Clever movies

[Robot_Arm]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Dave Made A Maze

I saw the trailer for that, but didn’t wind up seeing the movie. How was it, apart from clever?

@CalMeacham

That movie ran for an unbroken more than four year run at the Central Square Cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts back in the 1970s.

Never heard of the movie, or the Central Square Cinema.

[Jackknifed_Juggernaut]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Here’s a few more favorites:

Run Lola Run

If anyone in the NY area is interested, there will be a special screening of this movie in Williamsburg tomorrow evening with a live DJ playing the score. The music was a big part of this movie.

https://videologybarandcinema.com/event/run-lola-run-with-an-electronic-live-score/

[susan]

Being John Malkovich
Memento
The Usual Suspects
The Matrix
12 Monkeys
Adaptation (loved the genre-switching)

[CalMeacham]

@Robot_Arm

Never heard of the movie, or the Central Square Cinema.

The Central Square Cinema, like the many, many small cinemas in Boston and other cities (Park Square Cinema, Cinema 733, the Harvard Square Cinema, The Orson Welles Cinema – sob!) is long gone, killed off by first the VCR, then DVDs, then streaming. they were incredibly tiny, low-budget places that usually changed movies frequently 9often three times a week) and showed lots of foreign films, small indy films, and old films that the big theater chains wouldn’t touch. Several of them (Harvard Square in Cambridge, the Blue Mouse in Salt Lake City) showed The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on weekends. Not surprising you haven’t heard of it.

Nor is it surprising that you haven’t heard of The King of Hearts – it fit into two of the categories I listed. An indy foreign film, and even then a bit old – it was released in 1966. I’ve never seen it broadcast on any channel, nor on home video in any format, nor on any streaming service. So why would you have heard of it?

Here’s the Trailer on YouTube:

Here it is on Amazon Video or on (rather costly) DVD https://www.amazon.com/King-Hearts-Alan-Bates/dp/B000059H9D

[Sinaptics]

@CookingWithGas

Before I opened the thread I read the title and thought Memento.

I thought Looper did a better job with time-travel paradoxes than most.

Another time travel movie that I always thought was clever and underappreciated: Time Lapse

[Typo_Negative]

I though I, Tonya was clever.

Told in flashbacks from different characters, the characters in the flashback would break the 4th wall and comment on what was happening.

[RickJay]

“The Big Short” was quite clever, interspersing scenes of three totally different stories with bizarre celebrity cameos, fourth wall breaking, and documentary film to tell a complex story of baking malfeasance. It was extremely well done.

[Dewey_Finn]

@CalMeacham

The Central Square Cinema, like the many, many small cinemas in Boston and other cities (Park Square Cinema, Cinema 733, the Harvard Square Cinema, The Orson Welles Cinema – sob!) is long gone, killed off by first the VCR, then DVDs, then streaming. they were incredibly tiny, low-budget places that usually changed movies frequently 9often three times a week) and showed lots of foreign films, small indy films, and old films that the big theater chains wouldn’t touch. Several of them (Harvard Square in Cambridge, the Blue Mouse in Salt Lake City) showed The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on weekends. Not surprising you haven’t heard of it.

Thirty years ago in college, we saw The Rocky Horror Picture show at the midnight showing at the Harvard Square Cinemas. They searched everyone entering the theater but the only thing they prohibited was live animals.

[wintertime]

@Rocketeer

I really enjoyed Ex Machina, which is about a Turing test. I wonder, was the film’s protagonist the first to be invited to the test site?

No, it’s not. A Turing test is an “imitation game” (I’m citing the man himself); the human interrogator does not know whether his partner in communication is a machine or human (or if there is a machine among several partners, or if they are all machines etc).

Caleb already knows that he is talking to a machine. Yet, he also calls it a Turing test but this just shows that he completely fails to understand the nature of the experiment that he is a part of.

Some call it an AI-box experiment: any suitably advanced artificial intelligent is going to be able to manipulate people into giving it the means for its release from human control.

Nathan wanted to see if Ava could play Caleb even though he was aware what it was; he just didn’t realise that it could also play him.

I’d like to add “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” - a journey into the mind and a cleverly constructed circular narrative.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@CalMeacham

Nor is it surprising that you haven’t heard of The King of Hearts – it fit into two of the categories I listed. An indy foreign film, and even then a bit old – it was released in 1966. I’ve never seen it broadcast on any channel, nor on home video in any format, nor on any streaming service. So why would you have heard of it?

Here’s the Trailer on YouTube:

Here it is on Amazon Video or on (rather costly) DVD https://www.amazon.com/King-Hearts-Alan-Bates/dp/B000059H9D

I have the DVD. I first saw this on Showtime or HBO or Cinemax back in the late 1970s; I watched it a couple of dozen times. Finally grabbed the DVD as soon as it was on sale. Now I understand there’s a 4K restoration about to be released.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Typo_Negative

I though I, Tonya was clever.

Told in flashbacks from different characters, the characters in the flashback would break the 4th wall and comment on what was happening.

I haven’t seen that but it reminded me that we haven’t mentioned American Splendor, the awesome tale of Harvey Pekar.

ETA: Robot Arm, I liked Dave Made A Maze. It’s waaaaaay better than you’d suspect from the premise and/or the budget; in fact, very quickly I realized that the premise was awesome and that the budget simply didn’t matter.