Barry Lyndon
I watched this not because the premise of the movie spoke to me, but because of who directed it. It's kind of a depressing movie, since it's about a guy who lifts himself out of poverty and into the upper class, then, through his own stupidity, sends himself right back in worse shape than before. The portrayal of British society in the 1700s is almost aggravating in how fake and pompous it was (in real life, I don't mean that the movie feels fake).
I love "weird" movies, and Brazil didn't disappoint. It takes place in a dystopian future, a very strange and inefficient dystopian future. You know those scenes in TV shows where two characters are trying to find each other and keep missing each other by seconds, or when you try to run up the infinite stairs in SM64? That's basically the whole movie. Everything is so ridiculously tied up in mounds of pointless paperwork and overly complicated machines that don't work.
I haven't seen the original ending, but I love the way the director's cut ends and from what I've heard of the original, I think I'll leave it unseen. The way it seems that Sam has made an incredibly lucky escape at the last minute only to reveal that everything after he arrived in the torture chamber was a dream and that he's been broken mentally was a twist I didn't see coming. It's a downer ending but not every movie needs to end on a bright note or a sequel-inducing cliffhanger, especially when the movie's trying to make a statement about something.
Yet another depressing movie, also directed by Kubrick (I believe this was his first major film). The self-serving behavior of the officers at the expense of their men is disgusting, yet unfortunately matches up with reality. That sort of thing really does happen, though thankfully not on the scale shown in the movie these days. I enjoyed Paths of Glory far more than I expected to considering the age of it. Most war films back then were upbeat, and featured little beyond Hollywood's studs of the time easily killing tons of bad guys.
Finally something fun. I don't know how I managed to go so long without seeing this movie but I wish I hadn't. It's got a feel very similar to Galaxy Quest; not suprising considering they were made about the same time and are both genre parodies. This one mocks the same hokey war movies I was talking about previously, and does a great job of it. The book was quite different (for one, it was dead serious) but both are great in their own way. Best line: "The enemy can not push a button... if you disable his hand."
