THE DANMAN CAN

A creepy, hallucinatory ant apocalypse picture with evocative cinematography (including some fantastic macro photography) and an elegiac, psychedelic score. Legendary designer Saul Bass ' sole feature as director, 1974's Phase IV , is an intriguing, mysterious, and stylish slow burner. Recommended for fans of  The Andromeda Strain   (1971) ( review ),  Silent Running  (1972) ( review ),  2001: A Space Odyssey   (1968) ( review ),  Altered States  (1980) ( review ),  The Man Who Fell To Earth   (1976) ( review ),  Beyond The Black Rainbow   (2010) ( review ), and  The Thing From Another World  (1951) ( review ).

Fred Zinnemann 's Act Of Violence (1948) is a menacing, moralistic noir with three great leads and dramatically stylish cinematography. Fred Zinnemann Feature Films Ranked Film Noir Feature Films Ranked

Vital   (2004) does a valiant job of bridging the gap between director  Shinya Tsukamoto 's weirdest/most abrasive work and his more introspective/gentler fare. Indeed, this oneiric, corporeal, soul-searching drama seems to contain a little bit of everything that fans of the director gravitate toward—outré psychosexual behavior, a hodgepodge of cinematic/editing techniques (including some of his signature blue shots), deeply troubled characters, and meditations on existence. Vital  is the story of a man ( Tadanobu Asano ) regaining his memory after a bout of amnesia following a tragic accident, then coming to terms with grief, while doubling down on his medical studies and entering an unhealthily dependent relationship with a classmate that perhaps mirrors a previous one. Much is left ambiguous and there is plenty of striking and varied imagery to absorb. While it's certainly not the mind-bending sci-fi experience that is  Tetsuo: The Iron Man   (1989), nor quite as slow or res