What are your favourite films with a philosophical edge?
Mine would probably be A.I. for reasons I have expressed on so many occassions but there are lots others. For political philosophy/ideology I recommend AntZ - what an absolutely brilliant movie. Other philosophical films of greatness - Blade Runner, The Matrix (??), Fight Club, Don’t Look Now, Tess and for political satire/social commentary Dr. Strangelove or A Clockwork Orange.
You got one of the three greatest philosophical films. AntZ. I’d love to see the look of horror on Stalin’s face as he watches that.
In second place, monty python’s the meaning of life. satirising people’s reaction to phil. ideas. v v v v v funny as well
and first, the greatest phil. film of all time. Waking Life.
Either Blade Runner, or 12 Monkeys. Both kind of hit me in my philosophical happy-place. The former with it’s kind of “what is it to be human” message, and the latter with it’s “Nothing you do will ever alter what is meant to be” message.
But, to be honest, any film is philosophical if you look hard enough.
I don’t know if you want to call this a philosophical film, but i liked “A Beautiful Mind” My fisrt question was: What makes a mind -beautiful? and to this day, I can’t answer… can anyone though?
I want to remove Fight Club from my list actually - i don’t think it’s that good (what cam over me?) 12 Monkeys is excellent indeed.
As for A Beautiful Mind - I would say that Nash’s mind was beautiful in that he saw patterns in ordinary things - it’s like his intelligence was innate rather than taught. He was just a pure genius given how quickly his brain worked and how it could calculate and ‘see’ things. Otherwise I would say that a mind is beautiful if it’s open-minded, original and uninhibited.
I see what you mean Alex, but then in our stage how “open-minded, original and uninhibited” do people really get? In my opinion these characteristics would imply a perfection of some kind, and I’m thinking… we don’t live in a perfect world. And on many counts, I’ve felt beauty in ignorant and innocent people (more ignorant and innocent than I am) 
Hmm its actually quite interesting to see the movies listed above. I myself would have to say its very hard to tell which are the best when there are so many greats. Some of the films listed above i can agree with and others i do not, but to add to the list I’d like to bring up One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Brain Dead, Jaccob’s Ladder, Being John Malkovich, and Memento. Well i just felt the need to add those to the list and i hope you all get a chance to check them out.
My favorite movie of all time is Matrix, hence I put it first, but after that the movies are in no particular order of importance, just what came to mind.
the messanger
thats in addition to all the others. i liked almost all of the movies on all the above posts.
heathers.
braveheart is awful
My new addition: MINORITY REPORT. Very nice movie, futuristic as hell and damn, Tom Cruise never looked better.
ok now a.i. is a load of crap, how could you find that film remotely philosophical if you’d ever read even spot that dog as a child…it is speilberg’s sentimental toff, meaningless drivel as far as i’m concerned the only decent bit was that at the beginning, which was all kubrick anyway, and was all toiling the same furrow as blade runner without doing any deeper…
i think fight club is a great film, like stop trying to hide the fact that you have violent impulses and emerse yourself in them, that is the only way to promote self knowledge…by accepting every aspect of ourselves, and if our consenual moral fictions dictate that these aspects are dirty or wrong then fullfilment lies at the flowering of new fictions to supplant the old…
12 monkeys is good, but timetravel stories are getting so old- i await minority report but without any held breath…
waking life is wonderfully incoherent
el topo by jodorowski is a marvel
a beautiful mind was moving for personal reasons but it certainly was not philosophical, and rather inaccurate to that mathematicians actual life…hollywood, holy wood…wholey hoodwinked pap…
a lot of the films above are got films, good to watch but there are very very films made that i would say are truely philosophical…a film can make you think but be meaningless to every other sentient being out there, and maybe that exposes what is wrong with the question…no film can be philosophical- films aren’t like books, read your mcluhan- only a person can be philosophical so a more accurate question would be which films stimulate thought within you? and then is it meaningless to inquire this as to others?
my girlfreind has just made a pertinant observation, many people may feel a.i. is a “philosophical” film because artificial intelligence is a topic of philosophical study, but then bill and ted’s excellent adventure would also be a philosophical film as it’s content include socrates…
b y e
You of course mean soak-rates. But I do have to agree with you T-Man, no films are philosophical, which of course is the same as all films are philosophical.
PS, my uncle just made a point which could shatter 12 Monkeys for me, the woman that the bad guy sits next to on the plane at the very end, is she on of the future scientists, (that female one) gone back to stop him. I don’t have my copy here, so if someone could check that out it would be great.
Thales I don’t think you understood A.I. and unfortunately I’m going on holiday so I don’t have the time to explain why but I will when I get back. It is a deeply philosophical film and your criticism of Spielberg is born out of misunderstanding. I expect that you interpreted the ending incorrectly and your criticism of it being sentimental displays the fact that you haven’t understood it - it is not sentimental, it is not happy, it is a dark dark film despite first appearances. Kubrick’s influence is incredible too. And if you accept that Kubrick is a genius (which is more than obvious) then why would he have ASKED Spielberg to continue his project. Kubrick was no fool and neither is Spielberg.
Alex, have you seen blade runner? That does cover pretty much the same ground as AI does, but I must admit it does go much, much deeper.
well i await your personal interpretation of a.i., that unique definitive one that has absolutely no credance to any point of view other than your own…a.i. is a dark film but it is pap, and sentimental does not NECESSARILY have to be/mean happy…that film stimulates no thoughts within me that i didn’t have when i watched balde runner, or red dwarf as a kid or the first time i saw a nintendo robot or tron…ha…i find the end of that film deeply unmoving because the content provides me with and confronts me with no growth, it is stagnation as far as i am concerned…
now please proove me wrong, i would so like to be wrong i thirst for it for it is only though our own limitations and barriers, our resistances that we can grow…give me your interpretation and i pray that you confront me with that golden thought, that spark of enlightenment that will spred my boundaries just that little bit further…
i feel i’ve judged that film correctly, bring it on…
oh, hvd the woman at the end is in deed one of the future scientists…but just as that whole film is about the loop of time travel, also see minority report—nb the majority of these films are pop philosophy, best eg being the matrix, —so in 12 monkeys the beauty of the ending is that your are not shown what happens next…do you fall into the hollywood ending of the plague averted, mission success, or do you follow the message and pick up on the fact that the scientist could not have gone back without the events in place, including the plague, to allow time travel…that is determinism for you…
shitshitshitshit! I loved that film because i thought that the virus guy gets away with it and kills the world. A nicely dark ending that one needs once in a while. I always assumed the film ends with bruce sees guy–>bruce tries to shoot guy–>bruce gets shot–>world ends, and future sscientists have no way to stop it.
fuck
Hmm did anyone get a chance to check out the movies I listed? I noticed alot of feedback on A.I. and some of the other films but not much on the ones I listed. 
I’ve become quite curious on what the rest of the members think of them after reading the responses to the other films. Feedback give me feeeedback!!..ehem…Pardon my outburst. 
Starry Night,
unfortunately the only movie from your list that I have seen is Memento. I never thought of adding it to my list, since it has been a while since I have seen it. Regardless, the movie did have an impact on me. Aside from finding it extremely depressing, since I have a bad nack of feeling like I am ‘living’ through the movie - I found the concept quite intriguing. It is yet another movie that indicates the challenges of interesting battle of the mind vs. the mind. Like the movie beautiful mind where Mr. Nash learns to stop his psychophrenia to getting worse while also learning to live with the three characters it created while he was entrenched in the disease. Memento, in the same way illustrated the characters ability to write things down in a way so as to remember what had happened a few minutes back. Some may argue that memento proves that human beings are not the sum of their experiences, or atleast not the sum of their memorized experiences.
What’s your take?
enough talk about films
what about books. books i find particularly philosophical in an abstract way r Tintin, in particular Flight 714, The Castafiore Emerald, The Red Sea Sharks, Tintin in Tibet and Tintin and the Picaros.
PS. one of my favourite films is Back to the Future II, althoug I have noticed a few things wrong with it in terms of the time travel.