Another vote here for A Matter of Life and Death. It's a sublime combination of romance, war film and a rather absurd fantasy flick, which somehow works as brilliantly as the decision to alternate between earthbound scenes in full Technicolor and those in 'the Other World' in monochrome. Much as with AdeC's comments on the Lang film above, its vision of heaven and its workings is magnificently surreal – the fact that David Niven's lead character survives his technically fatal aircrash due to a sort of celestial bureaucratic cockup is a lovely opening gambit. Niven is just fantastic in the lead role.
Speaking of war films, Went The Day Well? is a masterclass is low-key tension: from its title down, it evokes the stiff-upper-lip spirit but summons serious questions about just what it would've been like had Hitler's army succeeded in infiltrating and taking over a quiet English village and how the locals would've responded, like some black and white Red Dawn, as it were. And it has Thora Hird sniping Nazis with a rifle and keeping score like Gimli and Legolas.
Speaking of war films, Went The Day Well? is a masterclass is low-key tension: from its title down, it evokes the stiff-upper-lip spirit but summons serious questions about just what it would've been like had Hitler's army succeeded in infiltrating and taking over a quiet English village and how the locals would've responded, like some black and white Red Dawn, as it were. And it has Thora Hird sniping Nazis with a rifle and keeping score like Gimli and Legolas.
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