Buffista Movies 4: Straight to Video
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Identity -- the latter wasn't that twisty. I mean, the movie doesn't make sense without an explanation, but it's just not the one you might have thought
Maybe. I just get hung up on the fact that (as I think Jessica and I have each said a dozen times) it's the exact same twist as the stupid brother's screenplay idea in "Adaptation." Which makes me giggle now, but made me angry at the time.
I haven't seen
Adaptation,
LJ, so it didn't affect my enjoyment of the movie. Do the timelines work out for
Identity
to be cribbing?
What's the twist in The Game?
Primarily when the game ends, I think.
I rather liked The Game, but, then, I didn't think either part was sucky.
Plus, I want the
T-shirt that Sean Penn gives Michael Douglas at the end.
Also, Debra Kara Unger - mmmmmm.
The Game
was what made me vow to avoid Michael Douglas movies from there on in. Still saw
Traffic,
and kinda regretted it. A teeny bit.
I don't have any reason to think it was conscious cribbing, ita. It's more that Charlie Kaufman clearly spent time trying to come up with the stupidest possible plot twist, expecting the audience to recognize it as a dumb one ... and then a movie comes out using it with a straight face, expecting the audience to ooh and aah at how clever it is.
It just bugged me, and I didn't even especially *like* Adaptation.
Traffic
had the Benicio del Toro subplot, which rocked. And a GREAT cameo by Topher Grace. The rest of it was meh.
I liked the movie without thinking the twist (or unexpected explanation, except I'd already worked much of it out) was clever. It was just ... it just was.
I guess I need
twists
to be clever to appreciate the movie, but not necessarily the explanations.
Probably a me-specific dividing line, too.
Traffic had the Benico del Toro subplot, which rocked. And a GREAT cameo by Topher Grace. The rest of it was meh.
ARE YOU DISSING DON CHEADLE??? ARE YOU???
The
multiple personality
thing was revealed pretty early in
Identity,
though. I thought the "twist" was who survived and
was responsible for the murder.
Not that it was good, in any case.
I give
the Game
a pass mostly because I loved
Se7en
so much. Fincher gets a lot of slack from me.
No, but he didn't make a huge impression on me in that movie, unlike, say,
Devil in a Blue Dress
in which he IS GOD.