Samsara i liked all of it except the clay face office drone.
This list is missing Belly and Do The Right Thing though.
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Last Emperor - freaking beautiful
Recently re-watched one of my old time faves, A Place in the Sun. Rewatching it, this time I really noticed the cinematography. It reminded me a lot of The Night of the Hunter.
The Fall IS just ridiculous, itâs one of the first I thought of when I saw the subject. Iâve seen about 1/2 on the big screen and canât argue against any of them but Kurasawaâs RAN should be on the list.
A few others that come to mind: Singhâs The Cell isnât as good as The Fall, but still gorgeous, City of Men, Ultraviolet, House of Flying Daggers
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I havenât seen samsara. I enjoyed Baraka, but I preferred Barakaâs predecessor Koyaanisqatsi.
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Itâs on Netflix right now.
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It was so lush and beautiful and then the story fell so flat for me that it ruined it.
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The Quatsi trilogy is amazing viewing; Koyaanisqatsi is more of a âpointedâ film in its imagery and more focused than Baraka. But for images of sheer beauty, Baraka and Samsara are visual feasts. I actually agree that Samsara is more beautiful â itâs a visual coffee-table book â but seemed more random and the music didnât move me the way the Baraka soundtrack did.
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Literally?
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I caught it on the Zigfieldâs astonishing screen about ten years ago. Tiny crowd, so we kind of had the place to ourselves. Surreal but amazing.
Literally.
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I would have thought that of all Greenaway films âThe Draughtsmanâs Contractâ was the most beautiful.
I canât speak to that one as I havenât seen it. So many films, so little free time.
I couldnât decide between the colour-co-ordinated âHeroâ, the sweeping âLawrence of Arabiaâ or the mystical âPicnic at Hanging Rockâ but then I remembered âOnce Upon a Time in Anatolia.â The night-time search for the buried body in the Anatolian steppe and the later appearance of the innkeeperâs daughter bringing tea, her face illuminated by a lamp on the tray are scenes of breathtaking beauty unlike anything else I can think of. Not a movie for Michael Bay fans but highly recommended to the patient movie fan (and people who donât mind subtitles.)
Agreed. Of course, Ultraviolet is hardly the height of SF filmmaking either.
William Dieterleâs PORTRAIT OF JENNY
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Havenât seen that one, but Princess Mononoke is definitely in my top five most gloriously gorgeous movies.
I canât really think of any live action movies that have struck me as beautiful in the moment when I was watching themâŚ
Thereâs a lot of shots in Jacksonâs Lord of the Rings (specifically the Two Towers) that strike me right in the gut as goddamn beautiful. But Iâm not so sure itâs the cinematography so much as the fact that New Zealand is one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Maybe 2001 could make it up there for me. The set design is pretty pleasing to me. The toroidal inhabited portion of the spacecraft with artificial gravity looks just like how I imagine a centrifuge system for that type of mission would work.
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I think Joe Wrightâs films deserve a place (in the top 50). Atonement, Pride and Prejudice. Anna Karenina tries to get away from that naturalistic feel, though.
Maybe heâs mimicing a master, though, and Iâm not cultured enough to recognize imitation.
I like some of the cinematography in Scorseseâs films-- Last Temptation of Christ, Bringing Out the Dead, though maybe I should be crediting Michael Ballhaus and Robert Richardson. Though perhaps those arenât beautiful,âŚ
