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So, Prisoners was pretty great and to my surprise, director Denis Villeneuve has another film up his sleeve which is currently available through DirectTV. Here's a quick synopsis from IMDB: "A man seeks out his exact look-alike after spotting him in a movie." Another Mystery/thriller? I'm sold! I'm hoping to watch it tonight after work but I essentially made this thread to raise awareness as this film seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Here's a trailer. It looks fantastic! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJuaAWrgoUY
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Feb 20, 2014 19:25
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Woah, I'm sold.
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Feb 23, 2014 03:50
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Is this getting a theatrical release? Is there any way to see it without being a DirecTV subscriber?
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Feb 23, 2014 03:53
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I had no idea this was hitting VOD (or some form of it, at least) before theaters  Yeah, I saw that trailer a while back and it looked great. Prisoners was excellent so it didn't take much to sell me on this one.
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Feb 23, 2014 07:38
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I saw this at TIFF this past September and can safely can it's worth a watch - and probably more than once. It's a lot more stripped down and certainly more thought-provoking than Prisoners. They're both great in their own way. I had someone in the lobby run up to us and go "did you just see that Enemy movie?? THAT WAS THE BIGGEST PIECE OF CRAP I EVER SAW!!" - which I think is a good sign! Villeneuve was there for an introduction and said this was a very personal and intimate project for him; that he felt naked in front of us by screening this film (which got the ladies cheering). He had a 90 minute 'Conversation' with Jake this past January about the film and I wish I could've gone.
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Feb 24, 2014 15:34
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I just saw this movie- it was great and stretched out a deep feeling of dread throughout. It started off feeling very "Hitchcock", but spiraled into something bizarre. What the hell was with that final scene? Edit:And did Adam's mother refer to him as Anthony at one point? At the beginning she is heard leaving a message that mentions his apartment not being very nice, which is Adam's, but at their lunch she tries to feed him blueberries (Anthony) and tells him to drop his acting career (Anthony). Also, doesn't Adam find the same picture he owns in Anthony's apartment (only his is torn)? Professor Shark fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 20:13
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I had a chance to see it back in March but passed because of work stuff. My buddy said it reminded him of De Palma's Sisters and Zulawski's Possession so I'm really hoping I can catch a screening soon in LA. edit: that second movie comparison might give something away Gorman Thomas fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 21:02
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I just read this comment: SPOILERS!!!! So there is two of them but it’s the same person. Its the Male Id vs. Ego. This has been explored in film before but this film makes it fresh. The film begins with the men sitting in a room watching women pleasure themselves and stand naked in front of them. We don’t even see their faces. Then a spider emerges and the lady steps on it. What do spiders represent? They are feminine power. Men go to this room (or rather their own subconscious place) to squash femininity and become primal again. So it begins with him cheating on his wife with another girl (Laurent) and he wants to go back to his wife, but he must face himself. His animalistic and primal side. It’s the classic Male ID vs. Ego. Note the white shirt of the more reserved Jake and black shirt of his animalistic side. The whole film then shows the battle and it’s fun to pick apart what’s real and what’s in his head. Most of it is simply the inner battle being shown on screen. The whole thing is his point of view so you can’t see the reality of it. We see a glimpse of it from the wife’s point of view. She is seeing her husband as two different people. He has cheated on her before. There’s a lot of clues throughout. It climaxes with him with his wife and when he can’t be intimate with her his dark side is able to have sex with the other girl. Once he breaks down and becomes intimate then his dark side is killed. But then he puts a black jacket over his white shirt. He has assimilated with his dark side again. He looks at the key (unlocks his inner desires) and says he’s going out for the night (to cheat again and feed his desire). He walks around the corner and she stands as the huge spider (a scared spider). Then it cuts too his face and it suggests that she knows what he’s going to do, and this cycle will repeat again. Ultimately the film is about man’s nature and how contemporary domesticated life battles with males inner desires. I knew that there was a play between white shirts/ black leather jackets going on, I just didn't think it may be anymore significant than Adam = passive, Anthony = aggressive. It makes sense to me though.
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Apr 23, 2014 00:37
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Finally got to see this tonight. Very well done and I was left guessing throughout. I think I understood the movie but I'm definitely not 100% on that. Honestly, I'd probably have to rewatch it at least once or twice more to get a real good handle on it. But it was certainly a neat take on the identity swap genre and I'd absolutely recommend it to fans of movies like that and fans of Villeneuve's style, which is pouring out of every second of this. Just don't expect it to be anywhere near as straightforward as Prisoners.
Rageaholic fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 04:56
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For what it's worth, apparently Jack Gyllenhal thought that he was playing two different aspects of one character who was attempting to save his marriage. I guess that things like the confusing lines from his mother make sense if Adam/Anthony is a bored professor (his "good" job) dabbling in acting, but Helen going to campus and seeing him there, obviously in shock, is still there. Maybe her reaction is due to the lack of his reaction? When she phones Anthony, Adam had already walked into the building, which creates (purposeful) ambiguity... Like a lot of critics, I can say I really liked this movie, but I'm still not 100% on what happened. I think I would have liked to have seen the book ending, which is ripped straight out of the Twilight Zone playbook, where Adam gets a call from a person claiming to have been searching for him, you and I look exactly alike, we should meet... Professor Shark fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 10:29
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I didn't know there was a thread for this movie. Anyway, here's what I said in the general chat: quote:Honestly, I think the movie lays it on a little thick by directly quoting Hegel and Marx right at the beginning.
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Apr 23, 2014 16:13
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uh, here I was going this sounds a lot like a Saramago novel, and it's an adaptation of the same; spider imagery aside
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Apr 23, 2014 23:25
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This movie is what it feels like to have a xanax wipeout. Jesus Christ.
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Apr 24, 2014 04:51
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Jesus christ that ending man, this movie is worth it for that shot alone. You guys should watch this!
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May 3, 2014 06:03
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I saw this not too long ago and really loved it. Everything was so hypnotic and stylish. I especially loved the score because it was just so perfectly euro-thriller. I haven't read any of Saramago's works but The Double has skyrocketed to the top of my must-read list.
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May 12, 2014 23:43
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Nearly a month after seeing this, I'm still thinking about it. Incredible, and I didn't expect any of what happened.
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May 13, 2014 02:27
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I watched The Double last night, which is a very similar movie based on a Dostoyevsky novel starring Jesse Eisenberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYj3dMhjBB8 It was funny but incredibly dark, and stylistically it's like if Wes Anderson went for bleak instead of vibrant. I don't think I'd watch it again any time soon just because it was so heavy, but it was well worth watching.
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May 23, 2014 20:48
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I saw the trailer for this in front of the double! This looked too good of movie to be delegated the edges of art houses and VOD...
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May 24, 2014 22:03
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This movie is incredible. Engaging, thought provoking, promotes dicussion...just  I was intially have trouble parsing the meaning but this video explains everything adequaltey I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9AWkqRwd1I%5C Major spoilers for those who bother to watch it Yaws fucked around with this message at 01:45 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 01:14
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Guessed the angle less than a minute in.
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May 25, 2014 01:41
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Guessed the angle less than a minute in. Is this a critique or were you hoping for some sort of trophy or plaque?
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May 26, 2014 21:46
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Partly a critique, because it's the most obvious interpretation of the movie. Where he goes with it is much more interesting, but I just don't see that it's that important that they literally be the same person. They clearly are the same person, but the uncanniness (if that's a word) is somewhat spoiled when you try to figure the logistics of how they're in two places at once or whatever. Not the point.
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May 27, 2014 15:32
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If you watch the video review Yaws posted, it's suggested that they aren't in fact in two places at once and that Adam/Anthony is just imagining what is happening to the other during parts of the film, such as when Adam is in bed with "Anthony's" wife and Anthony gets into an accident with his (their?) mistress.
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May 27, 2014 20:33
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Professor Shark posted:If you watch the video review Yaws posted, it's suggested that they aren't in fact in two places at once and that Adam/Anthony is just imagining what is happening to the other during parts of the film, such as when Adam is in bed with "Anthony's" wife and Anthony gets into an accident with his (their?) mistress. Right, but I think that's fussery. He does make a lot of interesting points at any rate.
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May 27, 2014 21:57
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regularizer posted:I watched The Double last night, which is a very similar movie based on a Dostoyevsky novel starring Jesse Eisenberg:
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May 29, 2014 06:52
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Really? You saw no humor in The Double at all? If you didn't find it funny, that's one thing.
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May 29, 2014 14:19
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I hate cringe humour like American Pie so try and avoid such movies, I guess The Double kind of does fall into that category though. I just took it as being played straight, one dude is super awkward and the other really popular. Oh, I forgot about the whole(The Double spoilers) forgetting his name thing, guess that was humour. Ok fine, spoilers mostly gone. Woden fucked around with this message at 15:38 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 15:19
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Why are there suddenly a bunch of spoilers right after y'all convinced me to watch it? I hate you.
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May 29, 2014 15:21
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Yeah, I was so psyched to watch this from reading the OP and accompanying posts. Then scrolled down a bit further and got immediate spoilers. Like, yeah, yeah, it's not the destination but the journey or whatever, but it would have been awesome to not have known that info.
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May 29, 2014 17:36
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Constellation I posted:Yeah, I was so psyched to watch this from reading the OP and accompanying posts. Then scrolled down a bit further and got immediate spoilers. Like, yeah, yeah, it's not the destination but the journey or whatever, but it would have been awesome to not have known that info. Man, I don't think you could "spoil" this movie. Even if someone talked you through scene by scene, you're not gonna have appropriate expectations.
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May 29, 2014 18:19
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My bad, fellows.
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May 29, 2014 18:26
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Read only the OP a few weeks ago and finally got around to watching this movie, liked a lot - and what no one mentioned is that it was filmed in Toronto! Adam's apartment building is a few blocks from where I live, and some of it was shot at U of T Scarborough campus, giving the strange movie a more real feel. I don't know about those other similar movies but the story reminded me quite a bit of Edgar Allen Poe's William Wilson.
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Jun 1, 2014 02:22
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I totally did, in General Chat. I said it made the Cleanest City In North America look like Lynch doing the Kids In The Hall intro.
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Jun 1, 2014 03:11
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I read this thread and either I am shockingly bad at figuring out movies or people are shockingly bad at explaining movies. I've read some suggestions after I came to my conclusion and they all really sound like giant leaps of logic. I think that is what happening is that the whole world is taken over by spiders and they never talk about it they are just like there are giant loving spiders and aliens everywhere not much we can do about it live life anyway. The whole purpose of the killing the spider was maybe that was one of the offspring and rich people go and watch them get killed kind of like "our little victory in this hideous war". These spiders have been assimilating the human race and you don't know who is who. The part where she is crying going "I think you know" they realize that people showing up with doubles is because the spiders got to them or something. I was really high when I watched it and I'm sticking to my plan.
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Jun 3, 2014 05:50
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Meowbot posted:I was really high when I watched it. I think that was a good idea.
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Jun 3, 2014 10:15
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Oh cool, an Enemy thread! Just saw this yesterday after a string of generally recommended movies left me disappointed, and just as I thought I was turning into (even more of) a cynical rear end in a top hat, this one finally delivered! Besides the thematic elements, what I think was most impressive for me was the level of dread in the atmosphere it managed to maintain throughout thanks to its cinematography and sound design. The last film that managed to do that was probably The Machinist, with which it also shares some of the hosed-up mind games. I'm not sure if the "twist" is even much of a twist, but I'm going to spoiler my interpretation anyway: They're one guy, of course. He goes to see the striptease at the beginning and one of the spiders escapes and bites him. The rest of the film is him trying to process and rationalize his double-life cheating behavior while in a venom-induced fever. What makes this necessary instead of a more straightforward interpretation is that there were several elements that didn't quite fit in - I think his mother thought his apartment was a mess (he didn't have her over at his, did he?) and he asks his wife how long she's pregnant, which is quite weird too. I suppose this could be explained away by an unreliable narrator but I prefer my SPIDARS theory One of the fascinating things about movies like this, in contrast with the typical summer stuff like X-Men for example, is that as I watch them, I'm imagining that I could totally do it - you only need a couple of people to actually act, no crazy cgi of practical effects, simple locations. If it were that simple 
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Jun 9, 2014 18:39
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I like the metaphorical interpretations I'm reading in here, because the ending was shocking and sudden as I watched. Really dug the atmosphere, tension, and sense of dread throughout this movie too. I was immediately compelled to hop online and read what others thought because it was so different and interesting.
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Jun 18, 2014 06:24
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I saw this last month and didn't see the thread, but I loved it. The tone and cinematography are great, and Jake Gyllenhaal has a surprising amount of range. He's never stood out to me that much before, but after this I feel like I need to pay more attention to him. I remember hearing people say the ending was a total mindfuck, but almost immediately the wheels were turning in my head. I really like how much it was making me think, and how much I was trying to figure it out along the way. I pretty much go with the same explanation as in that analysis video other than a couple minor disagreements, like he seems to say the history teacher thing was made up, or the actor thing was made up, but I don't see why he couldn't be a history teacher AND a failed actor, unless I misunderstood his explanation. I need to see the film again sometime with that interpretation in mind.
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Jun 18, 2014 11:26
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mobby_6kl posted:One of the fascinating things about movies like this, in contrast with the typical summer stuff like X-Men for example, is that as I watch them, I'm imagining that I could totally do it - you only need a couple of people to actually act, no crazy cgi of practical effects, simple locations. If it were that simple I know what you mean, but this film had a big budget (compared to the value of my house). I'm sure you've seen it, but Primer is a much better example of making a film with basically no money. This felt like one of those movies with a neat premise, but ultimate the writing couldn't quite live up to expectations.
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Jun 18, 2014 17:09
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Actually the movie tells you the key to understanding the ending (and everything else) both in the opening quote and Adam's lectures. The movie itself is a parable about living under a totalitarian regime, told through a re-imagining of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with giant spiders. Adam is human, but Anthony himself is a spider. Throughout the movie you can easily identify who's who thanks to Anthony's wedding ring (eg the opening scene in the club with the girls giving a spider show). The poster itself gives it away:  This is Anthony wearing his leather jacket, and well that spider is what he really is. Even when Anthony presumably dies in a car crash, his window is fractured in the form of a spiderweb. The world is being taken over by giant spiders. Apparently this is something some people are aware of but can't do anything about and don't discuss either, something very similar to life under totalitarian regime. The whole structure of the movie reflects the first lecture he gave to the class (twice), as well as his discussion of Hegel. Every point he brings up are paralleled in the movie. There are allusions to modern bread and circuses (movies/entertainment and the spider shows), how totalitarian regimes destroy individual expression to exert its power (and with an exact doppelganger he stops being an individual), etc... Hegel's quote about everything happening twice is also an obvious motif that affects almost every scene or situation. The movie made it very clear from its first frame that the keys to understanding the movie are right there amidst the chaos, and that order is a parable on living under a Totalitarian regime. A totalitarian regime of giant spiders who throw underground sex shows. There are spider web-like shots throughout all over different the exterior scenes, far more than just Anthony's death scene. There are also graffiti of people in uniform giving roman salutes and other visual reminders of past and current totalitarian regimes. While Adam represents those civilians in totalitarian regimes who are not really aware of what is happening around them is not the norm, another type of people living under totalitarianism are explored: Collaborators, or at least those friendly to the regime. This is who the building manager and the others present at the sex shows represent. It's given away in the the whole the discussion with Adam whom he believes to be Anthony and how they shouldn't be talking about such things. Adam's fiancee represents the yet another archetype, those who understand what is going on but don't speak about. Since she's aware of what is happening, she accused Anthony to be one of those spiders, which in turn lead to him screaming 'You don't think that I'm a man?' right before the car crash. And, well, what happens in the final shot is Adam finally fully realizes too late what is happening, and that he's hosed. Twee as Fuck fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 00:22
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