griggs's - Ari Aster’s Favourite Movies: 58 Films the Director Wants You to See List

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When her husband passes away in an automobile accident, Shin-ae (Do-yeon Jeon) relocates down south to her late husband's hometown of Miryang. Despite her efforts to settle down, in this unfamiliar and 'much too normal place, she finds that she can't quite fit in.

Helping her out is Kim Jong-chan (Kang-ho Song), a good-intentioned but bothersome bachelor, who owns a car repair shop. Life plods on. However, fate takes a vicious turn when Shin-ae loses her son in the most horrific way a mother could imagine. She turns to Christianity to relieve the pain in her heart, but when even this is not permitted, she wages a war against God.

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Paul Schrader's visually stunning, collage-like portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society.

Taking place on Mishima's last day, when he famously committed public seppuku, the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer's life as well as by gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a tribute to its subject and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.

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After he saves her from drowning in the bay, Scottie's (James Stewart) interest shifts from business to fascination with the icy, alluring blonde. When tragedy strikes and Madeleine (Kim Novak) dies, Scottie is devastated.

But when he finds another woman remarkably like his lost love, the now obsessed detective must unravel the secrets of the past to find the key to his future.

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How does an Irish lad without prospects become part of 18th-century nobility? For Barry Lyndon (Ryan O'Neal) the answer is: any way he can! His climb to wealth and privilege is the enthralling focus of this sumptuous Stanley Kubrick version of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel.

For this ravishing, slyly satiric winner of four Academy Awards, Kubrick found inspiration in the works of the era's painters. Costumes and sets were crafted in the era's designs and pioneering lenses were developed to shoot interiors and exteriors in natural light. The result? 'Barry Lyndon' endures as a cutting-edge movie that brings a historical period to vivid screen life like no other film before or since.

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"Raging Bull" is arguably the finest work from the Scorsese and De Niro partnership. De Niro gives and amazing portrayal of a man whose animal side lurks just beneath the surface, ever ready to erupt.

Vivid and unremitting in its uncompromising brutality and honesty, the fight sequences are famed for their realism. Violent throughout, this film is a testament to Scorsese's and De Niro's skills, creating a thoroughly absorbing film about such an unlikable character. Renowned for throwing himself into the roles of his character, De Niro went on a diet to gain fifty pounds during production for the role of the faded star.

Featurete is a surreal, comic vision of modern life in which the director's much-loved character, Monsieur Hulot - accompanied by a cast of tourists and well-heeled Parisians - turns unintentional anarchist when set loose in an unrecognisable Paris of steel skyscrapers, chrome-plated shopping malls and futuristic night spots.

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The story about one ordinary man's quest to become a serious man. Physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) can't believe his life: His wife is leaving him for his best friend. His unemployed brother won't move off the couch. Someone is threatening his career.

His kids are a mystery, and his neighbour is tormenting him by sunbathing nude. Struggling to make sense of it all, Larry consults three different rabbis and their answers lead him on a twisted journey of faith, family, delinquent behaviour and mortality in the film critics rave is "seriously awesome!"

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Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary about the holocaust, Shoah. Lanzmann spent twelve years spanning the globe for surviving camp inmates, SS commandants, and eyewitnesses of the "Final Solution".

Without dramatic re-enactment or archival footage - but with extraordinary testimonies - Shoah renders the step-by-step machinery of extermination, and through haunted landscapes and human voices, makes the past come brilliantly alive. "Shoah", is a work of genius, an heroic endeavour to humanise the inhuman, to tell the untellable, and to explore in unprecedented detail the horrors of the past. It is an immensely disturbing experience, yet in its solemnity and beauty not a morbid or disheartening one. There are few works of art which leave one with such a deep appreciation for the preciousness and meaning of life. For these reasons, Shoah is one of the most powerful and important films of all time.

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Set at the dawning of the new millennium, this hilarious masterpiece is from the brilliantly offbeat worldview of Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson, director of the acclaimed 'You, the Living'. Described by critic J.

Hoberman as 'slapstick Ingmar Bergman', this witty yet resonant film unfolds as a series of comic inter-connected vignettes that portray scenes from an urban world which has ground to a halt and whose citizens teeter on the brink of madness.

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Sergei Paradjanov's celebrated, dreamlike masterpiece paints an astonishing portrait of the 18th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, the 'King of Song'. Paradjanov's aim was not a conventional biography but a cinematic expression of his work, resulting in an extraordinary visual poem.

Key moments in his subject's life are illustrated through a series of exquisitely orchestrated tableaux filled with rich colour and stunning iconography, each scene a celluloid painting alive with stylised movement. One of cinema's most revered and beautiful films, The Colour of Pomegranates is a unique and rewarding experience that haunts the memory long after viewing.

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"Come and See" is one of the greatest war films ever made and one of the finest achievements of Soviet cinema.

A devastating account of the Nazi occupation of Belarussia during World War II, it tells the story of a young boy's abrupt loss of innocence when he joins the Soviet resistance and is thrust headlong into the brutal horrors of combat. Featuring terrifyingly authentic battle scenes and poetic, almost surreal imagery, director Elem Klimov has fashioned a vivid and unforgettably powerful portrait of the terrible atrocities committed by men in the name of war.

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Is there love after death? Acerbic everyman Albert Brooks finds a perfect balance between satirical bite and romantic comedy charm as the writer, director, and star of this wonderfully warm and imaginative existential fantasy.

After he dies suddenly, the hapless advertising executive Daniel Miller (Brooks) finds himself in Judgment City, a gleaming way station where the newly deceased must prove they lived a life of sufficient courage to advance in their journey through the universe. As the self-doubting Daniel struggles to make his case, a budding relationship with the uninhibited Julia (Meryl Streep) offers him a chance to finally feel alive. Buoyed by a pitch-perfect supporting cast that includes Rip Torn, Lee Grant, and Buck Henry, 'Defending Your Life' is a rare feat of personal, philosophical filmmaking that happens to also be divinely entertaining.

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Proud, eccentric, and antisocial, Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon) has always kept to himself.

But after a woman turns up dead in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town (Viviane Romance), discovers that his neighbors are only too ready to suspect the worst of him, and is framed for the murder. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon, Julien Duvivier's first film after his return to France from Hollywood finds the acclaimed poetic realist applying his consummate craft to darker, moodier ends. Propelled by its two deeply nuanced lead performances, the tensely noirish 'Panique' exposes the dangers of the knives-out mob mentality, delivering as well a pointed allegory for the behavior of Duvivier's countrymen during the war.

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Henry Horatio Hobson (Charles Laughton) is the owner of a well established boot shop in nineteenth century Salford, Lancashire and the father of three daughters.

The oldest, Maggie (Brenda De Banzie), shoulders both home and business responsibilities while Hobson whiles the time away at the local pub. The younger sisters are both being courted by neighbours, but Hobson refuses to give the couples settlements. Maggie becomes tired of his oafish behaviour and decides to take matters into her hands by seeking a husband. Much to the hilarity and consternation of her father, aged spinster Maggie sets her sights on shy Will Mossop (John Mills), Hobson's master boot-maker. Mossop is at first stunned by the suggestion, but eventually agrees to Maggie's authoritative persuasion, and together they set up a rival boot shop.

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When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually wrenched apart by vicious slave traders.

Under Kenji Mizoguchi's dazzling direction, this classic Japanese story became one of cinema's greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil.