griggs's - Martin Scorsese’s Favourite Movies: 84 Films the Director Wants You to See List
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Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Sean (Shia LaBeouf) are a Boston couple on the verge of parenthood whose lives change irrevocably when a home birth ends in unimaginable tragedy. Thus begins a yearlong odyssey for Martha, who must navigate her grief while working through fractious relationships with her husband and her domineering mother, along with the publicly vilified midwife, whom she must face in court. A deeply personal, searing, and ultimately transcendent story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss. - Director:
- Kornél Mundruczó
- Cast:
- Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Sarah Snook
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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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8½ (1963)Otto e mezzo / Eight and a Half
Marcello Mastroianni is (Fellini's alter ego) Guido, a successful filmmaker who, embarking on his next film, discovers he has a complete "director's block": he has no story to tell! Harassed by his producers, his mistress (Sandra Milo) and his wife (Anouk Aimee), while struggling to find the inspiration for his film, he increasingly retreats in dreamy recollections of his life and lovers, until fantasy, memories and reality merge in the director's mind - and on screen, in an astonishing, masterful spectacle, culminating in an electrifying triumph of optimism. As Guido-Federico says at the end of 8 1/2: "Life is a party, let's live it together!" - Director:
- Federico Fellini
- Cast:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale
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Ashes and Diamonds (1958)Popiól i Diament
On the last day of World War Two in a small town somewhere in Poland, Polish exiles of war and the occupying Soviet forces confront the beginning of a new day and a new Poland. In this incendiary environment we find Home Army soldier Maciek Chelmicki (Zbigniew Cybulski), who has been ordered to assassinate an incoming commissar. But a mistake stalls his progress and leads him to Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), a beautiful barmaid who gives him a glimpse of what his life could be. Gorgeously photographed and brilliantly performed, 'Ashes and Diamonds' masterfully interweaves the fate of a nation with that of one man, resulting in one of the most important Polish films of all time. - Director:
- Andrzej Wajda
- Cast:
- Zbigniew Cybulski, Waclaw Zastrzezynski, Adam Pawlikowski
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The Changeling (1980)House on Chessman Park / The Secret Hostage
John Russell (George C. Scott) has been haunted by the horrific death of his wife and child for months. A change of lifestyle and a move to Seattle may be the only way to escape the visions that torment him. With the help of a woman, Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere), a local historian, he moves into an old mansion and begins a new job. But before his life can completely heal, John Russell is plagued by a peculiar string of events, leading him to the discovery of a hidden attic room and a troubled presence that lies within. Consumed with a need to discover the truth of the hidden room, John must right an injustice from long ago. - Director:
- Peter Medak
- Cast:
- Trish Van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, George C. Scott
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The Chess Players (1977)Shatranj Ke Khilari
Set in the kingdom of Oudh during the last days of the Moghul Empire, 'The Chess Players' marked the first time that the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray worked outside of his native Bengal. The story follows two Indian noblemen (Saeed Jaffrey and Sanjeev Kumar) whose obsession with the game of chess renders them oblivious to the treacherous and historic events happening around them. In one of his finest performances, Richard Attenborough stars as General Outram, the British officer who covertly manoeuvres on behalf of the East India Company to seize control of the region and depose its King. - Director:
- Satyajit Ray
- Cast:
- Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Shabana Azmi
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Orson Welles makes his feature-length directorial debut with this classic drama which often tops critics' polls of the best films of all time. In 1940, newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Welles) dies after uttering the word 'Rosebud'. An anonymous reporter (William Alland) is assigned the task of uncovering the meaning of Kane's dying word, and in the course of his enquiries he receives varying accounts of his life from former colleagues Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) and Bernstein (Everett Sloan), and ex-wife Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore). The film, which Welles also produced and co-wrote, was not-so-loosely based on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. - Director:
- Orson Welles
- Cast:
- Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore
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Contempt (1963)Le Mepris
Camille falls out of love with her husband Paul while he is rewriting the screenplay Odyssey by American producer Jeremiah Prokosch. Just as the director of Prokosch's film, Fritz Lang, says that The Odyssey is the story of individuals confronting their situations in a real world, Le Mepris itself is an examination of the position of the filmmaker in the commercial cinema industry. - Director:
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Cast:
- Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, Michel Piccoli
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When Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) visits a country house, he finds himself trapped in his recurring nightmare that involves the manors guests sharing their experiences with the supernatural. With each bizarre tale told, whether it be about a haunted mirror or a ventriloquist tormented by his dummy, Craig hurtles closer and closer to the nightmare's end, where he knows something awful will happen... - Director:
- Alberto Cavalcanti
- Cast:
- Mervyn Johns, Michael Redgrave, Roland Culver
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Oscar nominee Barbara Hershey stars as Carla Moran, a hard-working single mother who, one terrible night is raped in her bedroom by someone - or something - that she cannot see. Met with sceptical psychiatrists, she is repeatedly attacked in her car, in the bath, and in front of her children. Could this be a case of hysteria, a manifestation of childhood sexual trauma, or something even more horrific? Now, with a group of daring parapsychologists, Carla will attempt an unthinkable experiment: to seduce, trap and ultimately capture the depraved spectral fury that is The Entity. - Director:
- Sidney J. Furie
- Cast:
- Barbara Hershey, Ron Silver, David Labiosa
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The Exorcist (1973)The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen
Brace yourself as one of the all-time spellbinders possesses you all over again. Director William Friedkin and producer/screenwriter William Peter Blatty have revisited The Exorcist to integrate 11 minutes of scenes and images deleted before the film's 1973 release and digitally restore the picture and audio elements. The result is an experience more gripping than ever. Now seen are moments deepening the impact of the performances by Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow and Lee J. Cobb. They include a "nervous disorder" dianosis, expansion of Father Merrin's arrival before the ritual, priestly doubts during the ritual, an epilogue with Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer and most notably, a shattering staircase descent by Regan. Winner of Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Sound, The Exorcist astonishes time and again like no other movie. - Director:
- William Friedkin
- Cast:
- Ellen Burstyn, Mercedes McCambridge, Max von Sydow
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"It was an evil house from the beginning, a house that was born bad". The place is the 90-year-old mansion called Hill House. No one lives there. Or so it seems. But please do come in. Because even if you don't believe in ghosts, there's no denying the terror of 'The Haunting'. Robert Wise returned to psychological horror for this much admired, first screen adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting of Hill House'. Four people come to the house to study its supernatural phenomena. Or has the house drawn at least one of them to it? - Director:
- Robert Wise
- Cast:
- Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson
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The Innocents (1961)Posesión satánica
Deborah Kerr (in the performance of her career) plays the emotionally repressed vicar's daughter who takes up a job as a governess to two seemingly angelic orphans. Gradually coming to believe that the children are possessed by the perverse spirits of their former governess and her sadistic lover, she begins to see manifestations of the ghosts prowling the huge gothic mansion of Bly House. Director Jack Clayton sustains a superbly haunting atmosphere throughout the film, and like James' original work, cleverly retains the ambiguity of wether the ghosts are real or the products of the governess's fevered imagination. Aided by Freddie Francis's exquisitely inventive and atmospheric CinemaScope photography, we, like the governess, are never quite sure what unspoken horrors are lurking beyond the edge of the frame and are kept guessing until the film's tragic conclusion. - Director:
- Jack Clayton
- Cast:
- Deborah Kerr, Peter Wyngarde, Megs Jenkins
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Isle of the Dead (1945)Camilla
It's 1912 and Greece is beset by war and pestilence. As his troops bury their dead after another bloody battle, stern General Pherides (Boris Karloff) goes to visit the grave of his wife, buried on an island nearby. He's horrified to see her tomb has been looted and learns grave robbers are to blame for the desecration but there is worse news to come: plague has come to the island. The doctors are powerless but perhaps the sickness has another cause. Could it be that a 'Vorvolaka' - a vampiric demon - is at large on the island? And is there anything that can stop it? - Director:
- Mark Robson
- Cast:
- Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer
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Joan Crawford plays Vienna, a saloon owner with a sordid past. Persecuted by the townspeople, Vienna must protect her life and her property when a lynch mob led by her sexually repressed rival, Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), attempts to frame her for a string of robberies she did not commit. Enter Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a guitar-strumming ex-gunfighter who has a history with Vienna. - Director:
- Nicholas Ray
- Cast:
- Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge
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