At The end of the first movie she was hospitalized because she was criminally insane, not made to switch schools. So, she’s in the hospital in Final Cut, pretending to a nurse…
You know, maybe I’m just a moron, but I really don’t understand why people think this movie is so brilliant. Yeah, it was neat to watch, and the Phillip Glass score was amazing, but at the end of the hour and a half you come away with the moral of “Nature is an ordered place, and the man-made world is chaotic–life is out of balance.” And what is so brilliant about that, really? Do you need to see a movie to realize that? Did it also take American Beauty to show you that suburban life is not all it seems to be on the surface?
Koyanisquatsi’s moral. Totally wrong. How can you look at those images of city life and factories without seeing the order and beauty in them? Those scenes of the cars moving and stopping at lights reminded me of blood pumping through arteries…etc. I know he THOUGHT he was showing the ugliness of industrialization, but he failed! Be showed the beauty of industrialization!
What’s there to “get” about Repo Man? It’s pretty straight forward. Alien bodies are hidden in the trunk of the car and everyone tries to get them back. The repo men get involved accidentally. But the bodies are just a McGuffin, the real story is the characters and situations. The plot is just a clothesline.
I’m a big fan of movies that make no sense. I have no problem with watching movies like Lost Highway. There’s a story there, I just haven’t got it yet. But that’s part of the fun of watching movies like that. Trying to figure out what the hell is going on. It’s a puzzle, and I like puzzles.
But David Lynch movies are pieces of cake compared to the truly bizarre movies. Of which one is Greaser’s Palace.
I know what you’re thinking. If only somebody would reinterpret the New Testament by placing it in the Old West and featuring Jesus himself in a zoot suit. Well worry no more, Greaser’s Palace is here to set you straight.
What I’ve got, Greaser is the Catholic Church, the guy in the zoot suit is Jesus. What the hell is with the rest of the movie? Lamey Homo must mean something. Why is Herve Villechaize a gay cowboy midget? Is there any reason for Greaser trying to defecate on a mariachi band?
I’m a song and dance man.
Well, I just remembered another one that I saw back in the mid to late 80s, called Millenium, and I think Daniel J. Travanti was in it. I recall being totally lost at the time. But then again, maybe I should rent it and see if things have changed any.
Any clues out there? Spoilers okay.
NUMBER SIX,
SPOILERS FOR “JACOB’S LADDER”
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This has always been my problem with this plot: how could Tim Robbins’ character know that his unit was unwittingly used for experimental drug testing if he actually DIED during it? If we’re to believe that nothing following his death in Vietnam actually happened, why should we believe his hallucination as to how and why he was killed?
MILLENIUM is simply a time travel movie, wherein the characters go through the same basic scenes twice, once from the perspective of the miscast Kris Kristofferson, and again from the perspective of the time traveler, Cheryl Ladd. It can be confusing, I suppose, if you miss this point.
It’s a fairly lame B-Movie, based on a good short story, “Air Raid” (later expanded into a novel, “Millenium”) both by John Varley. Varley also wrote the screenplay. IMHO it would have fared far better with a better cast, though Travanti and the overweight actor (damn, can’t remember the guy’s name!) playing Kristofferson’s boss do the best they can with what they’ve got.
Sir Rhosis
Rilchiam mentioned Don’t Look Now, the Nicholas Roeg film starring Donald Sutherland. Having seen this movie about seven years ago, I can offer a vague explanation. Please correct me if I miss something.
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Donald has a gift. He can see images from the future. Of course, he doesn’t realize that he has this gift. There are a few instances in the movie when he sees a future-image, but doesn’t realize it – like the time when he sees his wife and her mother in the boat.
For some reason I can’t fathom, there is a rash of murders in the town where Donald and his wife are staying. And, for some strange reason, Donald keeps seeing this cute kid dressed in red running around, seemingly following him. He takes a photograph in a church, sees a beautiful stained-glass window, and lives his life.
One day, he sees/hears the kid running around, so he tries to catch up to the kid. Suddenly, the kid catches up to him, and SLICES HIS THROAT OPEN!!! AHHHHHH! The kid was actually a dwarf, who had been responsible for the murders. The red dwarf showed up in the photograph of the church, trying to kill someone.
Now I’m going to go rent that movie!
My main recollection of bewilderment was about a film I saw when in my early teens, Derek Jarman’s The Last of England. I suspect that, unlike most of the films discussed here, it is simply not susceptible of explanation (having no plot at all) but if there’s anyone who wants to go ahead & try, be my guest. I haven’t seen it in the intervening years, but some images stick in the brain, such as a long sequence in which a woman in bridal clothing repeatedly fails to extricate herself using a pair of scissors. --N
Stephe96:
After reading my explanation, I can see how it might be a little confusing, and it had been over a year since I’d seen the movie. So I pulled out my dvd and watched it again. Here I will present my new, improved explanation of Jacob’s Ladder.
SPOILERS FOR JACOB’S LADDER SPOILERS FOR JACOB’S LADDER SPOILERS FOR JACOB’S LADDER SPOILERS FOR JACOB’S LADDER
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Jacob Singer was a young man who had just recieved a PhD. in English. He had a wife and three children. His son, played by Macauley Culkin, was killed in a car accident, and this in turn broke up his marriage. In despair, he enlists in Vietnam, which is where the movie begins.
A chemist had developed a variant form of LSD which increased aggression for use against the Cong, and a diluted version was used on Jacob’s battallion to increase aggressiveness. The soldiers went berserk, attacked each other. Jacob was bayonetted by another victim of the drug, another American.
At this point, he passes out, and wakes up on a subway. Most of what happens from here on out is a hallucination (possibly induced by the drug–I’ll get to this later), and by his inability to let go of life. The “flashbacks” to Vietnam are actually brief moments of consciousness that he experiences as he is dying.
Everything that seems to happen in the movie after Vietnam actually happens during the time he is being evac-ed and worked on in the army hospital.
During the post-Vietnam portion of the movie, two important things are happening. The first is that Jacob keeps having hellish visions/hallucianations. The second is that the survivors of his battallion are getting killed one-by-one. Bit-by-bit we are led to believe that their is a conspiracy to kill the survivors to cover-up the experimental drug use. This is actually a red herring to distract the movie audience from what is actually going on.
The Danny Aiello character explains to Jacob exactly what is happening to him (just after he rescues Jacob from the hospital; chp. 29 on the DVD) in a lot more detail than I want to go into here. Essentially, his soul was not at peace when he died, and it is desperately holding on to life, which has led him to this purgatory.
When he finally does come to be at peace, and his soul is ready to go to heaven unfettered by the problems in his life that he tried to carry with him into death, his son arrives as his guide into heaven. Cut to Vietnam, where he has just died of his wounds in the Army hospital.
Now, how does he know about the drug enough to incorporate it into his hallucination/purgatory? There are two explanations, suggested by the two posters he sees when he wakes up in the subway (one suggests he is crazy, the other he is in hell).
First, the whole thing is a hallucination, and Jacob is insane. In this scenario, we cannot trust his hallucinatory explanation for what caused the insanity of that day; we cannot know what caused it. The experimental drug is just another desperate explanation that his dying mind creates for him.
The second, and I beleive this one is the better one, is that Jacob’s soul is desperately holding on to life, keeping him from heaven. Thus, he is in hell (or if you prefer, purgatory) until he is at peace with his life on earth and ready to go to heaven. The Danny Aiello character (Louis) is an angel sent to help him find his way out this self-built hell, and even tells him exactly what is happening.
Michael (Matt Craven) isn’t actually the chemist who made the BZ. He’s also an angel (hence the name), sent to help Jacob resolve the last thing keeping Jacob from moving on, and does this by explaining what happened on the day Jacob was killed. Michael thus takes Jacob’s guilt onto himself , releiving Jacob of his last tie to life, and freeing Jacob’s soul to move on. The missing scene, in which Michael “cures” Jacob, makes this a lot more clear, and IMHO would have added a lot to the movie.