llandros

Have you ever watched a movie or a scene and immediately after thought "I have no idea what that meant or why it was funny/sad/poignant/etc..."

A recent example for me is in the movie Alien vs. Predator

There is a scene where two main characters are discussing the 'hunter's moon' and then at the end they just bust out laughing at something that is supposed to be funny. Maybe they were laughing at the dialogue they had to say, but I don't think so!

Anyway, I didn't get the joke. Anyone else have some of these moments?

Troy Stiffler

In AvP, I think they just caught themselves in the midst of 'talking stupid' about something they didn't believe. They were getting into it, and then thinking "that's a pretty dumb explaination'.

For some reason, "movies labeled "distrubing" that aren't disturbing at all" comes to mind. But I'm drawing an absolute blank tonight.

Dark_Sithlord

A couple of movies that have left me pondering:

Total Recall: This is one of my favourite Schwarzenegger movies. I've seen it a couple of dozen times, and to this day, I still have no idea whether everything in the movie actually happened, or a memory implant that he bought at Recall.

Blade Runner: Was Decker actually a replicant?

Maybe the answers are obvious to some people, but the answers still escape me.

Duder

Total Recall is really quite simple to understand once you realize that everything you see happen in the movie is really happening, and that what the recording of Quaid tells himself at the end is true too. Quaid used to be with the enemy, then he defected, got his memory erased, and started to recall it.

karnblack

TheGodfather

Lost Highway. WTF?

NatrlBornThrllr

Haha, I definitely have these moments the first time around with some Lynch films. Soderbergh's Schizopolis also had numerous what-the-fuckisms.

-JP

Filmmaker

Deckard had glowing eyes; ergo, he's a replicant.

Grubert

The ending of Matrix: Revolutions.

Michael T Hudson

Lethal Weapon 3


Lorna Cole: Close is a lingerie shop without a front window.


Never got that joke.

Hiro11

"Once Upon a Time in the West" is one of my favorite movies, but there's (what I believe to be) a series of serious continuity problems about 3/4 of the way through.

1. The attack on the train makes no sense in the timeline and is never shown so you can't figure out how it happened
2. the "love" scene between Frank and Jill is bizarrely out-of-tone with the rest of the picture.
3. Frank is shown in two places at essentially the same time: with Jill and then arguing with Morton, it's completely unclear where these events fall in the timeline.

Great movie, but the editing needs some help.

DVD Josh

No way. That's way, way obvious. The cycle is broken, those who want out will get out. End of movie.

DVD Josh

Even more so, it says so in the commentary.

jigga6286

The frogs of Magnolia. Plague?

mookiemeister

In Phantom of Opera movie, there was a sword fighting scene between Raoul and Phantom. Raoul almost killed Phantom. But didn't because Christine begged him not to. So why didn't Raoul turn Phantom into the Police at that time? Because later on, there was another scene where he wanted to capture the Phantom. But he already did a few scenes ago!

sundog

Cheyenne is shipped off to Yuma (nice reference to 3:10 to Yuma) and it's clear Cheyenne's men plan to spring him when they buy their own one-way tickets.

Then it cuts to Harmonica and Jill in the bar. Frank enters, Jill leaves. Harmonica and Frank talk. Then Harmonica helps Frank fight off his own men (bought off by Morton). Frank leaves Flagstone to find Morton. Harmonica says to Jill "it's time to go home" (nice reference to The Searchers).

It's during Frank's fight in Flagstone that Cheyenne gets free and attacks Morton. Frank then finds Morton's train and comes across the aftermath.
The dead men in the dusters show that it was Cheyenne who attacked the train.

Frank leaves Morton in the puddle and heads for Sweetwater and for Harmonica. Cheyenne only arrives at Sweetwater slightly before Frank.

These are big expanses these people are crossing. Traveling takes a lot of time. You saw how long it took Jill to get to Sweetwater from Flagstone in the beginning of the film.

And I always liked that we just see the aftermath on Morton's train. It almost echoes how we only hear Cheyenne's first escape from inside the way station in Monument Valley.

I think it's giving due private time between the female and 3 male leads. Jill has a great exchange with Cheyenne early in the film, where they simply talk. Her private time with Harmonica is all action, no dialogue (when they go to the well to draw out Frank's men). And her private time with Frank becomes the sensual aspect.

Actually, Frank talks with Morton first at Mesa Verde, then we see him in the loft inside the caves, with Jill. But I'll agree the whole sequence is a bit out of place.

And I used to have problems with the whole film's timeline, which, if taken literally only spans maybe a week at most. But what takes place (the delivery of the lumber to Flagstone, then to Sweetwater; the amazingly quick progress of the railgang; the speed with which the station is built) could not occur in that short time.

But after watching this movie over and over, these "faults" actually increase the main characters' mythic status. These grand archetypes of Western lore step and fight and live while the small world is moving quicker than them and progressing beyond them.

Once Upon a Time in the West is so much Leone's personal journey through Westerns and the West that looking at it in a pragmatic point of view is doing a disservice to the film.

I don't know if I answered any of your questions to your liking Hiro, but it's one of my favorite movies and I can't not comment on it . . .

sundog

Deus ex machina

sundog

Re: Total Recall

That's all fine and dandy. But just because the filmmakers' comments remove any doubt, the film itself still contains those ambiguities and should not be discounted.

Grubert

But, as Morpheus said in the first movie, they don't even know they are prisoners, so the release offer is moot.

Hiro11

Thanks for taking the time! I think it speaks well of the film that even though it's so difficult to follow on occassion, the impact is has is never dampened and the audience's interest never flags. It's a masterpiece and Leone's definitive film, IMO.

Hiro11

Another one: in Panic Room, the thieves cannot hear Jody Foster's character when she answers the door for the Police. Why doesn't she just explain the hostage situation and ask the Police to not show any visible sign of shock at what she says? I guess it's just a movie...

This thread seems to be turning into more of a "spot the plot hole" than "scenes I don't get", sorry about that.

taa455

The whole scene in Hero when the two guys are walking/fighting on the water. I just didn't get it. Another one is the scene in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon when the man and woman are dancing/leaping from the bamboo branches. I'm sorry, but that's just a bit too weird for me.

Shannon Nutt

That's because it's not a real joke. Gibson and Russo decided to come up with some non-sensical phrase just to see if anyone in the theater would laugh...even though it makes no sense. Know what? A lot of people laughed when I saw the movie...goes to show how many people just "turn off their brains" in the theater.

Groucho

An experiment that Gibson would later repeat as a full-length feature: The Passion of the Christ.

Michael T Hudson

That makes sense. Where did you hear that?