Extra Credit Films for the Europe Unit

Existentialist Film
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Being There PG
Perhaps Peter Sellers's best performance, earning him an Oscar nomination. This subtle black comedy is straight-faced commentary on politics, media, and celebrity in media-savvy America – strangely compelling and thought-provoking. Both movie & book brilliantly depict the precarious nature of power and influence
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The Truman Show PG
In this movie, Jim Carrey is Truman, a man whose life is a fake one... The place he lives is in fact a big studio with hidden cameras everywhere, and all his friends and people around him, are actors who play their roles in the most popular tv-series in the world: The Truman Show. Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea about how he is exploited. Until one day... he finds out everything. Will he react?
*
Defending Your Life PG
Yuppie Daniel Miller is killed in a car accident and goes to Judgment City, a waiting room for the afterlife. During the day, he must prove in a courtroom-style process that he successfully overcame his fears (a hard task, given the pitiful life we are shown); at night, he falls in love with Julia, the only other young person in town. Nights are a time of hedonistic pleasure, since you can (for instance) eat all you want without getting fat.

*
AI: Artificial Inteligence PG-13
In the not-so-far future the polar ice caps have melted and the resulting raise of the ocean waters has drowned all the coastal cities of the world. Withdrawn to the interior of the continents, the human race keeps advancing, reaching to the point of creating realistic robots (called mechas) to serve him. One of the mecha-producing companies builds David, an artificial kid which is the first to have real feelings, especially a never-ending love for his "mother", Monica. Monica is the woman who adopted him as a substitute for her real son, who remains in cryo-stasis, stricken by an incurable disease. David is living happily with Monica and her husband, but when their real son returns home after a cure is discovered, his life changes dramatically. A futuristic adaptation of the tale of Pinocchio, with David being the "fake" boy who desperately wants to become "real".

*
I Heart Huckabees Rated R
Determined to solve the coincidence of seeing the same conspicuous stranger three times in a day, Albert hires a pair of existentialist detectives, who insist on spying on his everyday life while sharing their views on life and the nature of the universe.
*
Waking Life Rated R
Dreams. What are they? An escape from reality or reality itself? Waking Life follows the dream(s) of one man and his attempt to find and discern the absolute difference between waking life and the dreamworld. While trying to figure out a way to wake up, he runs into many people on his way; some of which offer one sentence asides on life, others delving deeply into existential questions and life's mysteries. We become the main character. It becomes our dream and our questions being asked and answered. Can we control our dreams? What are they telling us about life? About death? About ourselves and where we come from and where we are going? The film does not answer all these for us. Instead, it inspires us to ask the questions and find the answers ourselves.
*
Being John Malkovich Rated R
A puppeteer discovers a hidden doorway in his office, which turns out to be a portal into John Malkovitch (the famous actor)'s mind. Upon entering the portal, one gets to be inside Malkovitch's mind for 15 odd minutes. As with any great discovery of this century, the ultimate question immediately arises : 'How can we make money out of this?' He and his co-worker promptly set out to exploit this discovery. It doesn't take long for things to go haywire
*
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Rated R
A man awakes disheveled; impulsively, he skips work, heading instead to the shore. On this chilly February day, a woman in orange, hair dyed blue, chats him up: she's Clementine, he's Joel, shy and sad; by day's end, he likes her. The next night she takes him to the frozen Charles River. After, as he drops her off, she asks to sleep at his place, and she runs up to get her toothbrush. Strange things occur: their meeting was not entirely chance, they have a history neither remembers. Our seeing how the lacunae came to be and their discovery of the memory loss take the rest of the film.


Gothic Films

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Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari
Directed by Robert Wiene in 1919, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari was one of the first Gothic horror films. Although the more usual Gothic environment was replaced by disturbingly surreal sets, this incredibly inventive story of dream, madness, love and evil is thematically more truly Gothic than any of your average graveyards-castles-and-living-dead spook flicks. Being also the film that first introduced the character of a maddoctor to a horror audience, The Cabinet remains an unrivalled masterpiece nearly eighty years after its original release.

*
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens
It is quite obvious that there are few things more Gothic than vampires. This was to be noticed by the world in 1922, when the German expressionist F. W. Murnau made the first ever film adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Although the Count was called Orlok, and the story was set in Bremen instead of London, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens was so identical to Stoker's story that major legal trouble for Murnau followed right after the release. The Count was portrayed by Max Schreck (whose last name is actually German for 'terror') as an undead bestial bloodsucker. In the story, the vampire can only be brought to rest by a virtuous woman who shall willingly give her blood to the beast until the sun rises, and the vampire turns to dust in a legendary scene. Many scholars describe Nosferatu as the best film ever made in the vampire genre.
*
Dracula
Released ten years later, Tod Browning's Dracula gave the character of the Count a remarkably different treatment - the one that we now call 'the classic Dracula'. Bela Lugosi's Dracula dressed in an elegant Victorian suit and a black and red satin cloak, and was closer to a mysterious, charmant aristocrat than a blood-thirsty monster. Despite the fact that neither the film nor its sequel Dracula's Daughter were cinematic masterpieces, Lugosi's immortal portrayal of Dracula would be copied by many, but never quite duplicated. The maestro himself was extremely dedicated to his work, and actually lived the last years of his life in the fantasy world of his films - he was finally even buried in his Dracula cloak.
*
Frankenstein
Shortly after Browning's Dracula, another classic Gothic novel was made into a film. James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein was a simple and popularised version of Mary Shelley's philosophically very complex novel, but nevertheless stands out as a prime example of traditional Gothic cinema. The immortal surrection sequence must be one of the best remembered scenes in the history of horror. Throughout the film, Boris Karloff manages to squeeze a considerable amount of dumb emotion through the monster's deformed face - particularly in the (partly cut-out) scene where he has thrown the young girl to a lake, thinking that she will float like the other flowers. The sequel Bride of Frankenstein was even more impressive, and has subsequently become one of the most respected films in the genre.
*
Horror of Dracula
Hammer's stunning series of Dracula films, starting with Terence Fisher's seminal Horror of Dracula, laid the basis for a whole new vampire renaissance in cinema. Lee's masterful portrayl of the vampire count was based on Lugosi's stylish gentleman bloodsucker, with some additional sophisticated decadence. Whether it was Lee or Lugosi who was the true Dracula shall always be argued, but Hammer's films were definitely scarier, more seriously Gothic, and generally less B-like than Lugosi's Draculas. (The writer has felt a certain religious awe towards Lee since his childhood, and is rumoured to have built an altar to him in his bedroom, so his opinions are not to be taken too seriously. -Ed.)
*
La Maschera del Demonio
It wasn't just the British directors who were making European Gothic film in the sixties. After the genre was finally popularised by Hammer during the '60s, European auteurs (particularly Italian and Spanish) were free to make their own versions without having to worry about their success. Although these movies had to copy some of their style from the British classics in order to remain popular, some directors showed genuine talent and made classics of their own. These included the Italian Mario Bava, a talented visualist, whose films were filled with beautiful Gothic imagery. Many of those films, including La Maschera del Demonio which is regarded as one of the genre's cornerstones, starred Barbara Steele who soon became known as The Queen of European Horror.
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The Fall of the House of Usher
On the other side of the Pond, Roger Corman was independently writing, producing, directing and shooting cheap exploitation films at an astonishing rate. He concentrated mostly on best- selling subjects: science fiction, monster movies and - of course - spooky Gothic horror. In 1960, Corman started his series of Edgar Allan Poe film adaptations with The Fall of the House of Usher. Most of these quickies starred Vincent Price as a paranoid nobleman, obsessed with either ancient family curses or the idea of getting buried alive. Stories took place in old, spooky castles and dungeons with rusty torturing equipment (often the same sets, just a bit differently arranged and lighted).

*
The Nightmare Before Christmas PG
Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king of Halloween Town, is bored with doing the same thing every year for Halloween. One day he stumbles into Christmas Town, and is so taken with the idea of Christmas that he tries to get the resident bats, ghouls, and goblins of Halloween town to help him put on Christmas instead of Halloween -- but alas, they can't get it quite right
*
Edward Scissorshands PG-13
The story surrounds an unfinished creation named Edward, played brilliantly by Johnny Depp. The talented actor managed to make Edward a simple being that radiates vulnerability as well as restrained passion suggesting the real, imperfect humanity within. Edward's intimidating scissorhands and strange black & white physical appearance looked out of place amongst the pastel-colored suburban surroundings. He is unique; we both laugh and sympathize when we see Edward having a hard time trying to eat a single green pea with his scissorhands, but then we become slack-jawed to see that his expression of artistry in sculpting are effortless, masterful, imaginative, and passionate.

Sci- fi Movies

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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
This movie is concerned with intelligence as the division between animal and human, then asks a question; what is the next division? Technology is treated as irrelevant to the quest - literally serving as mere vehicles for the human crew, and as a shell for the immature HAL entity. Story told as a montage of impressions, music and impressive and careful attention to subliminal detail. A very influential film and still a class act, even after 25 years.
*
War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds (2005)
Ray Ferrier is a working class man living in New Jersey. He's estranged from his family, his life isn't in order, and he's too caught up with himself. But the unthinkable and, ultimately, the unexpected happens to him in an extraordinary sense. His small town life is shaken violently by the arrival of destructive intruders: Aliens which have come en masse to destroy Earth. As they plow through the country in a wave of mass destruction and violence, Ray must come to the defense of his children. As the world must fend for itself by a new and very advanced enemy not of this world, it's inhabitants must save humanity from a far greater force that threatens to destroy it.

*
Metropolis (1927)
In the future, the society of Metropolis is divided in two social classes: the workers, who live in the underground below the machines level, and the dominant classes that lives in the surface. The workers are controlled by their leader Maria (Brigitte Helm), who wants to find a mediator between the upper class lords and the workers, since she believes that a heart would be necessary between brains and muscles. Maria meets Freder Fredersen (Gustav Fröhlich), the son of the Lord of Metropolis Johhan Fredersen (Alfred Abel), in a meeting of the workers, and they fall in love for each other. Meanwhile, Johhan decides that the workers are no longer necessary for Metropolis, and uses a robot pretending to be Maria to promote a revolution of the working class and eliminate them.

*
Blade Runner (1982)
In a cyberpunk vision of the future, man has developed the technology to create replicants, human clones used to serve in the colonies outside Earth but with fixed lifespans. In Los Angeles, 2019, Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specialises in terminating replicants. Originally in retirement, he is forced to re-enter the force when five replicants escape from an offworld colony to Earth.
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The Invisible Man (1933)

A scientist turns himself invisible. However, the formula slowly drives him insane, causing him to terrorize the countryside as an invisible killer.


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The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

An alien (Klaatu) with his mighty robot (Gort) land their spacecraft on cold war Earth just after the end of World War II. They bring an important message for the planet which Klaatu wishes to tell to representatives of all nations. However, communication turns out to be difficult so, after learning something of the natives, Klaatu decides on an alternative approach.
*
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

After Raymond returns from the Korean War as a decorated hero, the other members of his platoon can't really remember what he did to win his medal. Two of the soldiers start having recurring nightmares, and one of them decides to investigate Raymonds current activities. What dark and sinister secrets are being withheld by the Government and the Army ?