15 Smart Movies For Smart People

06.04.2024 - 13:53 / fortressofsolitude.co.za

Let’s face it: not all good movies are made for everyone. Sometimes, a good movie requires a good mind to appreciate it. Sometimes, people are too lazy to appreciate a masterpiece. Sometimes smart movies are made for smart people only.

Take art, for instance. One person can look at a Picasso doodle and see only the scribbles. But someone else might see it for what it really is: a masterpiece.

To be brutally honest, some smart movies are made for smart people. And that’s okay. The rest of the world still has CGI blockbusters, like Transformers, Fast and The Furious and the Twilight series.

For those who enjoy a little more stimulation for your brain, here is a list of really fun smart movies:

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a complex but masterful re-telling of John le Carré’s British espionage story.

If you expect car chases, gadgets and closely choreographed fight scenes, then you will be bitterly disappointed. This slow-burn film requires audiences to be a little smarter—to pay attention to the details, the quiet moments, and the meaningful looks of the actors.

Based on the classic novel of the same name, the international thriller is set at the height of the Cold War years of the mid-20th Century. George Smiley (Gary Oldman), a disgraced British spy, is rehired in secret by his government, which fears that a double agent working for the Soviets has compromised the British Secret Intelligence Service, a.k.a. MI-6.

Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a bizarre but smart and imaginative movie. If you lose attention for a moment, you might be completely confused by what’s happening on screen. Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, if you sit up and pay attention, you’ll discover that love is more powerful than science.

After a painful breakup, Clementine (Kate Winslet) undergoes a procedure to erase memories of her former boyfriend Joel (Jim Carrey) from her mind. When Joel discovers that Clementine is going to extremes to forget their relationship, he undergoes the same procedure and slowly begins to forget the woman that he loves.

Directed by former music video director Michel Gondry, the visually arresting film explores the intricacy of relationships and the pain of loss. This is the perfect example of a really smart movie made for really smart people.

Predestination is probably the most confusing film you’ll ever see. It’s the type of film that will leave you in complete shock and horror but also scratching your head long after the end credits. It really is brilliant—in a sick, twisted way, of course. It succeeds in touching the brain and the heart.

A temporal agent (Ethan Hawke) embarks on a final time-travelling assignment to prevent