We asked Associate Professor Rod Buxton, Lecturer Jeremy Dehn and Assistant Professor Sheila Schroeder,
film studies faculty in the Department of Mass Communications and Journalism Studies, for their winter-day flick picks.
1. The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
It’s hysterical male paranoia turned on itself.
2. From Hell (Albert and Allen Hughes, 2001)
A tour de force critique of patriarchal aristocracy with its literal and metaphoric nihilistic impact on the lives of women, especially those of the working class.
3. Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968)
High modern aesthetics collide with mainstream pop culture icons the Monkees in a psychedelic critique of the Vietnam War, media influence, celebrity and rampant consumerism.
4. City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
A devastating portrait of poverty and violence in a dismal favela just minutes away from some of Brazil’s richest beaches.
5. The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998)
A noir film template applied to the ambling existence of a burned out slacker, this is the Coen brothers at their hilariously idiosyncratic best.
6. Letter from Siberia (Chris Marker, 1957)
A meditation on history, culture, the nature of truth, and everything else that can be found on or beneath the surface of the frozen earth.
7. Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music (Michael Wadleigh, 1970)
The concert and the film show how the spirit of peace and the love of music and art can lead to modern miracles.
8. Smoke Signals (Chris Eyre, 1998)
Gives audiences a glimpse of modern life on and off the ‘rez’ through two complex main characters who travel to claim the remains of the man who saved them both from a fire.
9. Pieces of April (Peter Hedges, 2003)
This film about a dysfunctional family takes us through myriad emotions centered on difference, death, desire, desperation and love.
10. Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, 2006)
What do a heroin snorting grandpa, a self-silenced teen, a beauty contest misfit, a suicidal gay Proust scholar, a failed motivational speaker, a working mom and a semi-working Volkswagen all have in common? Love. As this indie gem shows, it does take all kinds!