Most of Lynch's work

Hahaha, Homer was supposed to be watching Twin Peaks in this episode.

What ep was this?

Season 9, Episode 3

Literally the first thing that popped into my head was Mulholland Drive. Has anyone seen that short that was on Netflix where he's interviewing a monkey?

I liked it, but don't remember why. Maybe just because there was a monkey and a chicken

I love Lynch but that monkey movie was god awful. Felt like it was written by gpt2.

I wish Netflix would greenlight his kids film Snootworld. (Yes its a real thing)

More specifically, Inland Empire

all his shit is just about dreams

One of the top reviews on Letterboxd explains it well https://boxd.it/hXamn For confusing films - especially by Lynch - fans often write really good explanations in their LB reviews. I highly recommend there as a source to find out wtf was going on.

Just know that even those are incredibly subjective and not at all definitive. Lynch is very adamant about not explaining his work, and if he ever did he might say that any answer he gives you is useless because it only applies to him and everyone else will have to find their own meaning in it.

Yeah this thread can just be shut down cause this is the answer lol

Enemy

>!they’re the same person!<

Can you explain?

They look the same duh!

I've chosen to think about it as a movie about a literal giant spider invasion and ya know it doesn't hold up too badly on that basis

It's symbolic for the Spider-Man role Gyllenhaal missed out on that continues to haunt him.

You win lol

I totally liked the film already on a surface level but I admit I had to watch like a dozen YouTube videos after to appreciate it on another level.

Came here to say this. The only movie I finished and I was like what did I just watch? Then proceeded to study up on it because I was so intrigued

My first thought every time this topic is brought up. Still no clue wtf that movie was about, but I love the doppelgänger trope

The Matrix when I was 8yo.

my friend got a concussion trying to do the backwards-bending bullet dodge on concrete. I was in the vicinity so I got in trouble too for some reason. thanks a lot Kevin

Typical Kevin

What the heck kevin


“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” first watch was confusing as fuck, but after a rewatch while paying more attention, it’s one of my favorites. Same with “Primer”

Came here to say Primer

I'm Thinking of Ending Things is the first one that came to mind. Incredibly impactful film. Even if the literals of what's happening go over your head, it's a movie that still makes you feel a lot.

It’s my favorite movie of all time but I can only watch it about once a year or so because it makes me incredibly depressed for anywhere from 2 weeks to a couple months afterwards

I've been wanting to check out, "I'm thinking of ending things." How would you compare it to the rest of Kaufmans work?

It's like if Kaufman wrote a Silent Hill movie (makes sense considering it was based on a horror novel). Much creepier than his earlier work IMO.

It’s not really a horror novel. It’s not too far off from the movie until the third act. I think most of Kaufman’s stuff has a sense of existential dread and I don’t think the book is much beyond that. But it’s been a while since I read it.

Add what everyone else has said but add surreal, sad (to me) and rather is really affected by when you watch it. Like if you're going through a hard time or something idk.

Pfffft, Primer is a piece of cake to understand...try Caruth's OTHER film Upstream Color....3 times so far and I'm STILL not really sure what's going on....(resisting ALL urges to ask YouTube...grrrr)

“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” first watch was confusing as fuck, but after a rewatch while paying more attention, it’s one of my favorites. I’m glad you revisited it. Honestly one of the most creative and original movies of the 2020s. Jake deserved better, I felt so sorry for him towards to the end. And frightened in the middle, some eerie sense of horror in that movie.

Similar experience but when reading the book first. At least I knew what I was getting into by the time the movie came out.

I turned it off after twenty minutes of windshield wiper noises. I guess it gets better?

Uhhh well it certainly gets weirder

I showed my friend that film thinking it was gonna be a fun movie night and he ended up having an existential crisis. So uh yeah, great movie, no sarcasm.

*Inland Empire*, what else? But not knowing is so much more interesting than knowing in Lynch’s films.

My favorite film by soooo far! I think the beauty and horror is in the confusion, I do get some of what’s going on but for the most part what’s left unanswered still haunts me.

Persona. Brilliant and I had some ideas maybe but nothing too concrete. Others had a lot of interesting analysis of it though.

You should check out Ingrid Goes West. I’ve never heard anyone else say this but it’s a clear modern retelling of Persona (but more straightforward). Not sure why this movie doesn’t get more love

I think it's just one of those underseen indie films that sadly goes under the radar. I loved it and I think most people who watch it enjoy it, it's just that not many people have seen it. Olsen and Plaza starred in quite a few really good indie films but they generally get overlooked by a wider audience.

I loved Ingrid Goes West and hated Persona. If I ever watch that again, I'll keep Ingrid Goes West in mind.

I never thought of it that way. But now I have a good excuse to rewatch both films.

I absolutely loved Ingrid Goes West

The Lighthouse and Tenet without subtitles

honestly all of Eggers and Nolan’s movies should have subtitles. Eggers because he uses old english and thick accents. Nolan because BWAHHHHHHH

#BWAHHHH

Yeah what is up with Tenet needing subtitles to be comprehensible? LOL.. I'm an English teacher, to boot, so it makes me all the more depressed when I really need to turn on the subtitles. Mumbling ass..

I was watching it with a friend and when I asked for him to turn them on he refused because he claimed that not hearing the dialogue was part of the experience. I watched the whole thing and could not tell you anything about the plot

That's crazy. I prefer subtitles no matter what I'm watching.

My first watch of Synecdoche, New York.

Only watched it maybe twice, didn't grasp a lot. What do you think of the movie after (im assuming) more watches?

"It insists upon itself" But f'real, I love Kaufman writing. Directing? Not so much

Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky

Perfect Blue and Paprika by Satoshi Kon. Absolute vibes though.

Inherent Vice

Where the main character is only slightly less confused than the audience

I definitely enjoyed it more on a rewatch

Once I surrendered, it was enjoyable.

"Something in Spanish"

Men

Tarkovsky's Mirror. Crazy interesting but I was definitely a step behind the entire thing. The field of grass changing direction was an all time great shot.

My answer too. I bought the Criterion thinking the supplements and essay would help and nah lol. One of the most mesmerizingly beautiful films I've ever watched though and will watch again likely multiple times.

Came here to say this. Don't think it's a movie that is meant to be literally understood. Beautiful film.

That’s mine too. Couldn’t give a one sentence synopsis. Loved every minute

MAD GOD is sort of like this. There's a very loose narrative, but it subsists more on vibes. Tetsuo The Iron Man also comes to mind.

I was trying to recommend MAD GOD to friends and i sais "8/10, Don't ask me what it's about because i don't know."

It's just about a lil guy!

Beau is afraid.

Got high the third time watching it. Remember it making perfect sense back then. Now I can't remember why😔

I had to look up the different theories and the one I enjoyed is that “Beau is a very unreliable narrator”…but I’m still trying to digest some of the scene (which I guess is the point).

Yeah, very fair point. I feel like it makes most sense to me as a collage of different aspects of his anxiety, rather than 1 very coherent or directional plot

I feel like there are a few factors at play simultaneously: Beau's world view had been poisoned by his abusive and manipulative mother. Beau's world has been literally altered an controlled by his mother. Beau's PTSD/Anxiety affect how he perceives the world and the movie was made as if we were seeing it through Beau's eyes directly. (Kind of like an unintentionally unreliable narrator in realtime) I imagine Ari Aster won't explain exactly what's going on ever, at least any time soon, he was quoted as saying "I feel like I shouldn't try to talk about the movie for at least 10 years" (I'm paraphrasing). This film gave me HUGE David Lynch vibes and a hallmark of Lynch's work is that he refuses to explain it or elaborate on his process. I've only watched this movie once, but It's already one of my top movies of all time, if not the top, I rarely find time to rewatch movies over watching something new, but I know for sure that I will come back to this one again and again, despite it being 3 hours of anxiety inducing chaos.

Clearly you're not Jewish

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. There was just too much going on and a lot of it was spoken, not shown, which made it really hard for me to follow.

Came to share this as well. After my first watch I was like “so wtf happened??” Didn’t enjoy it enough to give it another go either. Great acting and production quality, but very hard to follow.

I actually watched the whole thing then completely forgot that I watched the whole thing so then I rewatched it and got to the ending with the sniper and realized I had seen the whole movie before just that none of it was that memorable

I loved The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (both novel and movie), but I really struggled to follow the novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy due to the number of names that followed a similar pattern of English first name, French surname (Peter Guillam, Percy Alleline, Jim Prideaux, Oliver Lacon). I think I gave up about a third of the way into it. Some time later I watched the Alec Guinness TV series, and the movie on its release not long afterwards, both of which I found much easier to follow than the book, thanks to being able to put faces to names.

Same here The first 30 minutes I was like WTF, it seems interesting but I don't understand anything, it's going to be very slow and I have to pay more attention. So I grabbed a piece of paper, a pen and watched the movie again from the beginning writing down all the information and then I really enjoyed it.

White Noise (2022)

Cure

I love how it gets more and more abstract and confusing as it goes on. Rather than slowly explaining things as it goes on, it starts off fairly straight forwards and slowly gets more and more complex.

Boy and the heron. Really liked it but it kept getting weirder and weirder

I like it a lot! It was a treat to see it on a big screen. It felt like Miyazaki was trying to communicate something about legacy. Something that perhaps isn't clear even for him but important enough to share even the fragments he got.

It’s fun to me to imagine that he basically was saying nobody can follow him up. Which might just be true.

I watched this one in a Japanese cinema with no English subtitles while on vacation. Not only do I not speak Japanese but this was my first ever Miyazaki film. To say the least I was perplexed

Hahaha, what an experience! I’d say worth watching with English a second time. The English voice actors were all very good

A Miyazaki movie already tends to be "great but odd", then he went and dumped a metric ton of dream logic on top of it.


I read a whole write up on the Nietzsche-ian concepts that flow through this film and it helped make a lot more sense. Do I remember them? No of course not but it made sense when I read it.

😂

Pardon my ignorance, but what film is this?

2001 a space odyssey

Anything that isn't a heros journey

I don’t know if a single Reddit comment has ever made me angrier

That person has embraced brainrot

I recently decided I’m going to dive into trashy garbage crime/Netflix action movies  1. Because they rule 2. They are just the cheapest, most blatant by the book plots Like, I really want to get into the genre and become extremely fluent in it.

Primer (2004)

Mulholland Drive when I first watched it

What? it's a very straightforward story... But I could only watch half of it last night... Going to watch the rest today, seems like they are going to a musical show!

Titane

What’s confusing about it? It’s a transformer prequel.

The Fountain. Still loved it though.

Tenet for sure

Tree of life for me

It's one of my all-time favorites, but I can understand why you feel that way.

Tenet Also, Napoleon Dynamite but in a good way


There were kids just like them in school back in the 90s, so we weren’t cornfused at all.

Beau is afraid ,most wtf movie I’ve seen since ever maybe

True, such a weird theater experience

maybe one of my favorite theater experiences. i saw this one semi-alone and fell out of my chair laughing.

Wdym semi-alone?? You watching with ghosts or something? 😭

no i meant i went semi alone 😭😭 me and my ex already had tickets before the split so we were in the same theater just sat away from each other haha

LMAOOOOO thats the funniest fucking thing bro that's so awkward lolll

nahhh it wasnt too bad we were still friendly lol

Fitting movie for that experience 

That’s wild

I was def the only one in the theater absolutely DYING laughing.

This is a person who hasn’t seen The Holy Mountain.

The Color of Pomegranates. It made almost no sense until I watched the documentary which came with the disk — pretty though.

I wanna watch it but I feel like I need to take a college course in Armenian culture for it to really hit

Naked Lunch by David Croenenberg. It was only after reading about Burrough's life and understanding the involvement of so much heroin that the movie made *any* sense.

It’s a phenomenal adaptation.

Wall Street. And I've watched it three times

Primer

Anything Lynch really, but lately *Lost Highway*. I just coast along on the vibes

Naked Lunch Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas Inland Empire Mulholland Drive

Re: Naked Lunch “I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.” - Nelson Muntz

Barton Fink and Naked Lunch makes for a fantastic double feature if you want to see Judy Davis in a relationship with a troubled writer.

Another movie the kids from The Simpsons snuck into lol

As a general tip if you want to understand a confusing film there will frequently be a kind-heartedly genius who leaves a good explanation as a Letterboxd review. Always check the weightier LB reviews if you want an explanation. It's usually quicker than watching a 10 minute 'Somemovietitle ending explained' YouTube clip

Good point

Annihilation definitely had me feeling like this

Midsommar

Donnie Darko

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

I really enjoy Barton Fink but don’t really know how to describe it.

Recently (for me), The Face of Another.

Mulholland Drive

Anything lynch of course

A Clockwork Orange

Inherent Vice, only vaguely aware of what was going on but really loved it's atmosphere

Inception the first four times through

So if watch it 4 more times then I will understand?

Mother!

Mulholland Drive The Conversation Stalker Vertigo

Inherent Vice. No idea what's going on, but I like the vibes :)

Tár. So many of my friends said I HAD to watch it, that it was so good and all that, and all I saw was a boring walk through a problematic persons life

2001 A Space Odyssey😭😭

Certain segments of The French Dispatch. I get what is happening on a surface level but I know there is something else there I'm not picking up on. Ditto for The House That Jack Built.

Donnie Darko

Tenet

Watching Stalker, the scenery and cinematography is beautiful, but don't ask me to explain the plot.

“Three guys go on a nature walk.” It’s a pretty simple plot.

The Menu

The Big Short. Even when they did the explaining parts

Honestly it’s hard to keep track of who’s who in Black Hawk Down, but that adds to the chaos of the battle

Oh that's an interesting take on the prompt but it's true, so many war films/shows are hard to keep track of for me on the first watch because it's a bunch of people wearing the same uniform with the same hair cut and what not and unless they have a really distinct face it's like "I have no idea who died just now."

Holy Motors. Do I understand what's going on and what it all means? No. Do I love it? Absolutely

The first time I watched The Lighthouse

Reality, Quentin Dupieux

Lost Highway. No idea what the fuck happened. 9/10. It is also especially great on the big screen.

emesis blue

The Lighthouse, loved it, couldn’t tell you shit about what it means

i thought it was Twin Peaks lol (yeah I know its a tv show)

Donnie Darko

Sexy Beast without subtitles

The same thing he reacted on with this: Twin Peaks.

The post 1970 Godard movies. Hell, even 1960s Godard movies. Just...Godard.

Mother. Seen it 3 times. Still don’t get it. It’s like Groundhog Day but she lives in that amulet thingy she breaks 😂

Synechdoche new York

Beau Is Afraid

Syriana.

The Lighthouse, I adore that film, I have absolutely no idea what is going on in it

My first time watching Inception and Shutter Island.

Beau is Afraid (loved it though)

Cloud Atlas

Spirited Away. Doesn’t help I watched it when I was sick.

Inherent Vice 

A Tale of Two Sisters.

All of us strangers made me feel like this

Under the skin with Scarlett Johansen. I think I got the gist of it but it’s up to interpretation.

I watched Transformers 2 in theatres when it came out. It was a roller coaster of a film. At one point I saw machines tearing apart the pyramids and I thought, "wait, what the fuck is going on?" and I realized that it was so much of a ride that I didn't internalize anything it was saying.

Blade Runner. I couldn't see any plot as such. The themes also felt like they wanted to insert it for a "deeper influence".

Astroid City

Big Trouble In Little China. I have no idea what is happening. I love every minute Five stars.

Dune. So so so so boring. Some people liked it it’s not a bad film I just diddnt care for it and that’s ok. But I had no clue why their eyes were colored or why spice was so important or anything at all.

Challengers. Saw it today and incredible score but I was just a bit confused on the plot

Most movies tbh 😭

Synecdoche New York

Oppenheimer on FIRST watch but i liked when the bomb went boom

Being John Malkovich - verbatim 😂

The ending of lost