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Movies without obvious appeal
I chose to make this topic because I dont find other with the same goal, that is give recommendations of movies which dont have sex/kiss scenes and other things thats used to sell without any meaninful content.
Three favorites of mine (maybe not exactly appeal-less, but definitely worth watching and not using cheap tricks to sell):
I looked this one today, and I will not put any spoiler over here, this movie is really nice, It keep my attention very easy and in the end I felt like I time travelled. I dont enjoyed the last scene but the movie still great! Hopefully I will watch the others in next weeks.
The director actually credited much of the movie's success to piracy :)
It was a small movie with very little international distribution so the high seas were the easiest way to get it for large parts of the world.
This is one of my favorite films of all time. But I admit, I also have a deep love for "purely conversational" movies and stories like this. No action, no effects, no real changes in setting or scenery, just a deep and engaging conversation lasting an hour plus. I can't get enough of that stuff.
Heads up, there’s a sequel.
The man from earth is my favorite movie ever. I have heard terrible things about the sequel and have avoided it. Should I watch it?
It’s been so long since I watched the sequel that I truly don’t remember. I’m sorry.
Without saying any spoilers, I also think the movie would have been made better without the final scene. I like the questions the movie raises more than the answers.
Absolutely brilliant, I love this film. Gleeson and Farrell have wonderful chemistry together, and it's just a delightfully daft, sweary romp. It can get extremely dark at times, but it feels like an incredibly honest portrayal of its characters and story, despite the comedic tone.
I started to watch this one today, unfortunately I dont managed to ignore the fact the one of the killer are trying to hang with girl during the time they was supposed to just wait and receive instructions, this thing killed the movie for me, maybe I will try to watch again another day.
I feel like the classic poster child for this would be 12 Angry Men. The entire movie is twelve jurors in a single room speaking to each other for the entire movie (as exemplified by this XKCD comic), yet it is one of my very favorite movies.
Speaking of that XKCD comic, another one that might fit the bill is Primer, also one of my absolute favorites. The premise makes it sounds flashy, but it's actually very slow paced and cerebral (which is probably why it often gets low ratings). It's the most believable depiction of time travel I have ever seen, and it's also the most intellectually taxing movie I have ever seen. If you decide to watch it, make room in your schedule for two viewings back-to-back. (They should just make it a double-length movie and play it twice automatically.)
For something lighter, I found Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald deeply endearing. It is a Japanese comedy about a team putting on a live radio play. It's basically a story about people gradually becoming invested in a project that they initially discounted.
I have watched it ... a lot of times. I have some opinions, but my dad and my partner have other opinions, and we argue about it. The arguments take a long time because they are interspersed with further rewatchings.
The only other movie that I can think of that comes close is Memento, but Primer is really something else.
It's definitely less Primer-y than Primer which I won't expound on lest I spoil any of the fun, but it is a fantastically well made film and I do recommend a viewing or two.
I thought of Primer first too, but then I thought that it definitely does have an obvious appeal, but the more I think about it....damn, it really doesn't lol. It looks so amateur, the plot makes 0 sense, and few people spend the effort to understand it, even with all the info present on the internet, and understanding it gets you no further in life.
And yet, I've seen that movie at least five times. I've taken notes on it. I've read timelines on the internet. It's been a frequent topic of discussion in multiple friend groups across decades.
So....yeah. Good answer.
Primer is the kind of movie you should watch on your computer so you can rewind easily and pause if you need to. It properly would have been a nightmare to follow properly in a theater. My first time, I watched it on my laptop and I didn't find it that challenging a watch, but I realized that's because I usually skip back to catch stuff properly.
Really great fun though, testament to what you can do with a small budget if you are creative.
Along the same lines as Primer, the whole Resolution quasi-series is great and fits OP’s question.
I absolutely love Primer. And I'm still not quite 100%!on all the details. Every rewatch solidifies the plot elements I'm certain of, but picks at my persistent questions. It's a great movie, and the acting is top notch. Really liked the characters and felt for their experiences.
I also love 12 angry men, even though I only watched it once. It gave me a new fear of our legal system. Once I believed jury deliberation to be a fairly straight forward process where people entered, discussed evidence, and gave their opinions. I never considered that there would be so much active persuasion going on among the jurors themselves.
The Way We Are, Cantonese title 天水圍的日與夜, is a little film with a very modest premise, about a single mother and her teenaged son basically day to day living in a government estate style housing system, which is quite intimately familiar to nearly all 7 million inhabitants of Hong Kong. The protagonist is just going about her day living as nearly all HKers of a certain generation does and in the way many many many of us grew up. She could be our mom or our aunt or our partners or ourselves.
The choice of using 天水圍 as the main setting is also intentional: located at what was once the very edge of the mega metropolis, so much at the edge that the land itself was just oceans then wetlands then fish farms in the 1900, Tin Sui Wai came about as a sort of opposite-Dubai land reclamation building project, without any of the money and glitz. It took a while for the area to receive adequate infrastructure and rapid transportation and regular city amenities. The name itself is a historic reference to fish/seafood raised in traps/pens, but when each syllable is understood literally, the name can mean "The Heavens and The Waters: Entrapped/Enclosed/Encircled".
Last piece of the puzzle: A super awful violent domestic crime happened in 2004. Super super awful. Most HKers who hear the community name of Heaven-Waters-Encircled would be immediately thinking about this tragedy. That incident was only the extremely much worse pinnacle of many similar reports of domestic violence happening in a fairly-poor and very remote edge of the city.
Hong Kongers watching this film, from a famous director, with a very small unassume premise, would thus be watching with a sense of quiet apprenhension and tension that the advertising and trailer gives us absolutely no reason to feel.
Critical acclaim: film won a ton of major Chinese languages and Asian film awards.
Wavelength is a foundational film for avant-garde cinema.
It’s impossible to learn to plow by reading books by Richard Linklater.
These are the two that come to mind.
Wavelength is absolutely mesmerizing. If watching it opens a pathway into an avant-garde cinema for someone, apart from the obvious recommendations like Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou, I'd highly recommend Side/Walk/Shuttle, Hand Held Day, and of course Puce Moment by Kenneth Anger, who've recently passed away.
The Father.
An indie movie about an elderly man with dementia and his adult daughter. The father is played by Anthony Hopkins and the daughter by Olivia Coleman.
The brilliance of this film is that it's told from the perspective of the man with dementia. In that way, it's almost a psychological thriller. You really get a taste of what it must be like to be in his shoes. I have no experience with the disease and even I get a tiny bit of what it must feel like. I've read a lot of comments about how people relate too much with this film because they care or take care of someone with dementia.
That aside, the storytelling and performances are great. The direction and editing is amazing. I definitely recommend this film
This movie was so good! I love how they never state that he does have dementia, but it's clear within the first minute of dialogue what's going on. It's such a well written movie.
I hate when movies have unnatural exposition to explain things to the audience, writers should take note of how it's done in this one.
have you seen Vortex from Gaspar Noé -- I've had both of these in my queue for a 'dementia double header'. The trailer for Vortex really sells it for me.
I have not. It is a really good gallery, looks pretty good
Recently ignored Sisu because the cover didn’t portray what it was.
Got recommended it - and it’s an awesome bloody popcorn action movie.
Rare Exports by the same director is also pretty entertaining: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401143/
I watched this one tonight, It is exaclty how you said, good one to pass the time. Action all the time!
I'm a little confused on the prompt. I don't consider romantic scenes a draw to movies but they can have important storytelling context. But anyway, my favorite 3 "art house" films (I don't remember any explicit romance but could be present).
Local hero (1983)
"Mac" MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) gets more than he bargained for when a seemingly simple business trip to Scotland changes his outlook on life. Sent by his colorful boss (Burt Lancaster) to the small village of Ferness, Mac is looking to quickly buy out the townspeople so his company can build a new refinery.
Last night I stumbled upon the movie The Cow and I (La Vache et le Prisonnier 1959). Apparently, it was the most successful film in France in 1959. While I don't know modern French milieu, with only one review on Rotten Tomatoes and 1.7K IMDb ratings it seems like the movie has faded into relative obscurity.
There are thousands of films like this. Popular with your grandparents generation but now are mostly unknown. And one-hundred thousand+ movies which never reached that level of exposure.
Children of Men (2006) , I liked this one a lot, find this one in the last weekend but I just remembered to post it here now.
"In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have somehow become infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea." - Description from IMDb