Hacker Cinema
The Lighthouse
2019 · Film · 109 min
Directed by Robert Eggers
Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.
12 positive1 negative9 neutralfrom 22 commenters
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22 comments on Hacker News
For a real life complement to the film I would highly recommend this 1973 BBC documentary on life on Bishop Rock Lighthouse [0] and this modern day 2025 vlog of a lighthouse worker [1].
Sadly I did not see any mention of monkey pump in either of these, but I think they show nicely how lighthouse work self-selects for individuals who can handle (or even prefer) the solitude that comes with the job.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc9qxyf_suI
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhRbJ3DQdlQ
Consider adding (2020) to the title. "The Lighthouse" is no longer Robert Eggers' most recent film.
Movies with stories about building chemistry and relationships just need fewer characters. They still exist:
- All of Us Strangers (2023)
- Aftersun (2022)
- The Lighthouse (2019)
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) (2019)
- The Duke of Burgundy (2014)
>If you like experimental movies and/or are you’re into filmmaking, go for >90% critic and 65-85% audience for gems. If you’re not, you will HATE these movies.
Just checked some random “weird arthouse” movies I liked, mostly horror genre. It holds up pretty well. And I wouldn't in a million years recommend these movies to anyone that I didn't already know liked "these types" of movies.
The Blackcoat's Daughter: Critic 77%, Audience 52%
Possessor: Critic 94%, Audience 59%
The Lighthouse: Critic 90%, Audience 72%
The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Critic 79%, Audience 63%
A Ghost Story: Critic 91%, Audience 67%
Midsommar: Critic 83%, Audience 63%
Perhaps you can share some examples of the films you are referring as "mindless banter in between sex and explosions". I'm not sure that description really fits most of the films coming out recently. If you said, "Dumb comic book films", I would maybe agree with you, but there isn't typically any sex in those so I assume you are not referring to them.
Covid halted the production of a lot of movies, and changed how others were made. It also shut down theaters. So, "since covid", is really talking about before and after an era. Kind of like saying, "since 9/11", in terms of the impact on culture. A lot of creativity has moved from the movie theaters to streaming services and from films to more episodic content.
However, here is a short list of films worth seeing (imo) since covid (2019).
Zone of Interest (2023) The Holdovers (2023) Parasite (2019) Dune (2021) Dune Part Two (2024) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 1917 (2019) The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) The Substance (2024) Palm Springs (2020) Oppenheimer (2023) The Lighthouse (2019) Hundreds of Beavers (2022) Barbarian (2022) Flow (2024)
I dunno, 2015, I'm a little weak on this year: It Follows, Creed, Ex Machina, Max Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful 8. I'd watch those again with someone any time, and recommend all of them often. Several on my to-watch list most of which I expect to be good, like Queen of the Desert, While We're Young, Slow West, and The Overnight, just haven't made it to them yet. Not an exhaustive list, just gleaned from some titles I have at hand.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
Believe it or not, but there’s a lot more that goes into filmmaking beyond the premise.
Parasite, The Substance, Uncut Gems, mother!, Krisha, Tangerine, and The Lighthouse are some movies from the last decade that are novel in ways beyond their premises.
No generic prompts to an LLM could create those movies, even if it could spit out a vague 2 sentence premise that matches them.
Note that I’m not saying it could never happen, but LLMs as we have them in 2024 produce regurgitated slop, and require significant creative input from the prompter to make anything artistically interesting.
yup.. Flowers of algernon, meets Baribie, meets The Lighthouse !
really great movie
Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse" would have appeared in a completely different light with her as the lighthouse keeper instead of William Dafoe.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7984734/
Just a quick glance at Letterboxd....
Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Both Knives Out movies
Parasite
Nope (probably just in the "good" grouping, not great)
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That's, uh... just from the "popular this week" screen. And only the ones I've seen, so I know they're good. But I'm pretty sure all those are last five years, or close to it.
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Digging back to 2018 and later (we can say 2018 counts since 2023 just started, right?):
Annihilation
Sorry to Bother You
High Life
Midsommar
Uncut Gems (god it's so good)
Jojo Rabbit
The Lighthouse
The Green Knight
CODA
Spontaneous ([EDIT] It seems very dumb but wow is it a gut punch, when you start to think about what you're watching and make some connections to real life)
Red Rocket (small-scale brilliance)
RRR
Watcher
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I just realized I misread you as asking for 5 good ones from just one of the last 5 years, not 5 total from the last 5 years, but I think that gets the point across? Despite my leaving off a whole bunch that may be more taste-specific, not having watched even 1/3 of the films from that span I have good reason to believe are good, not exhaustively mining that timespan (I bet I could double the size of that list without changing how I was selecting them), and also omitting a bunch of more-popular movies that I think were at least decent.
[EDIT] Hell some years you could get to 2-3 good ones just by looking at what A24 produced that year, nothing else.
Nice, maybe I can turn the movie The Lighthouse from black and white into a color motion picture. I hear color "movies" as they call 'em are what's hot these days.
Original: https://i.imgur.com/9CZ7vk1.png
Base Palette: https://i.imgur.com/iTq5H9W.jpeg
The lighthouse is probably a good example of that. Critics have 90% but audience is only 70ish. There were so many themes within the movie that I had to look up online to understand it's significance. So overall not my cup of tea. Usialiif a movie has above 80% on both user and critics reviews i will watch it
The Plague Dogs is so unrelentingly bleak, few films have the spine to just be utterly hopeless. It's like a "children's" version of something like Threads or The Lighthouse lol
> bloodless
Most of modern life for most people in the west and even beyond is relatively bloodless. At least not bloody filled :p.
I enjoy films that are slow paced and stick closer to reality. So usually I’d prefer them not to be so dramatic. But I get you mean bloodless in how simple Arrival was too.
I don’t disagree at all with those points about Arrival. However Denis didn’t write most of his films any way, no? I enjoy the concept of time a lot so really just that combined with the visuals are enough for me to love the film. You’re def right on the massive weaknesses.
I gave only a few examples. I don’t pay too much attention to what is the major film in theaters. There’s only like 2 major releases on average per week. Even if it’s 3. That’s only 150 films. There are so many good films put out.
I think modern day stacks up if not exceeds past days especially when you don’t look at the major wide releases that are in thousands of movie theaters.
I think we would end up disagreeing on how good current films and old films are. I would not think of old films as good as you would, etc. if we were to begin listing a bunch out. This same sort of thing has happened with me with friends and music before.
To throw two recent films I watched. Though they aren’t new. The Lighthouse and Midsommar. The latter especially stacks up with how so much coverage of it was framing it as a happy story with a happy ending…when it’s a psychological horror film where every protagonist loses.
It’s also harder to compare only films. TVs golden era is arguably happening now. There’s a lot of very high quality awesome TV. Notably thanks to HBO, Netflix. I think one of my favorite shows, Rectify, was on IFC. Pretty obscure. This takes away from films as people can only multi task so much.
I’m surprised the article doesn’t mention the 2019 movie The Lighthouse. If you haven’t seen it and find this article interesting, do yourself a favor and watch it.
Comedies - Spontaneous, Popstar, Everybody Wants Some
Deconstruction/Meta/Anti-trope -Jump Street movies (count for both this and comedy as do some of the others), The Lego Movie, Cabin in the Woods, Better Watch Out, I'm Thinking of Ending Things
'Film' instead of movie - Another Round, Thorougbreads, The Lighthouse, Ex Machina
My favorite original movies of 2019: Parasite, 1917, Once upon a time in hollywood, midsommar, uncut gems, ford v. ferrari, the lighthouse, knives out, jojo rabbit, us, a number of shows that have shifted towards a streamed series format vs. traditional film
I think the film industry is alive and well.
I'd also say that dr. sleep only barely qualifies as a sequel if we're in the mood to complain about hollywood cliches.
Tangential, but I saw a film sometime back called "The Lighthouse" starring Willem Dafoe[0] that was beautifully shot in monochrome; and exuded age-old themes of isolation, loneliness, and eventual paranoia.
[0] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7984734
Beautiful short documentary. In my paranoid mind i was expecting the lighthouse actually being an Intercontinental ballistic missile with atomic warhead. Stupid me!
Another problem is that movies with high average rating can also be really generic. A lot of my favorites are controversial, you either love them or hate them: Lost in Translation, The Lighthouse, even Frances Ha to some extent.
By sorting on average you miss the most unique.
Some more movies in no particular order if you want to explore more of psychological horror:
Pandorum
The Lighthouse
eXistenZ
Videodrome
Hellraiser (I’m a fan of the series, some are better than others)
Blue Velvet
Mulholland Drive
The Thing
American Psycho
The Fly
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1978 version with Leonard Nimoy)
This seems like a similar setting to the lighthouse in the 2019 documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lighthouse_(2019_film)