Werckmeister Harmonies (2001)

Choose this when you can give a film your full attention. Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky tell their story of a frozen Hungarian town in 39 long black-and-white shots across 145 minutes, and the first is among the great openings in cinema: at closing time, a gentle newspaper deliverer arranges the tavern's drunks into a working model of a solar eclipse. Then a travelling show arrives with nothing to exhibit but an enormous stuffed whale, and the town's men start gathering in the square. Mihály Víg's score makes the dread feel like weather. It is slow by design, and hypnotic once you settle into it.