Movies that are too clever/convoluted for their own good

[Jragon]

8 1/2 by Frederico Fellini (I think). I know, I know that was sort of the point. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed it in an alternate universe where I didn’t have to watch it for an English class (yeah, the movies in Italian, it was the PLOT and Jungian psychology we were analyzing), but I ended up giving up somewhere near the middle.

Edit: oh, and P-P-P-Page Claim!

[Sampiro]

@Jragon

8 1/2 by Frederico Fellini (I think). I know, I know that was sort of the point. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed it in an alternate universe where I didn’t have to watch it for an English class (yeah, the movies in Italian, it was the PLOT and Jungian psychology we were analyzing), but I ended up giving up somewhere near the middle.

Which was adapted as the musical NINE (you round up for musicals) and which is soon to be a major motion picture starring Daniel Day Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and that singin’ fool Judi Dench.

[Frylock]

@Saint Cad

The made it pretty obvious. Remember when Verbal wa trying to light it? Remember any of the lighters the other guys used. Perfect example of Cechov’s rifle.

I don’t remember any of the lighters anyone used, including Verbal’s.

(Of course, I haven’t seen the movie in five years or so…)

-FrL-

[elfkin477]

@2nd Law

Damn, I’ve often wondered if I was the only person who ever saw that flick.

Can’t help you with the plot, though, as the movie made little sense to me as well.

Is El Topo the really violent movie with the gun fighter and the naked kid? If so, there’s actually a movie about how no one understands that movie (and five others).

[Waenara]

I thought that The Fountain was the kind of movie I might have been able to really love, and I found it thought-provoking and the cinematography was gorgeous, but it got a little too convoluted for my tastes. Everyone else I know who’s seen it just seems to hate it though.

[DesertDog]

@John DiFool

Just once I’d like to see one of these plots fall apart

That would be Gambit. The first third of the movie is Michael Caine laying out to his partner an elaborate theft scheme. The final two-thirds is execution of same. Not one thing goes right, but he gets what he wants, anyway.

[Ersatz_Shmoe]

@Waenara

I thought that The Fountain was the kind of movie I might have been able to really love, and I found it thought-provoking and the cinematography was gorgeous, but it got a little too convoluted for my tastes. Everyone else I know who’s seen it just seems to hate it though.

I liked The Fountain okay. It makes sense, but not literal narrative sense.

@DrCube

I love a lot of the movies mentioned in this thread (especially all the Coen brothers’ movies), so I’m going to feel bad calling out a movie that quite a few people probably thought was genius, but I hated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

It was such rambling, incoherent garbage that I couldn’t even finish it. Maybe it all got sorted out in the end, but in that case the rest of the movie was a terrible waste of time.

I did like the half-naked girls jumping on the bet though. For half a minute that movie rocked. Then it was back to confusing-in-a-really-bad-way-while-I-fall-asleep mode.

I thought the ending was unusually bittersweet, actually. In effect, the two characters

witness the ugliness of their breakup, having no memory of having lived through it, and decide to start a relationship anyway, despite knowing exactly how and why it won’t work out.

@Marley23

That movie’s been made a hundred times. Whether or not the vague, ‘the world’s changing’ stuff made sense to you, I don’t see it as a convoluted movie. It’s a pretty simple chase story, really, even if everybody’s motivations aren’t always clear.

I think one of the points is that the world isn’t changing. It’s always been cruel and indifferent to human suffering.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

One of my favorite parts of encountering a new story (on film or in a book or a video game or wherever) is the sense of being off-balance but knowing that there is an explanation. Some movies can leave me off-balance at the end (Lost Highway, for example) and I’ll still greatly enjoy them. A lot of the movies mentioned here are among my favorites.

Memento, I think, really is too clever for its own good. As I understand it, there’s a central question left unresolved from the movie: [spoiler]is the protagonist faking his condition?

The problem is that there are two scenes in the movie that are mutually exclusive. If he’s faking, one scene makes no sense. If he’s not faking, the other scene makes no sense.[/spoiler]
Unfortunately, I can’t remember what the two scenes are. After the movie, I talked about it a lot with my family, and i was really interested in it until I remembered those two scenes. At that point I totally lost interest: in trying to be clever, the movie had overreached itself.

Daniel