Dear online film diary,
by barnett_leon | created - 29 Oct 2014 | updated - 12 Sep 2021 | Publicthis is an ongoing list of films that have hit me hard
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1. Barry Lyndon (1975)
PG | 185 min | Adventure, Drama, War
An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's aristocratic position in 18th-century England.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger
Votes: 182,865
2. The Ascent (1977)
111 min | Drama, War
Two Soviet partisans on a mission to gather food contend with the winter cold, the occupying Germans, and their own psyches.
Director: Larisa Shepitko | Stars: Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Sergey Yakovlev, Lyudmila Polyakova
Votes: 10,090
3. Come and See (1985)
Not Rated | 142 min | Drama, Thriller, War
After finding an old rifle, a young boy joins the Soviet resistance movement against ruthless German forces and experiences the horrors of World War II.
Director: Elem Klimov | Stars: Aleksey Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius, Vladas Bagdonas
Votes: 96,979
4. Leviathan (2014)
R | 140 min | Crime, Drama
In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev | Stars: Aleksey Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova, Roman Madyanov, Vladimir Vdovichenkov
Votes: 56,878 | Gross: $1.09M
5. The Conversation (1974)
PG | 113 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest
Votes: 121,718 | Gross: $4.42M
6. Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Not Rated | 90 min | Drama
Recently released from a mental hospital, Karin rejoins her emotionally disconnected family in their island home, only to slip from reality as she begins to believe she is being visited by God.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Max von Sydow, Lars Passgård
Votes: 27,363
7. A Field in England (2013)
Not Rated | 90 min | Drama, History, Horror
Amid the Civil War in 17th-century England, a group of deserters flee from battle through an overgrown field. Captured by an alchemist, the men are forced to help him search to find a hidden treasure that he believes is buried in the field.
Director: Ben Wheatley | Stars: Julian Barratt, Peter Ferdinando, Richard Glover, Ryan Pope
Votes: 13,986 | Gross: $0.03M
8. 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: 57,045 | Gross: $0.04M
9. Wake in Fright (1971)
R | 109 min | Drama, Thriller
After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.
Director: Ted Kotcheff | Stars: Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay
Votes: 13,934 | Gross: $0.05M
10. Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
R | 102 min | Drama
While drag-racing through the American Southwest in a Chevrolet 150, a driver and his mechanic cross paths with an enigmatic hitchhiker and the tall tale-spinning driver of a GTO.
Director: Monte Hellman | Stars: James Taylor, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, Dennis Wilson
Votes: 13,409
11. A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
R | 155 min | Drama, Romance
Although wife and mother Mabel is loved by her husband Nick, her mental illness places a strain on the marriage.
Director: John Cassavetes | Stars: Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, Fred Draper, Lady Rowlands
Votes: 28,665 | Gross: $13.34M
12. The Vanishing (1988)
Not Rated | 107 min | Mystery, Thriller
Rex and Saskia, a young couple in love, are on vacation. They stop at a busy service station and Saskia is abducted. After three years and no sign of Saskia, Rex begins receiving letters from the abductor.
Director: George Sluizer | Stars: Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus
Votes: 44,054
13. House (1977)
Not Rated | 88 min | Comedy, Horror
A schoolgirl and six of her classmates travel to her aunt's country home, which turns out to be haunted.
Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi | Stars: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ôba, Ai Matsubara
Votes: 33,667
14. Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Not Rated | 147 min | Drama, Thriller
An entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara | Stars: Eiji Okada, Kyôko Kishida, Kôji Mitsui, Hiroko Itô
Votes: 22,664
15. The Haunting (1963)
G | 112 min | Horror
Hill House has stood for about 90 years and appears haunted: its inhabitants have always met strange, tragic ends. Now Dr. John Markway has assembled a team of people who he thinks will prove whether or not the house is haunted.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn
Votes: 42,458 | Gross: $2.62M
16. Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Approved | 137 min | Drama, Horror
A young couple trying for a baby moves into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, where they find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.
Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer
Votes: 234,858
17. Bitter Lake (2015)
136 min | Documentary
An experimental documentary that explores Saudi Arabia's relationship with the U.S. and the role this has played in the war in Afghanistan.
Director: Adam Curtis | Stars: George Bush, George W. Bush, Joanne Herring, Hamid Karzai
Votes: 3,519
18. Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
Not Rated | 139 min | Crime, Drama
Chronological exploits of Iwao Enokizu, a murderous thief on the run.
Director: Shôhei Imamura | Stars: Ken Ogata, Rentarô Mikuni, Chôchô Miyako, Mitsuko Baishô
Votes: 7,287
19. Black Cat (1968)
Not Rated | 99 min | Drama, Horror
Two women are raped and killed by samurai soldiers. Soon they reappear as vengeful ghosts who seduce and brutally murder the passing samurai.
Director: Kaneto Shindô | Stars: Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, Kei Satô, Rokkô Toura
Votes: 8,563
20. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)
Not Rated | 157 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A group of men set out in search of a dead body in the Anatolian steppes.
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan | Stars: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan
Votes: 50,243 | Gross: $0.14M
21. Red Desert (1964)
Not Rated | 117 min | Drama
In an industrial area, unstable Giuliana attempts to cope with life by starting an affair with a co-worker at the plant her husband manages.
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni | Stars: Monica Vitti, Richard Harris, Carlo Chionetti, Xenia Valderi
Votes: 17,614
22. Army of Shadows (1969)
Not Rated | 145 min | Drama, War
An account of underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France.
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville | Stars: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret
Votes: 25,819 | Gross: $0.74M
23. F for Fake (1973)
PG | 89 min | Documentary
A documentary about fraud and fakery.
Directors: Orson Welles, Gary Graver, Oja Kodar, François Reichenbach | Stars: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, François Reichenbach, Elmyr de Hory
Votes: 18,275
24. The Banishment (2007)
150 min | Drama, Romance
A trip to the pastoral countryside reveals a dark, sinister reality for a family from the city.
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev | Stars: Konstantin Lavronenko, Maria Bonnevie, Aleksandr Baluev, Dmitriy Ulyanov
Votes: 8,985
25. Funny Games (1997)
Not Rated | 108 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
Two violent young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.
Director: Michael Haneke | Stars: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering
Votes: 83,935
26. Balthazar (1966)
Not Rated | 95 min | Drama
The story of a mistreated donkey and the people around him. A study on saintliness and a sister piece to Bresson's Mouchette.
Director: Robert Bresson | Stars: Anne Wiazemsky, Walter Green, François Lafarge, Jean-Claude Guilbert
Votes: 22,795 | Gross: $0.04M
27. Titicut Follies (1967)
Unrated | 84 min | Documentary
Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside the Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater where people stay trapped in their madness.
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Votes: 5,101
28. The London Nobody Knows (1968)
53 min | Documentary
A trippy 45-minute documentary of late-1960s London that is a fascinating time capsule of the remnants of a bygone age before London's extensive redevelopment in the late 1960s.
Director: Norman Cohen | Star: James Mason
Votes: 393
29. The Wailing (2016)
TV-MA | 156 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
Soon after a stranger arrives in a little village, a mysterious sickness starts spreading. A policeman, drawn into the incident, is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.
Director: Na Hong-jin | Stars: Jun Kunimura, Hwang Jung-min, Kwak Do-won, Chun Woo-hee
Votes: 81,775
30. Symptoms (1974)
R | 92 min | Horror
A young woman is invited by her girlfriend, who lives in an English country mansion, to stay there with her. The estate, however, isn't quite what it seems--and neither is the friend who issued the invitation.
Director: José Ramón Larraz | Stars: Angela Pleasence, Peter Vaughan, Lorna Heilbron, Nancy Nevinson
Votes: 1,741
31. The Shout (1978)
86 min | Drama, Horror
A traveller by the name of Crossley forces himself upon a musician and his wife in a lonely part of Devon, and uses the aboriginal magic he has learned to displace his host.
Director: Jerzy Skolimowski | Stars: Alan Bates, Susannah York, John Hurt, Robert Stephens
Votes: 5,209
32. The Plague Dogs (1982)
PG-13 | 103 min | Animation, Adventure, Drama
Two dogs escape from a laboratory and are hunted as possible carriers of the bubonic plague.
Director: Martin Rosen | Stars: John Hurt, Christopher Benjamin, James Bolam, Nigel Hawthorne
Votes: 8,795
33. Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)
104 min | Drama, Fantasy
A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.
Director: Shûji Terayama | Stars: Kaoru Yachigusa, Keiko Niitaka, Masumi Harukawa, Kan Mikami
Votes: 2,403
34. Volcano: An Inquiry Into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry (1976)
100 min | Documentary
A documentary on the life of the alcoholic writer Malcolm Lowry, interspersed with readings of Lowry's work by Richard Burton. Lowry was born and educated in England. He moved to Mexico in ... See full summary »
Directors: Donald Brittain, John Kramer | Stars: Marjorie Bonner, Donald Brittain, John Buchan, Richard Burton
Votes: 212
35. Post Tenebras Lux (2012)
Not Rated | 115 min | Drama
Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complementary or if they strive to eliminate one another.
Director: Carlos Reygadas | Stars: Nathalia Acevedo, Adolfo Jiménez Castro, Rut Reygadas, Eleazar Reygadas
Votes: 5,940 | Gross: $0.04M
36. Tampopo (1985)
Not Rated | 114 min | Comedy
A truck driver stops at a small family-run noodle shop and decides to help its fledgling business. The story is intertwined with various vignettes about the relationship of love and food.
Director: Jûzô Itami | Stars: Ken Watanabe, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto, Koji Yakusho
Votes: 22,519 | Gross: $0.22M
37. Satantango (1994)
Not Rated | 439 min | Drama
On the eve of a large payment, residents of a collapsing collective farm see their plans turn into desolation when they discover that Irimiás, a former co-worker who they thought was dead, is returning to the community.
Director: Béla Tarr | Stars: Mihály Vig, Putyi Horváth, László feLugossy, Éva Almássy Albert
Votes: 12,556
38. The Structure of Crystal (1969)
Not Rated | 74 min | Drama
Jan and Marek used to study physics together but after graduation their paths were different. Jan got married and moved to the countryside. Marek stayed in Warsaw and now wants to persuade Jan to follow his path.
Director: Krzysztof Zanussi | Stars: Barbara Wrzesinska, Jan Myslowicz, Andrzej Zarnecki, Wladyslaw Jarema
Votes: 1,685
40. Hard to Be a God (2013)
Not Rated | 177 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In the distant future, a space traveler from Earth breaks a special law and interferes with the history of another, Medieval-like planet.
Director: Aleksey German | Stars: Leonid Yarmolnik, Aleksandr Chutko, Yuriy Tsurilo, Evgeniy Gerchakov
Votes: 6,360
41. Infinity (1992)
206 min | Drama
Reflecting on meaning of life, the hero of the movie involuntarily becomes the real participant of own memoirs. His fellow traveler - he 20 years ago, the young young man who isn't burdened... See full summary »
Director: Marlen Khutsiev | Stars: Vladislav Pilnikov, Aleksei Zelenov, Marina Khazova, Anna Tchernakova
Votes: 160
42. The Wayward Girl (1959)
Not Rated | 95 min | Drama, Romance
The story of a young Gerd, played by Liv Ullmann in her first leading role, who falls in love with a young boy. She is considered a 'loose' woman, and the boy's family does not accept their... See full summary »
Director: Edith Carlmar | Stars: Liv Ullmann, Atle Merton, Rolf Søder, Nanna Stenersen
Votes: 745
43. Five Easy Pieces (1970)
R | 98 min | Drama
A dropout from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil rigs when his life isn't spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels, and other points of interest.
Director: Bob Rafelson | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Green Bush, Fannie Flagg
Votes: 40,488 | Gross: $19.40M
44. Black Narcissus (1947)
Not Rated | 101 min | Drama
A group of nuns struggle to establish a convent in the Himalayas, while isolation, extreme weather, altitude, and culture clashes all conspire to drive the well-intentioned missionaries mad.
Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | Stars: Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird
Votes: 27,627
45. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
Not Rated | 75 min | Documentary
Filmmaker William Greaves auditioned acting students for a fictional drama, while simultaneously shooting the behind-the-scenes drama taking place.
Director: William Greaves | Stars: Patricia Ree Gilbert, Don Fellows, Jonathan Gordon, Bob Rosen
Votes: 2,511
46. The Long Goodbye (1973)
R | 112 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
Private investigator Philip Marlowe helps a friend out of a jam, but in doing so gets implicated in his wife's murder.
Director: Robert Altman | Stars: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell
Votes: 37,138 | Gross: $0.96M
47. Nashville (1975)
R | 160 min | Comedy, Drama, Music
Over the course of a few hectic days, numerous interrelated people prepare for a political convention.
Director: Robert Altman | Stars: Keith Carradine, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Shelley Duvall
Votes: 28,538 | Gross: $14.82M
48. The Wages of Fear (1953)
Not Rated | 131 min | Adventure, Drama, Thriller
In a decrepit South American village, four men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment without the equipment that would make it safe.
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot | Stars: Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck, Folco Lulli
Votes: 66,503
49. Dersu Uzala (1975)
G | 142 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The Russian army sends an explorer on an expedition to the snowy Siberian wilderness where he makes friends with a seasoned local hunter.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Maksim Munzuk, Yuriy Solomin, Mikhail Bychkov, Vladimir Khrulyov
Votes: 33,469
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