Zardoz

John Boorman's 1974 (cult) classic. It's a sci-fi mash-up. Echoes of 1984, Brave New World, The Wizard of Oz, Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough At Last," Kubrick's 2001, Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," Planet of the Apes. Shades of spaghetti westerns, Samuel Fuller & Sam Peckinpah. And who knows what else Boorman through in? (If you've seen it, by all means venture a guess.)

Whatever else it is, it is almost constantly visually mesmerizing. Director of photography Geoffrey Unsworth also shot Beckett, 2001, The Magic Christian, Cabaret, and Superman ('78).

Starring Sean Connery as Zed (the leader of the Brutals) and Charlotte Rampling as Consuella (an Eternal).

Zardoz's themes are Boorman favorites: the thin line between civilized and barbaric, the dangers of stepping out of one's own cultural comfort zone, nature as a malignant force, psychic duality. See: Deliverance, The Emerald Forest, Excalibur, Exorcist II: The Heretic (not nearly as awful as popular consensus would have it).