What should we watch at my film club?

March 7, 2013 11:45 PM

Please suggest some movies that would make for good film club viewing.

Like book club, only with movies. We watch the movie, then discuss it. So, I'm looking for films that fulfill three main criteria:

1. Provokes good discussion/debate
2. Not too long (~2 hours is ideal)
3. Under-appreciated; hopefully a new film for most attendees

Obviously it would be good if the films are generally enjoyable, but I'm more interested in films that will sharply divide opinions and make for lively discourse rather than ones that everybody likes.

posted by Cogito to media & arts (40 answers total)

Recently, I saw and enjoyed The Fall. Roger Ebert notes, "You might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it."

I think that sums it up fairly well. It's an odd and imaginative film, likely to divide audiences. Even if you don't enjoy the story, I think it's worth seeing based solely on the very young actress who stars in it. She is enchantingly genuine. Apparently many of her scenes were unscripted.
posted by dephlogisticated at 11:59 PM on March 7 [6 favorites]

Films by Terence Malick would be good: The Tree of Life and The Thin Red Line seemed to be polarizing, although both are gorgeously filmed (and The Thin Red Line, though, is rather long, so maybe not ideal). Days of Heaven is an earlier of his efforts, still terrific although perhaps not quite as polarizing.

Amigo by John Sayles might fit the bill.

Gritty foreign movies about crime are interesting watches: Sin Nombre, City of God, if people haven't seen it already.

District 9 could be a sci-fi entry if there are enough people who haven't seen it, either.
posted by MoonOrb at 12:05 AM on March 8

Highway 61
My Winnipeg
Happiness of the Katakuris
Let The Right One In
The Fast Runner
Abre los ojos
posted by benzenedream at 12:10 AM on March 8

This is so general. Can you gives us some more info about the kinds of people that are in this film club?
posted by empath at 12:10 AM on March 8 [2 favorites]

I like "thinking" movies...

One of my favorites of all time:

Siesta, 1987.

Directed by Mary Lambert, soundtrack by Miles Davis, starring: Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin, Jodie Foster, Julian Sands, Isabella Rosselini, Martin Sheen, Grace Jones, and Alexei Sayles.

---

If you can get ahold of a copy, and you have the impetus, this past year's was simply awesome for people who can "get" it. For everyone else, it was a trainwreck of a film:(

----

Better choices....

Before Mel Gibson got famous, he did "The Year of Living Dangerously" that is sublime.

Catherine Deneuve in Indochine. Holy shit is that great.

Farewell My Concubine explained what happend in China to me.

Likewise, The Last Emperor.

I liked that movie recently with Ryan Gosling, called Drive. It had a sensibility of intellectuality about it.

Carey Muligan was in Drive.

Let's just say that as my favorite book - EVER - is The Great Gatsby, and that Moulin Rouge left me crying on the floor, so that I am looking forward to the re-boot of Gatsby with Carey Mulligan by the director of Moulin Rouge, Baz Luhrman, with great expectation!
posted by jbenben at 12:16 AM on March 8

If the group is open to subtitles I recommend the wonderful work of quebec's Robert Lepage, my favourite being No. Lepage comes from the theatre and his work lends itself to interpretation. He is known for using a single object as a repeated theme throughout the film.

Might be good to scan the Wikipedia on the October Crisis if not Canadian. The film isn't exactly about the crisis, but it puts it all in perspective.

Another LePage, especially for film buffs, is the Confessional, set in Quebec City during the filming of Hitchcock's film of the same name.
posted by chapps at 12:26 AM on March 8

This is so general. Can you gives us some more info about the kinds of people that are in this film club?

We're pretty interested in all sorts of film. We're generally nerdy intellectual PNW types.
posted by Cogito at 12:31 AM on March 8

I screen movies in my loft every week. I find it helpful to organize by theme on a monthly basis. So, Noir, Loners, America 68 - 76, Faye Dunaway, etc. Doing this, and screening movies chronologically, really helps with discussion.

So, for Noir, for instance, I did

Maltese Falcon
Double Indemnity
Out of the Past
Kiss Me Deadly
The Killing
Long Goodbye
Chinatown
LA Confidential
Visions of Light (docu on cinematography that has a section on Noir)

Oh, and hands-down Out of the Past was the fave from that series, though the other movies are all great. I would highly recommend that film for your group as it's also not as well known.
posted by dobbs at 12:49 AM on March 8 [3 favorites]

Seconding The Fall.

Also, The Fountain.

If you're interested in movies that are being released soon, I'd recommend Upstream Color from the guy who made Primer.

Also, do NOT miss Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.
posted by dogwalker at 12:54 AM on March 8

Chungking Express is a fascinating film containing two vaguely related stories of coulda shoulda woulda love set in one of the most filmable cities in the world.

In line with Farewell My Concubine, To Live is a brutal look at the middle of the twentieth century as inflicted on the members of a single family. Amazing, but a little heart crushing.

The Constant Gardener is a fantastic film for the cinematography alone. For the story, after we finished watching it, Mrs. Ghidorah's response was "my heart hurts." good film, impeccably acted.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:06 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Documentary: Dear Zachary or Teenage Paparazzo
Foreign Film: Departures
Films: Adam,Moonrise Kingdom, any Woody Allen movie and my choice that kind of fits your criteria if you haven't seen it Mr. Brooks
posted by Plug1 at 1:15 AM on March 8

I came in here to say Holy Motors by Leos Carax. It's a reflection on the nature of performance (and life?) itself and contains about 12 mini-films or narratives, which are wildly divergent, within it. I won't spoil it more than that but it is relatively recent and should be excellent for discussion/debate.
posted by everydayanewday at 1:52 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

For sure Holy Motors if you can track it down. And a big ditto for The Fall and Malick.


But otherwise, digging into some odder, artier stuff I like:
- l'hypothèse du tableau volé
- Something by Svankmajer or the Brothers Quay The former's Lunacy makes an interesting counterpoint to the latters' Institute Benjamenta if you do paired films (both directors are known for stop motion animation, both feature a more or less normal person somehow ending up in a vaguely creepy asylum-run-by-the-inmates type of situation)
- Tracey Fragments
- Something by Peter Greenaway. The Cook, The Thief..., Draughtman's, The Pillow Book, or Prospero's Books depending on what people have already seen. His Rembrandt J'accuse is a documentary, but a neat counterpoint to L'hypothèse du Tableau Volé (both involve secret messages encoded in paintings, elucidated thru tableau vivants)
- assuming Dinner with Andre as already seen, then Vanya on 42nd which reunites the director with Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory
posted by juv3nal at 2:29 AM on March 8

Sleep Dealer: near-future science fiction that explores both political themes and impacts of technology on culture and society. I find the Spanish title Traficante De Sueños more evocative. Spanish with English subtitles.
posted by XMLicious at 2:59 AM on March 8

The Quiet Earth. Short (91 minutes) sci-fi movie. Discussion might be less about the film itself and more how people think they would have handled a similar "last man on earth"-ish situation.
posted by dayintoday at 3:47 AM on March 8

Man Bites Dog
posted by backwards guitar at 3:59 AM on March 8

Anything by director Yasujirō Ozu. Also, The Wife.
posted by rmmcclay at 4:36 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

In one of my college classes we watched a few "complimentary" films...the ones I remember best were Fail-Safe paired with Dr. Strangelove which for all intensive purposes are the same film...just one is a serous drama about atomic destruction and the other is a comedy about atomic destruction.
posted by Captain_Science at 4:36 AM on March 8

Memento
Koyaanisqatsi
Ice Pirates (oh just joking)
posted by sammyo at 4:40 AM on March 8

Not sure if it's "under appreciated" enough, but Adaptation is required viewing for any movie fan.

Nicolas Cage plays twin screenwriters, one of whom (Charlie Kaufman) is struggling to write the screenplay of the movie you are watching, an adaptation of the non-fiction book The Orchid Thief. Meryl Streep plays the book's author, and Chris Cooper plays the book's subject.

I've watched it at least 20 times and it never gets old.
posted by The Deej at 4:45 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

A Short Film About Killing, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski.
posted by HandfulOfDust at 5:22 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

We've been watching films from the criterion collection once a week. Half the weeks we're moving forward chronologically from an arbitrary point in 1955 (we started with Diabolique), and every other week we just watch movies in the criterion collection that I'm interested in seeing (so far: Topsy Turvy, Eraserhead, and Smiles of a Summer Night. Some late Kurosawa is coming up soon).

Using the criterion collection for this is kind of great because it shrinks the pool of possible movies to a manageable number, and it's full of great stuff. Even if you don't care for thus particular collection, you could do something similar with another preexisting, artificially selected list of movies.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:34 AM on March 8 [2 favorites]

In the Mood for Love

1 hour 38 minutes, multiple themes, what a piece of poetry would look like in cinematic form.


House of Sand and Fog

This is an American tragedy, deeply polarizing, and will keep your club talking for a long time.
posted by Kruger5 at 5:55 AM on March 8

We watched Cache/Hidden recently - the French language version. I was really annoyed by the way it posed questions and refused to answer them - MrM really enjoyed it. I felt the same about The Conversation (the Kubrick one) so if you've already done that, it could be interesting.

I think it might be fun to take a very mainstream film and examine it critically - especially one many won't have seen for some time. You could have a pretty strong discussion about Pretty Woman, for example, or the gender/slut-shaming representation in Grease.
posted by mippy at 6:05 AM on March 8

A french film called A Prophet. Fantastic story and acting and seemingly perfect for a film club.
posted by AngryLlama at 6:12 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

A couple of guys at my Uni run a weekly film club, specifically for non-English language films, usually from the last 25 years, most of which I have never seen, or often heard of before. They add in the odd arthouse classic like Chungking Express or Delicatessen, to lure in new members, who then stay with the group. However, I should say that they do sometimes struggle to find DVDs with English subtitles.

Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (Iran, 2007)

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Japan, 1989)

Supermen Of Malegaon (India, 2012)

Tabu (Portugal, 2012)

Lizard (Iran, 2007)

Kontroll (Hungary, 2003)

The Last Man on Earth (Italy, 2011)

Dust in the Wind (Taiwan, 1986)

The Source (Arabic, 2011)

Barking Dogs Never Bite (South Korea, 2000)

Tears of the Black Tiger (Thailand, 2000)

Chungking Express (Hong Kong, 1994)

Tony Takitani (Japan, 2004)

Poetry (South Korea, 2010)

Dying of Laughter (Spain, 1999)

The Wind Will Carry Us (Iran, 1999)

Suicide Room (Poland, 2011)

The Scent of Green Papaya (Vietnam/France, 1993)

Linda, Linda, Linda (Japan, 2005)

The Holy Girl (Argentina, 2004)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czechoslovakia, 1970)

Delicatessen (France, 1991)
posted by dumdidumdum at 6:24 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

More of a medium than a title suggestion coming if you want to go beyond Region 1 DVDs made for the U.S. market. There are plenty of great titles (including foreign titles) available in Region 1 but why limit yourself?

I'm assuming you're in the U.S. Do you have a fairly modern laptop or recently purchased tablet/iDevice with video output at your disposal that you could hook up to a projector? How about a decent broadband or 4G Internet connection?

If so.. check out MUBI either for the film club or on your own. $35 a year gets you access to one new film a day, 30 films always in rotation. MUBI is a great site to see foreign films (subtitled in English) as well as less well-known early American films (often silent). I've recently seen the Geman film Yella on MUBI, which would have provided a lot of conversational fodder had I seen it in a film club. Also, Derek Jarman's Sebastiane - guarantee I wouldn't have found that in my local library!! Lots of early von Trier (not my cup of tea but it will get people talking) and Wong Kar-Wei as well. MUBI won't work on Android or iOS, not yet anyway, but it works on Windows/Linux and should be OK on an Apple laptop as well.
posted by Currer Belfry at 6:46 AM on March 8 [2 favorites]

I agree you should do themes. The seventies were full of films that were provokative, and earnest and just downright interesting.


One movie that I think is SO great is Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson.

Here are others from 1970 to 1980 that are either interesting, or gritty or just spellbinding. Foxes is just a guilty pleasure.

Taxi Driver

The French Connection

Network

Foxes

You get the idea.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:48 AM on March 8

Synecdoche, New York is a thought-provoking movie that's quite polarizing. Roger Ebert called it the greatest movie of the previous decade.
posted by wolfnote at 7:44 AM on March 8

I felt the same about The Conversation (the Kubrick one) so if you've already done that, it could be interesting.

Coppola, not Kubrick.
posted by dobbs at 9:00 AM on March 8

I'm really not a highbrow movie viewer, but looking back at what I've rated in Netflix, these films seem like ones I've rated that would be most likely to spark conversation.

Secretary
Exotica / The Sweet Hereafter
Oldboy / Sympathy for Mr Vengeance / Lady Vengeance
In the Company of Men / Your Friends and Neighbors
Aguirre, the Wrath of God / Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Hombre
The Up Series
Buried
Bulworth
In the Bedroom
Breaker Morant
Proof (the Hugo Weaving one)
posted by cali59 at 9:08 AM on March 8

I imagine mippy might say the same about another Haneke film, The White Ribbon as about Caché, but I liked both, even if they're horribly unresolved.

Also in the horribly unresolved category is Die innere Sicherheit/The State I Am In, which was available on DVD from Netflix when I last had a Netflix subscription. (You could probably form a film club themed around 'horribly unresolved movies in German', actually.)
posted by hoyland at 9:38 AM on March 8

I like double features separated by cartoons, shorts, and food. In NYC, the dark days of February & March have been perfect for what I've been grandiosely terming The First Annual Werner Herzog Uptown Film Festival, wrapping up (in my apartment) this Sunday after six weeks. We've been watching two each week, and they've sparked lots of conversation and debate. Some particularly successful pairings: "Lessons of Darkness" shown with "Nosferatu," and "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" with "Fata Morgana".
When we were 16 my friends and I were completely undone by a double feature of "Breaker Morant" with Bergman's "Persona", and I think "Yo Soy Cuba" is fascinating to watch next to "Cuba Feliz".
Have fun.
posted by jcrcarter at 9:53 AM on March 8

To Be and to Have (Être et avoir) (2002)

The Boys of Baraka (2005)

The Cartel (2009)

The Lottery (2010)

Waiting for Superman (2010)
posted by plokent at 10:42 AM on March 8

I just saw Stories We Tell in the theatre, but I imagine it'll be available for home viewing soon (as is the way with movies these days). It's a documentary by actor/director Sarah Polley (Away From Her, Take This Waltz) about family secrets and features interviews with her surviving parent, her siblings, and her late mother's friends and acquaintances. I think there would be plenty to talk about, because people have differing views over how much of one's private life (or a parent's private life) one should make public.

The less you know about it going in, the better.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:43 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Stanley Tucci's Blind Date

Mary and Max

And then for good, campy fun, Bubba Ho-Tep

And Highway 61, mentioned above, is so random and weird and, well, you just have to watch it.

Which reminds me of Freeway with Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland. I can never think of Kiefer the same way again.

And how about a craving for frog popsicles after watching The Triplets of Belleville? The French making fun of French stereotypes.

And for some interesting gender commentary, Ma Vie En Rose and Flawless.
posted by jillithd at 11:45 AM on March 8

Birth
Chasing Sleep
posted by extramundane at 11:45 AM on March 8

This isn't a film suggestion, but a resource suggestion: the New York University School of Medicine has an arts and literature database (includes film and TV) that you can search by keyword. It's partly intended to be a resource for physicians/physician educators who run discussion groups like yours--book clubs or film clubs.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:47 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

There are so many that get people talking. There are some, like Moon, Primer, Swimming Pool, Impostor, and Love Crime that get people talking because the question is, "What really happened?" Or movies about violence, or our enjoyment of violence, like Funny Games, the original Vanishing, White Ribbon, or pretty much any torture porn movie (people will always talk animatedly about those). I took a class in college about art censorship and legalities and we argued a lot about The Dreamers, The Doom Generation, Kids (and more recently Ken Park), American Psycho, Irreversible, Crash, and Salo. Then there are the famously horrible movies that are fun to talk/argue about, like Southland Tales, Caligula, and Showgirls. And movies that some people consider to be genius and beautiful and others think are boring and self-indulgent, like Tree of Life, Melancholia, General Orders No. 9, any Qatsi film, Jeanne Dielman, Synechdoche, NY, Me and You and Everyone We Know, and The Fountain. I also remember talking for a long time about I Am Love (mostly about Tilda's character - Birth is like that too), I Heart Huckabees, and The Beach (utopias, would you or wouldn't you go, what you would have done differently). I just saw The Master and we talked about that for a long time after.
posted by theuninvitedguest at 11:57 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

-Lars Von Trier's Europa Trilogy: (The Element of Crime, Epidemic, Europa). Lars von Trier makes schlocky shit these days, but these early films are so fucking good. Maybe skip Epidemic.

-The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the greatest and most underrated films of all time. You'll find something to talk about.

-Early, pre-Kinski Herzog. Fata Morgana, Even Dwarfs Started Small, and Signs of Life.

-Early Dogme 95: The Idiots, The Celebration, and Mifune's Last Song.
posted by ablazingsaddle at 12:04 PM on March 8