These are not feel good movies at all but I think really send important messages. Not for kids, but at 16+ would be good. There’s very important takeaway messages in both.
Grave of the Fireflies
Requiem for a Dream
Get Crazy (1983). Just a fun piece of silliness with a cameo from Lou Reed.
And Electric Larry
Lucky Number Slevin
Man On Fire
Syriana
Equilibrium
And for some solid Australian cinema: Mystery Road
They Live. I stumbled across it on TV while exhausted at 2 am one night and it had me locked in the whole time.
I used this movie as the basis for at least three school assignments in high school. Brilliant.
Full Metal Jacket.
Spirited Away. In my opinion the most Miyazaki movie. It’s also just amazing. I’ve probably seen it a dozen times now.
Children of Men.
One of my all time favorites. I usually recommend it along with I Origins. They hit differently, but scratch the same itch for me.
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead
Cloud Atlas
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Tora Tora Tora!
Oh Brother Where Art Thou
Gone with the Wind
I get that most people are just listing their favourite movies, and that’s fair, but I feel like a lot of them are already well watched.
My suggestion is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Everything about it is a stunning piece of cinema that got massively overlooked at the time, and I don’t really know why. It stars Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, has a score by Nick Cave (who has a cameo) and Warren Ellis, and has cinematography by the mighty Roger Deakins.
On the cinematography; you could pause it at almost any point, take a screengrab, and print it out for display. It’s a stunningly well shot movie.
Nothing about the movie is fast. Everything takes place as it needs to, in its own time, all creeping glacially towards what you know is going to happen.
I adore this movie. I showed it to my kid a couple of years ago, fearful that he would hate it. Turned out he loved it as much as I do. It’s the best western I’ve ever seen, but to call it a western does it a disservice.
For the few people who didn’t already watch it, and the best movie of all time :
Mad Max: Fury road (2015 ) by Miller .
This is what film story telling is about: having an entire weird universe told through visual medium. The 1st half hour has mad max gagged and incapable of talking, and it is amazing. Preferably on big screen.
A gem from the past:
Taboo(1999), by Nagisa Ôshima,
a samurai movie with hint of homosexuality. and an ending that can only be understood by paying close attention to the sound off screen.
A classic:
Seven samurai(1954), Kurosawa.
Just enjoy the black and white shot , and immerse in old Japanese culture
Natural Born Killers
Many good ones were already mentioned
But from memory:
- The snatch
- The big Lebowsky
- Clerks
- American Psycho
- 2001 a space odissey
- Blade Runner (possibly the directors cut)
- Apocalypse now (possibly the redux version)
- Full metal jacket
- The godfather (first 2 movies, the rest is not as good)
- Fight club
- Alien
- The Truman show
- In the mouth of madness
- They live
- The terminator (first 2)
- Animal house
- the dollar trilogy from Sergio Leone
- Once upon a time in America
- pulp fiction
- reservoir dogs
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
The Matrix