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Just a few days ago I watched Sci-fi classic "Solaris" by Andrei Tarkovsky and I had no expectations or knowledge about the movie or Director before watching it and it blew my mind. I then looked into other movies directed by Tarkovsky such as "Stalker" and "Andrei Rublev" which nobody in my age group knows or talk about but these are great movies. I am looking forward to finding such hidden gems and watching these films.

Solaris is a beautiful book. It’s a short read, too. I highly recommend it.

This was a case where I thought the movie (Tarkovsky's Solaris) was much better than the book.

I would definitely put Andrei Tarkovsky in the same league of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch. Watching movies such as Solaris, A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blue Velvet etc. feel like watching a beautiful and masterpiece art.

Andrei Arsenevich Tarkovsky is definitely greater than Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch in my book. He's a genius and I highly recommend reading "Sculping in Time", a book he wrote to explain his approach to film making.

Agree. I think the ordering is Tarkovsky > Kubrick > Lynch. All great directors, though.

Indeed. A bit like what happened with Blade Runner and 2001 (which has a different relationship to the movie as neither is based on the other).

I think 2001 is a movie making masterclass in itself.

An interesting note here is that the edition most people have read was translated into English from a French edition. Lem wasn't happy with the translation, and there was a direct Polish to English translation done in 2011 which was blessed by Lem's estate, and which was released as an audible exclusive audiobook, and then on Kindle in 2014. It still isn't available in print.

There are substantial differences in the tone and even the character names.

I still like Tarkovsky's version best, even though Lem was not a fan.

That explains it. I had difficulties with the English translation. I thought maybe this is art or something. Then read it in some other language, and it was more palatable, but I do not remember the book anymore. I only remember an enormous baby rolling in the sea and lofty structures emerging from the sea as a by-product of Solaris brain ruminating.

Stalker is fantastic, as is "Roadside Picnic," the novel on which the film is based. Both inspired the acclaimed computer game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

While different genre, still recommend watching 'Viy': https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0062453

I'd risk to suggest that "Andrei Rublev" is Tarkovsky's best film as it is both approachable, auteur, commercial, poetic, symbolic, naturalistic and everything you'd imagine one of the vertebras of the 20th century culture to be.

Yes, late Tarkovsky is great too, but it's not really quite cinema at that point. "Rublev" is The Movie in Tarkovsky's filmography.

It's also probably one of the best medieval films there is, regardless of the genre, "7th Seal" to "Kingdom of Heaven".

Another great, often overlooked movie is his very first one - "Ivan's Childhood". You can see him still begin somewhat cautious there, but the movie is as poignant as they get. It was created by one of the best artists of the generation as he watched the dawn of the 60s era as a member of the society for which World War 2 and Red Terror are yet to become "yesterday".

After I watched Solaris I decided to space out the other Tarkovsky films over a period of years. They each hit me so hard that I wanted to always know there was one waiting for me that I could look forward to seeing, ideally as a restored print at the local rep cinema. Now I only have The Sacrifice left.

I also very much recommend Chris Marker's documentary on Tarkovsky, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch [1][2]. Germane to this thread, he compares aspects of his films to Kurosawa in parts. Marker is also an incredible singular filmmaker, and the documentary is more of a love letter to Tarkovsky while he's on his deathbed. If you enjoy this, then oh do I envy you getting to go down the Marker rabbit hole and watching Sans Soleil and La Jetée for the first time.

[1] English with Turkish subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=35lETmPDypI

[2] French https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M56i90Q1-Y

The production of Stalker caused the deaths of multiple people due to the toxic environment.

I was a little underwhelmed by Tarkovsky's take on Solaris; the book was written with a lot more evocative prose, especially with respect to color, which made the film seem just so plain. But I really liked Stalker - then again I hadn't read Roadside Picnic. My understanding is that Tarkovsky's adaptations are usually quite different from the source material.

> Film has such a huge library of "great movies", I have over 700 films logged on letterboxd, with a pretty decent spread of years/countries and I would say I still know basically nothing about film.

Film is so full of great stuff that there exists a reasonably-curated meta best-of-list of 1,000 great ones... with an overflow list of the next 1,000 that's also almost all excellent, and those still aren't a comprehensive list of all the films worth watching.

https://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm

(Possibly NSFW because of screen-caps from movies)

Yea, I started with the "AFI Top 100 Films" and went through all of those (spoiler, you've likely already seen many of them if you are even slightly into movies). Definitely focuses on American films (surprise!).

After that I have begun the "1001 Films To See Before You Die." I suspect I'll be finishing that up in about 3 years (need to hang on that much longer!). Most if not all of the AFI Top 100 Films are in the 1001. Also, again, some of the 901 remaining films you may also have seen already. But the 1001 have a lot more French New Wave, Italian Neorealist, and generally a more cosmopolitan mix. To be sure though the list skews Western.

I'm happy to have another list of films. The set of Kurosawa's favorite films, of course, intersects with the above two lists but appears to add, unsurprisingly, a lot more Japanese films.

Somehow I had to smile just imagining Kurosawa watching "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest". Does that film even make sense for someone growing up within Japanese culture?

> Does that film even make sense for someone growing up within Japanese culture?

Oh yeah! F*ck yeah! This movie was remade into a 1986 Malayalam movie by a really good actor/director pair and I'll bet almost everyone who watched it came away shaken.

Institutionalizing someone who is not crazy is something every culture can identify with. You can also pretty easily draw parallels in any culture to even the supporting cast (Nurse Ratched). Probably because of the stigma associated with mental illness and how institutions across the world took advantage of it.

Even now when I think about the (original) movie ending.. tears. I grew up in India. I don't know what I don't know, but after having lived in the US for over 20 years, I don't think folks missed much in translation. There might be a subtext there with a Native American winning some semblance of a freedom that most other cultures miss.

In the book McMurphy is trying to get admitted into the mental ward to get out of prison — it wasn't really a case of the state institutionalizing him against his will.

I guess I was thinking more that he is the protagonist for challenging the establishment, breaking the rules, questioning authority. That seems like something someone in Japanese society would not enthusiastically cheer on.

> In the book McMurphy is trying to get admitted into the mental ward to get out of prison — it wasn't really a case of the state institutionalizing him against his will.

I know. But he can't get out when he wants to right?

Yeah that's a good point about questioning authority. I don't know.

As I recall the AFI list is a good "mid-brow" list which probably describes me pretty well. I like these films more than most of the blockbusters but I also tend to clock out a lot of the time when you get into real art house fare.

Yeah, I suppose if you sprinkle in 5% art-house fare then I am okay. There are occasional surprises in the new wave, avant garde, independent films.

"1001 Films" does pull in a bit of the high-brow flicks. The harder to watch stuff from the "AFI Top 100" are some of the very early silent films (or over the top propaganda films like "Yankee Doodle Dandy").

I've seen the vast bulk of the films. Intolerance you definitely need to watch as a period piece. It's a pretty good example although something like Safety Last or The General would be easier to watch examples.Don't really disagree on "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Isn't a lot on the list I seriously disagree with although there are period favorites I'd probably skip and different films I'd include.

Strongly agree here. Letterboxd is the best thing that has happened to me in recent past. It introduced me to almost endless list of absolutely fantastic movies I didn't knew existed especially non-english movies no one talks about. And I just logged my 700th movie yesterday.

How do you use it for film discovery? I had a look and that use case wasn’t clear. I really want to find a good film discovery service though, so I’d love to know how to use it for that.

(When I looked it mainly seemed to be about rating movies I’d seen and making notes on them)

There are people with different tastes, and great lists you can discover, also they are sending newsletter called "Letterboxd Rushes for you" a weekly Letterboxd digest which mostly evolves with your activities on the website, and includes such as "new reviews by your friends", "popular films with your friends" etc. I like making archives, offline dvds, brochures, posters, and logging movies feels like a digital part of it, and Letterboxd kind of fits perfectly, similar to here actually; people, conversations and content has quality.

Lists work really well for me. Some popular lists like this[1] is a great place to start. Also on each film's page at the bottom, you can find lists it is on. So if you like a movie particularly well, you can find similar one in those lists. Most of the lists are not generic genre/actor/director based so I find really good stuff there.

[1] https://letterboxd.com/dave/list/official-top-250-narrative-...

I do the same thing on IMDb.

I adore Last Year at Marienbad. Although I agree with Sofia Coppola that it's inevitably a movie where I doze off a little. That's alright since the entire film is like a weird dream. It's refreshing having a film that resists interpretation so intensely. It's utterly surreal, beautiful and tragic, yet without having a singular "correct" reading. Rashomon and Last Year at Marienbad would be an excellent double billing.

Hiroshima Mon Amour is another fantastic film. In both films Resnais is so brilliant in his editing, in its non-linearity, in its emotional effect. Frankly he might be one of my favorite directors of the Left Bank/New Wave generation.

> I have over 700 films logged on letterboxd, with a pretty decent spread of years/countries and I would say I still know basically nothing about film.

It depends on what it means to "know film". It's a deep rabbit hole, but if you're logging the films you appreciate in some way and now you're up to 700, I would say you "know" a lot more than most.

Here's a gem for you... "Spring Night Summer Night". It's available free streaming on byNWR.com. Completely forgotten film that was meticulously restored by Nicholas Winding Refn. (review https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/spring...).

I was approaching 3000 films on criticker back in college when I realized, that I would never be able to begin to approach watching all of the films that I wanted to. Sort of like, the more you know the more you know you don't know. I ended up deleting all of my tracking of films, books (well now I'm tracking my books again for insurance purposes) etc and no longer worry about seeing all the important films.

I didn't know about Criterion Channel. Shame it's US only. I'd love to have that.

Good news, it isn't US only (anymore)! Criterion used to be available through Hulu (US only), then it was available through another streaming service whose name escapes me, but they (Criterion) finally started running their own VOD Netflix-like service:

https://www.criterionchannel.com/

I have it setup on my Apple TV in Canada and it works great. Highly recommended!

EDIT: Just checked [0], it's actually USA + Canada only for now... Sorry about that.

[0] https://www.criterion.com/faq/channel

You can just use a VPN to sign up. Works perfectly (with no VPN) after that.

Or you can just stream the movies with less friction more options and a wider catalogue. People thought netflix would en being the spotify of movies. They were wrong, so now watch a robust pirate scene to re-flourish.

When Criterion licenses films from the copyright holders, they are only allowed to distribute those films in North America. Meanwhile, in Europe for example, some other company gets the right. That is why Criterion’s DVDs and Blu-rays have always been Region 1, and Criterion’s own store will (last time I checked) not ship abroad.

In the UK Curzon have a similar but smaller catelogue.

I've seen letterboxd mentioned a couple times in this thread. I use trakt.tv (which has nice Plex integration), are they both sort of the same thing?