Everything by Terrence Mallick is amazingly beautiful. Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red LIne, and even The New World. Bertolucci’s films are very striking also. The Last Emperor, 1900, The Dreamers, Stealing Beauty, Il Conformiste, The Sheltering Sky, and Last Tango are all beautiful films.
I’m a big fan of Godard’s use of primary in Pierrot Le Fou.
The Virgin Spring
The Assassination of Jesse James
Brazil (Beautiful in how innovative it was)
I also thought the Red Shoes was visually stunning, Powell & Pressburger’s use of technicolor and emphasis on the color red was beautiful to me.
I’m sure I’ll think of 50 more tomorrow
Raul Riez films, I’ve just ordered a box set of them and I eagerly await seeing more.
The Thin Red Line
and Fitzcarraldo
I am in agreement with most everyone on this thread [the films of Terry Malick] but no one has mentioned Julien Schnabel’s work.
Basquiat
Before Night Falls
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
Criterion Films: The Last Emperor; Cries and Whispers; The Red Balloon; Unbearable Lightness of Being; Days of Heaven
Not yet on Criterion: Women in Love; A Room With a View; Barry Lyndon
L’ ATALANTE!
The Angkor Wat sequence in In The Mood For Love, is fucking beautiful. Quite possibly the greatest ending ever.
akira kirasawa’s dreams
I don’t know how we’re defining “beautiful,” but …
Roman Polanski’s TESS
And, i couldn’t agree more about Malick’s THE THIN RED LINE or Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON or Powell’s BLACK NARCISSUS or Renoir’s THE RIVER, but then how about ….
Cukor’s MY FAIR LADY?
Lean’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO?
Disney’s FANTASIA?
Allen’s MANHATTAN?
Late Spring (Ozu)
Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
Satantango (Tarr)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog)
Sunrise (Murnau)
Ordet (Dreyer)
The Leopard (Visconti)
The Rules of the Game (Renoir)
The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
KOYAANISQATSI is a really beautiful film – even the parts that are all industrial and ugly and scary. If any film deserved a Criterion treatment, it’d be that one.
So many too choose from !
The Thin Red Line
Open Range
The Deep Hunter
Apocalypse Now
Barry Lyndon
Blade Runner
Days of Heaven
Two by Sokurov: Mother and Son
Russian Ark
George Washington by David Gordon Green
Big props to those above who mentioned Days of Heaven, In the Mood for Love, The Spirit of the Beehive and Yi Yi.
the most beautiful film of 2008, for me, was mister lonely.
I’m going to jump back in on my own thread and say Innocence. Much of its beauty lies in its mystery.
STEPHEN LILLEY: Criterion is currently working on releasing the entire Qatsi trilogy.
“Once Upon a Time In America”- the story of America and the story of a gangster, tragically left broken and lost by time. Very violent, but very beautiful in its violence and in its tragic lead character, and the entire score is hauntingly beautiful.
Aronofsky’s The Fountain was a complete and utter experience for me regarding visuals, music, story and acting. I know that many people deem this movie both shallow and pretentious but I really don´t care. I just love this movie in every single way.
Baraka
I agree with The Fountain watching it with your loved one can be very moving. I would say Children of men is the most recent addition to this list. An amazing journey into humanity trying to find itself.
For Criterion:
Angel At My Table
Walkabout
Chungking Express
Non-Criterion:
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
Amelie
Semi-Criterion(at one time at least)
Bladerunner
Good call on Children Of Men by Missy Sanchez. That movie kills!
When someone says the words “beauty” and “film” in the same sentence, the first film that comes to mind is “Jules and Jim”.
Raging Bull, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Sunrise, Nights of Cabaria, and Casablanca
Tribe
My opinion could change tomorrow (or this afternoon, for that matter) bu Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books still awes me with its lush cinematography, pageantry and effects.