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.
The Wicker Man (Blu-ray) (1973)
7.5/10
Director: Robin Hardy
Starring: Britt Ekland, Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward, Diane Cilento, Ingrid Pitt
A British police officer goes to a small island off Scotland to find a missing girl, only to discover that the islanders practice a Celtic religion wh... Read more
The Roaring Twenties (1939)
7.9/10
Director: Raoul Walsh
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Priscilla Lane
James Cagney stars as a good man turned crook in this recreation of the world of bootleggers, speakeasies and violence; Humphrey Bogart is the gangste... Read more
The Rapture (1991)
6.4/10
Director: Michael Tolkin
Starring: Mimi Rogers, Patrick Bauchau, David Duchovny
A thought-provoking film where virtually no others have dared to tread, about a young woman in a brain-dead job who becomes involved with a fundamenta... Read more
Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972)
8/10
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Ruy Guerra, Del Negro, Helena Rojo
Based on the journals of Brother Gaspar de Carvajal, and tells a hallucinatory tale of Spanish colonialists searching for El Dorado, the legendary cit... Read more
If.... (Blu-ray) (1968)
7.6/10
Director: Lindsay Anderson
Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan
A daringly anarchic vision of British society, set in a boarding school in late-sixties England. Before Kubrick made his mischief iconic in 'A Clockwo... Read more
Dersu Uzala (1975)
8.3/10
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Yuri Solomon, Maxim Munzuk
Kurosawa's remarkable, personal tale of the friendship between a wise old man and a young Soviet explorer, filmed in the beautiful expanse of Siberia,... Read more
The Cove (2009)
8.5/10
Director: Louie Psihoyos
In the 1960s, Richard O'Barry was the world's leading authority on dolphin training, working on the set of the popular television program "Flipper". D... Read more
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
8.1/10
Director: John Huston
Starring: Peter Lorre, Mary Astor, Humphrey Bogart
Even if you've seen this film so often that you know all the dialogue, it never ceases to amaze. Great actors Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet a... Read more
Angel and the Badman (1947)
7/10
Director: James Edward Grant
Starring: John Wayne, Gail Russell, Irene Rich, Harry Carey
In an offbeat Western drama that predated "Witness," John Wayne plays a hardened gunslinger who is tamed by strong-willed Quaker girl Gail Russell, bu... Read more
Heat and Sunlight (1988)
5.3/10
Director: Rob Nilsson
Starring: Rob Nilsson, Don Bajema, Consuelo Faust
This powerful and disturbingly honest film documents the final hours of a love affair between a photographer and his exotic dancer girlfriend. Made by... Read more