Movie concepts that really floor you

ALL of Gattaca.

Gattaca's freaky 'cause you can envision it happening...

Memento.. The whole film being backwards really puts you in the place of Lenord because you have no idea how and why certain things happened until the end(or the beginning, I guess I should say). I really got into Guy Pierce's character. I liked the whole concept of Lenny trying to find his wife's murderer, although he really doesn't even know where to start, or who to trust for help. A great concept for a movie, IMHO.

I have no idea why, but I am SO looking forward to 50 First Kisses. Just sounds like the perfect date movie my wife will enjoy. And the unwritten rule in marriage states that whatever she enjoys, I must too.

Heh. I really enjoyed Gilliam's Mulholland Drive...

Rashomon
anything by Gilliam (esp. 12 Monkeys & Baron Munchausen)
and (I hate to be current, but) Reign of Fire blows my mind. Potentially the best geek wet dream on film ever...

Memento- A man is cursed to walk the earth, seemingly forever, in pursuit of his wife's murderer. A crime that he can never solve and will never fully understand.

A.I- Robots, the question of what makes up love and what obligation we humans have to love that which is not "real". And then of course the view of the future, and the devotion of one boy and his ultimate importance in the world.

Minority Report- The concept is what I loved the most. The ability to predict and stop murder, but at what cost? Can a person be guilty if the crime is in the future? heavy stuff that i thought they handled brilliantly.

Unbreakable- A real life superhero. A man realizes he has true superpowers and must learn and decide what place he takes in the world. And the villain angle also was amazing IMO, a man cursed with a weakness and living only to find his purpose as well.

Deep Impact- This movie floored me at times. Its a realistic, unbelievably disturbing look at what might happen if an asteroid were on course with Earth. The secrecy, the lottery to see who lives, the hopelessness, the lines of traffic out of the cities, and the entire world waiting on one space mission. I thought this was done very very well.

oh- tetsuo the iron man sounds really really interesting? any more details?

Sorry to play cinema police but 12 Monkeys was derived from Chris Marker's wonderful short film La Jetee and is well worth seeking out. Or, at least, the end twist is.

Indeed, Andre. They should of had that on the already sexy DVD. Great little film.

Every single thing in Donnie Darko was great high-concept material. It seems as if Richard Kelly blew his creative wad with that film though. I really do hope he writes more stuff like that.

Ghost World.

what the fuck indeed! it's a shame that there's no way in hell blockbuster will have this film. I'm gonna have to make the trip into San Diego this weekend to see if I can't pick it up somewhere.

I'll second the vote for Unbreakable. I love that film more with each viewing (whereas The Sixth Sense gets weaker with each viewing, I think). It's basically "With great power comes great responsibility" filtered through real life, but it's packed with powerful sub-themes - the pressure to be a hero to those who depend on you, the need to define yourself by your relation to others. The scene at the breakfast table where David pushes the newspaper report to his son, and his son just starts crying - you don't know if it's through fear for his father, or pride that he's finally become the hero he needed him to be. Powerful stuff.

I also think Toy Story 2 asks some very painful questions about love and commitment. Is it better to be safe from emotional harm, but completely cut off and alone, or to be loved and needed, knowing that the happiness will eventually end? That's a very complex issue to deal with in a kids movie, but Pixar pull it off beautifully. In fact, the ending is so perfect I hope they don't make a Toy Story 3 - it's just not needed.

Contact
Unbreakable
Mystery Men

Se7en

next to last?

Good catch, Walter. Saved me the trouble.....

UNBREAKABLE is high on my list, if only because it completely invalidated one of my own screenplays (approach was different, but similarities abound).

Godard's CONTEMPT, if only for how the off-screen demands affected Godard's production. A great "fuck you" of a film.

Woody Allen, as a former gag writer, is kinda the king of brilliant concepts: PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and BULLETS OVER BROADWAY are all pretty ingenious.

And, finally, a bouncer with a Phd in Philosophy comes to clean up a backwater bar..... ROAD HOUSE may have the greatest concept of all time.

joel schumacher being an a-list director is a movie concept that floors me

Being John Malkovich - conceptually, the weirdest near-mainstream movie ever (sounds like Adaptation might be even weirder)

Donnie Darko - the emotional center cuts right through the high-concept and hits you in the heart as well as the head

AI - which doesn't seem all that high-concept until that ending that no one seems to be able to agree upon

Moulin Rouge - a big-budget musical composed almost entirely of modern songs with some very unorthodox camerawork and sets... in 2001?

Santa Sangre - the Art Film as Psycho knockoff

Demon Seed - computer traps Julie Christie in her house and wants her to give birth to his techno-spawn; that's pretty high-concept

a bunch of leathernecks, and a group of average joes/janes saving Earth and saving the overeducated scientist and politicians who can't do crap and don't believe in them.

Don't you mean "HELLFIGHTERS in Space"? Not that I didn't dig the premise, either..... wink

"Who Ate Nipsey Russel?"

The guys who were going to kidnap Russle Crowe have been foiled. In the midst of planning new shenanigans they spy Nipsey Russel leaving a convience store. They Kidnap him. In the ensuing celbratory party they all get blacked out drunk. When they awaken they find that some one has eaten Nipsey Russle. The ransom note has been sent and now it is a race against the clock th find out just "Who Ate Nipsey Russel?"

Pain don't hurt!

Words to live by...words...to...live...by!

You've obviously never seen The Lawnmower Man 2.

A.I. definately...I was totally wrapped up in considering how David saw the world, whether he was truly a living being or some kind of inhuman creature we could never understand, able to adapt himself or completely lost and unable to function in the world. The "Hansel & Gretel" scene and the "You can't have her!" scene both chilled me in a way movies haven't in a long time, what with the above ideas circulating in my head.

Lynch: Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead
Cronenberg: Video Drome, Dead Ringers
Polish Brothers: Twin Falls Idaho

This movie is underappreciated.

The Element of Crime. Lars Von Trier.

(twin falls idaho)

i agree. i saw it last night, and was immediately intrigued. the polish brothers had an interesting concept for their first go around, and the three main characters (the brothers, themselves portraying conjoined twins, and michele hicks, who played a do-gooder hooker with a conscience) were written with such depth and emotion that i was sucked in. the supporting characters all fell a bit flat, and the symbolism was a bit too "in your face" and would have been obvious even to the most casual movie-goer. but overall, i highly enjoyed it, and look forward to more ventures from the brothers polish.

Battle Royale.
The Thing.

Easily Dawn of the Dead, simply because if it happened and it wasn't contained in the first 2 days, there's no where you can go they can't follow, there's nowhere that's safe, in Romero's world safe dosn't exist. Days, weeks, months, dosn't matter, they eventually get you, and that's a very disturbing thought.

what really floors me is someone greenlit a Cat in the Hat film, spent 100 million dollars, threw in product placement and then thought thaty'd make a cool profit.

Good. Someone mentioned Being John Malkovich.


Russian Ark.

Even though it was the technical thing that amazed me more than the story. If you dont know Russian history, you're fucked like me but you dont even realize it was all shot in one take until its over and you want to see it again but you forget about it and once again it just flies by.

Talk about invisible editing.

Can I take some tissue samples from your brain?

Or Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever

Zatoichi - The re-telling of an age old legend by adding emotional depth and musical numbers is brilliant. It's the first movie in years that I immediately watched again.

Minority Report - Anyone who thinks that this has a happy ending was not paying attention. I was expecting something good just not this good.

Eternal Sunshine... - I like the mind fuck concept of erasing bad memories. Would I do it? No. But I understand the desire.

It's actually two takes. They filmed two passes of the scenes and thought the second pass had the better second half so they added an invisible edit. I've watched it twice and still haven't seen the edit but according to the filmmakers there is one there.

Wow. I gotta rewatch it and try to find the damn cut.

Why the three year gap between posts? Strange.

Wasn't that the outcome of the Matrix sequels....?

No, the outcome of the Matrix movies was a butt-load of money for the W Bros. and a vague threat of a sequel in case they ever run out.

I guess you could say it was also the idea that you should do something only if you choose to, not because someone tells you you should or shouldn't, or because you think you have to. So it could also be a defense of the one brother's sex change operation.