Movies are very much a visual medium. Though music and sound effects are really important to the experience as well, let's face it, when you go to the movies, the general term is "watching" the movie. Today, we honor the movies that make the visual part of movie-going an experience unlike any other. The movies that take us to fantastical places that only the imagination and the power of film can dare take us to go. The movies that create astonishing worlds that you can just absorb yourself into, with their power and beauty. So without further ado, here are the most visually stunning and beautiful movies of all time. So sit back, relax, engage your eyeballs, and indulge yourself in this visual orgy of beautiful looking films.

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#10: Spirited Away (2001)



If you're making an animated film, you're gonna have to be a pretty d*mn good artist if you want that animation to be truly noticed. Hayao Miyazaki is a master of this. His style is the grand-daddy of Japanese animation filled with exquisitely detailed environments, imaginative character design, and vibrant colors, and Spirited Away is his most accomplished work to date. With its strange creatures roaming its spiritual world, the groundbreaking detail that each environment contains from the tiniest grain of dirt to a single blade of grass, it's a beauty to look at, and certainly one of the most gorgeous animated films ever created.

#9: Waking Life (2001)



Richard Linklater is a strange director. When he isn't making mainstream comedies like School of Rock, he is making thoughtful art films such as this one. Waking Life is a surreal visual treat that basically takes live-action footage, and uses a technique called "rotoscoping" to transfer them into an animated format. The result is incredibly strange and dreamlike, which perfectly fits the tone of this movie which is about philosophical questions of existence, life, death, perception, and the beyond. FUN FACT: This movie thought up of the "dream within a dream" concept before Inception did. Score one for the dreamers!

#8: The New World (2005)



To be fair, any single one of Terrence Malick's movies deserves to be on this list. The man just knows how to assault the eyes. For those of you who don't know who he is, Terrence Malick is a philosophist/movie director who is mostly known for using gorgeous shots of nature as the backdrops for all of his movies. The guy can literally just tell his camera-men to simply film a tree in your own backyard, and he will make it look like the most beautiful tree you have ever seen in your entire life. Two of his movies are on my list, and the first is The New World, which is able to show the discovery of America through the eyes of John Smith (Colin Farrel), and make it look new, fresh, believable, and breathtaking. From treks through the forest, to slow rides in the river, there is something simply beautiful about his natural aesthetic.

#7: Enter the Void (2010)



As per usual for a Gaspar Noe film, Enter the Void contains many highly controversial and graphic scenes. But for every dead baby, brutal car crash, and POV vagina shot that is shown in this movie, there is also a gorgeous light show, amazing camera work, and astounding shots of a "neon Tokyo". It's the most beautiful movie that will probably also repulse you.

#6: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)



The subconscious mind is a very strange and interesting place that films like Inception and The Cell have taken us, but none have done it as stylishly, as beautifully, and as strangely as what's been done in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The story of a man (Jim Carrey) who undergoes a special procedure to wipe his ex-girlfriend (Kate Winslet) from his memory, the film is shown through his perspective as he sifts through his memories one by one and realizes that perhaps forgetting isn't the right thing to do. Either way however, the way director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman have realized and visualized Jim Carrey's subconscious environment is original and astounding, with crumbling beach houses, rain falling from the ceiling, and an incredibly weird shrinking effect. It is delightfully trippy, but also strangely mesmerizing.

#5: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)



This is space unlike any kind of space you've seen before. The visuals for Stanley Kubrick's magnum opus of the cosmos was specifically designed so that the effects shall remain timeless, and as a result, the film has now aged remarkably well. While the shots in space and the prehistoric prelude are all worth remembering, they are all soon forgotten by the mind-rape that is done through the infamouse "Star-gate" sequence in the finale, as main character Dave is swept through time and space in what is one of the most jaw-dropping pieces of cinema ever made in history. The colors, the flashing, and the overall trippiness of the scene was so visually engaging that the film made a lot of money from movie-goers who wanted to see the movie while high. Speaking of which, that's something I have to try out............OH DEAR GOD! THE COOOLOOORRRSSSSS!!!11!!1one!!1

#4: Days of Heaven (1978)



As stated before, Terrence Malick can just film a tree in your backyard and it will look like the most beautiful tree in existence. But when you see what he does with the wheat fields of Texas in Days of Heaven, you immediately want to just pack your bags and move there. The sunsets, the sepia color palette, the sight of all of the grain just flowing and rustling in the wind like an ocean, he makes it look astonishing and breathtaking. The movie is worth the price of admission just for the "swarm" scene alone.

#3: What Dreams May Come (1998)



Unlike what many other critics and movie bloggers would say, I personally loved What Dreams May Come, despite it's many, many, many flaws, and its weak ending. Namely because whenever I think of those flaws, they are quickly massaged away when that feeling of awe is bestowed upon you as you just LOOK AT THE FREAKING MOVIE! Vincent Ward's odyssey through both heaven and hell is just such an astounding visual marvel, that I just can't help but love it. The visualization of heaven is extremely creative, beautifully realized, and so reminiscent of Renaissance paintings that it would make sense to frame screenshots of this film in a museum. It is just such a beautiful film to look at that it comes as a shock when you also see how well they visualize hell in the second half of the film, and realize how terrifying they manage to make that depiction in juxtaposition to the gorgeous vistas of Heaven. So while your mileage may vary on whether the movie is good or not, there's still no denying how pretty it is. Oh yeah, and Robin Williams is in it. Go figure.

#2: The Fountain (2006)



Hey look! Enigma is here to wank about The Fountain again! What a tweest! Well god d*mnit, I can't help it. When you have a tree floating in a space bubble, an ethereal golden nebula, and the most gorgeous depiction of the tree of life you will ever see in your entire life, and then finally realize that it was all done without any CGI, your gob might as well just smack itself. Darren Aronofsky, much like Stanley Kurbrick, designed his visuals to stand the test of time by using microphotography of chemical reactions to visualize space, and the effort pays off incredibly well. While many people will be turned off by the film's over-ambition, under-written characters, and multi-layered/confusing narrative, just remember to "Finish it" as they say in the movie, and let the movie wash over your eyes. Death is the road to awe.

#1: The Fall (2006)

Known mostly for music videos, director Tarsem Singh got his cinematic start with The Cell, a movie that was both visually rich, and insanely disturbing, as it took you into the mind of a serial killer, and you witness firsthand the killer's S&M fantasies in great detail. Blegh. Either way, people wanted to see what Tarsem could do with less disturbing subject matter, and that result is The Fall. A visual freefall into the imagination of a young child, as she visualizes a story being told to her by a paralyzed man in the hospital. A pseudo-fairy-tale of a corrupt governor and the quest of four heroes to vanquish his evil. Typical storybook fare, but seen through this young girl's imagination, it's a journey unlike any other. Tarsem's wildly self-indulgent film may be short-handed story-wise, but it is a visual masterpiece. All of the visuals come through the environment and the way he shoots it to make everything look fantastical and surreal. Just like The Fountain, no CGI is used at all, except unlike The Fountain, you just can't tell how the f*ck Tarsem was able to achieve his vision. This is especially true in the scene involving the "Labyrinth of Despair", which left me with my jaw firmly set on the floor. The movie was apparently shot in 18 countries and 26 locations, it was funded entirely by Tarsem himself, and the film hardly made anything at the box office. Considering the insane amount of effort put into this film, and witnessing the visual marvel that it is, it is worth checking out and is available through Netflix Watch Instantly.

[Trailer Omitted Due To Pretty Much Spoiling The Entire Movie. Seriously, go see the movie for yourself]
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Honorable Mentions

These were all not included due to either me not seeing them yet despite hearing about them, being visually stunning but in a disturbing sense, or simply just not being as pretty as the other movies.

The Cell
Avatar
Amelie
8 1/2
The Thin Red Line
Pan's Labyrinth
WALL-E
Up
Requiem for a Dream
The White Ribbon
Big Fish
The Science of Sleep
Synecdoche, New York
Brazil
TRON
TRON: Legacy
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
Coraline
The City of Lost Children
Across the Universe
Lost in Translation

And others...

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Well, that's all for this list. Is there anything you agree/disagree with, or are there any honorable mentions you would like to add? Please leave a comment.

That's all for now.

See ya next time, now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna see what getting high while watching What Dreams May Come would be like. The cooolooorrssss.....