The Qatsi films.
The House of Flying Daggers
A so-so kungfu movie with the twists of a love story.
But great cinematography, effects, and vibrant colors. Ballet like.
A couple of 1980s movies were so gorgeous that I’d watch them with the sound off:
The Natural
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan of the Apes
Stanley Kubrick’s films aren’t Pure Eye Candy, but they’re gorgeous, too. especially 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon.
And I agree about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow == it looks like pulp illustrations come to life,. but sadly without a brain.
The Sound of Music (true, there was that small thing with the Nazis, but still…) had the gorgeous Alps combined with gorgeous music. I also loved South Pacific, which had the gorgeous…south Pacific! When Bloody Mary sang *Bali Hai, and the camera panned over the islands, including (to my recollections) islands w/active volcanoes, it was purely gorgeous.
Love, Phil
For those who care, my cites for the above: The Sound of Music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5dUwsWTpnk (please ignore the nonsense at the beginning & enjoy the music & scenery) (Bali Hai) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81NROmUb7o0 (audio needs to be turned up)
Love, Phil
Road House 2: Last Call.
Kidding, kidding.
Silverado. Great Western landscapes.
This truly falls under guilty pleasures…
Xanadu
(Hides face in shame)
FML
Xanadu is sweet, baby, sweet.
For me, it’ll sound trite but I could watch ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ just for the landscapes. Just astonishing.
Dang - My top two eye-candy movies (beautiful visuals dept) are already taken: “Days of Heaven” and “Fellowship”. My third is the obscure “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”.
Now, man-candy eye-candy movies (non-Xrated division) I’ll have to give some further thought to.
For me, it’s Under the Tuscan Sun. Fluffy chick-flick, but gorgeous shots of Tuscany.
Baraka manages to be gorgeous, gorgeous eyecandy (landscapes, art, wildlife) and thoughtful and deep. It’s the kind of movie you get lost in late at night or on a quiet rainy afternoon.
From the anime corner, Appleseed Ex Machina and Innocence. The first is pure CGI in a new style, the second is a glorious blend of CGI and cel animation. Actually, while I’m on it, anything by Ghibli.
Cars. The great American landscape, beautifully rendered.
A lot of people don’t like the movie in general. I’m not amongst them, but even the haters have to give it credit for the gorgeous looks.
Labyrinth for the gorgeous sets, costumes, and creatures. You could tell Jim Henson had a blast going to work every single day.
Children of Men. It’s not pretty. It’s grimy and hopeless, but it is so well done and so complete, you can easily believe this is what would happen to society if no more children could be born.
Lord of the Rings. The locations. The sets. The costumes. The props. If you watch the behind-the-scenes extras, you can see just how much work they put into it. This is no large Potemkin village. They built everything up from scratch and created Middle Earth as a whole.
Dr. Zhivago. I don’t know what’s more gorgeous, the scenery or Omar Shariff’s eyes.
Pretty much every Terry Gilliam movie is great eye candy. The man is a great visual director.
Ang Lee’s stories vary in quality, but he usually gets some gorgeous epic landscapes in there.
Barbarella. It is a truly awful movie; the plot, the writing, the acting, the directing, the final putting together of the scenes (I forget the word for that), etc. are among the worse I have ever seen in 65 years of movie going, but Jane Fonda is so luscious (and, women tell me, the actor who plays the angel is so beautiful) that it bears watching again, and again, and again, and…
A lot of people hate Peter Greenaway’s stories, but the visuals are usually beautiful. The best eye-candy is probably in Prospero’s Books. It’s Shakespeare, with interesting special effects, and lots of gratuitous nudity.
What a Way to Go!, starring Shirley Maclaine. The story is told as a series of flashbacks, and each flashback is done in the style of a different film genre.
Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hamlet.
The version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania.
Legends of the Fall. Short on realistic plotline but prettiness abounds, from Brad Pitt with long hair, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond, to the gorgeous Montana landscape (though filmed in Canada).