Entertainment

5 Films That Make You Feel Smart

In describing the Blow Up, you can use words like “alienation.” It is based on a short story of the same name by Julio Cortázar, an author who smart people read. The final scene, a mimed tennis match, goes down as one of the best in cinema history.

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Videodrome (1983, David Cronenberg)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPGszmU1egQ&w=622&h=390%5D

What could be more cool and smart to talk about than a film whose director was a student of media theorist Marshall McLuhan? Videodrome, and most of Cronenberg’s films, provide ample material for discussions about the media, consumer culture, postmodernity, technology…and any other number of smart-seeming things. And it’s all packaged into a sweet horror movie where people’s guts fly around and James Woods says, “long live the New Flesh.”