Beau is Afraid was the last one I recall. I think it was mostly the latter half of the movie where I started to get a bit confused and needed the ending explained to me.
What movies made you look up some kind of explanation afterwards? I feel like I have done it several times in the past for more surreal movies but can’t think of any other examples.
It can also be a TV show.
Primer. Watched it twice in a row. Then went online to read about it too.
As soon as I read the title of this post, I knew that Primer would be one of the first comments.
You are not alone, that is the hardest time loop movie to wrap your head around.
I’m gonna have to open that on a monitor.
12 Angry Men. Gen X kid here, not my style, B&W a fair bit before my time, too old.
My god. Put it on for a lark before bedtime on a worknight. Far too tired, stayed up all the way through, suffered the next day. Worth it.
If OP had asked, “Name a movie you couldn’t put down?” or “What’s a movie that sucked you in and you had no choice to stop?” Yeah. That one.
Mainly because it’s so accurately done. It truly shows how insane it can get and it’s made worse by all the people violating their own “rules” repeatedly
I didn’t grasp the implications of the final scene with Aaron and the workers until I checked the plot write-up on Wikipedia.
I think this movie is virtually impossible to understand in 1 viewing.
I was going to say this, but I figured I could just scroll until I found where someone else inevitably said it.
By the end, I was just letting the drama wash over me and not even trying to sort out which version of who was doing what in which timeline.
And honestly, I suspect that that’s the best way to appreciate it anyway.
Came here for this, glad to be beaten to it. I’ve seen this movie three times and I’m still not sure I could actually explain it.
Ha, me neither. Love everything about the movie though. The fact that Shane did everything for this movie (wrote, directed, produced, acted, music, editing), it was made on such a small budget (7k I think), and shot over 5 weeks, yet it really doesn’t feel “cheap” when you watch it, is such an achievement.
Mulholland Drive
That’s cheating. No one knows what that movie is about.
I’ve heard that you can watch that movie in a loop starting at any point and it doesn’t make any more or less sense than starting at the beginning.
It was supposed to be a pilot for a TV series, that’s why it makes even less sense than the other Lynch movies.
I think what makes it so tricky for many is trying to “interpret” Lynch’s storytelling.
Spoiler, sort of?
At the beginning, we see a POV of laying down on a pillow in a dark room. Then a dream begins — with dream-logic and structure — and eventually winds up with the cowboy saying, “time to wake up.” Then the final act reveals what really happened to the main character (and how the dream made her the innocent victim/hero).
I think all of David Lynch’s movies could fit here. I tried watching his mini-series “Rabbits” over and over to understand, and I still have no idea what it’s really meant to be about.
Check out the documentary Lynch/Oz, it helps put his work in a more straightforward context.
Thanks, added to the list!
The Lighthouse. I really liked the movie but I would be lying if I said I understood it after watching it.
I watched that movie with my dad.
We were both equally confused and all the unexpected masturbation made it a tad awkward
I’ll bet. What about the masturbation in the movie?
- mother! (2017, Darren Aronofsky)
- Enemy (2013, Denis Villeneuve)
- Men (2022, Alex Garland)
- Under the Skin (2014, Jonathan Glazer)
- Us (2019, Jordan Peele)
- Titane (2021, Julia Ducournau)
- The Neon Demon (2016, Nicolas Winding Refn)
- Tideland, (2005, Terry Gilliam)
And a bunch more.
Which one is your fav out of this list?
Of these, I think mother!. The Images and vibes there are taking up the most rent-free space in my brain.
I neglected to mention Gasper Noe; basically everything he’s done. But his work leans too hard into palpable horrors for me to ever actively recommend.
Titane is excellent, though I prefer Ducournau’s previous film Raw
Honestly it seems like a lot of Aronofsky films are deeper than they appear at surface level.
Loved Pi back in the day.
2001 A space Odyssey
No country for old Men.
*Annihilation.
The more I read about 2001 and the more I watch it the more I love it!
2001 was a movie that made me go “wait, what? People like this?”
I heard it come up so often and was excited to watch it. Absolutely hated. One of the worst movies I’ve ever watched. I had to look it up a lot after I watched it because I was sure I had to be missing something big. But no, I wasn’t. Really not my kind of movie, I guess.
I mean, it was groundbreaking for its time and it redefined the genre and a lot of moviemaking in general, but it really didn’t age well as far as moviemaking goes. Yeah, it has severe pacing issues, is undeservedly way too long and it got way too trippy and abstract by the end. Frankly a whole lot of it feels like Kubrick masturbating over how great he is, with a lot of scenes being way too long and serving no real or useful purpose on on the movie.
I could say pretty much the same about Solaris too (the original Tarkovsky version which cinephiles always rave about, not Soderbergh"s, which I actually prefer), and if rumors are true, apparently Kubrick took a lot of ideas from it.
And I say all that as an avid sci-fi fan. The books from Arthur C. Clarke are more enjoyable.
I absolutely love 2001 and could not get through Solaris, I’m sure I will try again, but Solaris takes the long meandering scenes (which I generally enjoy) of doing nothing to an extreme, and I say that as a tarkovsky fan as well.
That being said, the third act of 2001 could use a bit of editing for modern tastes.
If you have the chance to see it in a cinema I highly recommend. Something about the big projection and sound, plus ideally an intermission really made it click for me
Kubrick actually fought against including an intermission. It was the norm at the time to pause a movie halfway in, raise the house lights, and let everyone piss and get a snack.
The compromise was that the house lights would stay down and the movie would keep running showing the intermission card, with the music that he had composed for it.
I can see from the filmmaker’s perspective but given it’s basically unheard of these days it felt cool and novel. Pretty sure the screening I went to did just what you described
I watched it with my partner and we riffed on it the whole time. Thoroughly enjoyable. Making fun of the movie’s bad parts allowed me to get past the boredom and appreciate the good.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but even after reading the explanation I still don’t know what happened.
After watching the movie twice, then reading the book and watching the movie a third time. I now know what’s going on.
Honestly, I think you should be proud of that. That demonstrates both impressive commitment and intellect. Good job.
Synecdoche New York
I didn’t have a chance.
One my favs as far as heady horror films go. I mean not horror in the traditional sense but getting old is terrifying.
Cloud Atlas (2012)
I didn’t think the plot of the film was too confusing, but trying to keep track of which cast member played which character in each respective time period while watching the film was challenging.
It took me like half the movie to understand the pidgin for New Hawaii.
The book doesn’t jump around. Each story is like a book opened to the halfway point, with another book inserted. They’re all nested like this down to New Hawaii, which plays through straight, before finishing each story in turn.
I love ambitious (if somewhat failed) movies like this, and I’m not really sure if the Wachowskis could have done a better job.
I completely agree with the last sentiment you shared! I think of Cloud Atlas as a flawed gem and am glad to have watched it at least once.
I didn’t exactly need the ending explained, but Everything Everywhere All At Once has so much going on that I got really hyper focused on looking up commentary for everything in the movie. There were a lot of things I missed so I found it really valuable beyond just wanting to deep dive every little detail haha.
Surprisingly, after all the hype of Interstellar being incredibly confusing, I felt like I missed something because it seemed fairly straightforward (not the plot, which was obviously convoluted, just that I understood the ending). Then I looked up explanations of the ending and they fit my interpretation so that was a bit anticlimactic lol
For Interstellar, I think it’s either you get it or you don’t. I got the idea pretty well, aside from the physics and stuff behind it. I talked with some people who couldn’t understand it and tried to explain it but it still left them confused.
I don’t remember being confused. But it was definitely one of those movies where I had to sit for 15 minutes after the credits rolled to process the emotional impact.
The wiki for Bird Box told me a hell of a lot more about what was going on than the actual movie did.
The Fountain. It kinda makes sense on first watch, but you really need to read the companion graphic novel to get it.
Soundtrack is fantastic too
Holy shit was that movie a mindfuck.
The Green Knight (2021)
Me too. But I still really enjoyed the weirdness of it.
naked lunch. i think i read everything and was still confused.
I can think of at least two things wrong with that title
Memento is the most extreme cases of this I’ve ever experienced. A week later, I was still walking around with a notebook, slide rule, and french curve trying to work out what the hell actually happened in that bitch.
• Waiting for Godot (play, but it’s been recorded, so like a movie) • Lost Highway • Rubber • Primer • Coherence • Triangle • Eraserhead • Pi
Holy shit, someone else who’s seen Rubber!
There are dozens of us!
