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Movies that confuse/haunt/bewilder


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Last night I watched Robert Altman’s 3 Women. It’s the second time I’ve seen it. I can’t say I understand it any more after the second viewing, but I love it anyway. It’s a weird moody film that involves characters behaving strangely, blurred identity, primitive archetypes, fuzzy dream logic and when it’s over you don’t know what the hell just happened, but at the same time it all makes perfect sense.

 

Anybody else a fan of mind !@#$ movies like this? Movies that play out like a fever dream, that defy rational explanation, but somehow still work? David Lynch has a few of these. Fellini’s 8 ½ is like this. Another recent example that I like a lot was Michael Haneke’s Caché.

 

Anybody else like movies that inspire thought and discussion but can never really be explained?

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there is an independant film called PRIMER about time travel paradox that I guarantee even Tom couldn't fully understand until about the third viewing. Actually, it makes the movie fun to watch a few times and let your understanding of what is happening grow with each watching...

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Those Godard films from the mid-60s always make my head spin. There's also this amazing film starring Mick Jagger called Performance that I'm convinced I'll never fully wrap my head around. It's either totally straight forward and I'm over thinking it...or a total mind!@#$.

 

I also find anyone finding Avatar to be even tiniest bit watchable the most confounding thing in the history of cinema

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Barton Fink ... perhaps one of, if not the best, written Coen brother's movie. And that's high praise for me because I love (most) of their films. Though, I realize that Fink is NOT for everyone. Some people hate it. But I adore it.

 

Every time I watch that flick, I find something new or come up with a new way to interpret it. I'm not a huge fan of super arty films, or films that are trying to be different just for the sake of being different (but that's just me) -- but in Barton Fink the Coen Brother's manage to pull off making an entertaining film that also flirts with becoming avant garde. It's even more astounding when you consider that they wrote Barton Fink while they were stuck on Miller's Crossing.

 

Imagine that. They're in the middle of writing the very plot heavy Miller's Crossing (which is a classic film in its own right), they get stuck ... and rather than stop or try to problem solve it, they bang out ANOTHER utterly brilliant script, very quickly, THEN go back and finish Miller's Crossing.

 

That's just insane.

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Barton Fink ...

That’s a great one! I love Barton Fink. It would be in my top Five Coen Bros. movies. Thematically (life of the body vs. life of the mind, the nature and burden of creativity, etc...) it’s incredibly rich. And the plot remains a mystery. Beautifully done.

 

In contrast, their latest, A Serious Man, kind of fell a little flat for me. It also leaves a lot of unanswered questions and the plot seems secondary to some Big Ideas. But this one, unlike Barton Fink, didn’t come together as well in my opinion.

 

 

Anyway, I agree that they are insanely talented writers. I've spent some time reading through some of their shooting scripts. Without exception, the words absolutely jump off the page. Every scene is great.

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SpongeBob SquarePants The Movie. I could never figure out the motivation behind the biker dude's character. Why did he want to murder SB and Patrick? Why was he ultimately unsuccessful? I mean, he was this burly, mean, armed to the teeth biker and SB and Patrick a sponge and starfish respectively. How the heck did they survive?

 

Amazing.

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Being John Malkovich is one of my favorites. Also John Carpenters - Vampires once his world of vampire dos and don't is understood.

 

The only problem with films of this genre is the catch-22 that most times the description of the film gives the premise away. Most of the fun is in watching the wierdness unfold.

 

Best weird factor I ever had was watching an old movie on the dorm TV on the down side of a "journey" . Came into the middle of some old English film where the character had been brainwashed and every time a chime sounded he transformed into an alter personality. Proof positive that the strangest things always happen on a trip.

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2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

Seen it three times, complete mind f***. Everyone has their own interpretation about what Kubrick is trying to say, and I think that's the way he likes it. Man, that guy was a genius.

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Bad Influence 1990 - w/ Rob Lowe and James Spader

 

Lowe plays a real evil character in this film. I saw this with my wife the other night and was surprised at how many good scenes there were in this movie...the engagement party scene where Lowe abruptly splits Spader's ties to his fiancee, Spader's creepy bunny mask in the liquor store robbery spree to his arrival at work the morning after, also Spader popping in that VHS cassette. This movie was surprisingly good and provided some well delivered creepy moments in it.

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SpongeBob SquarePants The Movie. I could never figure out the motivation behind the biker dude's character. Why did he want to murder SB and Patrick? Why was he ultimately unsuccessful? I mean, he was this burly, mean, armed to the teeth biker and SB and Patrick a sponge and starfish respectively. How the heck did they survive?

 

Amazing.

Dude you can't kill a cartoon, even if you are a cartoon.

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