What are the most original films you've ever seen?

Bickaxe said:
WALL-E is a good shout although you could argue that silent films have already done this, both had prompts to tell you want was going on.
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True but it was a pretty ballsy moment fora company who made animated family films to really push the limits of people’s Expectation in the genre.
 
Quick flip through my server...

Alien
Being John Malkovich
Blade Runner
City Lights
Clockwork Orange
Inception
Metropolis
Night of the Living Dead
Noseferatu
Pulp Fiction
Se7en
Star Wars
The General
The Jazz Singer
The Matrix
Toy Story
Truman Show
Waltz with Bashir
 
Hard to say really, it's not something I particularly take notice of. I would say:

Dr Strangelove
Memento (tried rewatching it about 15 years later and gave up though :/)
2001 ASO
Life is Beautiful
Heathers
Escape to Victory (escaping from a POW camp isn't original, but somehow basing it around a football match with a bunch of real football legends is unique!)
 
A few I've not seen mentioned already:-
Army of Darkness
Doberman
Irreversible
The Game
Mad Max
A Boy and His Dog
 
Rroff said:
Wasn't really that original though the first to do it that well. There is also stuff like Planet Of The Vampires which came out before it which covered similar ground.
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I was initially thinking the same, however the body horror side of things was certainly original I guess.
 
After watching The Shape of Water form the first time on Film4 the other day I would have said that was pretty original. But after googling it it seems to be seems to have plagiarized at least half a dozen films. Still, was a very good film in any case.
 
Brazil is up there for me. It's not even derivative of Gilliams own style most of the time.

I'd say anything by Lynch but a lot of his work is derivative of the arthouse movement of the time, except maybe something like Eraserhead which kickstarted a lot of trends within that genre. Twin Peaks: The Return is basically an 18 hour film so I'll throw that in if it counts?

Mel Brooks The Producers. Whist it reflects a lot of the golden age stuff, it was beyond edgy at the time and even now it cuts it pretty close. Still one of the funniest movies ever made.

Donnie Darko I suppose. Structure and themes are pretty indicative of a one time auteur and he's never done anything as good since though he's never really tried (though I do unashamedly love Southland Tales...)

Night of the Living Dead for obvious reasons.

Meshes of the Afternoon. Really kickstarted the European Surrealist movement in cinema which led to pretty much all of the great experimental films of the 20th and 21st centuries. You can watch it on YouTube if you're interested.

Suspiria would probably get in there, again for obvious reasons.

The Babadook doesn't get the credit it deserves. Even if you didn't like it, the storm of discussion around it helped with the resurgence in small Psycho horror films. A24 should pay Jennifer Kent royalties as far as I'm concerned.

You Where Never Really Here, or more to the point ANYTHING Lynne Ramsay makes. She is the greatest living filmmaker in my opinion and its a crime that she doesn't make more films.

Under the Skin, again for obvious reasons.

Grave of the Fireflies

Citizen Kane if only for technique.

Probably a thousand others that I'm not remembering but that's all I can come up with in half hour.
 
Most of my picks already mentioned, but Adaptation (another Charlie Kaufman) would go on there for me. Meta-narrative wasn't a particularly new concept when it was released, but I don't think it had ever been done so well (to my knowledge).
 
A couple that blew my mind as a teen watching 4Later at the end of the 90s (so much good stuff in that slot)

Videodrome
I married a strange person (very weird animated movie)
 
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