Hoew about titles which aren’t bad, but aren’t descriptive, either? Ones that show wit or have hidden meaning?
Like The Last of Sheila
James Cameron is on record that there are multiple meanings to The Abyss
I’m not terrifically fond of it myself, but that was obviously the case for Good Will Hunting as well.
Rod Serling intended double or triple meanings for his Twilight Zone episode Steel.
Any others?
The Ladykillers (the 1955 version, at least) has multiple meanings:
(1) Colloquially, “ladykillers” are gentlemen who charm ladies;
(2) The group led by Professor Marcus decide that they need to kill the little old lady Mrs Wilberforce;
(3) Mrs Wilberforce turns out to be a lady who is a killer – her actions indirectly, and withut her knowledge, kill all of Professor Marcus’s gang.
Transamerica is a very clever title. The movie is about a pre-op M2F transsexual who takes a cross-country trip.
It’s a spoof of Seinfeld and all of the characters make a wager to see who can get some anal sex first. It’s a farce AND a pun! Also, they renamed Kramer as “Creamer.” LOLZ
Inside Man is a good movie (IMHO), and the title has also provoked a lot of comment, with people suggesting it may have two or three separate-yet-related meanings. There’s one meaning that pertains to the plot, so I won’t spoil it, and there’s ‘inside man’ as in someone on the ‘inside’ who assists a robbery. There’s also the sense of ‘addressing a fundamental aspect of human nature’. Clever title.
Maybe not the cleverest by some definitions, but Snakes on a Plane has to be the most successful title in movie history. I can’t think of any other film thats so well known based purely on the fact of how amusing people think the title is.
I just finished watching Keeping Mum, which has several meanings in the context of the film.
Hey, it delivered what it promised.
I just came to mention Inside Man, but it looks like I have been beaten to it.
I thought Boxing Helena was going to be about a kangaroo in the ring.
Not gonna make that mistake twice.
“In a Lonely Place”. Not only is it beautifully evocative and haunting, but it has lots of possible meanings. On the literal level, it is where a body is dumped in the film, but it can also refer to the emotional state that Bogart & Gloria Grahame find themselves in.
As the lead character is a Hollywood screenwriter, I’ve also seen it suggested that it refers to the loneliness of writing and Hollywood itself.
The name “Gattaca” is composed entirely of the letters used to label the nucleotide bases of DNA. The four nucleotode bases of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Titanic – not only refers to the ship, but also the budget, the length, and the size of James Cameron’s ego.
House II: The Second Story
I came here to mention this one,had no idea what it was gonna be about when I watched it. :eek:
I suspect many of the “cleverest” titles will be porn. My favorite double-bill of all time was THAR SHE BLOWS with HAWAIIAN THIGH.
Really? I’ve found those porno parody titles to be pretty obvious and lame.
“E.T. – The Extra Testicle”
“Trader Hornee”
Right
There might be a lot of suggested ones, but I’ll strongly debate their being “cleverest”. Or ever Clever.
(Okay, hang in there with me on this one. Most people I’ve told this to think it’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard and give me the ol’ :rolleyes: )
The Terminal could have been the cleverest movie title ever if they changed the ending to my ending. At the end of the movie Tom Hank’s character is about to be let into America when he suddenly gets extremely ill, paramedics are called, but too late he has died. We then find out he was trying to get into the country the whole time to get a life saving operation for himself. However he was never able to communicate this to anyone and time runs out.
Thus “The Terminal” wasn’t refering to the airport but rather Tom Hank’s character.
God. Damn. It.
The one I come in to mention, and it’s not only in the OP, it’s the first friggin’ example given in the OP?!?!?
Okay, then, I submit Gaslight, one of the few movies to have actually added a new meaning to an existing word.
“Birth of a Nation” seems odd at first glance since it’s about the aftermath of the Civil War, not the Revolution. But the title refers to the Civil War as being the “birth” of one nation, in that it meant the end of what was previously seen (to some, anyway) as an alliance of sovereign states.