Looking for Recommendations

I've kind of been thinking about movies lately. I just got back from watching Batman, and if you haven't seen it yet, and if you haven't been reading the reviews, you should know that it is intense. I have to sleep on it before I can give my honest assessment, but I can share my initial thoughts. It was incredibly well done, and Heath Ledger as the Joker deserved all the credit reviewers have been giving him. However, the movie is also a barrage of senseless and seemingly unstoppable violence, so much that you begin to wonder if it can possibly end well (it does, or as well as can be expected). I left feeling just a little stunned, for both better and for worse. I think I am probably glad I saw it, but I also don't care to watch it, or anything like it, for a long time to come. I think there were some very interesting themes, about good and evil and the choices we all make. But I'm not entirely sure it's necessary to address them using such extremes, or even if that's the most effective way to address such difficult themes in a way that the audience can really relate to.

But one reason this is on my mind is because I've also been thinking about what makes a good movie. There are a lot of movies out there that I think are just fluff. I watch movies to be entertained, but sometimes I feel like the couple hours I spend watching could have been much better spent doing other things. I really like it when I can walk out of a movie and think, wow, that was really good. And yet I've noticed that a lot of my most recent wow-that-was-really-good experiences have had their fair share of unpleasantness. Some of the movies that have most deeply impressed me recently have been Pan's Labyrinth, United 93, and even Sweeney Todd (which I saw with Ashley awhile back). These are not easy movies to watch, and part of me really feels like I ought not to expose myself to too much of that kind of unpleasantness. And yet I walk away from these movies really thinking, in a way that, say, Horton Hears a Who or Made of Honor certainly didn't get me to think (those two movies were not wastes of time only because of the company I was with). Even WALL-E disappointed me a bit.

I can certainly appreciate Napoleon Dynamite or Elf or Zoolander or Enchanted in the right setting, or with the right people. And it's not like I watch movies just hoping to be blown away - sometimes I just want easy entertainment, and sometimes I get exactly what I'm looking for. It's just that sometimes I also want a little more than that, without feeling oppressed, or having to concentrate too hard. It's easy to fall into watching things that I might not otherwise been willing to see when I don't get much fulfillment out of the standard movie fare (excluding weekly movie excursions with my sister in which almost any movie was entertaining by virtue of the company), and I kind of want to get away from falling into that. I also want to be reassured that it is possible for good, thoughtful movies to be made without adding content that bumps the rating up to R.

So what I have been really interested in lately is movies that make me feel like I have not wasted my time and uplift me, and I'm looking for suggestions too. They are out there (and I do think that some of the movies I've mentioned already, like Pan's Labyrinth and United 93 very definitely had redeeming, uplifting value, don't get me wrong). A month or two ago I rented Lars and the Real Girl which was funny and sweet and different, and I really liked it. E.T. is a classic that is one of my favorites - I remember watching it as a kid, and then I came back to it years later as an adult and realized what an incredibly well-done movie it actually is. The other night we watched Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train at Brady's place, and while it was intense, it had a gratifyingly happy ending of the sort you could get away with years ago in a way that you can't today. Even some of your summer blockbusters can be clever and thoughtful and well-done, I just miss them because I don't hear enough about them from trusted sources.

The kind of movies that I'm looking for do exist, I know it. It's just hard for me to find them on my own sometimes, so if you have any recommendations, please let me know. (Though no guarantees that I'll actually getting around to watching them anytime soon, because supposedly I'm doing other productive things with my everyday life...)