10. Metropolis (1927)

Metropolis is Fritz Lang’s most impressive film, featuring incredible special effects. Set in the year 2026, Metropolis is a film about the oppression of the working class by wealthy industrialists, particularly by one business man named Joh Frederson. Most of the shots were achieved by using miniature and partially completed sets and, of course, expert lighting. This allows Lang to produce attractive and stunning shots of cathedrals and buildings that, unbelievably, don’t actually exist, and to create a grandiose feeling for a film that was shot with the technological capabilities of the 1920s.

9. Winter Light (1963)

Bergman, like Tarkovsky, knew how to construct a scene and use the camera to capture the splendor of the everyday. Winter Light is one of his many films about the silence of God. It follows Tomas Ericsson, a pastor dealing with his mistress and deeply troubled parishioners. Winter Light explores this silence and contrasts it with stunning cinematography. In fact, the landscapes that Bergman captures on film are so beautiful that they seem to undermine his point and suggest the existence of a perfect God. The scenes shot in the church are also striking, using dramatic lighting to heighten the viewer’s mood as Tomas deals with his mistress.

8. Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Synecdoche, New York follows Caden Cotard, played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, a dying playwright, as he works on his overambitious play. The film is very meta, given that Synechdoche, New York was Kaufman’s directorial debut and that, as a filmmaker, it probably seemed as if it was a never-ending and all-encompassing project. However, Cotard’s play is actually written and practiced over a period of decades as his life spins out of control, and is never a finished product. The central focus of the film is Caden’s mortality and his willingness to embrace it fully in life and on the stage. Incredible for a first film, Kaufman achieved true genius with Synechdoche, and somehow made the absurd plot’s key points seem believable and almost natural. 

7. The Fountain (2006)

The Fountain follows 2 characters over 3 separate but similar reincarnative timelines. The film is as visually stunning as they come. Scenes from the modern plotline are shot well, feature dark lighting, and are just plain good-looking. Scenes from the medieval period are in the beautifully lush jungles of Latin America and make great use of dazzling Mayan structures. More impressive, however, are the scenes of the future, in which Tommy is on a race to Xibalba. Instead of animating these scenes, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky decided to film yeast as it grew under a microscope, so as to provide realistic texture for the stars that Tommy passes through.

6. Melancholia (2011)

Melancholia is probably the cleanest and most accessible of the von Trier films. It follows a young woman, Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, through two of the biggest three events of her life: her wedding and her death. The film is stunning, both visually and audibly. It’s set alongside Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and begins with a stunning 15-minute-long slow motion intro depicting the end of the earth. This, of course, has to include animation, but von Trier pulls it off well, partially by including sweeping landscape shots reminiscent of Bergman or Tarkovsky.

5. No Country for Old Men (2007)

No Country for Old Men is a deep Coen brothers film that, unlike many of their others, they didn’t fully write. In it, Anton, played by Javier Bardem, is a murderous fiend, slaying almost everyone he meets across a wide Western barren landscape, all in search of lost drug money. No Country for Old Men is gorgeous. Somehow, the Coen’s manage to completely grasp and depict the West as writer Cormac McCarthy originally wrote about it, and provide such stunning and empty shots that convey a true feeling of loneliness. 

4. Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner is a feature film based on the science fiction novel by Philip K Dick. Harrison Ford features as one of the Blade Runners hired to 'terminate' the Replicants, an enslaved human-engineered robot created by Tyrell Corporation’s genetic engineers. The movie portrays what it means to be human in the cybernetics era, raising questions such as: if artificial intelligence were placed in a body that looked and acted human, would it be considered a human? Would androids differ in any important way from the humans who created them?

3. Ordet (1955)

Ordet is a Carl Theodor Dreyer masterpiece, which follows the struggles of the Borgen family. Dreyer and most filmmakers of the black and white era had a better sense for lighting than modern filmmakers do, and this is apparent throughout the film. If divinity were physically among us, we would imagine it to be radiant and mesmerizing. Dreyer is able to meet this expectation in Ordet, making the film more handsome and powerful than other filmmakers could.

2. Knight of Cups (2015)

Terrence Malick’s film Knight of Cups has been heavily criticized and is sorely misunderstood. While it’s no Tree of Life, it’s a powerful film chock full of Kierkegaard which parallels the parable of the Prodigal Son. In it, Rick, played by Christian Bale, is a wandering young man who has forgotten why he’s here. Like all of his others, Knight of Cups is gorgeous. Unlike Dreyer, Tarkovsky, and Bergman, it features no long sweeping shots, but rather is full of short, flittering glimpses which are edited seamlessly together. There’s so much camera movement that it gave my wife motion sickness. The film is abstract, perhaps his most abstract to date, but it is definitely worth watching and likely foreshadows other stunning and deep Malick films to come.

1. Stalker (1979)

Tarkovsky’s Stalker is a return to the science fiction genre following Solaris, but Stalker takes place on Earth and focuses on an impenetrable and mysterious zone in Soviet Russia. Tarkovsky truly does an amazing job capturing the magnificence of the Soviet landscape. Particularly striking are the scenes in which the Stalker is throwing lug nuts with cloth tied to them to try to determine which areas are safe for their travel. We see sweeping shots of the landscape here, and the plants seem to be in full bloom and vibrant.