Visually, your favourite films

One day I hope Disney would revisit Ultra 4K of Fantasia and restore the edited/altered scenes(zoomed in, etc...) to the original look of the entire movie!

Can dream about....

Love in no particular order:
The Black Stallion
2001
Amélie
Lawrence of Arabia
North By Northwest
Rear Window
Gravity
Dreams (forthcoming Criterion - Akira Kurosawa)
Brazil
The Fifth Element
The Empire Strikes Back
Safety First
Modern Times
Thief
Close Encounters of a Third Kind

so many epic looking films to recall!

 

Yes! I'd forgotten about this one - maybe cause I thought the movie itself was kinda meh.

It looks a lot a moving version of he hudson river school paintings - really gorgeous.

 

Everybody works in service of the director and his or her creative vision of the work as a whole.

You omitted the film's color timer (aka the Digital Colorist or the Digital Intermediate Colorist), who also has an important role nowadays in establishing the look, tone, brightness, and contrast of every shot and the individual elements within the shot. Lab color timers in the old days only had overall adjustments for Red, Blue, and Green, plus overall brightness or darkness; digital color correction has a lot more nuance, particularly in subduing certain elements or bringing out others. It's not unusual for us to specifically light individual actors within a shot differently from each other, and also to bring down the background while bringing up foreground objects or people. And we also can sometimes adjust sharpness or softness of individual elements within a shot -- for example, throwing the background more out of focus on a close-up of a face.

But to me, it's the Cinematographer, followed by the Art Director, as well as the Makeup people and Costume people. The colorist works in service of the cinematographer and the director.

 

Director !!!! of course most Directors are so so with visuals and hire Great Art Directors and Dps But this rarely works

 

For different reasons, my fave films, visually:

 

The two that come right to mind:

 

Thanks for the good clarification. After I posted I continued some research and found the Colorist role, as you explained so well.

I also saw a VFX CD (visual effects creative director) listed as having significant creative input in our digital age. Sounds like, among other elements, they (and their staff) direct/produce the CG we've come to discuss so much?

 

I would expect that many directors are strong at story telling, but weak at visuals... yet you're saying that even with a great DP and AD, that usually isn't good enough? — Surprising.

 

I would say the Visual Effects Producer has authority over all of them, but they work with the Look Development people to decide issues like time of day, overall saturation, contrast, and so on... which are conversations that the DP also participates in. As one example, Chivo Lubezki was the cinematographer on Gravity, but a lot of what he did was "virtual" lighting on CGI sets. He still made the decisions on where the shadows went, where the light was pointed, what reflected, what was black, what the overall color and contrast was, and so on.

 

Even when you have everything ,a great visual film is not a sure thing ,Coppola made the stunning looking Apocalypse now ,then go on with the same people two make One From The Heart hardly a visual classic even with Storaro

 

La Belle Et La Bete

 

Casablanca
Notorious

 

The most recent "The Revenant".

 

Here's a few of mine.

B&W

Citizen Kane
Manhattan
Raging Bull
Eraserhead
In Cold Blood
The Artist and the Model

Color

The Wizard of Oz
Days of Heaven
Tron
The Shining
The Master
The Fall

 

I have some qualms with Fassbinder's Querelle in terms of pace, acting and narrative choices, but the looks of it are mesmerizing. It's impossible to image the world Genet conjures in the novel without the pink-ish neon lights of the Brest Fassbinder created. Probably, it's his peak visually along with the sepia-tinted Weimar Berlin of Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Also, I saw a lot of people listing Paris, Texas which is brilliant but we gotta remember Wings Of Desire too. Glacial looking Berlin, warm and tender humanity overall. I remember I first saw this Wender's achievement in a very warm and sunny summer day and must confess by the end of it I had to catch a blanket. The black and white is dazzling and timeless while the color scenes by the end capture with documental perfection its time. Whenever the film needs to be mundane or eternal, it dances between colors and b/w.

 

No hesitation, Kwaidan.

 

Blade Runner is one of mine.

 

Kuroneko does to b/w what Kwaidan does to color. Have you ever seen Gates of Hell? I didn't but, by the stills and commentaries, I believe it reaches Kwaidan levels. Also the original Narayama is another japanese ethereal masterwork.

 

I haven't, no, but thanks for the recommendations. I'll be sure to check them out! I'm only aware of Kwaidan because of my love of portmanteau films. It is a film of stunning beauty.

 

Honorable mention to Excalibur.

What struck me were the greens and the admittedly anachronistic shining armor - still, visually stunning.

 

For sure! Also, the way they capture the Japanese folklore is absolutely stunning. That episode with the "army" of the dead and the way the naval battle is depicted are mesmerizing. Kuroneko isn't episodic but could easily be one of the episodes on Kwaidan since it carries the same spirit. I think you'll like it.

 

"Chinatown" is a perfectly realized film, and John Alonzo's cinematography is one of the perfect elements - sunlight that casts a dark light, corruption made visible in the night scenes.
"McCabe and Mrs. Miller' draws one into its opium dream, just as the Revenant pulls you into clear light of the wilderness. I've always been very impressed by "The Sweet Smell of Success" and have watched it with the sound off just because it so elegantly directed and filmed. The darkest blacks I can recall seeing on a screen. John Ford's "Fort Apache" is, imo, his most evocative of the desert southwest. Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid"'s elegiac look is perfectly in synch with its story. And while the entire movie is an impressive feat of production design and cinematography, this is the single most gorgeous visuals I've ever seeing on screen:

 

I don't know if this is an odd pick but Dracula '31. I just love how that films looks - cheesy bat effects and all. The atmosphere of that film gives me the warm and tinglys.

Also King Kong '33 with the lush jungle effect which I still find impressive today. Amazing what they achieved with painted panels of glass.

 

Well no doubt inspired by Rear Window.