MENTAL MASTURBATION I (Re-Issue)

NOTE: This was originally posted in January 2010. The first of several lists of films and their basic information. Since most of the first few posts on this blog have gone unseen, I'd like to re-post this first list. I think the films are brilliant and should be given more attention.


These films are essential for any movie buff, aspiring filmmaker, and pretty much anybody interested in great cinema. Most of them are not very well known, and others are greatly underappreciated.

In Chronological Order:

Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)
Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel, 1950)
Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951)
Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961)
Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962)
Simon of the Desert (Luis Bunuel, 1965)
A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966)
Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke, 1967)
Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto, 1969)
Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974)
The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
The Tennant (Roman Polanski, 1976)
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)
Nosferatu The Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979)
Cruising (William Friedkin, 1980)
Heavy Metal (Gerald Potterton, 1981)
Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983)
The Pope of Greenwich Village (Stuart Rosenberg, 1984)
Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994)
Bang (Ash Baron-Cohen, 1995)
Freeway (Matthew Bright, 1996)
Roger Dodger (Dylan Kidd, 2002)
Simone (Andrew Niccol, 2002)
The Return [Vozvrashcheniye] (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2003)
Mean Creek (Jacob Aaron Estes, 2004)
Reprise (Joachim Trier, 2006)
The Box (Richard Kelly, 2009)