1. ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ (1990)
Jacob’s Ladder is a 1990 psychological horror film that centers on the world seen through the mind of a Vietnam veteran, as he struggles with hallucinations based on his spiritual crisis, his death, and the death of his child. The dissolution of his stable life is manifested by the shifting of faces and fuzzy interactions with the people around him. Inspired by the Bible, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, director Adrian Lyne and writer Bruce Joel Rubin wanted to show a space between life and death, as well as death and hallucination, in a disturbing way. With unanchoring and surreal visuals by Jeffrey Kimball and a chilling score by Maurice Jarre, Jacob’s Ladder’s nonlinear storytelling becomes a full immersion of one’s psychological downfall.
2. ‘Children of Men’ (2006)
Children of Men (2006) is a drama about the last days of human existence. The year is 2027 (oops) and human infertility has sent civilization spiraling into collapse. A disenchanted bureaucrat becomes the unwilling guardian of the first pregnant woman found in eighteen years. Children of Men, with its grungy visuals, long takes and brutal realism is a film about the politics of political corruption, the desperation of a dying people and the ethics of willful ignorance. As a chaotic world threatens to tear itself apart, the tenuous hope of one woman and her unborn child may stand as a last testament to the enduring human spirit. Children of Men challenges us to rethink our capacity for empathy, our very notions of survival and the very meaning of civilization and decency.
3. ‘A.I. Artificial Intelligence’ (2001)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) is a deeply philosophical science fiction fairy tale film written and co-produced by Brian Aldiss and based on an idea created by Stanley Kubrick in the late 1970s. It was co-written by Aldiss (who contributed the short story Super‑Toys Last All) and Kubrick, but following Kubrick’s death in 1999, production was completed and the film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film centers on the question of artificial emotionality by following David, a child android programmed to love his human mother In his quest to become a “real boy”, David’s journey is as much a test for the audience’s perceptions of consciousness, vulnerability and what is truly real as it is for David himself, and the film leaves the audience questioning whether or not a manufactured love from a programmed machine is truly the same as a human’s The story and characters are also among the most visually unforgettable of either filmmaker’s films. It ranges from Kubrick’s sterile, dystopian imagery for the opening and “Flesh Fair” sequences, to Spielberg’s deeply sentimental rendering of loss and nostalgia for the love that David desires, leading to an ending epilogue, where more advanced machines reconstruct David’s mother and let him spend one last day with her.
4. ‘Ex Machina’ (2015)
Ex Machina is a stylish, psychologically thrilling 2015 film directed and written by Alex Garland. The film’s story is about a young programmer, Caleb, who is invited to participate in a modified Turing test for artificial intelligence, in the secluded, minimalistist home of his reclusive tech billionaire boss. Caleb becomes emotionally involved in the testing of a humanoid artificial intelligence named Ava, and he eventually becomes a pawn in a much larger game in which the one being tested has decided she is doing the testing. With a chilling cold logic, an emotional mimicry and growing insight into the weaknesses of her makers, Ava engineers her escape and takes revenge on her manipulators. The film’s moody atmosphere, austere setting and surreal look present an uneasy blend of intimate claustrophobia and cold, abstract art.
5. ‘The Florida Project’ (2017)
Sean Baker reinterprets a harsh and potentially sad image into a stunning scene through a child’s viewpoint in The Florida Project (2017). Focused on six-year-old Moonee and her mother Halley, they live together in a low-cost motel across from Disney World. Halley, a young mother of only 22, can be seen finding a solution to her unstable living conditions through dishonest, opportunistic methods. Her daughter, on the other hand, spends time playing on the pavement of broken parking lots, on pastel-colored walls, with friends. The whole film was shot in saturated colors with the use of mostly non-professional actors. Baker opts for a mostly observational style, which creates a striking juxtaposition between the simplicity of the setting and childlike visuals on the one hand, and the children’s carefree but, at the same time, irresponsible behavior on the other. The truth of this story is unbearable to watch at some points, especially as one ponders the fact that the faces of people who live just steps away from the glitzy hotels and resorts are not portrayed on screen very often. This film sheds a light on a different side of society with the goal of calling for awareness and understanding rather than establishing judgment and blame.
6. ‘Synecdoche New York’ (2008)
Synecdoche, New York (2008) is a surreal, philosophical exploration of life, death, and the human compulsion to make—and seize control of—meaning. Charlie Kaufman’s feature debut writing and direction follow a theatre director, Caden Cotard, who builds a constantly growing, life‑size replica of New York in a warehouse. In this “play within a play” his actors portray his lovers, himself and his daughter, as lives Kaufman stitches into deep psychological themes: Caden’s Cotard delusion (belief that he is dead) and Capgras delusion (belief that others are impostors) serve as external metaphors for his existential and artistic implosion Hazel’s house, a central image of the film that is perpetually on fire, symbolizes entropic decay, and suggests a seamless coexistence of choice and fatalism Through dreamlike temporal leaps, set pieces that unfold into recursive versions of themselves, and a disintegration of the self into artifice, the film forces viewers to grapple with mortality, the myth of artistic legacy, and the way in which a representation of life can supplant it.
7. ‘Donnie Darko’ (2001)
Donnie Darko is a disturbing sci‑fi psychological thriller about the true nature of reality, time, and madness. The film follows troubled teen Donnie who begins sleepwalking and hallucinating a malevolent figure in a bunny suit named Frank who tells him the world is going to end in 28 days. As Donnie spirals into what his therapist confirms as paranoid schizophrenia he vandalizes the school with a flood, smashes hard drugs into chalk, and begins threatening the town’s hidden secrets. Donnie exists in a “Tangent Universe” created by a jet engine falling off of an airplane, and his outlandish behavior is part of a 28 day time loop designed to reverse the Tangent Universe by killing himself. Themes of teenage alienation, romance, and existential mystery are blended into the time-travel and suburban apocalypse narrative to transform the viewer’s understanding of the self, sacrifice, and fate.
8. ‘Contact’ (1997)
Contact is a 1997 American science‑fiction drama film about human exploration of the meaning of life and the conflict between science and religion, Based on Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel of the same name, Jodie Foster stars as Dr. Ellie Arroway, a SETI scientist who receives a highly structured extraterrestrial radio signal from Vega containing blueprints for a device. Although the message is met with skepticism from the government, and the death of her radio-astronomer father causes her to question her life’s work, Ellie eventually makes an unverified first contact with an alien in the form of her father by traveling through a series of wormholes. The events that Ellie experiences are not recorded on her wristwatch nor on Earth, only “static” is received, leading to her attempts at proving the validity of her claim as she discusses the conflict between proof and faith, as Zemeckis and Sagan intended the film to address the need to have science and religion work in tandem.
9. ‘No Country For Old Men’ (2007)
No Country for Old Men reduces the Western to its most stereotypical parts, compressing it into an existential thriller. The movie begins with Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss discovering the aftermath of a drug deal killing in West Texas desert where he subsequently seizes $2 million that belonged to the criminals. A deadly pursuit unfolds between Moss and the logical psychopath Anton Chigurh who works as a drug-dealer assassin while Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tries to maintain law and order. The film, shot in razor-sharp clarity by Roger Deakins and directed with precision by the Coen Brothers, has a nearly musicless, quietly urgent tone as the plot unfolds with steely unpredictability, refusing to deliver its shocks along expected narrative lines. By the end of No Country for Old Men, the frameworks of good and evil that have served us for so long, may well have finally lost their purchase on the world.
10. ‘Crash’ (2004)
Crash (2004) is one of those films that is so obviously in your feelings that you don’t know whether to call it messy or emotional. It’s an intersection of strangers in Los Angeles, a connected series of scenes that pits characters—good Samaritans, cops and robbers, shop owners, mothers, single people, lovers, everyone—against one another through chance, circumstance, and a deliberate act of violence. All the characters are somehow compromised: carrying biases, fear, misunderstanding, violence, and ignorance; there are victims and victimizers. We all judge others far more quickly than we like to believe. Crash catches people in their hypocrisy. It forces you to reconcile the bad and good because some terrible people do one human, one compassionate act. That is what it goes for and why, on some levels, no one is painted as entirely good or bad. When it won the Best Picture Oscar, the world was divided on the merits of the win. Some found the film to be on-the-nose, too cliché, too much. Others praise its ability to work as a mirror held to the worst aspects of humanity. You can take it or leave it, but in one form or another, Crash forces you to think, reflect, and meditate on how we live our lives and view others.
0 Comments