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.
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
8/10
Director: Lars von Trier
Starring: Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, Joel Grey, David Morse
Winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival, Lars Von Trier's brilliant film inspires adulation and scorn. This neo-musical is set in an earl... Read more
The Emperor and the Assassin (1999)
7.3/10
Director: Chen Kaige
Starring: Gong Li, Zhang Fengyi, Li Xuejian, Sun Zhou, Lu Xiaohe, Wang Zhiwen
This lavishly produced, epic historical drama is set in the third century B.C. and tells the multi-faceted story of the man who became the first Emper... Read more
The Straight Story (1999)
8/10
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Everett McGill, Harry Dean Stanton
In a gentle, G-rated change of pace that still features his trademark fascination with rural American quirkiness, director David Lynch recounts the tr... Read more
Men With Guns (1998)
7.6/10
Director: John Sayles
Starring: Federico Luppi, Damian Alcazar, Tania Cruz
From writer/director John Sayles comes this sobering and politically awakening film about a recently widowed doctor who returns to an unnamed Latin Am... Read more
Pi - Faith in Chaos (1998)
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis
This original work focuses on an obsessed math prodigy. A strange numeric pattern thrown up by the fluctuations of the stock market, which only he can... Read more
The Game (1997)
7.8/10
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, James Rebhorn, Deborah Kara Unger, Peter Donat, Carr...
David Fincher's suspenseful follow-up to the magnificent 'Seven' deals with an investment banker (Michael Douglas) who has everything he could ever wa... Read more
Frank Lloyd Wright (1997)
7.8/10
Director: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick
Starring: Frank Lloyd Wright
An absorbing study of U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright's tumultuous life and career. Using all manner of original photographs, plans, home movies of... 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
Breaking the Waves (1996)
7.9/10
Director: Lars von Trier
Starring: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier
The extraordinary story of a young, simple-minded, God-fearing Scottish woman who willingly takes on lovers in the belief that it will cure her paraly... Read more
Kingpin (1996)
6.9/10
Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, Vanessa Angel, Bill Murray
A hilariously tasteless comedy about a hook-handed ex-bowling ace turned travelling salesman (Woody Harrelson) who joins forces with Amish lane maestr... Read more