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Credit: Screenshot: The Green Knight / A24, Background: Hudozhnica_Ananas / Shutterstock.com
Watching movies and smoking weed go hand in hand, so much so that there is an entire sub-genre of film known as the stoner comedy—usually movies about potheads under the influence or on the hunt for their next high, and getting caught up in surreal adventures along the way. (My favorite entry: Gregg Araki’s Smiley Face, in which Anna Faris gives an Oscar-worthy stoner turn.)
Those films are totally fine—nothing at all wrong with watching Half Baked while fully baked—but sometimes you want to feed your cannabis-inebriated brain something a little more challenging. In the spirit of the 1960s hippies who turned Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey into a head-tripping classic, here are 50 unconventional choices of movies to watch when you’re stoned (and not in the mood for video games).
Vampyr (1932)
Danish director Carl Theodore Dryer’s first sound film plays out almost without dialogue, a disorienting dark fable that was produced contemporaneously with Tod Browning’s Dracula but offers a far creepier, chillingly atmospheric take on the gothic fable. Shrouded in mist and dreamlike imagery, its pull is hypnotic.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, ScreamBox
Pinocchio (1940)
The best film of the classic Disney era is heartwarming and harrowing in equal measure; it’s wild that every frame was hand-drawn. It’s also way more messed up than you remember.
Where to stream: Disney+
His Girl Friday (1940)
Speaking of screwball comedy, the genre’s frantic energy and rat-a-tat dialogue makes it perfect fare for giggling stoners, and this frenetic romance about warring newspaper editors/ex-lovers played by Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell may be one of the quickest, wittiest movies ever made.
Where to stream: Prime Video, The Roku Channel, Tubi, basically all the places
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Hmm, basically everything I said about Vampyr, but transposed onto Beauty and the Beast. This 1946 treasure from French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau follows the same basic story beats as the Disney cartoon, but weirder, with impressionistic sets (a hall lined with candelabras made of real, reaching human arms), lavish costumes, and dreamlike imagery.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel,Tubi
The Red Shoes (1948)
Co-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, collectively known as the Archers, are generally regarded to have made some of the most ravishingly beautiful technicolor films ever, and this behind-the-scenes ballet drama about a ballerina prodigy and the obsessive, power-mad impresario whose push for perfection drives her mad is their crowning achievement—particularly their impressionistic, 17-minute staging of a ballet based on the titular fairytale.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, The Roku Channel, Tubi, Shout TV, Freevee
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Speaking of dreamlike imagery, this story of two children on the run from the fearsome, self-ordained “preacher” on the hunt for their criminal father’s ill-gotten loot is a nightmare come to life: A trip down a river that grows more surreal and dangerous (and their pursuer, more relentless) with every twist and bend. Audiences in 1955 didn’t know what to make of it, but today, it is rightly regarded as an expressionistic masterpiece.
Where to stream: Tubi
Forbidden Planet (1956)
A lot of stoners will tell you that Tarkovsky is the way to go when you’re baked, but films like Solaris and Stalker aren’t really trippy so much as they are…boring. Hypnotically boring, but still. Instead, I’ll take the Shakespeare-meets-Star Trek earnestness of Forbidden Planet, a reimagining of The Tempest set on Altair IV.
Where to stream: Vudu Free, Tubi
Invention for Destruction (1958)
This anachronistically artful aquatic adventure was filmed in Czechoslovakia in 1958 with all the hottest techniques on display in 1902’s A Trip to the Moon.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel
Black Orpheus (1959)
This Palm d’Or-winning adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a Brazilian favela during Carnival, is loaded with arresting imagery and set to a thrumming bossa nova beat.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, Kanopy
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Nobody fucks with Angela Lansbury in this trippy, hypnotic Cold War espionage thriller.
Where to stream: Tubi, MGM+
PlayTime (1967)
Jacques Tati’s third and most celebrated film to feature Monsieur Hulot, a sort of affable everyman in an omnipresent overcoat, PlayTime is nothing less than a kaleidoscopic vision of “modern” Paris circa 1967, a city growing ever more impersonal as the technological innovations meant to make life easier instead push people apart. Filmed in long, expertly choreographed takes and with action unfolding in every corner of the screen and in-between, it’s kind of like sorting through a Where’s Waldo? drawing come alive. If you love to get high and hyper-focus, it’ll definitely keep you busy.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, Kanopy
Fellini Satyricon (1969)
“I am examining ancient Rome as if this were a documentary about the customs and habits of the Martians,” director Federico Fellini said of this phantasmagoric, hedonistic portrait of the past—a nightmarish tour of a decadent republic, based on a play penned during the reign of Emperor Nero, unfolding in episodic, dream-logic narratives. (Not recommended if you are prone to bad trips.)
Where to stream: Nowhere officially, but you can find the whole movie (with subtitles) on YouTube
Donkey Skin (1970)
French director Jacques Demy made any number of candy colored musical delights that you’ll love to drink in while under the influence, but my bid goes to this lurid adaptation of the Charles Perrault fairy tale about a king who wants to marry his own daughter (probably because she’s played by Catherine Deneuve). The visual design is worth your strongest gummies all on its own—check out the dress made of the same material as a movie screen onto which a sky filled with clouds is projected.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel
Fantastic Planet (1973)
This experimental animated art film, a French/Czech co-production, is set on an alien world inhabited by giants who treat humans like mindless animals. The plot is sort of an afterthought, but the animation is spare, eerie, surreal, and unforgettable—especially if you experience it with your brain marinating in THC.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, The Roku Channel
Blood for Dracula (1974)
I’m not one for watching horror while high, but this stilted, blood-soaked farce, produced by pop artist Andy Warhol, edges closer to comedy in telling the story of an aging succubus (Udo Kier) seeking virgin blood to preserve his immortality and coming up short on virgins in early 20th century Italy. The stilted acting and low-budget charms are doubly endearing when baked.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, Vudu Free, Night Flight Plus, Tubi
Zardoz (1975)
This legendary misfire is a post-apocalyptic, Wizard of Oz-inspired sci-fi allegory in which an orange diaper-clad Sean Connery is in thrall to a giant floating stone head that eats people. Or something. Director John Boorman cashed in his Deliverance blank check to make this thing, and it’s hard to figure out why, but you’ll never be bored watching it (or trying to parse the muddled message).
Where to stream: Digital rental
Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
Before Brian De Palma dived deep into modern Hitchcock thrillers like Sisters and Body Double, he made this super weird rock opera pastiche, based on The Phantom of the Opera, but subbing in ’70s glam rock and adding a hearty dose of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Tommy (1975)
The Who and Ken Russell’s Tommy is the rock opera ne plus cannabis…
Where to stream: Digital rental
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
…but if you don’t like The Who’s music, go ahead and watch Rocky Horror. It’s best with a crowd, but if you don’t have a crowd, some THC will do.
Where to stream: Digital rental
House (1977)
I’d repeat what I said about Holy Motors but I can’t do that on every slide. On the other hand, I have no idea how to describe this movie anyway, aside from saying that “legendarily weird Japanese haunted house movie” only scratches the surface.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel
The Shining (1980)
Look it was really hard to choose just one Kubrick OK? This is where I landed.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
There’s no story to follow here, just slow-motion and time-lapse footage of American cities and natural landscapes set against a driving score from Philip Glass. Probably should come with a warning about not watching it while operating heavy machinery.
Where to stream: The Roku Channel, Kanopy, Hoopla
Stop Making Sense (1984)
Listening to music while high is great. Watching movies while high is great. So it only follows that watching what is generally agreed upon to be the best concert film ever made—Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme’s recording of a Speaking in Tongues-era Talking Heads tour—is doubly great. That’s just math. (If you can’t catch it this year, you’ll at least be primed for A24’s upcoming 4K rerelease.)
Where to stream: Digital purchase
After Hours (1985)
Griffin Dunne is having a very strange night in this mid-career Martin Scorsese romp, which was originally going to be directed by Tim Burton, if that tells you anything. Dunne plays an office drone who encounters the weirdest nightlife Manhattan had on offer in 1985 as he attempts to make his way home from SoHo. New York used to be cool.
Where to stream: The Roku Channel, The Criterion Channel, Tubi
Tampopo (1985)
Juzo Itami’s “ramen western” translates familiar tropes of bandits and heroes into the story of a woman who doesn’t know how to cook but seeks the perfect noodle recipe that will keep her struggling restaurant afloat. It’s a giddy, episodic, fourth-wall-breaking satire that caters to the stoner’s attention span, and nary a scene goes by without a delicious-looking meal onscreen, so keep munchies on hand. (But watch out for the part with the raw egg.)
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
A preference for heightened, melodramatic plotting and candy-colored visuals makes pretty much any Pedro Almodovar film a delightful experience while stoned, so I chose this one, his most frantic and funniest: a screwball romantic farce filled with broad characters making one very bad decision after another.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Slacker (1990)
In his plotless, endearing, aimlessly philosophical debut, Richard Linklater follows a bunch of one-of-a-kind esoterics doing their best to Keep Austin Weird in 1991. (Or, if you prefer, cartoon Slacker.)
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel
Chungking Express (1990)
Like Almodovar, Wong Kar-wai is another director whose filmography is a stoner’s paradise, and my pick from his accomplished oeuvre is this oddball romantic comedy about two cops looking for love, set in an around an all-night diner in Hong Kong. You’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you’ll swoon; you’ll have this Cantonese version of The Cranberries’ “Dreams” stuck in your head for days.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel
Dick Tracy (1990)
Warren Beatty’s garish ode to a comic strip no one cared about anymore even 33 years ago, Dick Tracy is ludicrously over-the-top in every way, from the film noir-meets-Hollywood musical tone (with tunes by Stephen Fucking Sondheim), to the performances (Al Pacino earned an Oscar nod for Doing All the Things as villain Big Boy Caprice), to the absurd prosthetics, to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s four-color visuals, to the presence of onetime Beatty beau Madonna in full-on Jessica Rabbit mode. It’s definitely the weirdest movie to ever get a McDonald’s tie-in.
Where to stream: Digital rental
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
The Coen brothers’ most underrated film is a parody of screwball comedies (no mean feat) about a good-natured inventor who brings about his own downfall in his quixotic quest to invent the hula-hoop (you know, for kids!). I’ve chosen this one instead of the more obvious The Big Lebowski because I’m just that cool.
Where to stream: The Roku Channel, Kanopy
eXistenZ (1999)
There’s nothing like getting stoned to make you begin to pick at the seams of reality, and also, video games are great, so what better choice than this Matrix-era David Cronenberg thriller about characters who may or may not be trapped within the narrative of a goopy, fleshy video game?
Where to stream: Kanopy, Pluto TV
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Lots of people would put Sofia Coppola’s award-magnet followup Lost in Translation on this list. Not me though. I favor this sun-drenched, slow-burn nostalgia thriller about a group of doomed sisters and the boys who grow up haunted by their memory. The summery haze of the score (by dream pop duo Air) will hypnotize you.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, Pluto TV
Mulholland Drive (2001)
I had to have a David Lynch film on here. I chose this one because it’s my favorite: A L.A. noir in which nothing makes sense and nothing can be trusted, because that’s Hollywood, baby.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel
Spirited Away (2001)
Everyone has a favorite Ghibli and this one is mine.
Where to stream: Max
The Saddest Music in the World (2003)
Awash in the anachronistic tricks of silent cinema, the films of Canadian director Guy Maddin are as visually trippy as they are narratively weird. Take, for instance, this morose comedy about an international competition to determine which country has the most depressing music—a sort of suicide hotline version of Eurovision. Judging the contest is widowed beer baroness Helen Port-Huntley, who lost her legs in an erotic car accident (go with me on this) and now walks around on glass prosthetics filled with beer.
Where to stream: AMC+
Kontroll (2003)
I love twisty stories of fractured psyches even when I’m not stoned, but this Hungarian comedy-thriller, about a group of ticket officers who patrol Budapest’s labyrinthine subway system after dark and must contend with a shadowy killer pushing victims onto the tracks, definitely plays better with all of your senses heightened.
Where to stream: Tubi, Pluto TV, Shout TV, Fandor
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
I’ve seen this movie four times but never sober, which probably explains why I can never quite remember the plot. Which is somehow appropriate, considering it takes place inside the mind of a man who is having his memories of a bad relationship erased via questionably scientific means.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Lady Vengeance (2005)
I almost choose the South Korean cult classic Oldboy, but I decided to spotlight another film in director Park Chan-wook’s so-called Vengeance trilogy. Lady Vengeance (also released as Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) follows Lee Geum-ja, a wrongly confused ex-convict who gets out of prison and proceeds to act as a sort of Archangel Amélie to a group of grieving parents, bringing them all together to arrange the kidnapping and murder of the man who did terrible things to their children (things for which Lee Geum-ja took the blame). It’s a knife-edged, contemplative revenge thriller filmed with the exacting precision of tiered wedding cake constructed by a master baker.
Where to stream: Tubi, Kanopy, Pluto TV
The Fountain (2006)
Director Darren Aronofsky’s sci-fi mind-bender concerns a man (Hugh Jackman) seeking the source of immortality across lifetimes, centuries, and spacetime, and its lush cinematography and metaphysical narrative flourishes are enough to give you a buzz even when experienced sober.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Shortbus (2006)
This romantic ode to sex positivity and New York City from John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) includes real fucking; it’s like watching porn and a Miranda July movie at the same time.
Where to stream: Mubi, Pluto TV, Night Flight
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Is it a dream? A nightmare? Or a fantasy? This story of a girl fighting to escape her abusive father in Fascist-era Spain unfolds like a surreal fairytale, populated by monsters both horrifying and enchanting. It may be writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s most bewitching, beautiful film, and it plays all the better when you slow down time to drink in the details.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Sunshine (2007)
Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting is always fun, but if you’re in a more meditative, existential mood, try this neglected sci-fi flop featuring a pre-Oppenheimer Cillian Murphy as a crew member on a ship that’s making a last-ditch effort to drop a bomp into our dying sun, thereby reigniting it and saving the human race. The plot is a mix of rigorous pseudo-science and space thriller, but the vibes—the elegiac score by the electronica band Underworld and composer John Murphy, the trippy sun-bleached visuals—will melt your brain.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Detractors like to say Wes Anderson treats his actors like puppets, but what about the movie in which they’re actually puppets? You’ll be mesmerized watching George Clooney’s stop motion fur undulating through every scene.
Where to stream: Max
A Town Called Panic (2009)
This stop motion marvel is kind of like what you’d get if you fed your 9-year-old nephew a pound of Pixy Stix, set him loose with the contents of a vintage toy box, and filmed the results. A cowboy and an “Indian” (named Cowboy and Indian) realize they have forgotten their friend Horse’s (name: Horse) birthday and set off on a series of slapstick adventures as they attempt to build him the perfect present.
Where to stream: Kanopy, OVID.tv
The Tree of Life (2011)
Terrance Malick is known for making movies that eschew plot in favor of imagery; he never met a drop of dew collecting on a blade of sunlit grass that he didn’t find more enthralling than a standard dialogue scene. It’s this quality that makes his films especially choice when you’re lit, because you don’t have to pay attention to what is happening too closely when basically nothing is happening (but also, everything is happening—there’s a long sequence that depicts the dawn of creation through the downfall of the dinosaurs, like someone slipped in a reel of Fantasia).
Where to stream: Hulu
Holy Motors (2012)
I kind of don’t want to say anything about this one. You know what, don’t even watch the trailer. Just down an edible, and light it up.
Where to stream: Roku, Vudu, Tubi, Kanopy, basically everywhere
Inherent Vice (2014)
Paul Thomas Anderson is the only person ever foolish enough to attempt to translate a Thomas Pynchon novel to the screen, and you can kind of see why. Joaquin Phoenix plays a stoner private investigator attempting to locate his missing ex-girlfriend in the L.A. underworld. He spends most of the movie wandering around in an inebriated haze with no idea what is going on, so you might as well join him—it’s not like you’d be able to follow the plot any better sober.
Where to stream: Paramount+
Suspiria (2018)
I almost put Black Swan on here, but I already had a Darren Aronofsky movie on the list, and this Luca Guadagnino remake of the (also weed-worthy) 1977 Dario Argento original will fuck you up way harder. Dakota Johnson plays an America dancer who enrolls at an exclusive Belin dance academy that happens to be run by a coven of murderous witches looking for the next vessel for their ancient queen. That description actually makes it sound much more normal than it plays out!
Where to stream: Prime Video, Freevee
The Green Knight (2021)
This visual marvel from director David Lowry is the most obtuse, low-key fantasy epic ever, a meandering, shambolic quest across a medieval landscape populated by immortal warriors, wandering giants, and talking foxes. The ambling pace will allow you plenty of time to drink in the visuals.
Where to stream: Max
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
I can genuinely say that catching this improbably Best Picture winner in the theater while lightly toaster was an all-timer experience. Who doesn’t want to watch Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan hop through infinite, increasingly bizarre universe while too inebriated to keep pace?
Where to stream: Netflix
