Taste of Cherry (1997)

This is a very highly regarded and well reviewed movie, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's fun. The movie starts with a man driving around Iran (city and then country) looking to pick someone up off the street. He approaches several men, and there is an interesting ratcheting up of tension here. As a viewer, I started by assuming he was looking for sex, for he keeps saying he has a job for the men - an easy job that will pay well. But before he explains the job it somehow becomes apparent that this is not about sex. It's much more serious.

Eventually we learn that the man wants to commit suicide. He has dug a hole in the hills, and wants someone to come by in the morning to bury him. We never learn why, but the man is adamant.

This driving tour introduces us to many types of people, and we see something of life in Iran. And we hear some philosophy about life. And the ending is really cool. But this is not cheery. If you are interested in what movie industries around the world are up to, you should see this one.

Angel Face (1952)

This is really good noir directed by one of the best, Otto Preminger. I particularly like Jean Simmons playing against type as the bad girl.

Robert Mitchum is Frank, an ambulance driver who meets 19 year-old Diane when her step-mother almost dies from a gas leak. Diane hits on him, steals him from his girlfriend, and brings him on as chauffeur in the home of her father and rich stepmother. Frank soon understands that Diane wants to kill her stepmother, and he leaves. But the stepmother dies, and Frank is implicated in the murder. They get married to have a better defense, but Frank now hates Diane. Will she let him leave, though?

There are some great lines in old noir, like this one:  Is it a complicated thing, or could anyone do it, even a woman?

Funny - murder is too complicated for a woman? Noir tells us again and again that that is so much hooey.

Peeping Tom (1960)

I could not look away from this movie! I was expecting something really disgusting, because it apparently killed the career of director Michael Powell. Well, times have changed. This movie is disturbing, but not particularly scary. We discover in the first scene that our guy is a murderer, and a particularly grisly murderer at that. We then see him peeping in the ground floor windows of his apartment building. Despite this, he is likeable.

We learn through films of him as a youngster that his father experimented on Mark with various methods of torture. Mark is soon one messed up kid, and then a murdering adult. He's also a photographer.

This movie is about watching, and about how a camera can remove the photographer from the people in front of the lens. If you're interested in the evolution of horror, pick this one up.

Onibaba (1964)

This is an interesting movie about fear and paranoia and what makes a person human versus an animal.

In feudal Japan a woman and her daughter-in-law make a living by killing isolated samurai and selling their armor for food. They are close to starvation and scrounging food wherever they can. The scraping and struggling they go through is well portrayed. Even without the murder, these two feel very far from human.

When a deserter arrives home and tells the women that their son / husband has died, things start to disintegrate. The daughter-in-law takes up with the deserter, each of them scratching a sexual itch that is interesting to watch. They run through the fields and fall to the ground in the tall grass just like they are in heat. Which is exactly the point. The mother becomes very concerned that her daughter-in-law will leave her for the deserter. When she kills a samurai who wears a mask, she starts to put it on in secret and hides in the field in order to frighten her daughter into returning home.

But things backfire. The mask won't come off. And when it does, she looks demonic even without it, and her daughter-in-law runs in fear. I didn't like this movie, and don't want to watch it again, but it was mesmerizing. 

Sansho the Bailiff (1954)

This reminds me in mood of The Bicycle Thief or Umberto D - life is hard and people treat each other like shit.

The setting here is 11th century Japan, where a local nobleman is exiled for defying the military and helping the peasants. Before leaving, he tells his young son to remember mercy for others is the most important quality in a person.

His wife and children are eventually kidnapped, separated and sold into prostitution and slavery, respectively. Ten years pass, with the mother trying to escape continually; eventually her captors cut the tendon in her foot, hobbling her. The brother and sister grow up in slavery, and the brother forgets his father's lessons on mercy. But one day he and his sister are breaking branches in the forest, and the action is identical to their actions the night before their kidnapping. The son remembers his father and starts to change.

This movie is a classic by Kenji Mizoguchi, and it will grip you. By the end I was hating humanity, particularly since there are still slaves in the world. It seems like we've learned nothing. But the movie is wonderful.