Top 7 - Most Visually Beautiful Films Ever
Feels like it's been a little while since we've done a Top 7, hasn't it? Usually I enjoy a nice little deep dive on some obscure topic I've become obsessed on and often I just end up reviewing whatever it is that Disney just unloaded onto our cinema screens but being away from a cinema I can use my swanky membership at right now means I've decided to tear myself apart trying to create a definitive ranking list that I'll hate in about a week. This week, it's a topic I've been meaning to do for a while, the most visually beautiful films ever. I specify visually because films can be sonically and emotionally beautiful too but I really want to focus more on the side of cinematography and production and costume design than those. Obviously, no one will be totally happy with this list and it's less a definitive list than an attempt to capture the films whose visuals have stuck with me through the last 19 and a bit years of my life but figured I'd do my best anyway. There's also all really good films when you ignore their visuals so if you haven't seen one, check it out on the biggest and most high definition screen you can find. As one final thing, I know most of these are very recent but seeing as all have been out for at least 18 months, I would say I've had enough time to consider them all fairly. Now, to honourable mentions!
Vertigo - director of photography, Robert Burks
Maybe my Stockholm Syndrome from a year of studying it has blinded me but I really think that Vertigo has some of the greatest uses of colour in 20th century cinema. Plenty of shots are so beautifully composed that they've become iconic, likely without you even realising it.
The Revenant - director of photography, Emanuel Lubezki
Shockingly, this is Lubezki's only entry on the list but if there's any film that will make you understand why he won Best Cinematography at the Oscars three years in a row, it is this gem, shot entirely with natural light and still a stunner.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - director of photography, Roger Deakins
Prepare to read the name Roger Deakins a lot. He is a rockstar of the cinematography world (if such a thing exists) and was able to inject stunning beauty into the well trodden western genre here.
The Grand Budapest Hotel - director of photography, Robert Yeoman, production designer, Adam Stockhausen
Wes Anderson had to pop up at some point and so while Grand Budapest isn't my favourite of his films (by an admittedly small margin), I think it is the "Most Wes Anderson" film he has ever made, fusing cinematography and production design into a perfect synthesis.
Tron: Legacy - director of photography, Claudio Miranda
Okay, I know many aren't the biggest fans of Tron: Legacy but I actually really like it, a huge reason why being the visuals. I'm a sucker for neon and I've tried to keep purely neon based entries low but I simply can't resist this fantasy world.
La La Land - director of photography, Linus Sandgren
While it beat out a worthier film for Best Cinematography in 2017 (more on that later), I do still adore La La Land, a great deal of which comes down to cinematography that bowls me over again and again. There's a reason I saw this film in the cinema four times.
Moonlight - director of photography, James Laxton
I feel like cinematography always gets overlooked with Moonlight but it shouldn't, pulling off the dual task of looking wonderful but also being a new layer on which storytelling can happen. To make the events in this film look this beautiful takes serious talent.
After those, onto the main list, which I took a surprisingly long time ranking. Turns out, ranking beauty is quite a tricky thing to do.
Perhaps this is all because I re-watched Her recently for the first time in a while but I utterly adore how it looks, especially how original a vision it is. Often with science-fiction, there's a tendency to aim for very bleak urban landscapes (and we'll see this later) but what I love about Her is that it doesn't look bleak. Of course there is a bleakness to the world, that's the emotional aspect of it but visually, it looks like a world that is trying to strive. DP Hoyte Van Hoytema is a man whose name you may have heard of as he was recently the mad man to strap an IMAX camera to his chest and jump out of a place for the most recent Mission Impossible but bombast is not the name of the game here. Instead, with help from the beautiful colour palette, it's quite visually low key. After all, isolation is the name of the game and so what better way to visually show that than with the beauty of the loneliest places on Earth, cities? Another unique aspect is how the city is a visual and cultural mixture of Los Angeles and Shanghai, a unique approach that I've never seen as well done as here. So really with Her, I think what it boils down to is a cityscape which I have never seen before, evoked gently yet with clear, expert craft.
6. Interstellar - director of photography, Hoyte Van Hoytema
Hoyte is back and better than before because that's how ranked lists work. What is interesting about having Interstellar on the list though is that, it being a film about interstellar travel, so much of the design of the universe had to be completely fabricated. It obviously looks great (that's why it's on this list) but as we recently found out with the first image of a black hole, it's fairly accurate. For the points I'm trying to make, that isn't necessarily essential but it's something that points to the serious attention to detail that goes into the world(s) building of Interstellar. This may sound stupid but a favourite visual flair of mine is when cinematographers stick their camera on something. A car door. A gun. In the case of Interstellar, a spaceship. Ridiculous as it sounds, visual moments like that make the world so much more tangible which, when you're dealing with incomprehensible sci-fi mumbo jumbo, is vital. If any film on this list sums up the visual possibilities of sci-fi, I think there is little like Interstellar, a film whose creativity on a visual level is unlike anything Nolan has done before and has done since, so far anyway. There's a reason I jumped at the chance to see a 70mm cut of Interstellar up on the big screen.
5. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover - director of photography, Sacha Vierny, production designers, Ben van Os and Jan Roelfs, costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier
Of all the films on this list, you are least likely to have heard of this film and that's a real shame. I've told this story before but the first time I was introduced to it was actually in a film seminar at University where the subject was cinematography. Our seminar tutor showed us a clip from The Cook e.t.c. in which the characters move from a pure white bathroom into the hallway you can see above while some stunning music plays. It took me a few months to see the film itself but when I did, I was delighted that visually, the rest of the film remains as jaw dropping. Through the mixture of the bold colours of the sets and costumes and the gliding movements of the camera, there is a genuine beauty to every scene here. Whether it's a scene of two characters consumating a forbidden love or Tim Roth is just vomiting on himself, everything looks so exquisite that you could fall into the frame and into the story even further. I also felt talking about the costumes was important here because when a famous fashion designer takes the time and effort to dress your star in some of the most dazzling outfits put to film, you sit up and notice. I know basically nothing about fashion but the striking colours they flaunt (which match the equally striking colours of each individual set) are captivating. The first time I watched this film, I watched a kind of crappy version through a streaming service at my Uni but I've since bought the blu-ray and in that edition, the colours burst out the screen. It feels like the reason high definition cameras and screens exist.
4. Arrival - director of photography, Bradford Young, production designer, Patrice Vermette
I know, we're back at sci-fi again but in fairness, it does seem to be a genre that offers a degree of visual creativity that few other genres offer. Not to get back to the whole "I study film" thing again but I recently wrote an essay where I was analysing the screenplay for Arrival. I enjoyed it but the point of the essay meant that I couldn't talk about the visuals of the film which broke my goddamn heart. Much of the visual side to Arrival is simple, almost impressionistic, making it almost unbelievable that this is the same guy who did the cinematography for Solo. Having spent so long reading and analysing both the source story and the screenplay, I really am impressed that anything was able to be visually conjured at all. The look of the heptapods is brilliant for the brief glimpses we get, as are their shuttles. I love sci-fi and I've seen my fair share of it but I have never seen ships as unique looking as the ones here. Not only are they brilliantly designed though, they're also captured beautifully. The moment when we first approach them in the helicopter is astounding, that shared moment of visual astonishment trying us to Louise in a way that script or sound alone could not. Arrival is brilliant because not only is it beautiful in every shot, each visual has an important part in story telling too.
3. Mad Max: Fury Road - director of photography, John Seale, production designer, Colin Gibson
You may be noticing a theme, in that I love my sci-fi futures visually resplendent and colourful. Mad Max: Fury Road takes that and puts it into the post-apocalyptic wasteland in a way that was so startling and original that every post apocalypse now is copying it, just look at the video games Rage 2 and Far Cry: New Dawn. This wasn't even something that had really been there in the original trilogy though. Sure, they're visually interesting (Lord Humongous is a really cool character purely because of his aesthetic) but there is a level of colour on display here that dazzled me both times I went to see it in the cinema. Characters just fire off fireworks for the hell of it. Tornadoes launch orange and black across the landscape. There is a man named the Doof Warrior, whose only purpose is to play a guitar that is also a flamethrower. The end of the worlds has never looked so great and just thinking about it now, I am absolutely gagging to rewatch this. Preferably with a bunch of mates and some beers in me. Interestingly, George Miller released a version of Fury Road that was in black and white (or chrome as Miller calls it) and while I have that edition as part of my blu-ray copy, I'm hesitant to watch it because of how much the visual splendour defines why I absolutely love Fury Road
2. Nocturnal Animals - director of photography, Seamus McGarvey
Nocturnal Animals came out the same year as Moonlight, Arrival and La La Land, all of which were nominated at the Oscars for Best Cinematography. Nocturnal Animals was not and frankly, it was a snub almost as cruel as that for Amy Adams in both this and Arrival. Perhaps it isn't surprising given his legacy but in both of his two features so far, Tom Ford has created films that are absolutely ravishing to look at. With Nocturnal Animals though, there is the conflict that many of the things we're looking at are objectively quite nasty. There is murder, there is sexual assault and, in the very opening shots of the film, morbidly obese women with surgery scars. Of course, fetishising dead bodies may be troublesome to some but even those shots aside, the framing and lighting in each and every scene is exquisite and I think that speaks to the quality of the visuals more than anything else. When what is on screen is morally troubling and yet still aesthetically delightful, you know that you're putting in some incredible work. So hats off to you Seamus McGarvey, you make loving the nastiness fun. I forgive you for Pan.
1. Blade Runner 2049 - director of photography, Roger Deakins, production designer, Dennis Gassner
Roger Deakins and director Denis Villeneuve both make returns on this list in what is not only one of the best sequels of all time but also (in my humble opinion) the best looking film of all time. I warned you I've told to restrain my love for neon but I certainly haven't held back on my love for sci-fi and here, the two meet at last. At my local Odeon, there is one screen whose size is almost absurd. I got to see Blade Runner 2049 in all its glory, up on that screen. It was, to quote Laura Mulvey out of context, pure "Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema". I could list off favourite shots of mine from the film. K walking through the desert. The Joi hologram leaning down (as you can see above). Even that sex scene, which is one of the most unique scenes I've ever witnessed in the cinema, reaching for visuals the likes of which I have never seen even remotely close to. As I said, I could list those all day. I could probably even do a list just on favourite shots but that would be boring and far too self-indulgent. Instead, I'll just say that Roger Deakins is widely considered the greatest cinematographer working today and this is his current magnum opus, finally winning him the Oscar for Best Cinematography. Using the foundation from the original movie, the entire world of Blade Runner was expanded on in a world that truly felt 35 years on from the world of Blade Runner, as opposed to a world 35 years on from 1982. Unlikely as it may be, if you ever get the chance again to see this film on the big screen, you need to take that opportunity immediately. Neon and future technology combine in a visual feast that I have never forgotten, likely never will.
Vertigo - director of photography, Robert Burks
Maybe my Stockholm Syndrome from a year of studying it has blinded me but I really think that Vertigo has some of the greatest uses of colour in 20th century cinema. Plenty of shots are so beautifully composed that they've become iconic, likely without you even realising it.
The Revenant - director of photography, Emanuel Lubezki
Shockingly, this is Lubezki's only entry on the list but if there's any film that will make you understand why he won Best Cinematography at the Oscars three years in a row, it is this gem, shot entirely with natural light and still a stunner.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - director of photography, Roger Deakins
Prepare to read the name Roger Deakins a lot. He is a rockstar of the cinematography world (if such a thing exists) and was able to inject stunning beauty into the well trodden western genre here.
The Grand Budapest Hotel - director of photography, Robert Yeoman, production designer, Adam Stockhausen
Wes Anderson had to pop up at some point and so while Grand Budapest isn't my favourite of his films (by an admittedly small margin), I think it is the "Most Wes Anderson" film he has ever made, fusing cinematography and production design into a perfect synthesis.
Tron: Legacy - director of photography, Claudio Miranda
Okay, I know many aren't the biggest fans of Tron: Legacy but I actually really like it, a huge reason why being the visuals. I'm a sucker for neon and I've tried to keep purely neon based entries low but I simply can't resist this fantasy world.
La La Land - director of photography, Linus Sandgren
While it beat out a worthier film for Best Cinematography in 2017 (more on that later), I do still adore La La Land, a great deal of which comes down to cinematography that bowls me over again and again. There's a reason I saw this film in the cinema four times.
Moonlight - director of photography, James Laxton
I feel like cinematography always gets overlooked with Moonlight but it shouldn't, pulling off the dual task of looking wonderful but also being a new layer on which storytelling can happen. To make the events in this film look this beautiful takes serious talent.
After those, onto the main list, which I took a surprisingly long time ranking. Turns out, ranking beauty is quite a tricky thing to do.
7. Her - director of photography, Hoyte Van Hoytema, production designer, K. K. Barrett
Perhaps this is all because I re-watched Her recently for the first time in a while but I utterly adore how it looks, especially how original a vision it is. Often with science-fiction, there's a tendency to aim for very bleak urban landscapes (and we'll see this later) but what I love about Her is that it doesn't look bleak. Of course there is a bleakness to the world, that's the emotional aspect of it but visually, it looks like a world that is trying to strive. DP Hoyte Van Hoytema is a man whose name you may have heard of as he was recently the mad man to strap an IMAX camera to his chest and jump out of a place for the most recent Mission Impossible but bombast is not the name of the game here. Instead, with help from the beautiful colour palette, it's quite visually low key. After all, isolation is the name of the game and so what better way to visually show that than with the beauty of the loneliest places on Earth, cities? Another unique aspect is how the city is a visual and cultural mixture of Los Angeles and Shanghai, a unique approach that I've never seen as well done as here. So really with Her, I think what it boils down to is a cityscape which I have never seen before, evoked gently yet with clear, expert craft.
6. Interstellar - director of photography, Hoyte Van Hoytema
Hoyte is back and better than before because that's how ranked lists work. What is interesting about having Interstellar on the list though is that, it being a film about interstellar travel, so much of the design of the universe had to be completely fabricated. It obviously looks great (that's why it's on this list) but as we recently found out with the first image of a black hole, it's fairly accurate. For the points I'm trying to make, that isn't necessarily essential but it's something that points to the serious attention to detail that goes into the world(s) building of Interstellar. This may sound stupid but a favourite visual flair of mine is when cinematographers stick their camera on something. A car door. A gun. In the case of Interstellar, a spaceship. Ridiculous as it sounds, visual moments like that make the world so much more tangible which, when you're dealing with incomprehensible sci-fi mumbo jumbo, is vital. If any film on this list sums up the visual possibilities of sci-fi, I think there is little like Interstellar, a film whose creativity on a visual level is unlike anything Nolan has done before and has done since, so far anyway. There's a reason I jumped at the chance to see a 70mm cut of Interstellar up on the big screen.
5. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover - director of photography, Sacha Vierny, production designers, Ben van Os and Jan Roelfs, costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier
Of all the films on this list, you are least likely to have heard of this film and that's a real shame. I've told this story before but the first time I was introduced to it was actually in a film seminar at University where the subject was cinematography. Our seminar tutor showed us a clip from The Cook e.t.c. in which the characters move from a pure white bathroom into the hallway you can see above while some stunning music plays. It took me a few months to see the film itself but when I did, I was delighted that visually, the rest of the film remains as jaw dropping. Through the mixture of the bold colours of the sets and costumes and the gliding movements of the camera, there is a genuine beauty to every scene here. Whether it's a scene of two characters consumating a forbidden love or Tim Roth is just vomiting on himself, everything looks so exquisite that you could fall into the frame and into the story even further. I also felt talking about the costumes was important here because when a famous fashion designer takes the time and effort to dress your star in some of the most dazzling outfits put to film, you sit up and notice. I know basically nothing about fashion but the striking colours they flaunt (which match the equally striking colours of each individual set) are captivating. The first time I watched this film, I watched a kind of crappy version through a streaming service at my Uni but I've since bought the blu-ray and in that edition, the colours burst out the screen. It feels like the reason high definition cameras and screens exist.
4. Arrival - director of photography, Bradford Young, production designer, Patrice Vermette
I know, we're back at sci-fi again but in fairness, it does seem to be a genre that offers a degree of visual creativity that few other genres offer. Not to get back to the whole "I study film" thing again but I recently wrote an essay where I was analysing the screenplay for Arrival. I enjoyed it but the point of the essay meant that I couldn't talk about the visuals of the film which broke my goddamn heart. Much of the visual side to Arrival is simple, almost impressionistic, making it almost unbelievable that this is the same guy who did the cinematography for Solo. Having spent so long reading and analysing both the source story and the screenplay, I really am impressed that anything was able to be visually conjured at all. The look of the heptapods is brilliant for the brief glimpses we get, as are their shuttles. I love sci-fi and I've seen my fair share of it but I have never seen ships as unique looking as the ones here. Not only are they brilliantly designed though, they're also captured beautifully. The moment when we first approach them in the helicopter is astounding, that shared moment of visual astonishment trying us to Louise in a way that script or sound alone could not. Arrival is brilliant because not only is it beautiful in every shot, each visual has an important part in story telling too.
3. Mad Max: Fury Road - director of photography, John Seale, production designer, Colin Gibson
You may be noticing a theme, in that I love my sci-fi futures visually resplendent and colourful. Mad Max: Fury Road takes that and puts it into the post-apocalyptic wasteland in a way that was so startling and original that every post apocalypse now is copying it, just look at the video games Rage 2 and Far Cry: New Dawn. This wasn't even something that had really been there in the original trilogy though. Sure, they're visually interesting (Lord Humongous is a really cool character purely because of his aesthetic) but there is a level of colour on display here that dazzled me both times I went to see it in the cinema. Characters just fire off fireworks for the hell of it. Tornadoes launch orange and black across the landscape. There is a man named the Doof Warrior, whose only purpose is to play a guitar that is also a flamethrower. The end of the worlds has never looked so great and just thinking about it now, I am absolutely gagging to rewatch this. Preferably with a bunch of mates and some beers in me. Interestingly, George Miller released a version of Fury Road that was in black and white (or chrome as Miller calls it) and while I have that edition as part of my blu-ray copy, I'm hesitant to watch it because of how much the visual splendour defines why I absolutely love Fury Road
2. Nocturnal Animals - director of photography, Seamus McGarvey
Nocturnal Animals came out the same year as Moonlight, Arrival and La La Land, all of which were nominated at the Oscars for Best Cinematography. Nocturnal Animals was not and frankly, it was a snub almost as cruel as that for Amy Adams in both this and Arrival. Perhaps it isn't surprising given his legacy but in both of his two features so far, Tom Ford has created films that are absolutely ravishing to look at. With Nocturnal Animals though, there is the conflict that many of the things we're looking at are objectively quite nasty. There is murder, there is sexual assault and, in the very opening shots of the film, morbidly obese women with surgery scars. Of course, fetishising dead bodies may be troublesome to some but even those shots aside, the framing and lighting in each and every scene is exquisite and I think that speaks to the quality of the visuals more than anything else. When what is on screen is morally troubling and yet still aesthetically delightful, you know that you're putting in some incredible work. So hats off to you Seamus McGarvey, you make loving the nastiness fun. I forgive you for Pan.
1. Blade Runner 2049 - director of photography, Roger Deakins, production designer, Dennis Gassner
Roger Deakins and director Denis Villeneuve both make returns on this list in what is not only one of the best sequels of all time but also (in my humble opinion) the best looking film of all time. I warned you I've told to restrain my love for neon but I certainly haven't held back on my love for sci-fi and here, the two meet at last. At my local Odeon, there is one screen whose size is almost absurd. I got to see Blade Runner 2049 in all its glory, up on that screen. It was, to quote Laura Mulvey out of context, pure "Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema". I could list off favourite shots of mine from the film. K walking through the desert. The Joi hologram leaning down (as you can see above). Even that sex scene, which is one of the most unique scenes I've ever witnessed in the cinema, reaching for visuals the likes of which I have never seen even remotely close to. As I said, I could list those all day. I could probably even do a list just on favourite shots but that would be boring and far too self-indulgent. Instead, I'll just say that Roger Deakins is widely considered the greatest cinematographer working today and this is his current magnum opus, finally winning him the Oscar for Best Cinematography. Using the foundation from the original movie, the entire world of Blade Runner was expanded on in a world that truly felt 35 years on from the world of Blade Runner, as opposed to a world 35 years on from 1982. Unlikely as it may be, if you ever get the chance again to see this film on the big screen, you need to take that opportunity immediately. Neon and future technology combine in a visual feast that I have never forgotten, likely never will.
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