"There Will Be Blood" is stuck in my head as a recent example. Slow, long, and sort of episodic in feel, it still manages to keep me riveted whenever I watch it.

On that note, the recent "Prisoners" has a similar feel to it in my mind. Both movies contain superb acting (in particular Day-Lewis and Hugh Jackman are absolutely tremendous), dissonant and scaled-back music, scenes that are allowed to sit and draw you in, slow precise camerawork, stunning cinematography by Elswit and Deakins, And great use of silence to build tension.

"Life Of Pi" also strikes me as an almost perfect movie of recent years, with some stunning effects work, not just clean and believable but also beautiful and used for artistic purpose.

I have some issues with ROTK that are mostly book purist based, although some of the colour grading is a bit too obvious. Still, a good nomination (and wow, it's more than 10 years old already).

The closest that I have seen recently has been Gravity, although actually thinking about it, Europa Report is probably closer to being 'perfect'.

Tough call! I thought the Korean movie A Bittersweet Life was perfect.

I would definitely go along with adding Dredd to the list. I haven't seen much of anything else lately though.

How does The Thing fit into that?

The Thing 2011 is a prequel, though. Yeah, it has similar elements to Carpenter's classic but its events lead up to the start of the 1982 film.

They should have went for a different title......

Last edited by Jimmy B (2014-02-22 20:38:02)

The Lego Movie's gotta be the most recent, unless I missed some detail. Dredd was another good example, the simple nature of it was what got everyone's attention in the first place.
Oh, I just watched This is The End last weekend, and have been thinking about it since. A bit sillier than the examples in this thread, but I think it meets the requirements.

Anyway, point is I think they happen somewhat often, it just depends on how strict you're being with the requirements. Unfortunately, it does seem like the ease of access to filmmaking is increasing the number of people involved but decreasing the number who fully understand how to achieve a complete story. This has been an on-going trend, particularly in scifi/action films who are determined to set themselves up for a franchise, but in doing so, skip out of actually telling a full story up front, or try to tell too much. Ender's Game was probably my biggest disappointment recently. While I liked it, they just couldn't figure out how to make the book flow into a film narrative. Though, it certainly did a better job of condensing scenes than The Last Airbender. [shudder]

I'm not sure how to factor in cultural relevance/acceptance, so I'm focusing on a film that, whether you liked it or not, delivers what the premise promises.

It's surely not going to repeat the same story as Terminator (in the way that Robocop and Total Recall were 'repeat- remakes'), but a prequel or new chapter in the existing universe? I don't know - do they even have a script?

The latest news I read said it's still Terminator 5.
It's all wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey at this point, who knows what they're trying to do.

The way I see it (as I'm sure many others do), anything after T2 is just a fanfilm anyway.
I'll still go watch some silvery, red-eyed androids shoot up some stuff, why not. Salvation was pretty neat, what I saw of the Sarah Connor show was alright. (We don't talk about T3.)

There's no such thing as a perfect movie, but Moon is a good candidate for nearly perfect.

THE INSIDER does check all the boxes on the perfect movie form. Good call there. That movie is remarkable.

I don't see anything about HER that should prevent it from being called a perfect movie. Just saw TOY STORY 3 again, too, and I'd slap the perfect movie label on that one as well.