Most films I watch I can enjoy but the minute after it's finished my mind will wander off to day to day things. But every now and again I'll watch a movie that just totally blows me away. I'll usually put in on the back burner until I go to bed and then lie awake for (what seems like) hours mulling over the plot. Examples are: Usual Suspects (the definitive movie for this category) Memento Fight Club Donnie Darko Jacobs Ladder The Ring (which I saw the other night and has probably inspired this thread) Countless more obviously, but would like to hear what makes other people tick and see if I've missed any.
I'd have to put Memento and the Usual Suspects in a tie at the top of any list. I also agree that the Ring makes the cut.
How is Usual Suspects thought-provoking? I I mean, I thought, "Wow. So HE was Kaiser Soze!" and then I stopped thinking about the movie.
I don't know if its thought provoking or not, but Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas messed with my head. So did The Virgin Suicides and Donnie Darko.
It's a dated film now, but I just watched Safe for the first time and that had me mulling over the environmental and psychological troubles of which some of us may or may not know we're afflicted. I mean, it was very, no, really, really slow at times.
Well, I guess you do have a point there. An apt analogy would be someone putting The Crying Game on the list.
I could see that. It does make one ponder what exactly what one would do if stuck on the same day everyday.
Not dated at all, in my opnion. OUtstading film and definitely on this list. YOu could debate all day whether or not she has reached safety or confinement, or if there isn't a difference, particularly given the particular circumstance.
The Usual Suspects isn't about who was Kaiser Soze, but a story of how a man can kill four criminals who stole from him in the pass, kill his Hungarian competitors, kill the fat guy who wronged him, got revenge on the NY police department, kill the only man who can identify him, make 92 million dollars plus some diamonds while doing it, and have the police let him walk away. It's a story about manipulation, both the characters in the movie and the audience's mind.
Boy, I didn't ask that question at all. I thought it just represented a group psychosis. Or neurosis. It was clearly confinement. Next.
I thought about how I wish the movie would end earlier than it did, and also about how it would have been much better if the Piano had just taken her down and left her there.
Actually, I was kidding, but now that you mention it, I do remember thinking about that. And also about the whole continuous suicide thing: "Is there ANY way I can kill myself and make it stick?"
"i'd like some flapjacks..." i have a couple of requisite, cliche-ridden, when-did-THIS-guy-fall-off-the-turnip-truck? nods: - apocalypse now, if for no other reason than its literary roots ("mistah kurtz. he dead."); and "the making of" flick was interesting, too. - pee wee's big adventure ("WHAT'S THE SIGNIFICANCE??? I DON'T KNOW!!!!") ;-) ok, ok, seriously, though: "Matewan."
Me too. The whole movie reminded me of a grad student seminar. I mentioned it because it generated as much conversation afterward as anything I'd been to see since the equally irritating Candadian film, The Decline of the American Empire, which held similar views about gender relations, incidentally.