Wait, what? What’s “clever” about High Fidelity’s plot? Guy loses girl, guy mopes about girl problems, guy gets girl back. I love the movie, but it’s not exactly a convoluted, high concept flim.
Vanilla Sky. The movie sucked, there was so much dream-within-a-dream stuff I just gave up on it.
AHHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!! I came in here specifically to mention Primer and that’s the first example in the OP!!! Ahhh, the hilarity of it. That movie’s plotlines are tangled together like a bowl of linguine.
That’s funny, because that’s exactly the reason it took me so long to see this movie – because I thought it was just about a bunch of guys beating the crap out of each other. I wound up watching it because it came highly recommended from a friend who normally isn’t into movies with a lot of violence. And I really enjoyed it.
Similar to what Cal says about D.O.A., I had to watch Repo Man about three times before I could figure out what was going on. Although part of the reason for that is because it was usually on late night cable and I’d be falling asleep while I was watching it. Alcohol may have been involved too…
For some reason a lot of people, pseudo-intellectual types, seem to think there is some great social commentary about the role of men in modern society in High Fidelity.
I think it is a whiny self-indulgent pity party piece of shit.
I’ve been told I’m wrong 'cause I just don’t get it.
eXistenZ, the David Cronenburg nonsense about a new virtual reality game where players play a game that plays a game about the reality where they are playing the game that the game is playing with the game that no one understands the game of…God that was an insufferable piece of garbage.
That’s the “Is it Live or is it Memorex?” theory of Virtual Reality films – the kind of story that people seem to think Philip K. Dick wrote a lot of, but didn’t, really. It seems quasi-mystical and deep, but is just stupid, really. The two other VR movies that came out about the same time managed to avoid this sand trap – The Thirteenth Floor by minimizing the number of levels (rather than multiplying them, as XistenZ did), and The Matrix by avoiding the issue of confusing VR with Reality – you always know where you stand with that film.
I kinda liked XistenZ, myself, but thought it got too complex (and too intentionally gross) for its own good. And the Punch Line at the end didn’t really stand up, I thought.
There are at least two things wrong with the title of Naked Lunch.
Napoleon Dynamite. I was told I* had* to like this one, because it was obviously a classic, and to this day I get a sour taste in my mouth thinking about it.
Came here to mention this one. The laughably-telegraphed nudity in the first quarter of the film (In the theater, I said to my friend “Three, two, one… Boobs!” And was only about a second off.), then the rest of it being me sitting there repeating to myself (at every ‘twist’) “Wait… What? What… Hold on… What?”
Terrible, terrible bloated film.
What I came in here to say. When you need a book and another director’s cut of the same movie to understand it, then what’s the point, really?
I liked Fight Club and found it clever–and I also felt that the third act was necessary to make it more than what it was.
Primer was just right.
The Usual Suspects. Clever, sure. But I’ve never had an urge to watch it again, because (and I can’t believe I’m using a spoiler box for this) the big revelation at the end means that we don’t know how much, if any, of what we’ve spent two hours watching really happened.
That’s what I LOVE about that movie, though.
Dude, it’s David Mamet! He’s not shooting for realism; he’s playing with and winking at the audience at every turn. See House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, Ronin, The Winslow Boy, Spartan for examples of this.
Hmmm…they pretty much hand the plot on a platter to you in the end. It’s pretty simple; the burglars come in, disguised as painters, take the customers hostage, get the diamonds and ring out of the lockbox, and then blend in with the customers (who they’ve stripped and dressed in overalls) except for Dalton Russell, who hides behind a false wall with the stones and walks “right out the front door,” a week later. Nothing really all that complicated; it’s just confusing because you are fed mostly from Frazier’s limited point of view.
Two movies that I thing are overly clever, albeit intentionally so, are The Big Lebowski and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Both, of course, are replicating pulp novels/films (in the case of the former, specifically aping The Big Sleep, a movie that makes no sense whatsoever) and thus the excess complexity is part of the gag. Personally, I love complicated films as it helps make a film worth watching over and over.
Primer, on the other hand, just sucked. A lousy film with a dumb plotline, remarkable only that it managed to be successful on a minuscule budget.
Stranger
For me, the punch line at the end turned what was a bad movie into a movie I absolutely detest. Plus, the punch line was telegraphed in the first few minutes.
See, I thought was the best part. Because if you watch again you can piece the real story together and that was great fun for me.
I don’t hate it, just hate the way it was portrayed. It was about as interesting as watching live footage from a security camera. I believe at working and making an effort to understand the tidbits and nuances that moviemakers put in, the little gems and symbols, but this one went too far. I prefer 2010. It may not have the depth, but it at least had a sense of flow and a plot set up in such a way that you could at least tell there was a plot. One that both movie buffs and the casual fan can both find without having to set up a major excavation to find it.
Does the movie El Topo count? I saw that, and had no clue what I had just seen. I’m not sure if it was too clever or if the plot was just non existent.
I think a lot of the Coen Bros. stuff would fit this bill – often times, a movie thats otherwise very good will just have too much “Isn’t that clever? Huh? <elbow>” stuff.
I think one reason Fargo is so great is that they played it relatively straight.
Yeah, although I love Miller’s Crossing, I have a hell of a time sorting out just what’s going down towards the end. I can sort of keep up right while it’s happening, but a few minutes after the movie’s over I’ve lost the thread again.
And I still can’t figure out if Bunny Lebowski is in cahoots with the nihilists or not.