Don't Do That Otis, She's Your Sister: Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)

I am constantly in search of a film whose opening shot thoroughly and evocatively establishes itself as something to be taken seriously, and am usually willing to extend this concession to an opening sequence.  Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is one such film that uses an open shot that pans out disturbingly slowly affording viewers a realization of exactly what they are getting themselves into, followed by a series of back and forth scenes establishing the serial killer narrative which will unfold throughout the film.  In many instances this type of sequence would emerge somewhere in the middle of the front half of the movie to set the stakes for the remainder of the film, but that is not the case here, the stakes are known by the title and the viewer enters into the experience out of a sense of perverse curiosity.  Director John McNaughton's work in Henry is both clearly influenced by similarly abrasive auteurs like David Lynch, Michael Mann and David Cronenberg, while also creating examples of how to make aesthetically pleasing films about the most deranged and debasing of subjects and individuals.  The score for this film which could be easily lost in the violent milieu of on screen body horror and a non-linear, but, nonetheless, temporal diagetic track of the various murders, make for moments that should receive nothing more than abject disgust take on a level of serenity that challenges the viewer to first not find comfort in some sense of beauty, only to critically reprimand any sense of safety that might emerge by jumping back to the violence on screen.  I often find myself having to step back from critically engaging with a genre film, wondering if I am indeed reading too much into the narrative and am in some ways expecting more out of a director in the way of filmic theory.  With a work like Henry, however, I am certain that McNaughton is playing with cinematic conventions both in terms of the meta and the traditional genre as a means to push towards a new understanding on not only how a person reacts to cinematic violence, but, more importantly, how such preoccupations with simulated violence can allow for real societal degradation in the way of murder and rape to become ignored to the point of a troubling collective ignorance.

Henry begins with a series of shots of women, who have been brutally murdered while cutting back to images of the title character Henry (Michael Rooker) going about his rather monotonous daily routine, a clear suggestion arising that he is the one responsible for these murders, eventually verified when a woman he picks up hitchhiking is shown murdered in a living room.  Meanwhile the narrative introduces viewers to Otis (Tom Towles) a ex-convict whose work at a gas station serves as cover for his work dealing marijuana.  Otis' sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) arrives at Otis' house in need of a place to stay after the final falling out with her ex-boyfriend, an occurrence that is of little surprise to Otis,who knows of Becky's troubled past involving erotic dancing and bad relationships.  It is then revealed that Henry is Otis' roommate and the two are close drinking buddies.  Becky, intrigued by Herny's silent demeanor and overt sense of good manners, becomes instantaneously enamored with Henry, despite the frustrations and misgivings of Otis who has a rather unhealthy attachment to his sister.  After an intense altercation relating to this realization, Otis and Henry attempt to rekindle their friendship by a night out for some beers.  This night out quickly turns into buying prostitutes, which then involves Henry killing not only his prostitute, but Otis' as well when she begins to panic.  Initially hesitant to let Henry's act go unreported, Otis has a change of heart, realizing first that he would probably be arrested as well, but also because he seems to take a perverse pleasure in the act himself.  This leads to the two going on joint killing sprees, which are eventually recorded on a video camera they bum off of one of their victims.  All the while, Becky continually makes advances towards the apparently asexual Henry, leading to considerable jealousy on the part of Otis, who is suggested to be bisexual, if not outright gay, during a drug selling sequence.  As such, when he awakes at home to find Becky attempting to seduce Henry, he goes into a rage, eventually being shot by Henry, who then suggest that he and Becky leave to start a new life.  During their first night in a motel, Henry does not attempt to sleep with Becky, but merely suggests they go to sleep.  However, the film concludes with Henry driving a car down the road alone before stopping on the side of the road to unload a heavy blue folding suitcase, its contents become somewhat obvious given Henry's violent nature and his penchant for destroying women who are open in their sexual behavior.

Looking, as I have already established in quite a few films here on the blog and even at least twice this month concerning horror films, is something that is assumed to be male and carries with it a degree of objectification.  Other elements such as castration, death drives and fetishism fall into this looking and too become issues within Henry considering that the opening scene is an eye at the center of a screen looking at/confronting viewers, the deceased nature of the body responsible for this stare adds on a layer of death to the entire act.  In fact, every moment of this film possesses a considerable feel for voyeurism, as the cinematic world of Henry suggests one fully involved in the notion of cinema verite, despite being a fictionalized version of real events.  I would argue that through this low-key, realistic depiction of the life in a lower class space, McNaughton establishes a difference between the priviliged viewer (this would certainly have been the case for moviegoers at Indie cinema scapes in 1986) and the othered lower class person.  While Henry and Otis' behavior is clearly to be chastised the way the narrative flows and how the two are established as working class, affords those looking at the film to detach themselves from the still present violence by asserting that it is not something that would occur within their more well-to-do spaces.  It is a vicarious look of sorts, but in the sense that the one looking is hyper-privileged as opposed to longingly desiring an item.  Here, murder and the look upon its occurring is all associated with the primal, wherein, some portion of the psyche of Henry, and later Otis are open to being barbaric and ruthless, because they have not learned the counter to this behavior due to educational lack.  Indeed, one could even consider the gaze to be one of a death drive on the part of a privileged individual who has achieved a higher level on the hierarchy of needs, thus privileging them to look for experiences in the violent for purely philosophical or ethnographic curiosity.  Indeed, as I write this down I realize how similar this film and Steven Soderbergh's stunning Bubble become.  Both look with disconcerting pity on troubled lower class spaces, but where Soderbergh finds attempts at protection and belief in a higher calling, McNaughton discovers a sense of morally degradation.  The larger question, however, is not the ethical problems of the individuals in the respective films, but instead; how one who is given the ability to watch condemns or empathizes with the acts of those on display.

Key Scene:  The metacinematic moment involving Beck and Henry kissing, wherein Henry continually wipes his mouth, is a perfect syncopation of direction, writing and acting and is one of many great payoffs in a disturbing, yet incredibly engaging film.

Netflix Watch Instantly is a great venue to look into this film, although I intend on filling my shelf with a bluray copy in the near future.

This Rock Has Been Waiting For Me My Entire Life: 127 Hours (2010)

As I  mentioned only a few posts ago, I am a huge fan of Danny Boyle's work.  I plan to do a complete analysis of his entire body of work at some point in the future and still have a considerable amount of his works to get through.  The most recent viewing was that of 127 Hours, the one film that worried me in his oeuevre, considering that it did not receive very much critical praise and stars one of my least favorite actors, James Franco.  To be honest as the movie began I was rather skeptical of its validity, aside from some brilliant cinematography and unusual narrative it seemed to have very little going for it in a completely fillmic sense.  I should have known better though, considering that the work was by Danny Boyle, as is so often the case with his works, he takes a situation and places it within normalcy and waits ever so patiently to take the viewers comforts away by large slaps of suspense, we see this in works like 28 Days Later... and to some extent Slumdog Millionaire.  Furthermore, I was in awe of how well delivered James Franco's performance was, and while it certainly does not cause me to place him in a tier of great actors, it was a pleasant surprise to find his presence in scenes anything but grating.  Perhaps the greatest element of this film is that it is grounded in a factual experience.  Having heard about the film for a great deal of time I knew the twists within the film, yet found each piece of narrative rewarding and engaging from his initial departure to his climactic return to civilization.  I am starting to gain some certainty about Danny Boyle's place in the filmmaking word, considering that one of his lesser films still proves to be leaps and bounds better than most of his contemporaries.

The film, as stated is based on the experiences of Aron Ralston, a carefree climbing enthusiast who spent a traumatic 127 hours trapped beneath a bolder in the canyons of Utah.  The film begins with Aron (James Franco) leaving for his trip while making his plans and location a secret to his boss, girlfriend and even mother.  It appears as though his trip will be of little difficulty, particularly considering that he runs into a duo of women hikers who he wins over with ease by showing them a cool hidden crevasse containing a pool.  While the two women clearly display interest in him, Aron is aloof to their advances and continues on his journey with indifference.  It is not much farther into this journey that he meets tragedy by slipping on a rock and becoming trapped underneath its mass.  It is at this point that he begins to panic and struggle for freedom, drinking much of his water in the process.  In a matter of hours, Aron's surival instinct kicks in and he begins using his small amount of items to help obtain freedom, as well as protect him from the constantly changing weather.  Water proves to be Aron's greatest concern, so much so that he begins to drink his water in panic, to the point of needing to rely on his urine for a small amount of hydration.  As delirium sets in, Aron begins to reflect on his life and his mistakes, something he keeps track of in his film journal.  His visions range between his tumutuous relationship with his girlfriend to his rather distanced one with his mother.  He attempts to beg for forgiveness, although he is doing it to the silence of the canyons.  He even begins to see visions of his future, a time that involves him hanging out with a yet unborn son.  After amputating his arm, Aron finally escapes the canyon and is helped by hikers in the canyon.  The closing shots explain that Aron's premonitions came true, even the one about having a child.

127 Hours is a film about self-reflection and overcoming turmoil.  However, it is unusual in that the entire process takes place within a single individuals world.  For a better portion of the film, we are only shown the experiences of Aron.  Even the moments that involve other people are stationed within his own consciousness, a fact that clearly influences the narrative.  Furthermore, what makes 127 Hours particularly unusual is that the character within the film is far from perfect.  Aron has many moments of failure and lack as a human, in most other films of that nature each action engaged in by the protagonist would be heroic.  Beyond this, Boyle's film does not shy away from some of the more gruesome and brutal elements of its story.  The film goes to great lengths to show the pain involved with amputating ones arm and Aron by no means deals with the act coolly.  Even the action of him drinking his own urine is made intense by his constant bickering and concern.  The ultimate seen of his pre-evolved materialistic nature is when he wines about the multitool his mother gave him, since it proves completely useless in helping him escape, however, he quickly realizes that when he was gifted the item he, nor his mother, could have ever imagined it would be used for such a task.  With his heroism in question, it is important to remind readers that he is quite brave and acts with strokes of genius frequently throughout the film.  This is clear when he manages to use each of his items to keep him warm in the cool desert nights, as well as his expert execution of a tourniquet, in one of the films most gruesome scenes.  Ultimately, it is not a film that intends to make Aron an unquestionable hero, but one that simply tells his story for what it is, something so completely unbelievable that it seems fictional, were it not for the presence of the person alltogether.

Key Secne: The initial urine drinking scene is done in an experimental nature, as much of the film is, but is at its best during this portion.

For those who love Danny Boyle, 127 Hours is a must own work, for those who are unsure please rent it at least, it is well worth a viewing.

God Made Me For A Purpose, But He Also Made Me Fast: Chariots Of Fire (1981)

While the film is probably best known for its theme song, Chariots of Fire did indeed win the Best Picture Oscar the year of its release.  While I know have  been critical of such a claim giving a film validity, I figured with the recent closing of the London Summer Olympics there was no time like the present to revisit this film, which as you may know is about British track athletes.  I knew the movie was going to be a traditional sports narrative of characters overcoming some social or physical obstacle in order to deliver a stunning feat of athleticism.  What I did not know going into this work is how terribly British the film would be overall.  While I have not seen Kes yet, I cannot help but suspect that this will serve as the penultimate definition of British filmmaking to me; however, there are a slew of Hitchcock films and David Lean works that could suffice.  Overall the dialogue and choice for what made the narrative cut simply is not that of an American sports film and in a surprising way the film really has very little to do with Track and Field and much more to do with individuals identities and their confrontations with a society that simply does not accept things that are different.  Chariots of Fire, is of course excellent as far as soundtracks are concerned, but beyond that obvious fact lies a well acted and incredibly shot film that inevitably causes viewers to reconsider their notions of a sporting film.  At a very basic level, it is a movie about competitive running, on a grand scale it is a commentary on human strife fully realized.

Chariots of Fire is set in the early twentieth century, beginning a few years before the 1924 Olympics which will be held in Paris.  The narrator of the film, Aubrey Montague (Nicholas Ferrell) serves as the eyes and voice of the story, although as it is made quite clear from the onset, his roles simply to observe and report the actions of Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), a fellow Cambridge classmate who happens to also be Jewish, a label he caries with contentious pride.  Abrahams desires nothing more than to prove the deans of the school and pretty much the whole of society that he is just as capable as any other Englishman of competing in athletics and that his ethnic existence does not cause him the slightest disadvantage.  On the other side is and out of the narrative gaze of Montague is Eric Liddell (Ian Charleston) a famous Scottish rugby star who is devoutly Christian and finds joy and harmony serving as a missionary.  However, due to some rather forceful nudging by a family friend, Liddell is convinced to also compete for a spot on the Olympic team, something he deems acceptable because it will prove as a form of glorifying God.  The two men begin their quest for Olympic competition as they compete in various track meets eventually facing one another in a race.  Liddell wins by the slightest of margins, losing as he later discovers by making the mistake of turning to check on the place of Liddell in the race  Abrahams is quickly approached by the professional trainer Sam Mussabini (Ian Holm) who helps advance the young athlete considerably, despite the disdain of Cambridge's deans.  The two eventually  make the Olympic team, along with Montague and a handful of other Cambridge students and head off by boat to compete.  It is at this point that Liddell discovers his race will fall on a Sunday, his day of rest, a fact that causes him to refuse to run.  He is moved into a slot in the 400m race, which means that Abrahams has a clear shot to win his 100m race, something he does with vivacity.  All that remains is for Liddell to win his race, despite being far from a favorite in the sprint he manages to also win.  The narrative then ends with the two of them returning to their daily lives as new Olympic gold medalists, forever cemented in the history of Britain.

Interesting enough, for playing so heavily into the differences between Liddell and Abrahams religiously, it is quite surprising that the film does not cause this to be a point of division between both athletes.  While there are certainly moments of clear problems between the two culturally, they nonetheless manage to create a bond through athletics that makes them friends.  Considering this fact within the narrative, it is clear that Chariots of Fire is about the transitive power of sports to merge seemingly divided groups of people.  In a non-sports setting it would be improbable that Liddell would ever meet Abrahams, let alone engage with him in more than passing terms.  Furthermore, the placement on a national and global podium allows for both men to share their stories and personal opinions in such a way that the world is forced to acknowledge their concerns.  This is evident with Abrahams throughout the film, but comes full frontal when Liddell refuses to run on the Sabbath an action that makes national headlines.  By doing so he is praised by fellow Christians and is even allowed to deliver a sermon at a prestigious church as a result.  While the face of such abilities have change in the new century, one only needs to revisit the countless moments of courage and confrontation that occurred during the past few weeks of the Olympics.  Individuals like Oscar Pistorious and Kirani James used their moment in the global spotlight to give a voice to paraplegics and impovershed peoples respectively.  In a sense, they are this eras Abrahams and Liddell, both were out to prove something and both did so with great results.

Key Scene: Abraham's final race is an editing spectacle.

Chariots of Fire will always be a piece of must-see cinema, I suggest doing so while the aura of the Olympics is still fresh in your mind, however, owning this film is not necessary and renting it will more than suffice.

I Sold My Soul At Bohemian Grove: Secret Honor (1984)

I am slowly leaning towards making Robert Altman one of my favorite directors of the 20th century, partly for his hip cool films of the seventies, but more so for his scathing and astute political dramas of the eighties.  Secret Honor is one such political drama in its combination of minimalist filmmaking and grandiose theatrical performance.  It is how one should study a political figure, in a detailed manner that shows both his flaws and redeeming qualities simultaneously and without pause.  Furthermore, in the manner that Altman films Secret Honor it becomes a very personal experience between the character of Richard Nixon and the viewer.  Although Nixon claims to be recording his own memoirs, the film is much more of a historical figure being recreated to defend himself to viewers and given its intimate setting, the viewer has little choice but to listen.  I would jump immediately to calling this a piece of cinema verite, but the excessive ways of Nixon make the film a piece of absurdist cinema that makes Josh Brolin's performance in W seem stoic.  I know that better political films exist, but I am not so sure that a more honest one has ever been filmed.

The film is unusual that it involves a single character from beginning to end and that is the aging Richard Nixon, played virulently by Phillip Baker Hall.  At the point viewers are introduced, Nixon has locked himself into his study and has began recording his memoirs, which are half childhood nostalgia and half defending himself to an unseen jury.  He is recording his memoirs both aurally with a tape recorder and visually with multiple close circuited cameras.  With this setup, a few bottles of whiskey and a gun Nixon recants everything relating to his controversial life.  These discussions include recalling a tumultuous relationship with his mother and his loathing of both Dwight Eisenhower and Henry Kissinger.  He also speaks condescendingly of John F. Kennedy and his inabilities politically, drawing some rather prophetic comparisons to the Bush dynasty.  However, every time he begins to become enraged and his monologues become ramblings filled with expletives and mumbling curses.  He even reads from his own memoirs in a moment of brilliant metacinema.  Fortunately for Nixon, anytime he rambles to far he is quickly able to ask that his transcriber remove said portions.  While switching between a devious politician and a self-loathing simpleton Nixon goes between disregarding Watergate to accidentally implicating himself for his crimes.  Perhaps the only constant within the entire monologue is the influence of the conspiracy group known as both The Bohemian Grove and The Committee of 100.  He claims that this group of old white men with power used him to assure democracy in Asia, which would also garner them control over the heroin trade.  Nixon then goes to kill himself only to stop and remind viewers that he is only a puppet of a larger scam and that to implicate him is to implicate the entire system and if that is what society plans to do, then as Nixon sees it they are worthy of no respect and his repeated expletives are followed brilliant by a static filled scream while a crowd chants four more years.

There are a slew of reasons why I find this to be an incredibly honest political film.  First and foremost, Altman is politically detached from his filmic visions.  Whether it be Tanner '88 or Nashville, Altman realizes the illogical nature of the entire process regardless of party politics.  Compare this to say Oliver Stone whose films are clearly liberal leaning, or the conservatively inclined Forrest Gump.  While all the aforementioned films and filmmakers are excellent, I find only Altman's films to deliver an all-encompassing vision of the political world in which he exists.  Altman could have made Secret Honor a film that defended Nixon or outright attacked him, but it actually does both and ultimately leaves viewers to decide their thoughts on the outcome.  It also reminds viewers about the very real effects politics have on the individual.  Nixon is a man destroyed in this film, he has resorted to heavy amounts of alcohol and complete secrecy, because one mistake completely ruined his life.  The Nixon we are shown is so preoccupied with revealing his innocence that he finds himself rewording his own statements to appear politically correct or detached from his unfortunate past.  It is made apparent that nobody will see or hear these ramblings, yet his paranoia is so far gone that he honestly believes that the pictures in his office are watching him.  From the images, Altman provides us we are shown a man who simply wanted to join politics to be like Abraham Lincoln, yet a politician like Lincoln could never occur with a camera constantly watching.  Even in defending himself the camera's are on Nixon and it is not until they go awry that he can once again gain support.  It is incredibly brilliant considering that Nixon was arguably the first victim of a media entrenched political world.

This is one of the hidden gems of The Criterion Collection.  It is a rather unusual viewing experience as it is a narrative with one actor and not a single other is given a voice of contradiction.  I would strongly suggest grabbing a copy if you love political cinema or anything unconventional.

Top Ten Thursday: Biopics

A good biopic is expansive, detailed and more often than not extremely biased.  Often released around Oscar season, biopics are usually inundated with respected actors and directed by notable persons in Hollywood.  Today I offer my list of favorite biopics, many of which were not Oscar contenders and a handful that were.  It is all in the hopes that the upcoming Abraham Lincoln movie will be glorious.

10.) The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

A poem of a film, The Passion of Joan of Arc set the standard for all biographies made after.

9.) Andrei Rublev (1971)

The Tarkovsky masterpiece on the unconventional experiences of a artistic monk is a film of grand proportions.

Review Here





8.) The Pianist (2002)

Roman Polanksi's biopic about Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman will drain your heart each and every time you watch the film. 

7.) An Angel At My Table (1990)

Simply put, An Angel At My table is how one should make a biography about an author.  I would be hard pressed to find a more cinematic study of an author than Jane Campion's biopic on Janet Frame.

6.) My Left Foot (1989)

My Left Foot introduced the world to Daniel Day-Lewis as cripple Christy Brown, garnering the actor his first of what will likely be several Oscars.

5.) Richard III (1955)

"A donkey,  a donkey, my kingdom for a donkey."

4.) The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (2007)

This French stream-of-conscious biopic is a lesson in artistic cinema that left viewers mesmerized upon its release.








3.) Raging Bull (1980)

The black and white story of Ray La Motta made Scorsese a household name and Robert De Niro a man's man actor.

2.) Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Perhaps the most controversial biopic on the list, the story of T.E. Lawrence burns off the screen with excitement.

1.) Amadeus (1984)

This music heavy biopic is as much about the title character as it is about Antonio Salieri, and its excellent composition earned it a slew of Oscar nods.

Honorable Mention

Schindler's List (1993)
The King's Speech (2010)
The Social Network (2010)
Moneyball (2011)

God Sent Priests, But The Devil Sent Jesters: Andrei Rublev (1969)

Andrei Tarkovsky is a name that will eventually pop up for people entering into art house cinema.  He is one of those directors that you hear whispers about but is often overshadowed by Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa when it comes to foreign director.  However, I can attest to this fact.  Once you view a Tarkovsky film, you forever change your understanding of cinema.  I discovered this when I first viewed Ivan's Childhood, remember it when watching Solaris, and rediscovered this after my recent viewing of his black and white masterpiece Andrei Rublev.  The film while extremely slow in its pacing offers a brilliant commentary for the patient viewer and is an expertly composed film that rivals both Bergman and Kurosawa in its style and delivery.  Bested by only Sergei Eisenstein, Tarkovsky is the preeminent Russian director and created a large catalog of excellent films, despite continual censorship on the part of then Soviet government. It is an unflinching look at a significant Russian historical figure that has more to say about Russia's over-glorified past than its iconic painter.  Through a montage of scathing absurdist imagery and poetic cinematography, Tarkovsky manages to recreate medieval Russia, while also making the film blatantly pertinent to the problems facing Soviet Russia in the 1960's.

As noted, the film has as much to do with artist and monk Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsin) as it does with the people and events surrounding him.  He is accompanied throughout most of the film by his fellow monks the disillusioned Kirill (Ivan Lapikov) and the quietly pensive Danil (Nikolai Grinko).  Together they set out on an artistic endeavor to paint at a cathedral, which leads them throughout the constantly changing landscape of Russia in the 1500's.  The film begins with the monks taking refuge in a bar, only to discover a jester denouncing the church and state, which leads to the jesters denunciation and subsequent death.  What follows is a series of vignettes set to chapters with titles like The Holiday and The Silence, which involve some combination of Andrei and the other monks witnessing religious persecution, druidic rituals and mass murder in the name of the state and church, leading to various reactions amongts the monks, most notably Andrei's moment of doubt in his other wise religiously stalwart ways.  A feud arises amongst the group in their decision on how to paint a version of The Last Judgementt for a chapel, Andrei fears that a rendition of such attrocities would only scare patrons in a time when death and fire were daily realities.  Kirill disagrees with Andrei and the fellow monks have a falling out.  The film then focuses on a Tartar attack of a village, which leads Andrei to commit murder in an attempt to protect a young women from rape, leading the confused monk to partake in a vow of silence.  Andrei continues his vow of silence, despite witnessing Kirill return to the monastery and beg forgiveness.  In fact, it is not until Andrei watches a young man pretend to know the secrets to his father's bell making process that he breaks his silence and tells the boy to continue making bells, while he continues to make icons.  In a masterful conclusion, the film pans around various images of Rublev's actual paintings to remind viewers that the importance is not the artist or his artistic ability, but instead what his images represented for a specific time and place, a rather pertinent stylistic choice for a director like Tarkovsky.

Image is key to Tarkovsky, it takes only viewing a scene from any of his films to realize this, however, it is particularly relevant to a film like Andrei Rublev, because it does, in fact, focus on the life of an artist.  Although debatable, the most visceral response an individual can have to a film comes through its visual elements.  It is how the single composition of a variety of things come together on a single frame of a moving picture that catches the visual senses and captures the viewer.  Sure music, editing and narrative are important additions...to almost every other director, but not Tarkovsky.  I would go so far as to say that in terms of filmmakers Tarkovsky is an impressionist.  It is a combination of seemingly arbitrary images together which create a cohesive idea, in this case the woes of political and religious oppression.  It is easy to see why this film bothered the Soviet government, it is scathingly anti-state government, yet to the untrained eye it seems like a set of illogical images (Think Luis Bunuel's The Milky Way in black and white).  What concerns those being rebelled against are not the obvious forms of rebellion, but those subtle enough to pass under the radar undetected.  Andrei Rublev is certainly one of these films and Tarkovsky's oeuvre proves to be the same as well.  For example, his desolate landscape and distancing shots in Ivan's Childhood reflect a commentary on the effects of war on youth and a loss of innocence, while the repetition of imagery and subtle inclusion of the absurd help to drive home the sci-fi simulacrum that is the world of Solaris.  Andrei Rublev is revolutionary both figuratively and literally and it is done so through the best way possible, subversively subtle.  Which when you think about it is perhaps the best way to describe Tarkovsky as a director.

This is one of the backbones of The Criterion Collection, and is in dire need of an upgrade.  With that being said, the outdated release by the company is still far superior to its rival companies and is well worth buying if you, like me, cannot wait for a blu-ray release.