A Beautiful Mind. I think it is fundamentally awful for portraying/exploiting a real case of schizophrenia as a device for suspense.
I also think that Russell Crowe's portrayal of John Nash passes "as a mentally handicapped" characterization of a somewhat awkward genius. Seriously. Place his performance within the movie I Am Sam, and see that it does not play perfectly there too. All my reasons for disliking A Beautiful Mind can be chalked up to "personal", and I freely admit that I can't stand Crowe as an actor, or Ron Howard as a director, so please withhold the hate.
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I thought I would also share some of my thoughts about some of the movies mentioned previously:
District 9 - it's about the apartheid ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_under_apartheid), and simply replace the aliens for poor African people, and you have yourself the perfect allegory. Bonus points for a real representation of mercenaries and privatized military.
Apocalypse Now - epic scale and an attempt to represent the descent of human compassion, it pull greatly from The Heart of Darkness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness).
Blade Runner - A human (Deckard) hunting robots which show more emotion than their human counterparts, existentialism at its very core. Then again, Deckard is also a robot, being manipulated by humans to kill his own and is insinuated that the whole scenario was planned out from the start - as is revealed by the origami trail. It is has also been further reveal that Rachel, Deckard's robot love interest, was "made for him" quite literally.
Muholland Drive / Inland Empire (or practically all of David Lynch's filmography) - There is a simple thing to keep in mind while watching almost any David Lynch movie. He explores the motives and psychological state of different characters in various stages of mental collapse: Muholland Drive - A wannabe actress who is unable to accept her state in life. Lost Highway - husband loses it when he is unable to cope with the fact that his wife cheats on him. This interest came from back when he did Eraserhead (man unable to understand societies traditional roles of men and women), however Inland Empire is a return to form for him, exploring deeper metaphors through the entire movie, like in Eraserhead. It is least accessible of his work to date, but I would argue, a much more welcome change - as the sociological and pathological meanderings are more rewarding over repeat viewings.
Kill Bill (and perhaps all of Q.T.'s work) - If there is one reason to perk up when Q.T. comes out with a new one, it is as easy as this: his form of diction, and command for the English language. All the sentences and structure is sex to the ears. Sure, the sense of cool aesthetic can be a hard pill to swallow, but I argue that few people have an ear (or talent) like his.
2001: A Space Odyssey - Kubrick worked hard at all angles of almost every movie he completed. With 2001, he and Arthur C. Clark succeeded in making a serious Sci-Fi movie to rival the seriously topical novel work which continues to be largely ignored by the masses. It was so successful, that it had preceded a good deal of space exploration and technology up to this day. Reading the novel, reveals more concerning the monoliths actual function, but the point of Kubrick's was that he knew that he would be ultimately wrong about a few things concerning the future, hence the title (2001) and ambiguity of certain themes near the end. If there is one thing to admire it is the sheer sense of scale and scope, and the fact that anything close like it was ever made to begin with.
A Clockwork Orange - A Clockwork Orange has simplistic morality because the entire movie is about youth and coming of age. The novel has an additional "moral" chapter which was omitted in certain prints of the book (u.s. print I believe) at the time, and omitted from the movie. This is the primary reason why the riots happened in the U.K. because of the movie, because it encourage youth to be youth without consequence and U.K. kids connected with it strongly. Kubrick had it withheld from further distribution in the U.K. until his death, and to my knowledge, no other director has ever achieved this form of "flattery" for their work. It also speaks large degrees considering institutionalization, and stands as one of the better novel translations considering theme and language.
Citizen Kane - It's about Bill Hearst (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Hearst), and had such an effect on Orson Welles career that his life began to parody the plot of Citizen Kane. This also rippled into his other masterful work on The Magnificent Ambersons, which had it's ending destroyed and replaced with something to kill it at the box office, when the producers had locked him out of the editing room. The sleigh was also a supposed reference to Bill Hearst's nickname of his mistress's clitoris. This movie is also one of the few which tackles the ideal businessman, who's best intentions, turn into his undoing. Which would be quite a thing considering how objectivism and Hemmingway's ideologies were being triumphed to such a degree at the time.
Bad Lieutenant - All of Werner Herzogg's movies are personal taste largely, but what cannot be ignored his is capacity to show things on the screen (largely character pathologies) which rarely are explored otherwise. Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre are both incredible because the lengths at which the director goes to achieve his image, really moving large ships over mountains, or going into the amazon unafraid of potential death around the corner, all the while exploring the pathology of a madman is fantastic.
Avatar - I totally understand the hate: plot holes the size of texas, etc. However, it did attempt to discuss issues of alien occupation of alien land and reveal a great degree of the interworkings of why it could happen on earth as well. Stephen Hawking might be a bit worse for the wear, but the man had a point when he said that Aliens who come to earth will probably not have good intentions. Bonus points for clearly showing some balls concerning current U.S. foreign policy.
The Wild Bunch - The movie was antiquated when it was released, much like all westerns are designed to be. It's a nasty film that took all the piss out of the western genre at the time. It effectively killed the genre for years. Reason? It literally blew out all the romance and capitalism indicative of all westerns, and to top it all off it had a quick message concerning friendship, companionship, and vein attempts to alter one's state in life. I'll throw a bone out there and say that this could easily be respectfully remade to be an allegory concerning the fast times of u.s. business, however this is impossible. Sam Peckinpah was the only genus with balls enough to push the topics considered in his movies as far as he did (see Straw Dogs) with the degree of aplomb and damned persona non gratas as that man was capable. I would have loved to have had a drink with him.
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