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Originally Posted by squarejawhero
I still haven't seen 2001, or I have and I don't remember it.
Anyhow, just finished watching Adrian Brody in The Jacket. I say watching, I was working, but it sucked me in by having good performances and a naked Keira Knightley. Always a bonus. The film actually really suprised me, being another one of those darker films a lá The Mothman Prophecies that slips under everyones radar and ends up being far better than expected. Certainly better than weirdfest The Machinist, anyhow, which suffered from being completely readable no matter how many twists they threw at you. The Jacket does have a convoluted, if contrived, plot, but it reaches natural conclusions and dare I say it, actually suprised me by the end. And not in the way you think it might.
Spoiler:It was happy!
It's closer to Abre Los Ojos, but has moments of Vanilla Sky in it too, in the sense that it shares some of the sun of the remake and a lot of the dark of the original, plus has the same kind of frustrating, ethereal feel that only a movie which deals with primordial fears and surreal concepts can. If you've ever seen any of these films, or enjoyed Jacobs Ladder (another film it shares a lot with), then you'll like it a lot. It also has the same heartache you can often end up feeling these movies - they're dark, but human. The desperation of the protagonist makes you hope for them and identify with them, and the love they often feel for the female characters is tinged with sadness...
Actually, I've noticed that often with this kind of film, the love interest is beautiful, but somehow unobtainable. Interesting, almost as if there's a whole genre there. Thoughts? |
Yeah, The Jacket is really nice, playing with all kinds of emotions; it made me laugh, then sit in wonder, then be sad, then... well, you get the picture.
And I liked the Machinist, myself, but it lacked the melancholy of The Jacket. It was "just" a very clever psychological thriller a la David Lynch. (not readable at all to me, this one
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