Chris Connelly's Pretentious List of Weird and Boring Movies You Probably Won't Like
by PlanetConn | created - 22 Aug 2013 | updated - 16 Jun 2016 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Persona (1966)
Not Rated | 83 min | Drama, Thriller
A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are melding together.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand
Votes: 130,999
Persona, for me, is essentially the perfect example of Ingmar Bergman; it's elements have been parodied from everything from Academy Award winning films, to children's cartoons.
It's Bergman's signature style of sublime and disturbing sexuality and mania that makes Persona an incredibly visceral and emotional experience - choked full of tricks of cinematography and filmmaking that is rarely emulated in today's modern cinema.
2. The Master (2012)
R | 138 min | Drama, History
A Naval veteran arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future - until he is tantalized by the Cause and its charismatic leader.
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson | Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Jesse Plemons
Votes: 186,281 | Gross: $16.38M
In 2012, The Master was met with praise from critics, but confusion and downright hatred by many in the general audience. Upon viewing the film, the misunderings surrounding exactly what The Master is become clearly evident; building off his reserved yet undeniably intense screenwriting success in There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson attempts to tell a story of two men's symbiotic a struggle against societal bounds and animal urges.
Ultimately this question for understanding of the human subconscious renders the plot meaningless, the story futile, and the progression of the characters nonexistent. But that stark deviation from established screenwriting techniques and stern adherence to admiring the human and psychology drama of its main characters lifts The Master far beyond the meager trappings of it's story.
In addition to the deft and innovative screenwriting, PTA continues to prove himself a master in the art of direction, weaving together all of the right elements of cinematography, score, and acting performances to form a resoundingly whole film of extremely high quality.
3. Badlands (1973)
PG | 94 min | Action, Crime, Drama
An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town, and her older greaser boyfriend, embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota Badlands.
Director: Terrence Malick | Stars: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Ramon Bieri
Votes: 78,432
4. Days of Heaven (1978)
PG | 94 min | Drama, Romance
A hot-tempered farm laborer convinces the woman he loves to marry their rich but dying boss so that they can have a claim to his fortune.
Director: Terrence Malick | Stars: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz
Votes: 62,786
Terrance Mallick has the ability to imbibe his films with the spirit and sentiment of the human condition better than probably any director alive today. While The Tree of Life is the pinical of his adaptation of the human condition from reality to fiction, Days of Heaven also offers innumerable examples of what was to come later I'm Mallick's career.
There's a grittiness, and unsettlingly and strangely alien cloud that hangs throughout Days of Heaven's run time,
5. Upstream Color (2013)
Not Rated | 96 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.
Director: Shane Carruth | Stars: Amy Seimetz, Frank Mosley, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig
Votes: 34,973 | Gross: $0.44M
On the surface, Upstream Color is, by far, the strangest film I've ever seen. And I doubt few stranger movies exist at all. It's plot revolves around the bizarre tale of a woman having mind-controlling worms implanted into her brain and the ultimate linking of her consciousness with that of a common pig. Yes...that's the plot.
Beyond that, one would begin to assume that it's meant to be an allegory of some kind of economic or political message; an indictment of a set type of thinking or system.
But instead, as he explained later, the director instead seeks to explain something much more broad and less judgmental; merely divulging into how the human psyche deals with exterior stimuli.
If that all sounds just as strange and farflung as the plot itself, that's because it very much is.
6. Winter Light (1963)
Not Rated | 81 min | Drama
A small-town priest struggles with his faith.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand, Gunnel Lindblom, Max von Sydow
Votes: 27,108
7. The Samurai (1967)
GP | 101 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
After professional hitman Jef Costello is seen by witnesses his efforts to provide himself an alibi drive him further into a corner.
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville | Stars: Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, Cathy Rosier
Votes: 57,208 | Gross: $0.04M
8. Wild Strawberries (1957)
Not Rated | 91 min | Drama, Romance
After living a life marked by coldness, an aging professor is forced to confront the emptiness of his existence.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand
Votes: 115,038
9. Blade Runner (1982)
R | 117 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A blade runner must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
Votes: 823,463 | Gross: $32.87M
10. Alien (1979)
R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 951,545 | Gross: $78.90M
11. There Will Be Blood (2007)
R | 158 min | Drama
A story of family, religion, hatred, oil and madness, focusing on a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business.
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds, Martin Stringer
Votes: 641,459 | Gross: $40.22M
12. The French Connection (1971)
R | 104 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A pair of NYPD detectives in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles, but stopping them and capturing their leaders proves an elusive goal.
Director: William Friedkin | Stars: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco
Votes: 135,763 | Gross: $15.63M
13. On the Waterfront (1954)
Approved | 108 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
An ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses, including his older brother, as he starts to connect with the grieving sister of one of the syndicate's victims.
Director: Elia Kazan | Stars: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger
Votes: 165,007 | Gross: $9.60M
As strange as it may sound...I'm not really a big fan of American cinema. The American method of telling human drama bluntly and realistically often bores me more than it intices me.
With that in mind, I delayed seeing this seminal Marlon Brando film for several years, purely due to its publicity as a classic American film.
While ultimately, it is little more than that - a rather straight and to the point drama/thriller with a bit of 50s charm - it's indeed Marlon Brando's incredible performance that lifts or into the high echelons of cinema history.
14. The Big Heat (1953)
Passed | 89 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Thriller
Tough cop Dave Bannion takes on a politically powerful crime syndicate.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby
Votes: 29,192
15. M (1931)
Passed | 99 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut, Otto Wernicke
Votes: 168,538 | Gross: $0.03M
16. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
R | 133 min | Drama
In the Fall of 1963, a Korean War veteran and criminal pleads insanity and is admitted to a mental institution, where he rallies up the scared patients against the tyrannical nurse.
Director: Milos Forman | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Michael Berryman, Peter Brocco
Votes: 1,072,862 | Gross: $112.00M
17. 8 1/2
Crime | Announced
Nine Hollywood legendary actresses stuck in a retirement home take revenge on a sadistic studio head who once tortured them and made a fortune off them.
Director: Susanna Lo
18. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
R | 118 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
An oddball journalist and his psychopathic lawyer travel to Las Vegas for a series of psychedelic escapades.
Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire, Michael Lee Gogin
Votes: 301,628 | Gross: $10.68M
19. Brazil (1985)
R | 132 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A bureaucrat in a dystopic society becomes an enemy of the state as he pursues the woman of his dreams.
Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond
Votes: 211,295 | Gross: $9.93M
20. Dead Man (1995)
R | 121 min | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
On the run after murdering a man, accountant William Blake encounters a strange Native American man named Nobody who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.
Director: Jim Jarmusch | Stars: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Crispin Glover, Lance Henriksen
Votes: 103,116 | Gross: $1.04M
21. Filth (I) (2013)
R | 97 min | Action, Comedy, Crime
A corrupt, junkie cop with bipolar disorder attempts to manipulate his way through a promotion in order to win back his wife and daughter while also fighting his own inner demons.
Director: Jon S. Baird | Stars: James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Poots
Votes: 115,871 | Gross: $0.03M
Filth's overall experience plays out as a combination of A Clockwork Orange and In Bruges, with a little sprinkling of the over the top hedonism of The Wolf of Wall Street thrown in for good measure.
The director's inexperience shows through at times in a lacking of true narrative subtext, Filth is still worth a viewing purely for it's uncompromising tale of mental sickness and the vile ways in which it can be made manifest.
22. Network (1976)
R | 121 min | Drama
A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit, but finds that his message may be difficult to control.
Director: Sidney Lumet | Stars: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall
Votes: 170,723
While much more of a straight forward crowd pleaser than almost any other movie on my list, Network ultimately becomes an extremely multilayered and meaningful tale purely due to circumstance; the depressed and downtrodden spirit of the mid-to-late 1970s strikes a eerily similar tone to the economic and social downturn of the late 2000s.
23. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
R | 180 min | Biography, Comedy, Crime
Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stock-broker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey
Votes: 1,584,421 | Gross: $116.90M
24. Spring Breakers (2012)
R | 94 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
Four college girls hold up a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation. While partying, drinking, and taking drugs, they are arrested, only to be bailed out by a drug and arms dealer.
Director: Harmony Korine | Stars: Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine
Votes: 148,829 | Gross: $14.12M
25. Pain & Gain (2013)
R | 129 min | Action, Biography, Comedy
A trio of bodybuilders in Florida get caught up in an extortion ring and a kidnapping scheme that goes terribly wrong.
Director: Michael Bay | Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub
Votes: 229,389 | Gross: $49.88M
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