What movie puts the protagonist through the absolute ringer for it to all pay off in the end?
Vanilla Sky! It’s a mind bending movie about a lucky man’s life that many of us could only dream of. That life quickly turns into a waking nightmare when the man’s jealous lover takes her own life with him inside the moving car. His nightmare of a life then melds into an actual dream. That dream then slowly transforms into a nightmare. All the while the main character doesn’t know what is real and what isn’t.
This all leads to an absolutely spectacular cathartic release for the main character when he finally understands what’s happened to him in the last 10 minutes of the film.
Did I mention it was mind bending? One of my favorite movies by far.
I’ve watched that movie atleast 4 times and even knowing how it ends I’ve bawled like a baby all 4 times
Wow - I’ve never heard this take on Vanilla Sky. My only recollection of it was how bored we all were when we first tried to watch it. Didn’t it get panned by the critics?
It’s very hard for me to recommend this movie because most people do not have the patience for the slow burn! A few of my friends fell asleep while watching it with me. The kind of person who will enjoy this movie is what Vanilla Sky itself refers to as a “pleasure delayer”. Someone who delays gratification until the absolute breaking point… which, ironically, is precisely what is necessary to fully experience the orgasmic conclusion to the film.
This movie just resonates with my soul, I don’t know how else to describe it!
It hits so many chords which have been interesting to me throughout my life: consciousness, lucid dreaming, sci-fi, romance and the lack of it (“you will never know the exquisite pain of the guy who goes home alone”), etc.
The soundtrack is also out of this world. Whenever a song plays during the movie the underlying visuals are in such perfect harmony that it starts to feel a bit like a music video.
i watched the original Spanish (Spain) version, that was fucking incredible. I would totally check that out too as Penelope Cruz is also in that one. It is called Abre Los Ojos
Nimona
deleted by creator
A Clockwork Orange
The interview.
Fight Club
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Frodo in LOTR
Maid
You guys seen Young Adult? Goddamn.
No joke. “Sing” It’s this silly kids cover song movie, but it ends up having a wonderful consistent optimism and a brilliant payoff. It’s not an improbable massive “pulled it off” win, it’s surviving through failure and loving the act of making art so much that you keep doing it anyway. It’s joyful and a masterclass in writing a classic story arc without torturing your characters and your audience to get there.
Sing’s decision to cast all of its black VAs as a crime family of gorillas is disgusting, though.
Ah. Wow. Didn’t catch that previously. Agreed
Training Day, a movie about a rookie cop who gets paired with a corrupt senior on his first day who manipulates him from the beginning. ''I should have been a fireman"
Gattaca. I am not sure if you can call it an absolute ringer, but it does feel all the hard work pays off in the end.
Agreed on Training Day.
I totally forgot about Gattaca, I watched that in school in like 6th grade. Fantastic movie
''You know what i learned today? I’m not like you."
You can have an Ethan Hawke catharsis marathon.
Wristcutters
The main characters go to a hell/purgatory specifically for people who’ve committed suicide, where no one can smile. It’s not a very action-y movie, but it’s one of my favorites. Also, it has Shannyn Sossamon from A Knight’s Tale, so that’s a plus
Green Room
Shawshank Redemption.
In my opinion, V for Vendetta. What Evie Hammond was put through was inexcusable, but I feel like it was worth it in the end.
Not sure if worth it, but it was definitely a cathartic movie.
That’s the beauty of it I think. We’re left with this ambiguous feeling about whether the end actually justified the means.
Maybe they did, but surely there was a better way, right? Or was there really not? We can’t know.
Uncut Gems
Except that movie had no catharsis only tension.
Kung Fu Panda 2. A funny panda movie about dealing with buried trauma.
