So this past week I've watched some excellent older films that I'm reasonably assured most users here probably haven't seen but might enjoy, especially if you're sick of recent media. Anyway here you go.

Watership Down (1974 version)

Based on the excellent Richard Adams book (which I also highly recommend) about a small band of rabbits fleeing the destruction of their warren and setting out to find a new homeland. The animation is rather poor but its buoyed by strong voice acting and a compelling story. Pay close attention and you'll see some interesting stuff on the power of myth, folklore, leadership, Nature, and the will to power. Way more than just a cartoon about cute bunnies. Not for young children, by the way.

Zardoz

This might be the most ridiculously based movie I've ever seen. Unfortunately more people seem to know Zardoz from the infamous promotional picture of Sean Connery in a tight red speedo and riding boots with bandoliers than from actually watching the film. From the same director that made Excalibur and Deliverance, it stars Connery as the leader of a post-apocalyptic band of horse-riding barbarians who are manipulated by a powerful, hidden but debauched elite into keeping the hordes of unwashed peasants at a manageable level. The unusual aesthetics and sometimes iffy special effects might turn people away, but if you look past that you'll experience one of the most virile, masculine, Nietzschean, anti-feminist, anti-modern movies ever made.

The Naked Prey

Firmly in the category of "Things That Would Never Be Made Today", Naked Prey is about a white hunter in colonial-era Southern Africa who is captured, stripped naked, and forced to flee as he is hunted by spear-toting tribesmen. Read what you will into that plot in Current Year lol. If you like "man is the greatest prey" type stories, you'll love this. There is almost no dialogue, just a savage, kill-or-be-killed race for survival.

From Book III, Chapter 26 of Discourses on Livy by Niccolo Machiavelli

How a State Is Ruined Because of Women

In the cIty of Ardea a conflict arose between the patricians and the plebeians because of a wedding in which when a beautiful woman had to marry, a plebeIan and a patrician alike asked for her, and as she did not have a father, her guardians wanted to unite her to the plebeian, her mother to the patrician. Such a uproar arose from this that they came to arms; in which all the patricians armed themselves in favor of the patrician, and all the plebeians in favor of the plebeian. When the plebs were overcome, they went out from Ardea and sent to the Volscians for aid, while the patricians sent to Rome.

The Volscians arriving first, surrounded Ardea and besieged it. When the Romans arrived, they shut in the Volscians between the town and themselves, so that they constrained them (being pressed by hunger) to surrender themselves at discretion. And when the Roman entered the city, they put to death all the heads of the sedition, and restored order in Ardea.

There are several things to note in this text. First it is seen that women have been the cause of many ruinations, and have done great damage to those who govern a city, and have caused many divisions in them: and (as has been seen in our history) the excess committed against Lucretia deprived the Tarquins of their state; and the other committed against Virginia deprived the Ten (Decemvirs) of their authority. And Aristotle, among the first causes of the ruin of the tyrants, places the injury they committed on women, either by seduction, by violence, or corruption of marriages, as we have discussed this subject at length in the chapter in which we treated of conspiracies.

I say, therefore, that absolute princes and governors of republics do not have to take little account of this subject, but ought to consider the disorders which may arise from such incidents, and remedy them in time that it does not injure and disgrace their state or republic; as happened to the Ardeans, who, for allowing the rivalry to increase among their citizens, were led to become divided among themselves, and wanting to reunite, had to send for outside succor, which is a great beginning to a sure servitude.