David O. Russell's 2004 movie I Heart Huckabees explores the idea that there's a hidden order to life in this crazy, topsy-turvy world. On the other end of the spectrum, it covers existentialism, too. The film revolves around Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman)—an environmental nerd bubbling with rage and Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin)—strikingly odd shrinks who call themselves “existential detectives.” While some may call it a screwball comedy with an all-star cast (which also includes Jude Law, Naomi Watts, and Mark Wahlberg), Manhola Dargis of The New York Times said I Heart Huckabees is “loud, messy, aggressively in your face and generally played for the back row in the theater. The film doesn’t offer up solutions, tender any comfort or rejoice in the triumph of the human spirit.” Isn’t the idea of existentialism alone enough for viewers to take in?
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Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey doing a film together seemed to lend itself more toward voicing an animated feature than co-starring in an indie movie about targeted memory erasure in 2004's hit movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And watching the film, a favorite among twenty-somethings, feels like a fictional, non-surgical brain warp. Even with leading lady Winslet's extreme hair color changes (from deep blue to bright orange/pink) as a visual aide to help distinguish the time-scattered scenes, it still feels like the Rubiks cube of films, some people get it, others never will. Ask screenwriter Charlie Kaufman why he made the film and his oblique answer explains everything: "I was trying to figure out what a memory feels like." Perhaps that makes sense actually after seeing Kaufman's previous film, 2002's Adaptation.
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Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz made about as much sense as a couple as the plot of their 2001 psychological thriller Vanilla Sky did. Even the reviews of the film were indecipherable, such as this one in The New York Times: "As it leaves behind the real world and begins exploring life as a waking dream… Vanilla Sky loosens its emotional grip and becomes a disorganized and abstract if still-intriguing meditation on parallel themes." As it turns out, the movie was baffling for good reason, even the director Cameron Crowe admits it wasn't clear what happened. During the commentary on the DVD, Crowe says that there are four possible interpretations; two of which touch on the "it was all a dream approach". Roger Ebert was satisfied, in a puzzling way, with the film's ending, which he said, explains the mechanism of our confusion, rather than telling us for sure what actually happened. Still, we'd rather watch Cruise and Crowe's previous collaboration Jerry Maguire--at least we know who is completing each other there.
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Keanu Reeve's greatest film presented viewers with a fascinatingly complex notion of reality; that we essentially live our lives in a simulated dream world, that the real world is beyond our reach, and that in that real world, humans are used as an energy source for our machine overlords. And in all of these worlds, there are plenty of leather trench coats and slo-mo backwards leaning. The sci-fi/martial arts thriller earned raves for its mind-bending special effects and its plot. Entertainment Weekly crowned it the top sci-fi film of the past 25 years. Time Out New York wrote "the frequent switches between the different 'realities' are entertainingly ingenious." Perhaps, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) says it best in the film: "No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." Or is it because no one really knows?
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Being John Malkovich, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze, is a mind warp: Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), a lowly file clerk, discovers in his office a temporal-spatial portal—or something to that effect—that sucks him straight into John Malkovich’s scrambled brain. For brief interludes, Schwartz then takes haunting, surreal glimpses through the actor’s eyes, before falling from the sky alongside the New Jersey Turnpike (and no, that's not synonymous for hell… at least, we don't think so). This might sound like an oddball, befuddling movie, which, in part, it is, but the film's more than that, too. The New York Times Janet Maslin calls it “endearingly nutty; and intriguingly prophetic. And Roger Ebert calls it a stream of dazzling inventions, twists, and wicked paradoxes; Both are right on point. Still, others are not fans of Kaufman's filmmaking; which has infiltrated our list—deeming his movies nothing more than artistic masturbation.
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Like any movie from director Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs centers around violent, bad guys with dirty mouths, who are also fond of skinny ties. In the 1992 heist flick, a group of professionals, including Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, and Tim Roth, all of whom are named Mr. plus a color, are hired to steal a diamond shipment in Los Angeles by underworld honcho (Lawrence Tierney). While the movie certainly gives Tarantino’s diehard fans exactly what they’d expect (blood, guts, and plenty of “f---“’s), the end does leave plenty to the imagination. Many have made conjectures about what exactly happens to Mr. Pink (Buscemi) at the film’s dénouement and we won’t spoil it for you—largely, because we wouldn’t know how to anyway.
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