind of plays out like a myth. A young boy, rejected by his father, acts out and hurts people in a search for a surrogate figure, and is hurt in turn. I liked it but it felt kind of "pure cinema" in a way I'm not sure I needed in this kind of story. Like, all of the action felt real and affecting, and it was a pretty physical movie, lots of biking, running, fighting, climbing fences, etc. But the main character in the boy's life isn't shown to have any motivation to be in his life, and the kid's own motivations for changing are left pretty opaque. I'm sure that's on purpose but I'm not sure that's enough for me.
Actually haven't seen that one, but I'm generally a fan. I recently re-watched Rosetta with some students and it's still brilliant and HEAVY.
"Lost In America": Road trip / 80s corporate America satire has some hilarious dialogues. My favorite scene is when Garry Marshall, as the casino manager, refuses to give a refund on stupid gambling losses. "I like Wayne Newton. Are you saying I'm a schmuck?"
"The Gambler": Speaking of casinos, James Caan plays a college professor who gets a rush from the risk of losing his money, girlfriend and life.
"Fitzcarraldo": I heard about the infamous "Apocalypse Now"-style turmoil behind the camera. Klaus Kinski, loosely portraying Carlos Fitzcarrald, with the financial assistance of his brothel-owning wife and challenged by a filthy rich businessman, also involved with the lucrative and environmentally exploitative rubber trade, assembles a ship crew to bring opera concerts to the native tribesmen of a then uncharted territory of the Amazon jungle during early last century. I stuck with it and really enjoyed it.
"Antoni Gaudi": my mother and her husband visited Spain several years ago and raved about the architect's work. That led me to see this Japanese-produced feature from the early 80s. Other than a couple of parts where a historian chimes in to give context, this "documentary" has no spoken words. With the accompanying droning soundtrack and candid footage of people on the street, it reminds me of Godfrey Reggio.
I re-watched Lost Highway the other day, hadn't seen it since it came out in the theaters. Don't know why people were shitting on it so much when it came out, it's still just as cool as I remember it being.
I spent my day off watching Bertolucci's "1900" and "The Last Emperor". I've heard about both, but never seen either before. The word "epic" gets thrown around a lot, but they are deserving of the description. There is the similar "changing times" theme, regarding Italy and China, respectively.
felt like watching something stupid the other day, but this wasn't very good. Except for Mandy Patinkin, he's alright in this.
watched this one last night, I actually hadn't seen it when it came out for some reason, even though it's right up my alley. Dope cast and the movie has aged pretty well IMO.
I've been on a bit of a sci-fi kick, rewatching some things and finally watching others I missed out on long ago. I want to watch Dark City again because I remember really liking it when it came out, and Strange Days because I've never seen it.
"Halt, sinners!!!". I remember when I saw those and others around then as a teenager: "Judge Dredd", "Mortal Kombat", "Breakdown", "U Turn", "Hackers"... Good times.
Comments
"Judgement At Nuremberg": I saw this once as a teenager but I didnt appreciate it until seeing it with my dad a couple of weekends ago. Montgomery Clift's part as the mentally challenged man who was sentenced to castration was one of the movie's best performances.
"Belle De Jour": Dreamlike and I liked Catherine Deneuve's wardrobe.
"The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds": I admit I just wanted to check this out based on the title alone.
"Night And The City": Richard Widmark's character is a slime, but I sympathize with his desire to just want to make something of his life.
"Harold And Maude": Both darkly humorous and uplifting. What I needed.
"Dead Alive": I can't get with campy horror comedy usually but I had to see it just for the excessive bloodletting
"The Fly" ('86 remake): another Cronenberg crossed off my list. Damn, that fingernail scene...
"How The West Was Won": watching this on a 48" flatscreen was the best I could do for this one.
"Heavy Metal": Finally saw this after all these years hearing rave "it changed my life" reviews from people. So I rented it a few days before attending the 40th anniversary opening night art gallery show in my area where many of the namesake magazine's OG artists were in attendence. Wicked stuff.
Summer With Monika - was OK, pretty modern feeling for the year it was made ('53) but shows little of the hardcore philosophically challenging questions asked in later stuff.
Seventh Seal - again OK but didn't blow me away considering how heavily this is ridden for in film snob circles. The "game of chess with death" concept that is the first thing people say about this movie seems like the least important thing.
Wild Strawberries - Here I was getting more on board with this stuff. This one is a road and memory trip... completely missed the fact that two significant female characters (one from the flashbacks and one from the current day storyline) were both played by the same actress.
Through a Glass Darkly - Was intense and dope. A woman descends into mental illness in the face of an absent (or silent) deity. Absolutely deserves the Oscar it won, especially when you consider the dreck that was getting made in 1961 and how it stands up now.
Persona - The only film of his I'd seen before, in film school. This was a stupid one to start us on in school, but building up to it with his earlier stuff this time made it a lot more watchable. Still not as affecting to me as Through a Glass Darkly, it reminds me a little too much of Lynchian dream-illogic stuff that is open for interpretation but to me never actually rewards interpretation. Makes sense that it was a big influence on Lynch but he took the things I liked least about it and made a career with them. The filmmaking metaphors feel unnecessary. The most compelling stuff is the character work in between the formal experimentation.
Cries and Whispers - A super hard and brutal watch. There are scenes in this where you feel like you shouldn't be seeing this onscreen. Animalistic depictions of dying in pain, surrounded by psychologically destroyed, cold and unfeeling relatives. Not something you'd watch for fun but really unforgettable.
Still gotta watch Fanny and Alexander.
I ride for Hour of the Wolf, it starts off slow but by the end it's kinda
I guess I gotta check Hour of the Wolf... next up on my subscription (and final one I think) is After the Rehearsal, which sounds a bit like a "minor" Bergman.
The Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick
Psychotic disaffection of some footballer. Feels pretty 70s in that 70s disaffected way. Not enthralling.
Paris, Texas
Every shot is beautiful and the story held my interest much better. I can see why this is so beloved although not going to revisit it for a while or ever. Maybe if I have a kid and they grow up to be into movies I'd watch it with them in like 20 years. The ending confrontation is the most riveting piece of acting I've seen in a while, but I don't think the middle hour and a half needed to be an hour and a half.
Tokyo-Ga
Probably the "slightest" of the ones I've watched recently but I kind of enjoyed it the most. It doesn't hurt that Ozu's Tokyo Story came up on the ol' streaming subscription a couple months ago - this is a tribute to Ozu but it's also mixed with travel diary style observations of modern (1983-era) Japan, and without trying to shoehorn everything into holding together as one topic, he just keeps it pretty separate and it's fine. Werner Herzog and Chris Marker cameo, and there's a really touching interview with Ozu's longtime cameraman.
"Koyaanisqatsi" and "Powaqqatsi": Thankfully, I somehow over the years managed to be completely unfamiliar with these two aside skimming over a glowing Leonard Maltin review in one of his books from several years ago. It's a visually arresting journey.
I once watched Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi and then Chronos, Baraka and Samsara all in one weekend... My brain felt like it was going to melt. I mean I've seen them all before, but over 30 years. Compressing them all into a weekend, it was tough to turn my mind off after.
The Virgin Spring
Another Bergman, this one based on a folk tale about jealousy and revenge, pretty brutal really. As always with his movies it looks beautiful and has a lot of issues swirling around in it to cogitate on, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed it as much as Wild Strawberries or Through a Glass Darkly. Very simple story, which is no bad thing considering his later movies are more difficult to watch.
Oh yeah and a while back I was gonna see "After the Rehearsal" and forgot to report that it was definitely "minor Bergman" as I put it before.
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Controversial take alert, but I kinda really didn't like this. First, the good - the setting, photography, 16mm film use, and the attempt to make climate change into a tangible part of the narrative of life. Unfortunately the soundtrack mega let it down, the whole thing sounds like one of those bank ads where 30 people say the same meaningless aphorism in different voices and you don't know what it's advertising until a logo comes up in the last 3 seconds. Actually the whole thing is kind of written that way too.
I absolutely can't rag on Quvenzhané Wallis' performance considering she was fuckin' six years old at the time,
BAYLESS: Absolutely
ME: BUT!
her nomination for an Oscar was a stunt. The most gifted six year old child actor just can't act as well as an adult. The movie banked on her remarkable ability to read voiceover lines to a not-dogshit, but unconvincing, level of naturalistic. Onscreen, she pretty much just looked at stuff and benefits largely from having a particularly determined-looking stare. The camera searches her face throughout each scene while she looks at stuff. When she has to talk with people onscreen the acting lets the scenes down, so I get why you'd use the voiceover technique to get through that. The PROBLEM, then, is NOT her acting or voiceover-reading skills, which are still world class for a six+ year old, but the fact that the voiceover lines that are supposed to work around having a young child lead rung really, really false. It's just bad writing to me.
"When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me flying around in invisible pieces."
"All the time, everywhere, everything's hearts are beating and squirting, and talking to each other the ways I can't understand. Most of the time they probably be saying: I'm hungry, or I gotta poop. But sometimes they be talkin' in codes."
There's also the notion that those lines in that particular AAVE approximation were written by a Manhattan born Little Ivies educated white dude that rubs me the wrong way. And as the story goes on it carries a hint of "noble savage" cliches. But that's just me bringing outside knowledge into the experience. Maybe the fact that it was so hyped for awards and by people around me at the time fed into my reaction too, but what can you do.
"Ivan's Childhood" (preteen spy with a vengeance joins the Soviets during WW2)
"Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors"
"Land In Anguish" (poetry and Brazilian politics)
"Hamlet" (Laurence Olivier one. Ahhhnold murdering everyone in "Last Action Hero" brought me here)
"The Bad Sleep Well" (inspired by 'Hamlet')
"The Iceman Cometh" (Lee Marvin's monologue!)
"Solaris" (the final father-son scene...)
"The Devil's Backbone"/"The Deserter" (insensitive but well-cast "Dirty Dozen"-inspired Western)
"Bird" (late 80s isn't "old" but a great biopic; up there with "Malcolm X" and "Ray")
"L'Atalante": Jean Vigo sure had a brief career. An antique collector and record enthusiast helps his ship captain superior, an abusive asshole husband, patch things up with his wife during the honeymoon.
But this one didn't grab me, it felt really didactic for the topic it was about - a teenage girl who, unlike all the older people around her, doesn't talk bullshit or hearsay. The rest of them have awful, unhealthy relationships come together and fall apart, and she just like makes out with another teenager she meets on the beach once. It's like an anti-gossip morality tale. Much of the movie was the adults bullshitting their views about love to each other while Pauline sits around silently in the back of shot. It felt kinda on the nose. The 80s beach vibes were nice to watch in a dark northern November though.
I was on the edge of my seat every time Ox came through. Sadlly, Louie Ranking died in a a car accident here in Ontario last Fall. :(
I'd never seen this before and having a new child in the house made me a lot more sensitive than I think I ever would've been to the baby-in-peril plotline. Cannibals talking about how they were gonna section and eat this baby and such. It has that 70s mood of oddness that almost nobody seems able to capture now. Maybe something to do with actually having shot in Death Valley, and actually casting a guy with a strange condition where he has no hair or nails or sweat glands.
The Kid With A Bike
Dardenne brothers social realism... kinda. But also kind of plays out like a myth. A young boy, rejected by his father, acts out and hurts people in a search for a surrogate figure, and is hurt in turn. I liked it but it felt kind of "pure cinema" in a way I'm not sure I needed in this kind of story. Like, all of the action felt real and affecting, and it was a pretty physical movie, lots of biking, running, fighting, climbing fences, etc. But the main character in the boy's life isn't shown to have any motivation to be in his life, and the kid's own motivations for changing are left pretty opaque. I'm sure that's on purpose but I'm not sure that's enough for me.
I remember the remake being pretty good too but I haven’t seen it since it came out.
The hills have eyes, the walls have ears, a river has a mouth. You could potentially have a metaphor face if you build in the right spot.
well they got this pig in this mountain in Algeria, looks to have legs, ears and a nose at least
Actually haven't seen that one, but I'm generally a fan. I recently re-watched Rosetta with some students and it's still brilliant and HEAVY.
"The Gambler": Speaking of casinos, James Caan plays a college professor who gets a rush from the risk of losing his money, girlfriend and life.
"Fitzcarraldo": I heard about the infamous "Apocalypse Now"-style turmoil behind the camera. Klaus Kinski, loosely portraying Carlos Fitzcarrald, with the financial assistance of his brothel-owning wife and challenged by a filthy rich businessman, also involved with the lucrative and environmentally exploitative rubber trade, assembles a ship crew to bring opera concerts to the native tribesmen of a then uncharted territory of the Amazon jungle during early last century. I stuck with it and really enjoyed it.
"Antoni Gaudi": my mother and her husband visited Spain several years ago and raved about the architect's work. That led me to see this Japanese-produced feature from the early 80s. Other than a couple of parts where a historian chimes in to give context, this "documentary" has no spoken words. With the accompanying droning soundtrack and candid footage of people on the street, it reminds me of Godfrey Reggio.
I think Heart of Darkness (IIRC), the doc about the making of Apocalypse Now falls into the same category.
Also pretty sure Tropic Thunder takes heavy influence from that doc/real life and spoofs it.