OK, indulge me. What are your top 5 films that leave the audience feeling cynical, dark, or spiritually violated? (Not that that's a bad feeling for a film to give...)
In the Company of Men
Your Friends and Neighbors
The Ice Storm
The Magdelene Sisters
Amores Perros
"It's a good deal...it's a good deal for ME!"
I don't see "The Ice Storm" as cynical. It was dark, but that was a dark period. It showed people, normal people, trying to do their best at a time when the national moral compass was disintegrating.
And, for the record, I think it was one of the best films of the '90s, and one of the best films about that time, 1973.
5. The Ice Storm.
Realistic characters experimenting with socially unacceptable things in a time that the boundaries of what is socially acceptable was changing, the entire tone makes me nostalgic in a way.
4. Eyes Wide Shut.
It was explained above perfectly.
3. My Own Private Idaho.
We follow a character who we learn to like, and after everything he goes through in the film, he ends up in the same bad place he was in the beginning.
2. Bladerunner.
Though the ending tries to be somewhat uplifting in Deckard and Rachel deciding to spend their remaining time together, complete with the one-liner ending, sudden music and quick close-to-credits, Roy Batty had an excellently dark story, and a cynical message to give to Deckard - one that puts down the entire human race for what they've done in the films world.
The entire film portrays a gritty, cynical, cyber-punk reality that, though futuristic, isn't unbelievable.
1. Panic In Needle Park.
Seven
Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
Funny Games
...theres another one but I cant think of it. not in this order either.
off the top of my head (no order):
Romance X
Brief Crossing
Clockwork Orange
Lost and Delerious
Salo
Ghost World
Closer
Mysterious skin
The mother and the whore
1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller - Masterful film by Robert Altman, where death is entirely inevitable. It has the most downbeat ending out of any film I've ever seen, period.
2. Network - Lumet proves once again that he is the master of cinematic cynicism with a film that overflows with negativity, although a good bit of the film is comical.
3. The Conversation - Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 masterpiece is a great foray into paranoia and guilt, and what's paranoia and guilt without some cynicism in the mix?
4. Ran - Kurosawa's final true masterpiece finds no need to sugercoat us with redemption, and it's final frame indeed confirms that we are all totally *beep*
5. KIDS - Holds the distinction of being the ugliest movie I've ever seen. While I am often drawn over and over to negative, depressing films, I have no desire to ever see this one again.
Honorable Mentions (in no particular order):
Winter Light - Cripplingly downbeat Bergman!
The Verdict - Lumet's great courtroom drama that is ultimately bittersweet, but moreso bitter.
The Ice Storm - Redemption? Not so much.
The Player - Hilariously cynical film with Hollywood as its main target.
Ikiru - Another great Kurosawa film, which drives home harder than ever that nothing ever *beep* changes.
No Country For Old Men - Sweet, sweet nihilism.
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I'm not sure if Bergman was cynical, in general, and in Winter Light in particular. Angry, yes. Angry at God, but still believing that there HAS TO BE an answer somewhere, if only God would break his silence.
"Sometimes you have to take the bull by the tail, and face the truth" - G. Marx
Sorry! I couldn't just put 5.
Requiem for a Dream
Gone Baby Gone
Chinatown
Dangerous Liasons
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Road to Perdition
Mystic River
There Will be Blood
A Clockwork Orange
Fargo
No Country for Old Men
Autumn Sonata
The Exorcist
Dead Ringers
Boys Don't Cry
Blue Velvet
Dead Man Walking
Mulholland Drive
In the Bedroom
28 Days Later
Children of Men
Das Boot
Five Easy Pieces
One Flew Cuckoo's Nest
Gangs of New York
Persona
The Constant Gardener
Hard Candy
Funny Games
The Virgin Suicides
Midnight Cowboy
American beauty
mystic River
seven
Departed
The Mist
how about monster's ball? i'm surprised it isn't on anyone's list.
shareDon't know if these will pass the cynicism definition test, or even the dark criterion, but I found them to leave me depressed
Boiler Room
The Passion of Christ
Leaving Las Vegas
Blow
Drugstore Cowboy
Gallipoli
also, maybe
Jean de Florette (though the 'sequel', Manon, helps right things a little)
Sleepers (justice in the end, but not enough to make up)
Midnight Express (same)
If we're defining "cynical film" as one in which the scheming, dishonest, and underhanded triumph over the "good guys" and the "nice guys" (and the film presents it as only natural), then my personal list would be as follows:
In the Company of Men
Happiness
The Ice Storm
Election
Full Metal Jacket
I chose these because they each express the cynical viewpoint in very different ways... also there are many more, but the OP wanted five.
Happiness
A Clockwork Orange
Magdalene Sisters
Song for Raggy Boy
Sideways
Of the top of my head and in no particular order
The Wrestler
The Ice Storm
State of Grace
Gone Baby Gone
Sin City?
1. House of Sand and Fog
2. Down in the Valley
3. The King
4. Hard Candy
5. Spun