Most beautifully shot films?

Defiler Of The Coffin

Which films do you associate with top-class cinematography? Stand out films for me are:

Road To Perdition
The Last Samurai
Life of Pi

writhen

I thought Unforgiven was pretty good.

Ironman76

Hero (Jet Li) - Nuff said.

7 7 12

Inland empire

illicit007

Lord of the Rings

(cus New Zealand rocks!!!)

*insert Flight of the Concords joke here*

fruvai

Barry Lyndon

Sad Professor

I don't know about best, but some of my favourites would include Barry Lyndon, The Third Man and The Double Life of Veronique. Oh and almost anything by Sven Nykvist and Christopher Doyle. And Malick, of course.

Custardpi

Saw Laurence of Arabia in the IFI a few months ago. The way the desert scenes were shot blew my mind, really brought the landscape to life & made it an integral part of the film.

Mary28

A river runs through it.
Anything by Akira Kurosawa.

baby and crumble

A Single Man. Beautiful.

MrTsSnickers

I loved the way Moulin Rouge was shot, or any of the Baz Lurhmann film I've seen to be honest; Australia was beautiful.

Aurum

The first films to spring to mind were Pan's Labyrinth, I am Love and Manhattan; all three had outstanding cinematography.

rednik

The thin red line for a war film is beautifully shot.

kraggy

Amélie and A Very Long Engagement, both Jeunet films.

Sublime.

mike65

Laurence of Arabia - nuff said
Barry Lyndon - Ireland never looked so good.
Alien (yes!) - the perfectly realised depiction of a truck in space also featured superb cinematography esp the scenes on LV-426.
Apocalypse Now - did war ever look better?
The Third Man - Fantastic black and white world, bleak and beguiling.
The Darjeeling Limited - usually recent entry (for me) a mix of the highly stylised and "naturalistic" effective colour palette.
Daughters of Darkness - lesbian vampires in Ostend. Opulent and saturnine.
Blade Runner - if you need to ask why....

krudler

of recent times The Tree of Life, Sunshine, and The Assassination Of Jesse James all look amazing.

Birneybau

"Days Of Heaven" by Malick.

You could print any screenshot and stick it on the wall, happily.

Aidric

Roger Deakins work in The Assassination of Jesse James immediately spring to mind.

I also found 'Melancholia' to be visually arresting. In fact I think my jaw was on the floor during the prologue.

Royal Irish

Killing Them Softly. The part when Brad Pitt pulled up along side Ray Liotta and shot him was beautifully shot.

saintsaltynuts

The Master.

long range shooter

Lord of the rings
13th warrior
Braveheart

delbertgrady

I'd agree with Barry Lyndon, Days of Heaven, La Double Vie de Veronique and Manhattan, all already mentioned.
I'd suggest JFK (stunning cinematography and editing), Once Upon a Time in the West and - the first one that came to mind when I saw this thread - Picnic at Hanging Rock.

opr

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. The first half of the film is among the most stunning looking cinema I've ever watched.

Opr

Fox_In_Socks

The Fall

It's one of my favourite films, and part of it, is because of how it incredible looking it is.

http://splatteronfilm.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/the-fall1.png

http://www.directorsnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/the_fall.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o8Ga3C5NQWI/Tf7Q3p4kS2I/AAAAAAAAAIo/Cb2k2mnYDrQ/s1600/the-fall.jpg

Ole Rodrigo

Samsara
I always loved the colors in O Brother Where Art Thou ( Roger Deakins again )

dark crystal

Having just watched The English Patient, I'd have to give that a shout.

One film I've always found beautiful to watch is Black Narcissus. If I'm not mistaken, I think it's the work of the great Jack Cardiff, who was also cinematographer on the equally beautiful 'The Red Shoes'.

TheIrishGrover

Yep, as the sad prof said, anything by Christopher Doyle, especially his WKW stuff (I know he gets his just kudos from In "The Mood For Love" but I still love the speed and vibrancy of "Chungking Express") and anything by Malick: Some of the scenes in The "Thin Red Line" are simply amazing and, as mixed as the reception of the film was (Personally, I loved it), "The New World" was breathtaking. I love the angle Janusz Kaminsk has taken Spielberg post Schindler's List: the washed out colours and handheld camera angles/unusual framings of scenes. "Minority Report" was practically monochrome. The Coen Brothers' stuff too: "Fargo" and "O Brother" especially.

I like my long takes, be they something ever-changing and dynamic and complex like the Copa-Cabana scene in "Goodfellas" to leisurely, still scenes like any from The New World.

"Heat" also looks amazing. Initially it doesn't hit you because you are concentrating of the film itself but, once you watch it again it's amazing. It's a film I failed to appreciate when I saw it in the cinema for the first time 'cos all the focus was on "that scene" between DeNiro and Pacino (And, at the time I was underwhelmed by it. Fool, me!). But I rewatched it years later and noticed two things: 1) For all the hype that surrounded the pairing of DeNiro and Pacino, the rest of the cast (especially Kilmer and judd and a post-Leon Natalie Portman) were freaking AMAZING. And 2) It looked stunning: all steel blue and neon.

qwert2

Wim Wenders' "Beyond the Clouds". Check it out

nbar12

Brokeback Mountain

mewe

Road To Perdition was beautifully shot. Conrad L Hall was my favourite cinematographer-his use of light was second to none.

Think Roger Deakins has taken up the mantle now-his work on The Assassination Of Jesse James and No Country For Old Men is amazing.

P.T Anderson is amazing too-can see a Stanley Kubrick influence in how he shoots.

johnny_ultimate

The single most beautifully visual cinema experience I've had was watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Nearly the entirety of the first half of the film is shot in POV, which brings a profound sense of intimacy and insight into the mindset of the protagonist. It's a tad more traditionally shot after that, but it's never less than a glorious triumph of pure cinematography - from the rich colour palette to the simple sight of hair billowing in a convertible speeding down a motorway. I emerged in sort of a daze that took a good few minutes to fully recover from - probably the highest compliment I could give to a film.

I could say the same thing about Enter the Void - its seemingly endless parade of omnipotent angles, freeform movement and quite mind-boggling setups (the opening twenty minute long tracking shot is one of the film's more traditional moments) is beguiling. Alas, unlike Diving Bell..., the stuff it supports occasionally shatters the illusion - a film whose themes and storytelling range from the moderately interesting to the laughably ridiculous. But as a visual achievement its ambition and bravura is unmatched in recent cinema. Shame about the CGI penis.

Kenji Mizoguchi remains my favourite visual director of all time. A lot of his films like Ugetsu or Sansho Dayu are full of arresting, beautiful imagery - like the foggy lake or lakeside picnic of the former. But what's remarkable is the way he achieves this technical ingenuity with strong narrative purpose. When he uses a tracking shot it is not just to show-off - it is to aid us in truly viewing and comprehending the character, or in the case of something like Life of O-Haru to make a scene come across as even more intense or heartbreaking. Every shot is considered - like in Osaka Elegy where he waits until the final minutes of the film to use his first close-up to devastating effect. A true master of form.

Of the films I've recently watched, I found Stoker and The Naked Island particularly compelling. The former employs consistently eccentric and clever compositions and combines them with inventive editing to craft a wonderfully uneasy atmosphere. The latter is simply stunning - where most Japanese films are often set in confined interiors, The Naked Island is a film of breathtaking landscapes, intense close-ups and deep-focused / sunlit exteriors. Would love to see it in a cinema that could do justice to its monochromatic widescreen wonders.

mountai

"Deep Troth"

---

G"wan if Linda can do it -#--- So can you !!!

Chefcomput

The thin red line

DrumSteve

Has to be Sunshine by Danny Boyle... Beautiful, beautiful movie.

faceman

Only cos its Saturday night am I getting involved in this thread!

Most of you are wrong. And I'd love to debate it over a pint!

Anyway for me there are 2 clear cut winners

"Dreams" - Dir. Akira Kurosawa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx_dpJmUPZY

Just beautiful.

"Orlando" - Dir. Sally Potter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNcVg8j-Jos

Every frame is a painting!

Sl!mCharles

Into the Wild is the first to spring to mind for lovely panoramas and nature shots.

Would also agree with A Single Man, I absolutely love that film's visual aspect. It looks incredible. Beautiful shots & beautiful sets, & 60s folk, beautifully dressed

Jumboman

Tron Legacy was beautiful to look at.

mcgarrett

The Duellists

Royal Irish

Royal Irish wrote: »

Killing Them Softly. The part when Brad Pitt pulled up along side Ray Liotta and shot him was beautifully shot.

Cheers man, can't wait to see that movie now.

e_e

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGmvfowkQlc

Got goosebumps from this scene, Malick at his best.

fluke

Royal Irish wrote: »

Killing Them Softly. The part when Brad Pitt pulled up along side Ray Liotta and shot him was beautifully shot.

Spoiler tags dude...ffs.

Stand By Me is beautifully shot. It has a dreamlike quality. Especially all the shots on the train tracks.

johnny_ultimate

The New World's opening with the Pilgrim landing is unspeakably beautiful on the big screen too. Seeing it in the IFI last year - aided by that tremendous soundtrack choice - was spine-tingling stuff, the sight of those ships as jaw-dropping a spectacle as any major studio production has ever offered.

It might be the single-most lavishly visualised mainstream release ever made, TBH.

The Barefoot Pizza Thief

Gandhi has many breathtaking scenes in a classic way but The French Connection and Se7en for me.

Sweet Smell of Success, The Hustler and Mean Streets were also each shot in a very unique and quite striking ways, for their time and often copied since as a result.

Ben Moore

I agree with many of the films already mentioned here but one stands out to me from around 20 years ago

"Indochine"

While the film itself was too long for some it has an epic quality reflected by incredible cinematography by Francois Catonne

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0146284/awards

Padraig Mor

Fox_In_Socks wrote: »

The Fall

It's one of my favourite films, and part of it, is because of how it incredible looking it is.

http://splatteronfilm.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/the-fall1.png

http://www.directorsnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/the_fall.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o8Ga3C5NQWI/Tf7Q3p4kS2I/AAAAAAAAAIo/Cb2k2mnYDrQ/s1600/the-fall.jpg

That director's (Tarsem Singh) previous film, The Cell, was stunning as well.