I thought A.I. was complicated.The symbolism was incredable. Everything meant something and then some.
Wow, some great movies here. Pi creeped me out BIG TIME. Good movie, but Aronofsky is seriously warped.
Also, two of my favorite movies are mentioned here, Blue Velvet and Chinatown. Robot Arm, I had totally forgotten about Sleuth. What a great movie! I’m going have to rent that again.
A couple that haven’t been mentioned. House of Games - Early Mamet, maybe my favorite from him, although The Spanish Prisoner was really good. 3 Days of the Condor was pretty tight. I’m a huge fan of Blade Runner, a movie that I think works on a couple different levels.
I’ll add a second for Perfect Blue. It’s one of those dual reality movies in which the main character, and the audience along with her, can’t be sure which of two realities is the real one.
Another one that takes some deciphering is the recently released Japanese thriller Audition. Like With a Friend Like Harry, nothing really unusual happens for about the first hour, but when strange things start to happen, they get really strange. There are a couple of flashback sequences that blend together facts that were kept from the viewer earlier in the film and fantasies that the protagonist has about what he wishes had happened, and it’s left up to the viewer to disentangle them. There are other scenes that we can’t be sure whether they actually occurred, or were from the imagination of one of the characters.
Blood Simple is a great modern film noir by the Coens, and has just recently been released on DVD.
Double Indemnity is the classic noir, in my book even above The Maltese Falcon.
2001: A Space Odyysey is a movie that cannot be truly appreciated on a single viewing.