Marat/Sade (1967), Grass (2018), Cure (1997), Wit (2001), Ugetsu (1953), Andrei Rublev (1966), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Existential movies.
Storyline: Early thirty-something American Jesse Wallace is in a Paris bookstore, the last stop on a tour to promote his best selling book, This Time. Although he is vague to reporters about the source material for the book, it is about his chance encounter nine years earlier on June 15-16, 1994 with a Parisienne named Celine, and the memorable and romantic day and evening they spent together in Vienna. At the end of their encounter at the Vienna train station, which is also how the book ends, they, not providing contact information to the other, vowed to meet each other again in exactly six months at that very spot. As the media scrum at the bookstore nears its conclusion, Jesse spots Celine in the crowd, she who only found out about the book when she earlier saw his photograph promoting this public appearance. Much like their previous encounter, Jesse and Celine, who is now an environmental activist, decide to spend time together until he is supposed to catch his flight back to New York, this ...
Plot Keywords: romance, drama, dialogue-driven, sequel, reunion, paris, intellectual ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse he or she would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.—Mattias Thuresson
Plot Keywords: drama, period drama, cannes film festival, palme d'or, adaptation, village life, aging ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Just after boarding a train, much to the surprise of his fellow passengers, a man pours a bucket of water over a young girl on the platform. Over the next few hours he explains (and we see in flashback) how he became obsessed by her (so much so that he failed to notice that she was played by two different actresses, representing different sides of her personality), and how she tantalised him, but would never allow him to satisfy his desire for her...
Plot Keywords: surrealism, erotic, psychological, drama, romance, art film, french cinema ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: It has been nine years since we last met Jesse and Celine, the French-American couple who once met on a train in Vienna. They now live in Paris with twin daughters, but have spent a summer in Greece on the invitation of an author colleague of Jesse's. When the vacation is over and Jesse must send his teenage son off to the States, he begins to question his life decisions, and his relationship with Celine is at risk.
Plot Keywords: romance, drama, dialogue-driven, marriage, relationships, midlife crisis, travel ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Pietro (Nanni Moretti), an Italian executive, mourns his wife by sitting outside of his daughter's school all day.
Plot Keywords: drama, family, emotional, grief, healing, midlife crisis, loneliness ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Munich, 1955: A sports journalist meets Veronika Voss, an UFA actress who supposedly had an affair with Goebbels. Now declining, Voss is kept by her "kind" doctor, Dr. Katz, supplying her house, food, clean clothes and her favourite: morphine. Voss, trying to come back towards the cinema, cannot perform an absurdly simple scene, but it attracts the attention of the journalist, who suspects that something's very wrong regarding her doctor.—Sdicht <sdicht@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: drama, film noir, german cinema, female protagonist, psychological drama, historical, celebrity culture ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The traumatized survivors of a murderous bus hijacking come together and take a road trip to attempt to overcome their damaged selves. Meanwhile a serial killer is on the loose.
Plot Keywords: sci-fi, mystery, psychological, crime, road movie, surreal, independent film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A once handsome playboy, César finds himself in a mental facility and he can't remember why. All he can remember is meeting the love of his life for one day, and then getting into a car accident which left his face horribly disfigured. But the pain of becoming physically undesirable may help him to find the truth.
Plot Keywords: science fiction, thriller, psychological, mystery, romance, dream, reality ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, apparently playing themselves, share their lives over the course of an evening meal at a restaurant. Gregory, a theater director from New York, is the more talkative of the pair. He relates to Shawn his tales of dropping out, traveling around the world, and experiencing the variety of ways people live, such as a monk who could balance his entire weight on his fingertips. Shawn listens avidly, but questions the value of Gregory's seeming abandonment of the pragmatic aspects of life.
Plot Keywords: drama, dialogue-driven, philosophical, intellectual, existential, new york, restaurant ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Neddy Merrill has been away for most of the Summer. He reappears at a friend's pool. As they talk, someone notices that there are pools spanning the entire valley. He decided to jog from pool to pool to swim across the whole valley. As he stops in each pool his interactions tell his life story.—John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
Plot Keywords: psychological thriller, existential, midlife crisis, suburban life, social satire, identity crisis, american dream ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Follows the literal and associated life journey of middle class Brit Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), representing the "everyman", as he tries to make his mark in his so far young life. He is able to make great strides in his traditional view of success by being what those in authority want him to be. As such, he achieves in a few weeks what it usually take years for others, namely having his own sales territory, the northeast and ultimately Scotland, for Imperial Coffee. He is also able to garner a plethora of fringe benefits from this job, including women throwing themselves at his feet. But he will ultimately face a struggle in class and authority warfare, which culminates with his encounter with the Burgess family, wealthy industrialist Sir James Burgess (Sir Ralph Richardson) and his daughter Patricia (Dame Helen Mirren), who Mick wants to marry, the former who is contemplating investing in the shady dealings in Zingara. Mick will also find that the class struggle not only applies in his case in an upward direction, but also in a downward direction with the working class and the truly down and out. Through it all, Alan Price and his small combo act as a Greek chorus of sorts providing commentary of Mick's travails through song.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: satire, black comedy, social criticism, british film, dystopian, absurdist, allegory ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Neal Oliver is a young artist, but his father doesn't like his choice and wants him to go to Oxford. Everything changes after Neal's meeting with O.W.Grant, who grants exactly one wish per person, as his name suggests. Neal wishes for answers, and so he must travel to the nonexistent Danver by the nonexistent Interstate 60. In this trip he hopes to find the girl of his dreams, following the trail of her photos on the advertising stands along the route. Many encounters await him ahead. Will he receive what he asked for?—Valery Prikhodko
Plot Keywords: fantasy, adventure, comedy, drama, road movie, surreal, allegory ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Forty year old documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee has a penchant for filming everything around him. Following the announcement of his impending marriage to his film-making partner Marilyn Levine - marriage something that he and his family never thought would happen for him - McElwee turns on the camera to film life as it happens in respect to this new phase in his life. Both in real terms (as it applies to himself and those around him) and philosophical terms, McElwee discusses, through self-narration, life, death, love, family and babies.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: documentary, autobiographical, family, marriage, death, grief, reflection ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: 'Werner Herzog' takes his camera to Antarctica where we meet the odd men and women who have dedicated their lives to furthering the cause of science in treacherous conditions. A scientist studies neutrinos, which are everywhere, yet elusive; he likens them to spirits. A researcher's nighttime performance art includes contorting her body into a luggage bag. A survival guide teaches his students to survive white-out conditions by wearing cartoon-face buckets over their heads. Animal researchers milk mother seals as part of their study. Volcanologists offer advice on what to do when a volcano erupts. A pipefitter shows us the anomaly in his hands that he says are a sign he descended from Atzec royalty. A former Colorado banker drives what he has christened Ivan the Terra Bus. An underwater diver shows his colleagues DVDs of apocalyptic sci-fi films like Them! (1954). And -- though Herzog declares he's not "making another film about penguins" -- we meet a penguin researcher who answers the filmmaker's questions about homosexuality and insanity in his subjects. We also meet an individualist penguin, who breaks away from the other birds to run toward the mountains, facing certain death.—J. Spurlin
Plot Keywords: documentary, exploration, scientists, adventure, nature, wildlife, extreme environment ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Puppeteer Craig Schwartz and animal lover and pet store clerk Lotte Schwartz are just going through the motions of their marriage. Despite not being able to earn a living solely through puppeteering, Craig loves his profession as it allows him to inhabit the skin of others. He begins to take the ability to inhabit the skin of others to the next level when he is forced to take a job as a file clerk for the off-kilter LesterCorp, located on the five-foot tall 7½ floor of a Manhattan office building. Behind one of the filing cabinets in his work area, Craig finds a hidden door which he learns is a portal into the mind of John Malkovich, the visit through the portal which lasts fifteen minutes after which the person is spit into a ditch next to the New Jersey Turnpike. Craig is fascinated by the meaning of life associated with this finding. Lotte's trips through the portal make her evaluate her own self. And the confident Maxine Lund, one of Craig's co-workers who he tells about the ...
Plot Keywords: fantasy, comedy, drama, psychological, surreal, black comedy, absurdist ...
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