I just finished my first year of college, and this semester I took a philosophy class called "Knowledge and Reality" In the class we watched a movie each weeks that had some sort of philosophical ties. (12 Monkeys, The Matrix, Blade Runner, Being John Malkovic, etc.) Since then I have been on a search for good movies similar to these. Any suggestions? They don't have to be explicitly philosophical, just make you think.
There's always Dr. Strangelove. Doesn't get much more blatantly philosophical than that. I'm blanking on any others right now. I hate it when that happens.
"The Sea that Thinks." It's a European (Dutch? -- it's mostly in English) film, I think from 2000 or so. Really really great.
The Fountainhead The Fountainhead. - Review - movie reviews New Statesman, Nov 20, 1998 by Jonathan Romney It's clear from the opening credits of King Vidor's The Fountainhead that the film is in the grip of phallic dementia. It begins with a skyscraper swinging round to turn into a book - the best-seller by novelist and ideologue Ayn Rand. Rand herself adapted The Fountainhead, and there's no mistake who's pulling the rhetorical strings as a succession of sniffy bureaucrats lecture a monolithic, shadow-cloaked figure about the virtues of mediocrity in the building trade: "Do you want to stand alone against the whole world? There's no room for originality in architecture!" That figure turns out to be the most statue-like of Hollywood heroes, Gary Cooper. He's architect Howard Roark, a man of absolute vision, and by golly he knows it. "A building has integrity, just like a man ... I set my own standards," he declares. The Fountainhead is less a drama than the illustration of an ideology. Born in Russia, and a hater of the revolution, Ayn Rand dreamed of America as an Eden of individualism. When she got there - becoming first a Cecil B de Mille extra, later a novelist and popular philosopher - she expounded her belief in the sovereignty of the individual. For Rand, the self comes above society, termed variously "the masses", "the collective", "the mob". This leads to some peculiar redefinitions of familiar terms: for Rand, there's nothing more corrupt than "altruism". Hence such bizarre proclamations as Roark's warning: "The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing." http://clickit.go2net.com/search?po....com/m0FQP/4412_127/53392402/p1/article.jhtml
Clerks - free will vs. determinism. A Clockwork Orange - how does or should society respond to violence 2001: A Space Odyssey - what defines man? Full Metal Jacket - All of the above, in parts.
"Castaway" or what was the name of that flick where Tom Hanks is stranded on an island for years: the importance of the other for the preservation of self. Humans are a social species, and they need dialogue, or they lose their sense of self. "The Name of the Rose": What is? And what is faith? -- But read the book by Umberto Eco too.
eXistenZ - a better examination of simulation than the Matrix (albeit more gooey), draws heavily from Baudrillard, Schopenhauer Fight Club - "everything is a copy of a copy of a copy..." Last Year at Marienbad - French new wave art film, looks at memory and subjectivity Eyes Wide Shut - on fidelity, sex The Trial - Orson Welles does Kafka, looks at questions of state power Videodrome - Cronenberg examines media, violence, and the "new flesh" Hour of the Wolf - art, the artist, madness Persona - another Bergman film, this time analyzing identity and everything StarOfEight listed... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Josh
Being There Sleeper Magic Christian Joe Hill The Grapes Of Wrath Ran THX 1138 As Good As It Gets One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest From 'One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest' "There had been times when I'd wandered around in a daze for as long as two weeks after a shock treatment, living in that foggy, jumbled blur which is a whole lot like the ragged edge of sleep, that grey zone between light and dark, or between sleeping and waking or living and dying, where you know you're not unconscious any more but don't know yet what day it is or who you are or what's the use of coming back at all - for two weeks. If you don't have a reason to wake up you can loaf around in that grey zone for a long, fuzzy time, or if you want to bad enough I found you can come fighting right out of it.. Dead Poets Society
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - It's quite recent, it has Jim Carrey playing a serious role, it gets REALLY philosophical especially near the end. It is one of the best concept movies I have ever seen, here is a link, but the review may spoil some of the movie if you like to figure out everything on your own. http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808457310&intl=us
Do not read a review before you see this film. It's much, much better if you don't know what's going to happen. And much credit for Jim Carrey for turning in a restrained role that consisted of actual acting, rather muscle spasms and catch phrases.
If you buy the Candian DVD, you get a commentary by Cronenberg where he goes on and on about the "gristle gun" -- I get the feeling he was quite impressed with it too. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Josh
Yeah, that gun took imagination. If you like clerks, dogma will give you a look at belief and being led blindly. Also the best Jay and Silent Bob stuff ever Dead Poets Society A few good men Pulp Fiction- There's about three different meanings to pull out of that one
The Seven Samurai is about loyalty and duty, and ultimately about pacifism as well i suppose. And it does have Samurai.
