I've seen all movies mentioned so far except Happy Go Lucky. My next pick:
1900 (Novecento) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074084/
by Bernardo Bertolucci with Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland and Burt Lancaster.
The life of two men (a rich landowner/Lancaster and one of his peasants) and their sons (De Niro/Depardieu), who are born on the same day and become friends, during the first half of the 20th century in rural Italy, from the late days of feudalism to the end of fascism.
Epic movie (in Germany we call a movie about an era "Sittengemälde", don't know the English word) with lots of unforgettable, brilliant scenes and excellent camera work. I'll never forget the hilarious scene when Lancaster asks a teenage girl (a daughter of one of his many peasants) for a handjob next to a cow in the stall, right in front of a dead man, and her brilliant answer to the request. De Niro and Depardieu get simultaneous handjobs later in the movie (which were not faked, as I recently discovered over the internet). Bertolucci always incorporated sex scenes in a light and funny way, like many European directors. Today they'd call this an arthouse movie, but in fact they stopped making movies like this, with such a complex and deep plot, in Europe a long time ago. No one would finance such a movie today and none of today's Hollywood stars would play scenes like De Niro, Lancaster and Sutherland did here (his performance as a foreman who turns into a fascist is simply brilliant; the scene where he kills a cat shocked me like no other in this movie). In my opinion 1900 is way better than Bertolucci's more famous other epic movie which covers half a decade and the end of an era, The Last Emperor.
