Giles ,'Chosen'
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.
I specifically avoided Identity because of what Jessica and Lyra said the twist was.
Do the timelines work out for Identity to be cribbing?
Actually, some people suspect that Charlie Kaufman may have done some script doctoring on Identity, and that's what inspired him to create such a horribly implausible screenplay for Donnie Kaufman to have written in Adaptation.
Also I really liked Traffic.
I liked it, but didn't love.(Did love TG, though) Adaptation? One of my favorite recent films.
I guess I need twists to be clever to appreciate the movie, but not necessarily the explanations.
Lately I've begun to feel that the twists in most movies are too clever, and become uterly implausible. In fact, I think Hollywood has become over reliant on twists and reversals. I don't think it's absolutely necessary for a movie to show me things I've never ever seen before in any other movie. Sometimes it's okay to show me things I've seen before in a different way, or done better than they were before.
Most movie with "twists" these days just feel like they're trying too hard, and bug me with their excessive cleverness.
wrod.
I don't know that I'd accuse Signs of excessive cleverness (where were the smart aliens to corrall the invading ones back to the short mothership?), but I too am a bit weary of the Ta Da! school of filmmaking.
I would love to see that catch on. "Actually, it's one of the few high points in the Ta Da! trend of the early years of the century."
I too am a bit weary of the Ta Da! school of filmmaking.
Yes, this. Revealing something in the last ten minutes of the film that causes the audience to re-evaluate what they've seen in interesting ways that hold up on rewatch is good. (Fight Club, The Usual Suspects.)
Revealing something in the last ten minutes because you want the audience to go "OMGWTF!?!?!!!" while easier, is getting almost as old and tired as ironic self-awareness.
Revealing something in the last ten minutes because you want the audience to go "OMGWTF!?!?!!!" while easier, is getting almost as old and tired as ironic self-awareness.
"New things make people feel scared. And smart things make people feel stupid."
t /Fry