From terrifying horror to undeniable classics, there are some films that you simply have
to see before you die.
If you haven't seen them already, here are some films you absolutely need to put on your
bucket list.
Dogtooth is a dark satire brings to light the insane pressure parents are under to mold
their children into decent people - and the horrific consequences if they choose to go
against that noble effort.
To say much more about the plot of Dogtooth would ruin it for the uninitiated.
Still, what we can say is that it involves Rocky 4, a VCR wielded as a weapon, and plenty
of taboo subjects.
It's not exactly the ideal of a feel-good movie.
Still, if you end up watching it, you'll come away from the film incredibly thankful that
your parents didn't resemble the nameless and despotic duo in Dogtooth.
Widely hailed as the scariest film of 2018, Hereditary is far more than a terrifying horror
movie.
It's a story about family and fate, two very scary concepts.
Written and directed by Ari Aster, Hereditary tells the story of Annie Graham, a woman dealing
with the recent death of her mother and her own complicated relationship with her surviving
family.
All that family drama isn't helped by the fact that there seems to be a sinister force
at work, moving the family around like they're merely dolls in a miniature house.
It would be a huge disservice to reveal too much about the plot, but we do have to sing
the praises of Toni Collette as Annie, a woman who alternates between extreme grief and homicidal
rage.
As her family life and sanity crumble around her, Annie struggles to save her children
while threatening them at the exact same time.
"Don't you swear at me you little s---!.
Don't you ever raise your voice at me!
I am your mother!
Do you understand?"
It's Collette's incredible acting abilities that lend so much horror to the story and
the film's central theme.
According to Hereditary, we're all just products of our family, whether that's the home we
were raised in or our DNA.
Whatever your family life was like, chances are that you can relate to the stomach-churning
horror of Hereditary.
Cloud Atlas is a big, messy, sprawling movie with a reach that exceeds its grasp.
But while the movie is far from perfect, you've got to give it major points for ambition.
The film follows a small group of people as they live, die, and repeat their lives throughout
history.
It's an incredible cast of actors from Tom Hanks and Halle Berry to Hugo Weaving and
Susan Sarandon.
But while faces change and the scenery transforms, every segment tackles the same theme in a
brand new way.
Cloud Atlas is a movie about oppression - how, throughout time, the mighty have always tried
to impose their will on the weak.
But while the powerful will continue to exercise a philosophy of "might makes right," there
will always be a few good men and women who try to resist, no matter the time or place.
"You think I'm crazy?
Huh?
Is that what he told ya?!
Well, listen up!"
Possibly the most intense actor on the planet, Michael Shannon is the king of playing erratic
men on the verge of losing their minds.
In Take Shelter, he's at the top of his game.
Shannon stars as Curtis, a man suffering from incredible nightmares.
At first, Curtis worries he's going crazy, but these dreams feel a lot more like prophecies
than fantasies.
So he decides to build a storm shelter, just in case his visions come true and his family
needs somewhere to wait out the apocalypse.
You can read the film as being about a man suffering from mental illness, or you can
see it as a tale about a middle-class American suffering from existential uncertainty and
mounting poverty.
Either way, Take Shelter examines what happens when paranoia sets in and how anxiety and
dread can tear your life apart.
In the 1960s, death squads roamed Indonesia, slaughtering an estimated 1.2 million people
accused of being communists.
These murderers were never brought to justice.
Instead, they became powerful figures in Indonesian society, bragging about their evil deeds and
answering to no one… until a filmmaker, Joshua Oppenheimer, showed up with a wild
idea.
He wanted these gangsters to make their own movie which would recreate their monstrous
deeds.
Meanwhile, Oppenheimer was creating a film of his own, resulting in the most disturbing
documentary ever made.
The Act of Killing digs deep into the nature of evil, focusing on the monsters who perpetrate
mass genocide and how they justify their bloody behavior.
The film is also a study in the nature of performance.
Thanks to their nightmarish movie, we get to see how the killers view themselves.
When one of the murderers begins showing signs of guilt, we're forced to ask if he's being
sincere or just playing for the camera.
A gut-punch of a movie, The Act of Killing is equaled in intensity only by its sequel,
The Look of Silence.
Watch them back-to-back for the most devastating double feature of all-time.
Colossal follows an alcoholic, unemployed woman named Gloria, played by Anne Hathaway
who's just been kicked out of her apartment.
With nowhere else to go, Gloria returns to her hometown, gets a job working for her childhood
friend Oscar, and then learns she's psychically connected to a giant monster that's attacking
South Korea.
Yeah, it's a pretty weird movie.
Gloria quickly discovers this skyscraper-sized monster materializes over Seoul whenever she
walks into a particular playground at a particular time of day.
Stranger still, the monster mimics her every move.
"Can you guess which film this is from?
Huh?"
"The f--- is going on?"
"Do you wanna make any requests?
Because, uh, this does not last that long."
At first, a drunken Gloria thinks it's a neat trick, but after realizing her superpower
is hurting people, she decides to get sober and clean up her life.
That's when Colossal takes a hard left turn, morphing into a completely different movie.
With a witty script and fantastic acting, Colossal is a brilliant study, and epic takedown,
of toxic masculinity in the 21st century.
Written and directed by Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris finds Owen Wilson playing Gil, an
obvious Woody Allen stand-in who earns his living writing screenplays.
Despite his Hollywood success, Gil dreams of writing a great novel, something that might
stand alongside the works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In fact, he wishes that he lived back in the 1920s.
Then, during a trip to Paris, Gil's wish magically comes true.
Stumbling through some sort of time portal, our hero finds himself back in the Jazz Age,
where he actually gets to meet all of his literary idols.
Most importantly, he runs into Adriana, a beautiful muse who immediately hits it off
with the time-traveling screenwriter.
Midnight in Paris is a fantastical love letter to the past, but even though the film basks
in the warm glow of memory, Allen is totally aware that nostalgia is a tricky thing.
As Gil soon learns, obsessing over the past is a guaranteed way to feel miserable in the
present.
No matter when you're from, life is always going to feel a little unfulfilling; stepping
back in time is never going to help.
Good Will Hunting tells the story of Will Hunting, a janitor who's also a genius with
some serious psychological baggage.
At the prompting of a professor, this foul-mouthed math whiz winds up in the office of a psychologist
played by the one and only Robin Williams.
Williams won an Academy Award for this performance, one that's equally sad and compassionate,
and his monologues are both hilarious and heartbreaking.
"You don't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than
you love yourself and I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much."
Of course, Williams isn't the only one with incredible acting chops on display.
Watching Matt Damon's cocky swagger crumble away is a glimpse into the actor's true talent,
and reason enough to put Good Will Hunting on your list if you haven't seen it.
After their Oscar-winning success with No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers got
theological with A Serious Man.
Borrowing from the Bible's book of Job, this 2009 parable tells the story of Larry, a Physics
teacher who can't catch a break.
His wife is cheating on him, his student is blackmailing him, his brother is in trouble
with the law, and somebody is trying to destroy his career.
With everything falling apart, Larry seeks the help of three rabbis, only to find that
their advice isn't exactly helpful.
Larry keeps looking for meaning in his never-ending parade of misery and never finds any answers.
In fact, A Serious Man has a pretty simple message: Larry isn't going to find any answers.
Nobody is.
This cynical film is the Coens at their most tragic.
The universe they build is one where you can't escape fate, and no matter how hard you try
to be a serious man, horrible things happen without reason.
Christopher Nolan's filmography is full of modern-day classics, but none are quite so
intricate or impressive as Inception.
This 2010 sci-fi flick follows a thief played by Leonardo DiCaprio who specializes in sneaking
into people's dreams and stealing their thoughts.
When he's offered a chance at getting his old life back, the crook and his crew take
part in a dangerous mission where they're hired to implant a memory in the mind of a
young businessman.
Their trippy con job takes them deep into this man's subconscious, and the gang must
maneuver through various dreams, allowing Nolan to create some truly staggering visuals.
An entire city folds over on itself, men fight in a rotating hallway with ever-shifting gravity,
and it's all accompanied by Hans Zimmer's pounding, driving score, which is one of the
best in his brilliant musical career.
The film works on multiple levels and its infamous ending still sparks debate to this
day.
In an era of often mindless blockbusters, Inception proved that big-budget films aren't
just for creating illusions.
They're also for giving audiences new ideas.
"You musn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."
Even though it's set in the near future, Her is a story that translates for any time period.
This Spike Jonze movie tells the story of Theodore, a divorced letter-writer played
by Joaquin Phoenix.
After befriending an operating system named Samantha, Theodore finds himself falling head
over heels for the attractive AI.
But romance between a man and a disembodied program brings all sorts of problems, especially
when you're as isolated and hurting as Theodore is.
Sure, the film examines the place technology holds in the world today, but really, it's
about a movie about loneliness and isolation.
It's a futuristic tale about ancient emotions: the joys of romance, the pain of a break-up,
and the depression that's grown worse in an era of social media.
On top of those heavy themes, Phoenix is phenomenal as a quiet, struggling writer, looking to
become whole again.
What's more, even though we never see Scarlett Johansson onscreen, she brings Samantha to
life with her voice, creating a fully developed character who's just as human as any actual
person.
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather is a movie that transcends the gangster genre.
Not only was this a pre-blockbuster blockbuster, but it transformed the way moviegoers thought
about the Mafia, turning gun-wielding criminals into flawed but sympathetic humans that were
bound by tradition, family, and honor.
The film also permeated pop culture with almost too many iconic lines to choose from:
"In a month, this Hollywood bigshot is gonna give you what you want."
"It's too late, Vince, they start shooting in a week."
"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."
Marlon Brando's performance secured the actor's spot in the pantheon of Hollywood legends,
and there are scenes from the film that are still seared into the collective consciousness
of all moviegoers.
And after The Godfather came to power in cinema history, it set the standard for all Mafia
movies to come.
With its memorable score, beautifully dark cinematography, and all-time performances,
The Godfather's greatness just can't be refused.
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