Most Mindblowing/Ambitious films ever made

[Max J Power]

No one said No Country For Old Men yet? That movie has one of the most ambitious, convention-defying endings I've ever seen.

In addition to the other Charlie Kaufman-scripted films others mentioned, Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York are both extremely ambitious (even if Synecdoche wasn't something I loved).

 

[bullets]

A Clockwork Orange

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

Moon

Sunshine

12 Monkeys

The Prestige

Fight Club

Special

Primer

District 9

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Source Code

Didn't see this one getting mentioned so soon. good call

 

[Octoberist]

Alien:

It's wet, sexual, creative and influential.

 

[Secret Fawful]

Von Trier's Antichrist

 

[Crockett]

Von Trier's Antichrist

Uh, this one slipped my mind. It was interesting to see him tackling a horror route with Anitchrist and it's on top of his most ambitious works definitely, I'd put Europa (one of the films in the Europa trilogy) there too, it's quite ambitious with its subject it delve into as well and it's good too.

 

[Venomfan]

Lord of the Rings

 

[mclay18]

Blade Runner
Rashomon

Those are the ones that immediately come to mind. Inception comes pretty close, because I laud Christopher Nolan for pulling an ambitious and conceptually-challenging film and making it accessible for moviegoers. No wonder he spent a decade writing and re-writing it.

I see why 2001 are on some people's lists, but I think BR and Rashomon are just better overall.

 

[Ipodman]

Transformers

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

Schindler's List handles a important subject on a pretty mass scale and does a pretty good job of giving an idea what it was like to a mainstream (not just arty farty) audience. Ralph Fiennes character does alot of brutal stuff but in pretty much every scene (the gun jammed stand out for me) it bluntly shows a sub-human attitude. Some people have even accused it as Jewish propaganda. I don't know about that, but really wouldn't care if it was. Sure beats promoting the idea of killing them.

 

[Electrofarce]

And, of course, The Room.

"Oh hai Mark"

Haha that film had me rolling. t:

 

[Electrofarce]

A Clockwork Orange

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

Moon

Sunshine

12 Monkeys

The Prestige

Fight Club

Special

Primer

District 9

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Source Code

Great list. I've seen all of these except Source Code. I hear good things.

 

[misjuevos]

star wars a new hope
planet of the apes(original)
tron

 

[hopefuldreamer]

Great list. I've seen all of these except Source Code. I hear good things.

It was okay. Not the best in the world, but it certainly left me feeling a bit disturbed.

Wanna add:

The Box

Martyrs (French)

The Idiots (German)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Trainspotting

American Psycho

The Exorcist (for it's time)

Planet of the Apes (for it's time... I mean that ending blew everyone's minds back then lol)

The Passion of the Christ

Sucker Punch (whether you like it or not, it had ambition)

The Wicker Man (original)

And I'd even go for 'Buried'. I mean, having an entire film with just one actor in a coffin is pretty ambitious, and personally it worked for me.

 

[redhawk23]

But it still looks fake as hell in alot of places. Like a Playstation video game.
In Jurrasic Park and Terminator 2 the blend with reality is more convincing imo and even today still holds up incredibly well. That was what, 1992-1993?

Turn off the notstalgia blinders.

Also, seriously, you'll have to direct me to the nearest place to buy these videogame systems, they sound insane.

 

[redhawk23]

If we're going to talk ambition and Cameron then the Abyss must enter the equation, crappy ending not withstanding The amount of resources he used and the things he demanded of his actors were kind of absurd considering this was a James Cameron who had not yet made T2, Titanic, or Avatar.

So much of the film actually is filmed in the dark underwater, or in tight enclosed spaces. Some of the actors started having nervous breakdowns.

Furthermore, esentially for a single scene the effects teams working on the Abyss had to invent and repurpose technologies in a way that would lead to the techniques that would make T2 and Jurassic Park possible to begin with.

This is an oddly overlooked film.

 

[terry78]

Yeah, I do have to agree about Transformers. That was one franchise you knew they could NEVER put in live action, ever. It wasn't the best interpretation, but I give Bay credit for making it work for the most part.

 

[:eek:]

Gone with the Wind. I mean, an almost four hour long movie in colour, that surely must have been something special when it was released in 1939. If we're talking about ambitious movies from a technical point

 

[redhawk23]

Gone with the Wind. I mean, an almost four hour long movie in colour, that surely must have been something special when it was released in 1939. If we're talking about ambitious movies from a technical point

Not to mention they had to burn most of the sets from a lot of their other movies just to film it, including everything from King Kong's skull island.

 

[Visceral]

THE DARK KNIGHT

go cry about it.

 

[LOBO3315a]

The Wizard of Oz

Lord of the Rings - all of them.

2001

The Watchmen

Titanic

Jurassic Park

Aliens (still the best sequel ever)

The Matrix - the original

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

The Seven Samurai

Saving Private Ryan

Schindler's List

Blade Runner

E.T.

 

[redhawk23]

TDK is like the Goodwin's Law of the Hype. The longer a thread goes the probability that TDK will be mentioned approaches 1.

 

[Visceral]

would you like cries with that whamburger?

 

[The Morningstar]

I don't actually understand what is ambitious or mindblowing about TDK? Not crying, just a serious question.

 

[redhawk23]

Wasn't crying about it just saying that it comes up in every thread eventually, similar to how Nazis will come up eventually.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

Turn off the notstalgia blinders..

What "notstalgia" blinders? I have watched both movies several times and both with-in this month. Time has barely touched them. And in the time period released, they were far more impressive. Motion capture and CGI have been done to death in movies pre-avatar. We are saturated with them, so it's not mind blowing at all. Jurrasic Park and Terminator 2 in the context of time, are. That's an objective opinion from someone who was around then and now, not "notstalgia".

I think another good one is probably Lord Of The Rings. Not so much for the digital effects but weta's (very) extensive physical work. Alot of the scenes in the movie's aren't fully digitally rendered buildings but actually miniatures. And even though alot of the soldiers are done with a computer, hunderds of them were wearing armour created by weta.

Also, seriously, you'll have to direct me to the nearest place to buy these videogame systems, they sound insane.

Regardless of all the effects being thrown out, it looks phony. I assume this is because pretty much, all of it, or most of it, is digital effects on the characters as well as the enviroments. The camera shots tend to swing around like a video game because the camera has no physical constraints. People pick that up watching. Most shots in Lord Of The Rings that were convincing mixed practical effect with real backgrounds and/or digital effects. The fakest part (like avatar) were usually wacky camera work. Like Legolas surfing the oliphaun in Return Of The King.

When I watch Lord Of The Rings barring some fake looking battle-scenes (particularly in Return Of The King which look pretty bad) I'm not consciously thinking about the effect itself rather what the effect has achieved naturally accepting it. You can say "oh that's because avatars effects are much better". No son, no. It's because Avatars effects are much less effective and nobody likes furrys.