Strange_Bundle (Level 18)

Director's Cut is the only way to go. A really fun movie, especially the first time.

I think I liked the concept more than the framework around it. Just give me surreal landscapes and costumes and save all the explanations for a pamphlet you hand out to the fearful.

I've seen it now and yes, it deserves to be here.

I wonder if cutting out the explanations would make me feel more satisfied.

It's the mood more than anything. It's a thriller that plays like a horror movie. I realize that those two are close together, but it crosses the line in really fun, disturbing ways. Hey, that's two Finchers in a row, I think. Go Fincher!

This is what you get if you base a film on a dream. Interesting exploration of roles people play, if not the most focused of movies.

Jodorowsky is that oldschool of surrealist who would mess you up if you chose to join him. Many of the cast had some interesting, messed up experiences MAKING this film, and they were pretty angry by the end of it. Which to me is icing on the crazy cake.

Mainly for the last bits, but I imagine the first time anyone watches this as a struggle to understand what the movie is trying to say.

This film is really hard to find, so I haven't seen it yet, but I put it here on reputation alone. I do own it now, though!

At least the first time you watch it.

Sometimes I think Lynch's films don't earn the confusion they evoke, but Mulholland Dr. DOES have a solution, and it makes it one of the coolest films once you realize what's going on. Multiple views are pretty much required.

Seriously flawed but ambitious, it should have been titled Meanwhile.

Just what is going on in this city?

I think the movie doesn't have too many potential interpretations, but what I love about is I can go into it with a different mindset each time and be rewarded. Art's extra fun when it seems to change because you have changed. Pi does that for me.

Three levels simultaneously, and they're all real.

Nothing TOO complex, but it's still got playful exploration of its own reality, including its famous paradox. It was the first film of Charlie Kaufmann's that I'd seen, and afterward I felt like he took after my own heart.

Not one to shy away from a bit of the meta, old Charlie Kaufmann is a character here.

Sometimes pain is OK.

Watched this THE DAY after Inception, and I'm glad I did. The contrast is striking, yet people will easily talk about them in the same sentence. This film is indirect but becomes painfully clear. Ambitious and, once things fall into place, universal.

It moves too quickly to take stock of what's going on, but that only adds to the fun. Everything by this filmmaker's my kind of insane :)

Haven't seen it, but am intrigued by suggestions here so will add it. Hope to see it some time soon. Bought it, but haven't actually let it run, yet.

Based on the novel by Tsutsui. Takes a much more sensible, and therefore surreal and philosophically interesting, take on dreams. Zhuang zi would have approved.

[I have it, haven't seen it, but I guess I'll learn before too long if it deserves to be here. Trailer was weird enough, to be sure.] It could have gone a bunch of different ways, and I enjoyed some of what it did. Some of it was pretty gross, and there's this tendency that a lot of less well-grounded films have to foster performances and scripts that are come off as abrupt and unrelatable. This film certainly felt that way, with sudden, random behavior swings that felt less like something that could happen in the world they constructed, and more a by-product of unsympathetically strange motivations. Glad I finally saw it, not sure I would see it again, although I want to zoom in on the book at some point and see if I can read anything in it.

You know what, I just like this movie. I'm not a big Barker fan, guy needs to get out more, but I think he really did a good job with this, even if it wasn't perfect. It felt like the right kind of different for me, and the bad guys had a strangely seductive viewpoint. Not nearly as surreal as most of the others here, but it deserves more attention I think.

There, I said it. Now I don't have to list many of his films.

Same with you! Keep on shining.