42 Highbrow Films to Watch When You’re Totally High
Reading Time: 9 minutesAny pothead can watched Half Baked, but a true cineaste stoner opts for Fellini.
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.
That’s 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 42—because I couldn’t manage 420—art films to watch when you’re stoned (and not in the mood for video games).
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 an animated Where’s Waldo? drawing. If you love to get high and hyper-focus, it’ll definitely keep you busy.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, digital rental
Juzo Itami’s ‘ramen western’ (as opposed to spaghetti) translates familiar tropes of bandits and heroes into the story of a woman who doesn’t know how to cook but seeks the perfect ramen 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 scene with the raw egg.)
Where to stream: HBO Max, The Criterion Channel, FilmBox+
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.
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: HBO Max, The Criterion Channel
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: The Criterion Channel, digital rental
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: Tubi
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: HBO Max, The Criterion Channel
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: HBO Max, The Criterion Channel
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: Digital rental
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, Tubi, Pluto TV, Kanopy, Hoopla
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: Kanopy, digital rental
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: HBO Max, The Roku Channel, The Criterion Channel, Dark Matter TV
‘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
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
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
I wanted to choose the South Korean cult classic Oldboy but it isn’t streaming anywhere, so I’ll have to go with another film in director Park Chan-wook’s so-called Vengeance trilogy. 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 a master baker.
Where to stream: Tubi, Kanopy, Arrow
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+
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: HBO Max, The Criterion Channel, Pluto TV, Kanopy
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: AMC+, Vudu Free, Shudder, Night Flight Plus
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: Kanopy, digital rental
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, Paramount+, Epix, The Roku Channel, basically all the places
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.
Where to stream: Roku, Plex
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: The Criterion Channel
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: Digital rental
Look it was really hard to choose just one Kubrick OK? This is where I landed.
Where to stream: HBO Max
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: Disney+
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+
Sorry Rocky Horror; The Who and Ken Russell’s Tommy is the rock opera ne plus cannabis.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Nobody fucks with Angela Lansbury in this trippy, hypnotic Cold War espionage thriller.
Where to stream: Paramount+
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: FuboTV, Paramount+, Epix
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
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
Everyone has a favorite Ghibli and this one is mine.
Where to stream: HBO Max
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: HBO Max, The Criterion Channel
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
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: Peacock
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, digital rental
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: Showtime, DirecTV, digital rental
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: Digital rental
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: Pluto TV
This late-era Brian De Palma crime thriller about a jewel thief on the run from some very dangerous people features all of the director’s hallmarks—splitscreens, sex, and double identities—cranked up to an absurd level. Critics either loved it or hated it; I assume the latter viewers made the mistake of watching it sober.
Where to stream: Hoopla, digital rental
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, Fandor, digital rental