Movies so good (or powerful) that you can only see once?

I'm a man, but I sat and saw "DEAD RINGERS" with my mom. She filled in what wasn't on the screen for me. It was a great movie, but it was so good that it served it's purpose.

In fact, I walked out of the theatre when they forced his lids open. It was just too much for me - way back then. And I've never been tempted to rent it, either.

Great movie for repeat viewing. Read the book too!

eom

we were just talking about this movie yesterday in a Bjork thread...

That movie was so fucking intense. God, I got halfway through it and was like totally exhausted mentally.
Duckie

I still get choked up when I remember the scene in which Ricky is shot and laying on the white sofa.

so well done.. and being from L.A. I knew a lot of what they referred to.

That scene was especially hard to watch.

Irish movie about girls abused in a nunnery in the 40s(?).
Truly powerful

you aren't kidding about powerful.

I really liked that movie a lot, from a religious standpoint as well as a hate-group/culture standpoint.

I'd see it again.

Gives me the horrors just thinking about it. "Fail Safe" is almost as bad.

Can you tell I was a child during the worst part of the cold war? :)

"Testament" is mine - the best of the 1980's nuclear war movies.

Easily the most horrifying, depressing, despair-inducing movie ever made.

Same topic: Surviving a nuclear war.

No mutants, no crazed bikers, no paramilitary survivalists, no macho loner heroes, and no smokin', sexy, ass-kickin' punk-rock babes. Just pain, despair, and hopelessness.

--bkl

But I've heard of it. Did it air in the US?

I don't think it aired on commercial TV in the USA, though PBS may have shown it.

We had one called The Day After, which was pretty good, but certainly NOT a visionary piece of work like Threads.

The Day After was slammed and damned by the critics, but it was actually a breakthrough for American audiences, used to sugar-coated macho versions of Doomsday. People actually suffered in The Day After, and nuclear war was portrayed not just as stylistically dark, but emotionally devastating. It was like fifteen minutes of Threads spun into a mini-series. I don't think most of the critics really ever understood how significant it was from the point of view of American audiences.

Amerika (which I also liked) was about the takeover of the USA by the United Nations. It was the "answer" to The Day After. It was said to have been based on a joke told by Ben Stein at a Hollywood party. The second irony was that for a supposedly super-patriotic movie, it managed to convey liberal sentiments and ideas pretty well.

--bkl

A fine, fine film, but once is enough.

Great movie but you have to be put on suicide watch after viewing it.

I can watch it more than once, but I only break it out every couple of years. It's that damned depressing.

also "the bad lieutenant","the pianist"and"dodge ball"

Watch it before you have kids (at least when they are young). I had to stop half-way, couldn't take anymore.

It's one of the best movies I've ever seen, anime or otherwise. But it really is that depressing.

heartbreaking - and Begnini isn't usually that heartbreaking.

And I'm not by any stretch a sobber...I didn't sob like that when my father had bypass surgery, and I'm a total daddy's girl, ffs...:eyes:

"Schindler's List" and "Henry, A Portrait of a Serial Killer"....

Schindler's List was in my opinion one of the greatest films ever made... I wouldn't even go see it in a threater... I waited to watch it at home. I had gotten home from bowling and I thought that I would watch half of it that night.. (since I had to work in the morning) and the second half the next evening. I ended up watching the whole thing and didn't get a lot of sleep that night.

I haven't watched it since...and I don't ever think I will. What a sad testament to humankind. What makes me even more upset..is that I thought that something like this would never again happen in my lifetime... yet... it has.

Henry...was a fiction story..but really gave a gut wrenching portrayal of how a serial killer thinks. Siskel and Ebert reviewed it many years ago and said "Every adult should see this movie".... not for anything entertaining...because it left you sick to your stomach...but because there are people in society that do think like Henry.

I had a copy of the Henry video I had bought in a pawn shop ... a friend of mine said he wanted to see it... He lived with his mother and I told him not to watch it with her..because there are some very disturbing images in the movie. He did anyway.... He said he had never felt so uncomfortable in his mothers presence as he did during this movie...I laughed so hard... I said I told you!!

Great film but also a wrist-slitter!

Anti-war. Disturbing.

and "On the Beach"

Yes, it's a JD movie. It's his directorial debut (he also co wrote it with his brother) about a Native American living on the res. He's so poor that in order to support his family, he agrees to be the star of a snuff film that Marlon Brando is making. He essentially has a week to spend with everyone and then die at the end. :cry:

This film is not available in the US. You can occasionally find it on ebay. I've only seen still shots from it. And most who have seen TB say they can't watch it more than once.

:cry:

I'm glad I saw it, but it was traumatic, and I do not care to see it again.

Grave of the Fireflies

Once you've seen the end, everything falls together. To see it again wouldn't be the same. Well, maybe just to gaze at Ludivine Sagnier some more.

I don't think I could bear to see either of those again. Knowing the full scope of the horrors those characters faced makes it hard to watch the movie from the beginning

felt altered after watching this

too honest, tmi

n/t

Not comfortable with the way Frank treats everyone, especially Isabella Rosellini. But what a great movie!

Not to mention the climax in the closet.

The scene of the soldier dying because he reached for something beautiful, at the end of the Great War, is the most bothersome scene for me to watch in any movie.

I slept with the light on for a MONTH after this film.

It was too fucking powerful for people, which is why it was a commercial failure.

People could not deal with the brutal reality of rape and sickness and desperation in this movie, it was no Roots, that's for sure.

God, Thandie Newton as Beloved (ironically, her given name "Thandie" means Beloved in Swahili) "Where you Di-ah-monds?"

"You, you, can go, but she's
the one
I
HAVE
TO
HAVE!"

Just thinking about lines from this movie is giving me chills. I have never worked up the courage to see it again, although it was one of the most beautiful and horrifying works of art I have ever been exposed to. Oprah did Toni Morrison proud, and I think she still doesn't understand the public rejection of Beloved, and I still want to slap her right across the face for calling it a failure. The public wants action heros who triumph, not women who trudge on to die a natural death after brutal humiliation and desperation beyond words.

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The most accurate portrayal of addiction I've ever seen is "Why do Fools Fall in Love/ The Frankie Lyman story" Halle and Vivica are in this, it is Brutal, Brutal, Brutal.

not that I really want to see it again, but you're so right. "Beloved" is a misunderstood masterpiece. On second thought, I think I'll force myself to watch it again.
Danny Glover delivered the performance of his career also.

But in that film, no one wasn't brilliant.

I'd love to see it again, but I know what it will do to me, it'll have me scared shitless for months, jumping at the slightest sound, and terrified of lady bugs again.

I only hope someday it will get the reverence it deserves, and Oprah's ass will wise up and stop putting it down as a failure. Toni Morrison desereves a hell of alot better than that.

nm

w/Adriane Brody. Probably the most powerful movie I've ever seen. There were so many scenes that just overwhelmed me.

Elizabeth Shue's character's co-dependency is excruciating, I couldn't sit through it again, and there was no resolution, because it wasn't her character's movie.

The alcoholic character to me was boring and stupid, but true, but her...

and many other documentaries but not F911 I must have seen that a gazillion times by now.

If a movie is really good, you can always find more nuances by watching it again.

it's too monumentally screwed to watch again

..w/Tom Hanks.

Anyone?:headbang: