surprisingly good movies

This past weekend we watched The Five People You Meet in Heaven with Golden's parents. Golden's mom pointed out that I would probably like the movie because it is a little strange and I seem to like those types of movies. I was actually amazed at how right she was. Since I have been thinking about some of the movies I was surprised by how much I liked them, I decided I would take this chance to highlight a few of them.

Just because the movies are in this list, this is no guarantee that they are for everyone. They all emphasized specific things that I look for in a movie, and that list of desirable elements is different for everyone.

Also, all of these are movies that I have seen in the last three years. There are certainly other movies that could have made the list, but these are the movies that have stood out to me as the most unexpectedly enjoyable films that I have seen in this time period.

The Five People you Meet in Heaven
I don't typically go for Hallmark movies. I generally view them as emotional fluff, being fine for others but not designed for me. I like this movie, though not for many emotional reasons, but rather because I like the psychological aspects of the movie. I also appreciate the perspective that the person who doesn't appear to have done much with his life is just being judged by the wrong standard of measurement.

The main character meets with five different people after he dies who have information about his life to help him understand his purpose, what the true cause of the hardship in his life was, and how he can attain a measure of atonement.

One thing to note is that this is not a particularly doctrinally sound movie, but it isn't as off the wall as one might think. For what the purpose of the movie is, the worldview that it espouses did not bother me too much.

Update (4/25/2015): The doctrinal stuff does bother me more now because I do fear that people will take this specific of redemption too literally.  It was still a more interesting movie than I anticipated going in, though.

Cypher
I can see how people who are not interested in twists in movies or psychological science fiction would not enjoy this movie. This flick is an absolute must see for anyone who likes either of these types of movie, though.

The movie starts with the main character applying for a position in industrial espionage. Other than to escape boredom, it is not clear why the man would risk so much for this kind of job. As the movie progresses he gets himself entangled further and further into the world of powerful corporations and their focus to destroy each other and anyone else who stands in their way. Why would he bother? I was surprised to find the answer, though I was able to predict the final twist a good five minutes before it happened.

The Lost Room
This was actually a miniseries that originally aired on the SciFi channel. Some of the movies that show on that channel are certainly duds, but this one is different. Rather than playing out like a typical science fiction movie, it is actually structured a bit more like a detective story.

Through events beyond his control, a police officer comes across a key that allows him to go through any door into an old hotel room that seems to exist outside of reality. He is then able to leave the room and exit through any other door that he has ever seen in the world. So, he can use the key to move immediately to any other location on earth where he has already been. This seems great until he finds that this is only one of many strange objects with preternatural properties floating around the world and many other people want his key very badly.

If I have any complaints they are that my questions about the hotel room and how the key came to be were not fully explained. In this case I am nitpicking, though.

Equilibrium
This is a relatively dark movie about a dystopian society where emotion is considered evil. The basis of the story is amazingly similar to Fahrenheit 451 with the main distinction that the action and effects in the movie feel more like The Matrix.

The main character is part of an enforcement team who is tasked with bringing in people who refuse to take their government-issued drugs and indulge in art, music, and the like.

Christian Bale plays the lead role in this one. This is a good and bad thing. He has a very stylistic demeanor that makes him very well suited for action movies. This demeanor also makes his characters feel a bit distant, so it is hard to care about them too much. That matters very little, though, when his character is so reminiscent of Neo.

Deterrence
That this movie was made before 9/11, let alone the second gulf war, is simply amazing. The entire movie takes place in a diner where the President is holed up during a blizzard. While he is there, Uday Hussein (Saddam's son) launches an invasion into Kuwait. When the United States threatens Hussein it is revealed that he has not one but twenty-three nuclear warheads trained on major cities throughout the world.

This is an intriguing take on an area of the world that was not nearly as politically charged when the movie was made as it is now. Not only this, at the end of the movie I was left with the feeling that if a scenario played out this same way in real life, there would not really be any good choices to make. It would be an issue of making the least bad choice available. Part of what I took from the movie is how undesirable positions of real authority frequently are.

11:14
This is the crudest of the movies in this list. I almost didn't mention it. That would have been unfair, though, because it is a very well constructed story. The crudities are different than you might expect and I cannot go into too much more detail without spoiling the movie for anyone who intends to watch it.

The movie starts with someone talking on his cell phone in his car with his girlfriend. Immediately after he gets off the phone a body drops from an overpass onto his car. Throughout the movie you find out how intertwined everyone in the story's lives are, and how little sympathy most of the characters deserve.

The movie is compared to Crash a lot, but I think it is a more enjoyable watch than Crash.

Charade
This is probably the most universally appealing movie in the list. It is a little old, but it is written so that you never really know what is going on. If you aren't interested in that, though, and just want a relationship, Charade has that as well. It is just a strained relationship where neither party is completely certain how much it can trust the other party.

I don't know if it is the luck of the draw, but the Cary Grant movies that I have seen have been superior films, almost without fail. I think this is partly because I have seen him in several Hitchcock films, and those are always a cut above the rest.

Diabolique
This is the only movie with subtitles on my list. Golden noted that the movie was one of the scariest she has ever seen, even though it is a French black and white movie from the fifties.

When a long-suffering wife attempts to off her husband, she is shocked when his apparently dead body goes missing. Is he still alive and out for revenge? Will the police find out what happened? Does she have anywhere to turn?

At the conclusion of the movie the audience is informed that they should not spoil the ending for anyone else. In this spirit, I will stop my description of the movie here.

Notorious
This Hitchcock film introduces the two main characters as responsible (a government agent) and irresponsible (the daughter of a recently deceased Nazi spy who is known to have had a wild past). The government agent talks the woman into accepting an undercover role seducing a German Nazi who has fled to South America. The main characters fall for each other, but a relationship is impossible as she becomes wed to the Nazi.

Given that this movie was released immediately following World War II, its portrayal of Nazi characters feels less clichéd than most other portrayals that I have seen. The film also did a good job of keeping me on the edge of my seat. Who said black and white movies aren't as good as the color counterparts?