To celebrate Culture Night, Movie.ie picks five films to feel cultured!
Have you ever felt like you are the dumb friend in your group? Are you a little behind on all things considered high culture and society? Well fear not as Movies.ie brings you a very special guide to improving your social standing and you don’t even have to read that much. In our top five guide we will endeavour to cover, world cultures, fashion, music, politics, literature and social etiquette. So prepare to learn from the masters as we bring you five films some of us could stand to learn a lesson or two from…
V for Vendetta
Don’t panic this isn’t a joke, V for Vendetta is our generation’s version of the cult classic ‘1984’. Telling people you have an interest in politics and philosophy is all well and good but you need something to base your ideals on, so we suggest you take a thing or two from Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. History has been rewritten in this movie adaptation and one man begins a plan to set things right and tear down a treacherous dictatorship and false society, aided by a frightened young woman and a suspicious police officer…proving the people really do hold the power to make great change.
The Hours
Based on the book by Michael Cunningham, ‘The Hours’ is the story of three women whose lives revolve around a single book. Clarissa, Virginia and Laura are all women who are struggling for freedom. Virginia Woolfe, renowned author desperately seeks to be free of her illness and return t London, Laura searches for a life outside the confinement of the tiny suburbs and Clarissa wishes to escape into the freedom of her youth once more. Three lives profoundly shaped by the chapters one woman wrote, set brilliantly to the music of Philip Glass, ‘The Hours’ is a must see for anyone wishing to dabble in literature and cinema.
Memories
Nothing says world culture and a sense of well travelled experience than watching some foreign cinema (or booking a round world trip but who can afford that these days!) Memories is brought to us by Koji Morimoto and written by one of the masters of Japanese animation, Katsuhiro Otomo. It features three stories, ‘Magnetic Rose’, ‘Stink Bomb’ and ‘Cannon Fodder’ each with a different plot and style of animation While animated features might raise a few brows rest assured that mentioning it is foreign cinema is guaranteed to earn you a few brownie points with your friends.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born into a life that seemed to taunt and tease him at every turn. Escaping death many times, the young man was gifted with an extraordinary and even inhuman sense of smell. Undertaking the tutelage of a perfume maker Jean soon becomes engrossed in finding and perfecting the most beautiful scent. Out of a talent and passion for his work a new man is born, one will go to any lengths to achieve his goal, even murder. The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman and the narration is provided by John Hurt The movie is based on a book published in 1985 written by Patrick Suskind.
Bright Young Things
You know you are on the right track for impressing people with your unscrupulous knowledge of high society and cinema when you tell them you watched a movie directed by Stephen Fry. Bright Young Things is the story of London’s beautiful people (the exact type of people we are trying to impress here!), a group of boisterous young friends living it up in the 1930’s. Adam is a struggling writer trying to get a manuscript published that is now ceased by customs, his fiancé seems to be losing interest and all his friends care about is money and booze.