griggs's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List
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One of the most unconventional and experimental films ever made, Wavelength is a structural film of a 45-minute long zoom in on a window over a period of a week.- Director:
- Michael Snow
- Cast:
- Hollis Frampton, Lyne Grossman, Naoto Nakazawa
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Weekend (1967)Week End
"Weekend" follows a bickering, scheming bourgeois couple who leave Paris for the French countryside to claim an inheritance by nefarious means. Almost immediately, they become entangled in a cataclysmic traffic jam, which is just the beginning of a journey fraught with violence and dangerous encounters: rape, murder, pillage and even cannibalism. - Director:
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Cast:
- Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne, Jean-Pierre Kalfon
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Planet of the Apes (1968)El planeta de los simios
A bewildered astronaut (Charlton Heston) crash-lands on a strange planet ruled by apes who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport.- Director:
- Franklin J. Schaffner
- Cast:
- Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter
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Hour of the Wolf (1968)Vargtimmen
Haunted by demons past and present, artist Johan Borg (Max Von Sydow) fights a losing battle to retain his sanity and maintain his artistic prowess. His wife Alma (Liv Ullmann), desperate to help him, finds herself starting to share his hallucinations. But as Johan's mind continues to unravel, Alma is forced to choose between her love... and her life. - Director:
- Ingmar Bergman
- Cast:
- Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Gertrud Fridh
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"2001: A Space Odyssey" is a countdown to tomorrow, a road map to human destiny, a quest for the infinite. It is a dazzling, Academy Award-winning visual achievement, a compelling drama of man vs. machine, a stunning meld of music and motion. It may be the masterwork of director Stanley Kubrick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke) and it will likely excite, inspire and enthrall for generations. To begin his voyage into the future, Kubrick visits our prehistoric ape-ancestry past, then leaps millennia (via one of the most mind-blowing jump cuts ever conceived) into colonized space, and ultimately whisks astronaut Bowman (Keir Dullea) into uncharted realms of space, perhaps even into immortality. - Director:
- Stanley Kubrick
- Cast:
- Keir Dullea, Douglas Rain, Gary Lockwood
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Faces (1968)The Dynosaurs
An incisive exploration of the disintegration of a bourgeois marriage, 'Faces' traces the shifting character dynamics as Richard (John Marley) and Maria's (Lynn Carlin) fourteen-year marriage implodes. Maria joins her friends looking for romantic satisfaction elsewhere and has an unfulfilling fling with a young swinger (Seymour Cassel). Richard meanwhile secures the services of a prostitute (Gena Rowlands) for a night. Both find their liaisons to be no more satisfying than their dead-end marriage. - Director:
- John Cassavetes
- Cast:
- John Marley, Gena Rowlands, Lynn Carlin
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Memories of Underdevelopment (1968)Memorias del subdesarrollo
"Memories of Underdevelopment" follows Sergio (Sergio Corrieri), through his life following the departure of his wife, parents and friends in the wake of the Bay of Pigs incident. Alone in a brave new world, Sergio observes the constant threat of foreign invasion while chasing young women all over Havana before finally meeting Elena (Daisy Granados), a young virgin girl he seeks to mould into the image of his ex-wife, but at what cost to himself? Even though director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was a staunch and devoted supporter of the revolution, 'Memories of Underdevelopment' makes a raw and uncompromising analysis of the newly formed system of government. Through a moving blend of narrative fiction, still photography and rare documentary footage, Alea catalogues the intricacies of the early days of the Castro regime; producing a stirring and enigmatic work that feeds from the culture of the very subject it is studying; Cuba. - Director:
- Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
- Cast:
- Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Núñez
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Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) are newlyweds, but Rosemary has no idea that her wedded bliss is about to come to a horrific end. Her husband's ambition as a struggling actor is about to plunge her into an abyss of terror like she has never known. In exchange for a taste of fame, Guy makes a deal with the devil that puts his wife and soul in jeopardy. When Rosemary becomes pregnant, her husband becomes odd, her neighbours (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon) border on obsessive, and her normal life turns into a surreal nightmare. Slowly, she begins to realise that a seed of evil has been planted... and she is its host. - Director:
- Roman Polanski
- Cast:
- Mia Farrow, Gail Bonney, Tony Curtis
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Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff) is a retiring horror-star bidding farewell to the limelight. Bobby Thompson (Tim O'Kelly) is an unassuming but disturbed Vietnam veteran who suddenly embarks on a murderous shooting rampage. As Byron makes one final public appearance, their worlds collide as Bobby brings carnage to a suburban Los Angeles drive-in cinema. - Director:
- Peter Bogdanovich
- Cast:
- Don Steele, Tim O'Kelly, Boris Karloff
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Shame (1968)Skammen
On a remote island far removed from a raging civil war, Jan (Max von Sydow) and Eva (Liv Ullmann) retreat to their apolitical fortress: a small vegetable farm. But their serene existence is shattered when soldiers violently invade their home. Now caught in the crosshairs of a brutal and inhuman conflict, Jan and Eva become survivors with only one concern - to endure. - Director:
- Ingmar Bergman
- Cast:
- Liv Ullmann, Max von Sydow, Sigge Fürst
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The film follows the fate of three different women with the same name of Lucia during key moments in Cuban History. The Cuban War of Independance, the 1930's and lastly the 1960'slt tells the stories of three Lucias, one in 1895, when the Cubans fought for independence from the Spaniards (a situation that resolved with U.S. intervention and purchase of Cuba from Spain); in 1933, when Cuban popular resistance against the dictator Geraldo Machado resulted in failure; and 196-, in the aftermath of the victory of the revolution led by Fidel Castro. They are women from three different classes: The first is upper class, the second is from the middle class, the third working class. They have three different ranges of potential action, and responses.
Each story is hung on a love drama. In the first, the woman has an affair with a Spanish soldier, in which she must betray her own family. In the second, a young woman abandons her family and class to go underground with her soon-to-be-slain husband; in the third, a young wife learns how to read and write and work in collective agriculture, in spite of a traditionally macho husband who tries to keep her in the house.
The battles sequences have been compared to the great ferocity of Orson Welles "Chimes at Midnight". The use of extreme close ups and long shots anticipates the works of Sergio Leone.- Director:
- Humberto Solás
- Cast:
- Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Núñez, Adela Legrá
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Night of the Living Dead (1968)Laugh Track: Night of the Living Dead / Monster Flick / Night of Anubis
A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls, Romero's claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combined gruesome gore with acute social commentary, and quietly broke ground by casting a black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role. Stark, haunting, and more relevant than ever, 'Night of the Living Dead' is back. - Director:
- George A. Romero
- Cast:
- Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman
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High School (1968)Student Affairs
Producer and director Frederick Wiseman takes his camera into a high school in 1968 and records events as they occur. Told without narration, the film essentially listens in on students, teachers and parents as they deal with issues of everyday life. Students are clearly meant to do as they are told without question - many of the teachers are autocratic in this respect - and the developing clash of cultures is evident in almost every scene. The role these young women are expected to play after high school is particularly archaic by today's standards. - Director:
- Frederick Wiseman
- Cast:
- Not Available
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This incredible film takes a look at British boarding school and three unruly seniors who fail to conform. If.... is an amazing blend of fact and fantasy which features a young Malcolm McDowell in his first film. The students at College House are kept in line by tradition, strict discipline and prefects. Director Lindsay Anderson is careful to document the repressive conditions and the painfulness of rebellion as he builds to his surreal and violent ending when the students have their day. - Director:
- Lindsay Anderson
- Cast:
- Malcolm McDowell, David Wood, Richard Warwick
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Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)C'era una volta il West / There Was Once the West
Sergio Leone's monumental epic 'Once Upon a Time in the West' ranks among the five or six all-time Western masterpieces. The picture itself is as big as its Monument Valley locations, as grand as its fine, distinguished cast. Henry Fonda plays the blackest character of his long career. He's Frank, the ruthless, murderous psychopath who suffers conscience pangs after annihilating an entire family. Jason Robards is the half-breed falsely accused of the terrible slaughter. Charles Bronson plays the harmonica playing man who remembers how his brother was savagely tortured. - Director:
- Sergio Leone
- Cast:
- Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale
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