I think we should be allowed to spoil any movies that are over a decade old.
And what movie do you have sitting in your computer’s DVD player just waiting for enough time to watch, Glenn?
Sixth Sense, why?
‘Identity’ was the only time where I was actually felt cheated and angry at a movie at the same time.
A Few Good Men. About a third of the way through the movie there’s a flashback that explains exactly what happened in the events surrounding the murder. It’s the only flashback in the movie and its the only time we leave the perspective of the three main characters. The whole thing is designed to remove any doubt that Nicholson is the bad guy and its okay to root for the three good guys. It was such an obivous artifice and it completely ruins the movie. Removes any nuance or gray area that the script may have tried to build on.
All right, I am going to spoil the movie that inspired this thread. Here is my problem with ‘The Last Broadcast’:
The movie follows, and is told from the point of view of a fellow creating a documentary about these four guys who go into the New Jersey Pine Barrens - but only one returns, the other three having been murdered out in the woods. The whole point of their trip was to find evidence for the existence of the Jersey Devil - the survivor returns with an unsatisfactory story and is of course the prime suspect for the murders.
SPOILERS LOOK OUT BELOW
But the fellow making the documentary doesn’t buy it - and the effective part of the movie is that the movie is from his point of view, and his discoveries are our discoveries. The movie takes place through the lens of his camera. But here is where it loses me - at the end of the movie, it’s revealed that the documentary guy staged everything and killed the three people - and the movie ‘steps out’ from behind his camera to show him cleaning up his mess from some god’s eye view - my first real problem. Second, the guy is documenting a mystery of his own creation? I don’t get it.
So yeah, weird movie, and really bad in terms of yanking your chain in my opinion, like a cinematic practical joke really.
Birdy
Andrew- We leave the perspective of the three characters for the very beginning of the movie as well(we see the murder). And the flashback occured at the very beginning(around 10 minutes in), the movie was not intended to be a mystery. I’m going with not cheating on that.
Event Horizon broke it’s own rules when Sam Neill turned magical for no particular reason. Twisty stories don’t necessarily need to cheat, the incredibly terrible Basic was just stupid, but it never cheated us. Everything that we were shown that ended up being false was given as testimony. Frailty is another example thereof. If you establish one timeline as ‘reality’(Travolta’s investigation, Spacey’s interrogation, etc.) you can lie your pretty little head off about the other parts.
But as now described, The Last Broadcast doesn’t cheat the way Fight Club and Jacob’s Ladder do, it’s just stupid. Really stupid. Basic and SAW suffer from similar problems, in that characters do things that make no sense exception in terms of advancing the narrative. The Life of David Gale is another example of this syndrome.
SIGH. What part are you guys talking about?
I submit, as I always do, The Cell.
I’m assuming when the ghost lets Jack out of the storage room.
The second part, where the movie maker investigates a crime of his own making - yes, stupid. But the violation of point of view - going ‘meta’, if you will, when the entire movie previous was from the filmmaker’s perspective (who filmed the climax? best not to ask) is in my opinion, going back on the promise of the story so far. Stupid isn’t the word for it, it’s almost deus ex machina, except the god doesn’t throw lightning bolts, he just sits back and apparently records the end of the movie.
I thought the ending of Fight Club where he cures his psychological problems by shooting himself in the face was intensely stupid, but not really cheating. And the rest of the movie was enjoyable enough to cover for it.
The cheating part of Fight Club was the Durden being imaginary twist and the way that means the first half of the movie was complete bullshit. What phone number did he dial to call Durden? What was Norton allegedly doing while Pitt was flying around plotting massive schemes?
Which is now available on DVD - no excuses people.
He thought he was sleeping I think.
There was no phone call, except to himself.
He thought he was sleeping I think.
For a week? The guy was traveling around the country.
There was no phone call, except to himself.
Yeah, but we saw him dial numbers and wait for ringing, etc. Did he just jab random numbers and then ignore whatever was coming out of the headset? All sorts of shit like that. How did it take literally months before someone noticed that Norton had an imaginary friend? He was in a house with like 30 people, he never was like “Hey, give this to Tyler?”
Clearly what was “actually” happening was significantly different than what we saw.
I just remembered that his job was to fly around the country. Even after he was told to work from home he still had to go around looking at the crashes. I suppose he would do his job and then sleep, which is when Tyler would take over.
The feeling I got was that they were fairly used to his mood swings, personality changes. Hence them being prepared for his objections in the castration scene. I think the Tyler personality probably prepared for and covered for that sort of thing as far as it could.
Probably. What I am saying is just trying to justify things as best I can. There are holes but I guess it just depends on how much you want to analyze them.
The movie does eventually establish that he’s a bit loose in the head, right?
I thought there was a scene where he says something like that, and whoever he’s speaking to does a quick double take but then follows him. I mean, he does have a cult of personality around him, it’s not so unbelievable that his minions don’t question his quirks. I know he says something like that to Marla, but that’s right before he figures it out so I’m fine with saying that one doesn’t count.
Also, you are talking about a movie where hundreds of people start to worship a man who beats himself up outside a bar.
Also, you are talking about a movie where hundreds of people start to worship a man who beats himself up outside a bar.
Or not, which is my point. Who knows what they were actually doing when the film was showing us Norton and Pitt fighting? If Pitt was imaginary, was Marla real? Once the movie lies to us(showing Pitt and Norton interacting) we can’t trust the camera anymore.
Marla was his girlfriend for apparently weeks, Jared Leto’s character was like his 2nd in command, none of those people noticed? If it was just “He’s Pitt when he’s asleep”, that’s one thing. But they interact. They interact with other people around. What the fuck actually happened with the car crash?
And John, he wasn’t actually working from home, he was just blackmailing his boss for money. His “job” was “not telling the media about all the bad shit his company does”.