I just bought a new screen (going from 17" to 23"), and to take its virginity I was thinking about what to watch first. And that put me on this topic: What do you think is VISUALLY the coolest film out there (so not counting great acting or story-lines, pure looks)? For me it would be 300, Watchmen and 2001.
2001 !! or Full metal jacket, Dr Strangelove, Shining, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange, Eyes wide shut, The Killing, the Killer's kiss, Paths of glory...
Visually beauty is many things, but I think movies with great landscapes, colours and so on are good for the "big?" screen... Here I would say "The Fall", "Cashback", "Days of Heaven", "What dreams may come", "Sunshine", "The Fountain", "Samsara" "Until the end of the world" and much much more :D! Btw all movies by Wong Kar Wai (i'm a great fan) is beautiful :D!
No dvd yet for Avatar. And no 3d at home for the moment :( I saw yesterday Christmas Carol (Scrooge) in 3d and it is also a great movie. My first 3d experience where the 3d makes sense.
Also saw Avatar 3D in the cinema, it's great! I mean the scenario sucks, you shouldn't go for that, there is nothing original in the story. But visually, it is a must see experience imo :) I have never seen anything like it, some scenes are breathtaking, trully amazing. And it is also something that you must see in the cinema (and in 3D), really, seeing it on dvd will not even come close! But then again, I wish one day they could do something like this but with a good story :(
Also saw Avatar 3D. Really a stunning visual experience. Absolutely exciting. But then, as Chrissy says: why spend hundreds of millions on research, visuals and marketing and fail to pay for a proper scenario? It's so disappointing. Are the directors and producers of such movies retards themselves, or has it been proven that the only way to make money in film industry is to address a hypothetical 14-year-old who supposedly needs a clear distinction between good and bad, lots of explosions, music that tells whether a bad acted scene is meant to be understood as romantic, and a build-up that has a fixed number of highlights and setbacks to end with a reassuring climax?
Is the scenario THAT bad ? It's basically Dancing with Wolves meets Star Wars. I agree that's it's not original at all but it's not bad either. Anyway my eyes had so many orgasms that my brain couldn't pay attention to the story lol
I think the most grotesque twist in the story was quite nicely described in a review by Chris Tookey ('Avatar: It's Dances With Smurfs') in The Daily Mail:
"Cameron affects a fashionably anti-war, anti-military stance, but — as befits the man who made Aliens — he knows American audiences well enough to provide a 20-minute pro-war finale that takes just as much delight in mass destruction as any Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer movie."
BEST CAMERA WORK: any kubrick movie, but especially THE SHINING BEST OVERALL VISUALS: i'd have to say KING KONG. i watched both KING KONG and AVATAR on the big screen and found the first one at least as visually amazing as the latter. nevertheless, i felt that KING KONG had more optical variety. and finally, jackson already achieved these visual standards ~4 years ago, so i just have to go with the kong (who just looks friggin' amazing, by the way). SPECIAL MENTION: the highly underrated SUNSHINE, for creating some kind of strange "attraction" to the sun.
movies like TRON or THE MATRIX are also great visual showcases, but more in a way that they were "ahead of their time" and something completely new for their original audiences.
I also think Tim Burton movies are visually great. Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd (if you turn off the volume, in my opinion the singing is quite obnoxious) Big Fish for example