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.
Diva (1981)
7.3/10
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Starring: Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, Frederic Andrei
A breathtaking series of visual images in this stylish romantic thriller; at the heart of the film is an opera-intoxicated 18-year old mail carrier wh... Read more
The Machinist (2004)
7.7/10
Director: Brad Anderson
Starring: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, John Sharian, Michae...
Trevor (Christian Bale) hasn't slept in a year. The shocking deterioration of his physical and mental health makes every waking moment an unrelenting... Read more
The Producers (1968)
7.7/10
Director: Mel Brooks
Starring: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn
Mel Brook's hilarious hit about a producer who comes up with a surefire scheme for making money... on a musical production that he is absolutely cert... Read more
Vitus (2006)
7.7/10
Director: Fredi M Murer
Starring: Teo Gheorghiu, Bruno Ganz, Fabrizio Borsani, Julika Jenkins, Urs Jucker
A compelling domestic drama showing the family dynamics and ambititions surrounding child prodigy Vitus. A piano master by age six, Vitus' future seem... Read more
The Saddest Music in the World (2003)
7.2/10
Director: Guy Maddin
Starring: Isabella Rossellini, Mark McKinney, Maria de Medeiros, David Fox
Director Guy Maddin's works are like a window to an alternate film universe - this unforgettable feverish whirligig of a movie is the closest the cul... Read more
Natural Born Killers (1994)
7.3/10
Director: Oliver Stone
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr, Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Sizemore
Dubbed 'A Clockwork Orange' of the 90s, this all-out audio-visual experience is something that comes along all too rarely. Oliver Stone has, with the... Read more
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
8/10
Director: Victor Fleming
Starring: Ray Bolger, Judy Garland, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Billie Burke, Frank Morgan, Mar...
Follow Dorothy over the rainbow and down the Yellow Brick Road, along with the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, Cowardly Lion and Toto, too, for fun and adven... Read more
Freeway (1996)
6.9/10
Director: Matthew Bright
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Dan Hedaya, Amanda Plummer, Brooke Shields
This 'bent, punk retelling of Little Red Riding Hood' stars Reese Witherspoon as a disenchanted teen who flees her trailer trash mum (Brooke Shields)... Read more
Songcatcher (2000)
7.2/10
Director: Maggie Greenwald
Starring: Janet McTeer, Aidan Quinn, Jane Adams, Pat Carroll
A film about a woman whose drive to pursue the things she believes in leads her on an unexpected path to self-discovery. It is 1907, and musicologist... Read more
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
8.1/10
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Starring: Dennis Hopper, George Kennedy, Strother Martin, Paul Newman, Harry Dean Stanton
A taut honest drama greatly aided by Stuart Rosenberg's direction and a marvellously controlled and artful performance by Paul Newman as a gutsy priso... Read more