[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Jomo Mojo *
**Jacob’s Ladder was one of my favorite movies ever. What was it you didn’t get? It had a twist ending, so discussing it would be a spoiler which I hesitate to post. But I found the whole plot quite coherent despite the abruptly shifting storyline. Think of Billy Pilgrim coming “unstuck in time” in Slaughterhouse-Five. To understand the outcome and the shape of the whole plot, read the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. That story was the first to use the plot twist that was borrowed for Jacob’s Ladder.QUOTE]
Well, it’s been quite some time since I saw it, so I will give it another look. I did read that story by Bierce years ago, too, and I got it.
Five Easy Pieces … I don’t get this at all. The first time I saw it, it didn’t really hold my interest, so perhaps I missed something that would have cleared it all up. This bothered me so much that I watched it again, but it didn’t help matters.
The guy’s a pianist, but he doesn’t play 5 pieces in the film. I think (but then again, what do I know) that the title is also supposed to be a play on the women in his life, but there’s more than 5 women, unless you only count the women he sleeps with, but that wouldn’t total 5 either.
Every damn thing at the film school showing I just went to. When are people going to learn that surrealism is at best a medium, not a plot in and off it self. sigh.
The one James Bond film Albert Brocolli didn’t produce (Casino Royale) is up there in the “Whaat?” category.
What a waste of a good cast.
Another waste of a good cast might be “The Missouri Breaks.”
David Bowie’s “The Man Who Fell To Earth” left me with a question mark that could only be answered by “rip off.”
Shit happens. It may not be explained or explainable, but it happens and you gotta keep goin on anyway. To some people, so much weird shit happens that they don’t even realize anymore that it’s weird, and it just becomes part of life. Whatever happens, though, happens, and you gotta deal with it and move on.
That Coen Brothers movie about the 1940s playwright who goes to Hollywood to write movie scripts and stays in a hotel with John Goodman as his neighbor. Bart Something-or-other? Something like that–movie title was the guy’s name. Weird as radioactive batshit.
Why, EVE, does this mean that you didn’t get the transcendent glory and symbolism of The Hand, or the bizarre movie that Stone made back in the early seventies with Jonathan Frid?
Barton Fink was the Coen Bros. film you’re wondering about. It had me flumoxed, too. Most of their other works have a nifty little story behind all the other stuff. This one just never seemed to get going for me.
I’ll agree with you, Eve. 2001 is a film I only needed to watch one time. I like Noel Coward’s response to Kier Delay, who starred in the film, and, when he introduced himself to Mr. Coward was met with this response - “Hello, Mr. Coward, I’m Kier Delay.” “Kier Dealy, gone tomorrow.”
Barton Fink was even better than Jacob’s Ladder. There were enough clues in there that you could figure out for yourself what happened to the lady and how Fink was able to finally write his screenplay (especially when he shakes that box and something heavy rattles inside). The climax with the flames all over the place may have looked strange—but sometimes you have to see things as symbolic externalizations of what’s in a character’s consciousness. John Goodman’s best role ever. The guy rocked! “They call you Mad Man Munt” “[Sigh] You know, sometimes folks can be so cruel.” The ending of Barton Fink was enigmatic—but again think of a character’s inner state being externalized. Once you get used to that, things start to make sense.
“Casino Royale” is supposed to be an absurdist comedy, it’s not supposed to make sense. If you’ve ever seen that weird Monte Pyhton skit where they sail around in a office building attacking other office buildings like pirates, then you probably have a good idea what I mean by absurdist comedy.
Movies I didn’t understand: “Akira” and “THX-1138” Although I think the second might have been the fault of the TV station because they cut a scene out. Also “8 1/2”, this movie is just plain weird.
“Casino Royale” is supposed to be an absurdist comedy, it’s not supposed to make sense. If you’ve ever seen that weird Monty Python skit where they sail around in a office building attacking other office buildings like pirates, then you probably have a good idea what I mean by absurdist comedy.
Movies I didn’t understand: “Akira” and “THX-1138” Although I think the second might have been the fault of the TV station because they cut a scene out. Also “8 1/2”, this movie is just plain weird.
It was a bad movie, but what still keeps me wondering, months after I saw it, is that strange ending. WTF? If any of you dopers had the (mis)fortune of seeing the movie and understanding the ending, please enlighten me.
PD. Oh yea, even though I enjoyed watching it, Natural Born Killers was confusing when I started seeing it.
I’ll join Eve in saying that 2001 (the movie) was pretentious and pointless. HAL was great, and the opening space choreography scenes were nifty, but that’s not a movie, folks. The novel was better in that you at least got an understanding of what was going on.
As for other meaningless movies, I’ll toss out Dr. T and the Women and Eyes Wide Shut as well. Both of those movies had me wishing for a nice, mindless action movie instead – at least that’d be a better use of the time…
Sadly, I must agree- though Mr.Mielikki says it is just about his favorite movie, and claims that anyone who doesn’t like it just doesn’t understand. The acting was god-awful and it seemed to be sort of an angstier-than-thou bitchfest with random boffing and killing thrown in for the hell of it. But he thinks I’m crazy because I liked ‘Jerry Mcguire’, so what the heck. I will admit that I have somewhat simple tastes.
I also didn’t get a movie which I think was called ‘Big Blue’. It had the annoying Arquette woman in it and was about these two divers who competed for each other to see who could dive the deepest without croaking. There was something about the way the story was told that made my eyes bleed. I dunno, maybe it was French or something.
Eyes Wide Shut works if you get the central joke: Tom Cruise can’t get laid. More over, Tom Cruise is willing to sleep with anyone who is not Nicole Kidman, and can’t do it! Along the way, he runs into a bunch of very rich, very silly people who read too much Romantic literature. It’s absurd, and kinda pointless, but those are not necessarily bad things. I think it was an oddly appropriate final movie for Kubrick.
Homer: I’ve been trying to figure out how to say that fo a few months now. Wonderfully put.
Baker (and others asking about Quiet Earth): He went where the other people went. Presumably, they came back. (Don’t think about these sentences too much if you haven’t seen the movie, it could be dangerous.)
KarlGrenze, The nurse at the end of Urban Legends: Final Cut was the killer from the first movie. She said to the guy that they had “a lot to talk about” or something like that, because she presumably wants to plan another killing spree.
Oh, and they should be shot for playing Hitchcock’s music over that scene. Blasphemy!
The kid’s rap song, the dude in the closet, and the cop losing his gun were part of another, expanded story line that was edited out for length. For the full story, get the DVD with the edited scenes intact.