Paul's Favourites
The 7th Arts's highest level of achievement can be judged alongside great literature, great music, and great painting, with many filmmakers creating enduring masterpieces.
The list of film titles below may not all be enduring masterpieces, but I have however, fond lingering memories of all of them. They all fit the criteria of what I feel films can or should do, to not only be well crafted, but also to entertain, inform, enlighten and more often than not, take the viewer down roads less travelled...
Can only hope you also will discover or rediscover some viewing pleasures among my all-time favourites' listed below.
As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me (2001)
7.4/10
Director: Hardy Martins
Starring: Bernhard Bettermann, Michael Mendl, Irina Pantaeva
Captured while fighting in World War II, German soldier Clemens Forell (Bernhard Bettermann) escapes the hell of his confinement in a Siberian labor c... Read more
.jpg)
Audience of One (2007)
7.4/10
Director: Michael Jacobs
After Pentecostal preacher Richard Gazowsky got a greenlight from God to make a science-fiction epic based on the story of Joseph, he and his San Fran... Read more
Babette's Feast (1987)
7.8/10
Director: Gabriel Axel
Starring: Stephane Audran, Jean-Philippe Lafont, Jarl Kulle
Awarded the Best Foreign Language film of 1987 by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Stephane Audran is Babette, an exiled French cook-... Read more
Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
7.4/10
Director: Rolf de Heer
Starring: Claire Benito, Nicholas Hope, Ralph Cotterill, Carmel Johnson
Locked in his room for 35 years (no TV or Radio here) as not much more than a sex slave, Bubby's perception of the universe is not extensive. Through... Read more
Badlands (1973)
7.9/10
Director: Terrence Malick
Starring: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Alan Vint
Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek star in this tale of two outcasts on a murder-spree in a film that is one of the most stunning directorial debuts in the... Read more
Bagdad Cafe (1987)
7.5/10
Director: Percy Adlon
Starring: Marianne Sagebrecht, CCH Pounder, Jack Palance
This enchanting and affectionate fable unveils, in a series of wonderful vignettes, the developing friendship between several oddball characters. Mari... Read more
Ballad of Narayama (1983)
7.9/10
Director: Shohei Imamura
Starring: Ken Ogata, Sumiko Sakamoto
In a small 19th-century Japanese village, residents who reach the age of 70 are banished to the top of Mt. Narayama to die so that they don't become a... Read more
Barry Lyndon (1975)
8.1/10
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Ryan O'Neal, Hardy Kruger
How does an Irish lad without prospects become part of 18th-century English nobility? For Barry Lyndon (Ryan O'Neal) the answer is: any way he can! Hi... Read more
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
8/10
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Starring: Alexander Antonov, Vladimir Barsky
This landmark film was planned by the Soviet Central Committee to coincide with the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful 1905 Rus... Read more
Being There (1979)
8/10
Director: Hal Ashby
Starring: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Dysart, Ri...
Peter Sellers gives the performance of his career as Chance, a middle-aged gardener who's led a sheltered life and whose thoughts and behaviour are to... Read more