Floating Lives (Cánh dong bat tan) - 2010 - Nguyen Phan Quang Binh

Impressive Vietnamese film about a 'timeless' Vietnam - a family out in the remote countryside living as rural Vietnamese have lived for generations, facing the same universal problems.

Not to ruin the plot, but to give you some idea of it, a father and his two children survive on the Mekong River and take in a woman who has been brutally beaten by villagers for promiscuity. As the film develops you learn the backgrounds of all the characters.

Victim - 1961 - Starring Dirk Bogarde - Directed by Basil Dearden

Click on link here to see the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBTgzcpN6mQ

Dirk Bogarde is, in my humble estimation, one of the coolest actors ever.

If I am not mistaken, this film was banned in the USA because it dealt with a gay man suffering the injustice of being blackmailed because of his sexual orientation.

Indeed, it seems as if the film was made to criticize England's anti-gay laws. There is a very sympathetic police detective in the film who often argues against the laws, pointing out that they often lead to blackmail.

This may have been the first English-language film to even address the issue of homosexuality and the persecution of gay folks.

The US just did not want to acknowledge, at this time, that gay folks existed and banned the film.

This was an important film in the UK that helped open eyes and change anti-gay laws.

Picnic at Hanging Rock - 1975 - Peter Weir

Click to see the movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy0_hXCpEO4

Wings of Desire - 1987 - Wim Wenders

Click on link for the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igVFUHHaKs0

Ride Lonesome - Budd Boetticher - 1959

The Randolph Scott character claims to be interested in seeing justice done by taking a young man in to be hanged for a senseless murder; yet, it turns out he has ulterior motives. We see the possibility between a person's true motives and the perfectly legitimate moral justifications he can give to obfuscate his true intentions.

The Pernell Roberts character wants to take the young guy in as well, but his motives are also less than direct.

Everybody wants justice, but they all want it for different reasons.

Münchhausen - Josef von Báky- 1943

Not every film shot in World War 2 in Germany was propaganda...or would you disagree after seeing this film?  Lots of folks really like this movie,even though it was shot in Germany during the war.

Triumph of the Will - Riefenstahl - 1935

You can see this film by clicking on this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4gVcHE2HcU

I once took a sociology of religion course in which our professor asked us to watch this film and to look for how Riefenstahl used religious symbols and motifs to glorify Hitler and Nazism. Don't forget that the swastika itself was an ancient religious symbol. You might want to view this film the same way I did for the first time, or you can simply just watch it and derive whatever conclusions you are able to.

This film was made after Hitler had performed an economic miracle in Germany - reducing unemployment to negligible levels. Some perceptive folks still recognized Hitler's threat to civilization, but many were, apparently,bamboozled.

Riefenstahl would later go on to say that she was not a Nazi propagandist, but she seems to be shooting for a very clear and precise political message in this film. It is unmitigated propaganda. Some say it is the finest example of propaganda in the history of film.