277. Mundane history (2009)

 

Country: Thailand

Directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong

One of the most significant movies of the Thai new wave cinema, 'Mundane history' is a film that has a rather simple storyline but a complexity in its content, as it has readings at so many levels that it's hard to be fully understood. Thai politics, history, comments about the social enequality, allegories,  Buddhism, even cosmology or existentialism, are only some of the elements of a film that, even if left us with the feeling that it underperformed its fully potential, manages to bring everything together beautifully at the end

276. Aparajito (1956)

Country: India

Directed by Satyajit Ray

A flawless film at any level, "Aparajito" is still amazingly fresh and powerful, with a timeless universality, as it relates to viewers from all cultural backgrounds, and a deep humanism that bathes everything in light: reflecting people's lives and emotions with tenderness it can be felt even by the most "modern" audiences. Poetical, delicate, touching, with stunning visuals but still realistic, it's one of the finest works of Satyajit Ray: just magnificent

275. A devilish murder (1965)

 

Country: South Korea

Directed by Lee Yong-min

Obviously a horror film that is so often comical when it intents to be scary is not a good horror film. However, 'A devilish murder", as a ghost vengeance b-movie, is so entertaining, with a no stop action and a fair amount of weirdness, that it can't be left out of the list. Watch it without expectations of high quality: it's just fun with a lot of cult moments

https://youtu.be/rVVtAPh2M9Q

274. P like Pelican (1972)

 

Country: Iran

Directed by Parviz Kimiavi

I always liked the short films of Parviz Kimiavi. The way that the realism is blended there with dreamy, surreal elements, their slightly avant garde style but also their symbolic, allegorical nature that is not always easy to decode. Is P like Pelican a film about our fruitless search for comfort, relief, purification, serenity? It's a movie about God? Or about the cruel and deceptive essence of existence that we never can escape from ? No exact answers are given but this is the way it should be: life doesn't give exact answers too

273. Mother (2009)

 

Country: S. Korea

Directed by Bong Joon-Ho

A captivating, intense, challenging movie that keeps us interested from the first to the last second, 'Mother' is far above of the typical predictable Western crime films with positive main characters vs villains, simplistic psychological backgrounds and plot twists that make you yawn. In this movie, and in the real life too, human minds and emotions are uncontrollable forces that can't fit in the boxes of stereotypical narrations neither can evolve in a way that always makes sense. Under the spell of the great Bong Joon-Ho's cinematography we end up watching the film mesmerized: it show us a strange but somehow very familiar world

272. An elephant sitting still (2018)

 

Country: China

Directed by Hu Bo

The first and last full length film of Hu Bo, who took his life shortly after he completed it at the age of 29, is the most bleak, gloomy and depressing film you can imagine, not offering even a single smile, a single ray of joy in the four hours that it lasts. However, it's not as much hopeless and pessimistic as you think: even if it's not a way out of misery the four leading characters of the movie never stop to fight, never stop their agonizing struggle to live, no matter how damaged and poisoned are themselves by the ultra hostile social environment. With a strong documentary feeling, a superb cinematography with a camera that comes so close to the characters that we feel that they breath a few steps away from us and a   brilliant acting from everyone "An elephant sitting still" is a masterpiece of the modern Chinese cinema, more real than the reality itself, makes you wondering how the absence of any emotion can be so emotional, how the absence of any hope can be so hopeful

 

You can watch the full movie here:

https://youtu.be/xWCkZS5r7Tg

271. A fugitive from the past (1965)

 

Country: Japan

Directed by Tomu Uchida

In my opinion one of the most underrated movies in the history of cinema "A fugitive of the past" is easily among my five most favorite Japanese films ever made. Although you would fully understand this statement only if you watch it, I would try to identify what makes this movie so great apart of it's fascinating plot, the amazing black and white photography or the captivating music score : it's this raw realism, depicting the misery of post war defeated Japan with unparalleled accuracy, that occasionally and unexpectedly cracks with a way we rarelly see, revealing a terrifying opening to the fragility of the human condition itself, where the subconscious, the guilts and obsessions, the fear of supernatural but mostly the limitations that mortality sets, define our existence and fate.