10 Movies To Challenge Even The Most Hardcore Film Buff

10. Upstream Color

Shane Carruth wowed and perplexed audiences in equal measure back in 2004 with his debut independent film, Primer. An audacious movie, not least on account of its miniscule budget (completed for just $7,000), it marked Carruth as a director to watch, eschewing conventional structure and refusing to pander to the lowest common denominator. After a decade waiting, Carruth finally returned behind the camera to produce his second feature, the beautiful puzzle box of a movie, Upstream Color. Starring Carruth and Amy Seimetz, Upstream Color tells of two people who have been unwittingly infected with a parasite who meet by chance on a train and experience a connection which seems to transcend the regular psychic realm. As they slowly piece together their memories of what happened to them - and these memories seem to merge with one another - they uncover the source of their predicament in The Sampler, a strange pig farmer locked in a regenerative cycle in which the parasite passes from humans to pigs to orchids, which grow from the corpses of the infected piglets he throws into a river. As baffling and metaphysical as the "story" is, Upstream Color is also a gloriously shot and edited work of cinema which frequently reaches poetic heights. Comparisons with David Lynch and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (shortlisted for this list) are entirely justified - Upstream Color is a surreal yet strangely moving full of rich imagery exploring symbiosis, memory and our place in nature.