Film

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

A 1976 adaptation of Mishima's provocative novel about a widow's affair with an American sailor and her son's descent into a brutal boys' cult. Kris Kristofferson and Sarah Miles navigate moral quicksand in a film that trades psychological subtlety for raw, unflinching darkness. It's unsettling, formally strange, and unafraid of its own ugliness.

TMDb rating3.2

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Walkabout1971

Roeg's masterpiece of primal beauty corrupted by civilisation. Haunting, hallucinatory, and morally ambiguous in ways that linger. Visual storytelling at its most powerful—you'll think about it for years.

But Pacing is glacial and the ending is quietly devastating. Some sequences feel formless; patience required, comfort not guaranteed.

Walkabout poster

Performance.1970

Nic Roeg again, this time with Mick Jagger. A London gangster hides in a rock star's house and loses himself. Fractured, dangerous, erotic, and genuinely strange—cinema refusing to behave itself.

But Deliberately obscure and experimental. Plot takes a back seat to atmosphere. The pacing will test you and some viewers find it pretentious.

Performance. poster

The Last Picture Show1971

Bogdanovich's elegiac dive into small-town Texas as the 1950s die. Ensemble cast at their peak, black-and-white cinematography that aches, and sex treated as a real fact of ordinary life.

But Sexually frank for 1971; it's also sometimes stagey. The emotional payoff requires you to care about people who aren't always likeable.

The Last Picture Show poster

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La Haine1995

Both pit youthful cruelty and gang pressure against individual conscience. Both argue that corruption isn't chosen—it's inherited.

Mathieu Kassovitz's black-and-white explosion of suburban Paris following three young men through one day of casual brutality and systemic pressure. Like Sailor turned inside out—the boy is father to the man, and both are crushed by forces larger than morality.

But Handheld, frenetic, and relentlessly bleak. Non-French speakers may struggle with the argot; even native speakers find it punishing.

La Haine poster
More like this (8)

Cul-de-sac1966

Polanski traps a honeymoon couple and a wounded criminal in an English castle. Tension, dark comedy, sexual power games, and genuine unease. Proof that isolation and confinement can be more frightening than violence.

But The tone whipsaws between thriller and farce. Some find it dated; others find it deliberately theatrical in ways that undercut suspense.

Cul-de-sac poster

Murmur of the Heart1971

Louis Malle's scandalous, funny, and genuinely humane film about a boy's sexual awakening and his complicated relationship with his mother. Taboo subject matter handled with grace and wit.

But The central transgression will make many viewers deeply uncomfortable. It's sympathetic to a character many will find impossible to forgive.

Murmur of the Heart poster

Sunburn1979

Terence Young's kinky thriller stars Kristofferson again—perfect casting as a hired man in a sunlit web of seduction and murder. Playfully decadent and genuinely sexy in ways modern films rarely attempt.

But Plot is thin cover for mood and eroticism. It's shallow by design, which some will find shallow by accident.

Sunburn poster

Farewell, My Lovely1975

Dick Richards' noir reverie with Dick Richards' noir reverie with Mitchum at his most weathered. Los Angeles at twilight, betrayal, femmes fatales. A genre exercise that earns its emotional weight.

But You've seen noir tropes before. If you need novelty rather than depth, this elegant riff on convention won't surprise you.

Farewell, My Lovely poster

Death in Venice1971

Visconti's achingly beautiful adaptation of Mann. A composer's descent into obsession and death by beauty, shot in sumptuous Technicolor. Moral corruption as aesthetic seduction.

But Very slow, very mannered, very sad. The object of desire is a child, which will alienate viewers despite the film's serious artistic intent.

Death in Venice poster

Mandingo1975

Fleischer's transgressive plantation melodrama uses exploitation trappings to examine actual exploitation. Ugly, raw, and morally unflinching. Not art-house—it's pulp used as a scalpel.

But Genuinely vile racial and sexual violence. It provokes rather than condemns, which many will read (fairly) as irresponsible.

Mandingo poster

The Boy with Green Hair1948

Like Sailor, it uses a child as the lens through which we watch a society enforce its cruelties. Conformity becomes a form of death.

Joseph Losey's strange, expressionistic fable about a boy whose hair turns green and society turns on him. Post-war allegory wrapped in American fantasy. A film about conformity's violence rendered in color and music and magical realism.

But The tone is fairytale-like in ways that undercut the serious subject matter. Some viewers find it sentimental; others find it confused.

The Boy with Green Hair poster

A Brighter Summer Day1991

Both treat adolescent violence as inevitable tragedy shaped by forces beyond individual choice. Both argue the heart is a fatal weakness in a corrupt world.

Edward Yang's four-hour Taiwanese epic about a boy caught between rival gangs in 1960s Taipei. Epic scale but intimate scope—the boy's sexual awakening, moral confusion, and fatal mistake play out against the Cold War's shadow.

But It's long. It's in Mandarin. The ending is tragic in ways that feel arbitrary if you're not attuned to the film's lyrical, almost novelistic rhythm.

A Brighter Summer Day poster

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