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.
By Dan Hoffman
Tokyo-Ga (1985, Wim Wenders)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtl558KARx0&w=622&h=390%5D
Wender’s companion piece to Sans Soleil (although it was filmed at around the same time, it was released two years later), Tokyo-Ga is a document of Wenders’ voyage to Tokyo, where he goes to see if the Tokyo depicted by the legendary director Yasujiro Ozu in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s is still there. Narrated by Wenders himself, the film ends up being a meditation on Japanese culture, cinephilia, and the relationship between reality and film. You’ll feel smart because Wenders has such a studied, deliberate way of speaking Wenders’ narration, and you also will learn interesting facts about Japanese culture. You also might develop an appreciation for classical Japanese cinema, even if you have never seen any of it before. 
