As I explained – in this much too long post – I have decided to mine the depths of this site’s intellectual movie capital of crazy awesome movies and craft a top 25 movies list. Now, this movies list will be unlike any other movie list you’ve ever seen. Why? Because Quality and Unknowness will be equally weighted. And lucky for you, I built an algorithm to find and surface the crazy mindjobs that no one has heard of so that I can bring them to you in this top twenty five countdown. Our list so far:
- 16. Enemy
- 17. Bad Times at the El Royale
- 18. Stay
- 19. The Endless
- 20. Timecrimes
- 21. In Darkness
- 22. I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House
- 23. Time Lapse
- 24. The One I Love
- 25. The Exam
Can’t wait to see this list grow as we find more and more movies that are below your radar… And here is the total list of every movie published so far.
Number 16 – Enemy
If this were different. If, instead of unknownness, we chose to elevate mindjobbery as our north star, Enemy would vanquish every other name on this list. By a factor. Enemy is a movie so beguiling and confusing as to give even me great pause when starting to talk about it. Thankfully, I’ve already dissected the movie, and finished the heavy lifting necessary to tease it apart. I wouldn’t like to do that again today. No thank you.
Enemy is the rare movie on this list that is gilded with true Hollywood stars (OK, so last week we mentioned another – but minus that! Some of you people are so persnickety when it comes to facts, and all that.) and an even bigger director. Denis Villeneuve, the creator of Arrival, Incendies, Blade Runner 2049, Sicario, directs Jake Gyllenhaal (of Velvet Buzzsaw, and Nightcrawler) twice as he tells the story of two men that look exactly the same.
So the story is about Adam Bell – a History professor in Toronto. He’s mired in routine, stuck in the doldrums of his life. He’s tired of his job, his live-in girlfriend Mary, and the absolute lack of anything new happening. One day, Mary and Adam watch a movie and he spots a man who looks eerily similar to himself. And just like that, he becomes obsessed with finding this other human. And as Adam begins to interject himself into this other person’s life, he becomes entwined with this man’s wife, his career, with everything. And as he begins to realize there are even more similarities than he noticed at first, he starts to question his own sanity, and the sanity of the entire world, now that I think about it.
The basic premise is a good one. An inside out Jekyll and Hyde of sorts. But what makes this even better though is the ending that Denis crafts for us. An ending so baffling as to rewrite the previous 100 minutes from top to bottom. An ending so utterly confusing as to make us wonder how we missed just how messed up this movie was from minute one. It is a glorious movie that defies any sort of attempt at explanation. Even my frail attempts faltered. Do you know what happened? But this movie is so unknown, and so fantastic, it makes sense that it would find its way onto this list. Do join us in discussing it.
Edited by: CY
