demagogue on 25/4/2009 at 19:24
I just watched
Mulholland Drive again recently, too. Definite edge there if you understand what he's implying in each scene (how desparately we lie to ourselves to get through life).
In the Company of Men is a "comedy" (a very, very black one) that has a mindfuck edge, about 2 guys spurned by love getting revenge on a poor girl (feign romance, then humiliate her)... maybe throwing you to the lions a bit, though, since the sadist character really fucks with her vulnerabilities as a deaf person, but then, he is a sadist. When I interned in D.C., I stayed at the Galludet dorms (deaf university), and one guy rented it to watch there and it was one of those surreal moments.
Others in that vein (almost uncomfortable to watch how far human nature can go) -
Once Were Warriors about domestic violence in Maori families; Buñuel's
Cet obscur objet du désir where it's the girl mentally torturing the guy this time.
Some that are way on the hardcore cult end: Jodorowsky's
El Topo, Pasolini's
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (wiki says "It is considered by many to be one of the most disturbing and unpleasant films ever made.").
Way on the tame edge (not mindfucks, more like dreamy, slightly disturbing mindrubs) you have something like the experimental montage (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnbbqiD7C7A&feature=related) Rose Hobart (one of the best images of pure obsession), and maybe things like
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Solaris (the earlier Soviet one), Lars von Trier's
Breaking the Waves ... and (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8J98ZeS-ME) this Mogwai video.
Xenith on 25/4/2009 at 19:34
To tell the truth I've been kind of looking for "mindscrewing" movies myself, so I'm really looking forward to watching some mentioned in this thread.
To try and contribute to the topic: how about Twin Peaks? I haven't seen much of the series, but I have seen the movie (called "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me"). I remember seeing it a long time ago and it really left me with a different feeling than other movies (probably because I was younger... hmm, I'll have to watch it again soon)
quinch on 25/4/2009 at 19:58
Oh my goodness I just remembered The Vanishing (1988).
Twin Peaks is great. It's a mindscrewing TV series with a warm centre.
Nicker on 25/4/2009 at 21:51
I love Terry Gilliam's use of sets and active, theatrical style lighting, for transitions and scene changes. Like in Baron von Munchausen, when the actor playing the sultan walks of a bombed out theatre set and into an actual harem.
Brazil, 12 Monkeys... pretty much all of them use some sort of in camera transition / mind-warp. Pretty much every Gilliam movie is a mega mindscrew. I'm loving it.
The movie Cashback uses a low budget version of this technique too, where the camera follows actors as they walk through the set of their own flashback. It's a also a bit of a mindscrew.
vurt on 25/4/2009 at 23:16
Inland Empire is truly a mind fuck, even for a lynch movie (:cheeky:).
Rug Burn Junky on 26/4/2009 at 00:17
demagogue already beat me to it, but Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom.
I really couldn't do justice to how disturbing this is. It's the only movie that's ever made me need to physically need to avert my eyes for risk of getting violently ill.
Though the Éclair scene in Van Wilder came close.
Angel Dust on 26/4/2009 at 01:15
Quote Posted by Aja
Lost Highway is a terrible movie. It's like Lynch parodying himself, and it's even boring somehow. Try Mulholland Drive if you've never seen a Lynch film. You won't come away feeling good about yourself, I guarantee it.
I agree, if you want to try some Lynch dethtoll go with the
Mullholland Drive or
Blue Velvet for starters.
DaBeast on 26/4/2009 at 01:57
I saw a mixed anime/live action thing called something like "In the Aftermath:An Angel Never Sleeps" or possibly "In the Apocalypse"
I was only a kid when I watched it, aside from the strange imagery and plot, if you could call it that, it had a nice piano peice, simple but emotive and uplifting, if a bit popish.
These opinions are based on old memories of mine, which are rarely reliable.
Edit:(
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206827/)
Scots Taffer on 26/4/2009 at 07:44
Lost Highway is pretty great, I think, and probably the only one worth repeat viewings to figure out.
Mulholland Drive did never and will never make any sense because it was an aborted TV pilot trying to deal with issues way too big for a film and too confusingly written to be anything other than a supreme mindfuck (and not much else).
Blue Velvet is an ugly, ugly movie and not so much a mindfuck as just bordering on extremely unpleasant voyeurism of fucking weirdos.
Shakey-Lo on 26/4/2009 at 08:19
I'm not one for 'nightmarish' type mindfuck movies, so I'm not sure if any of these are what you're after, but one I could recommend is Jan Svankmajer's
Alice, the flat-out weirdest interpretation of Alice in Wonderland I've seen. For an ugly, confronting movie you can't go past
Irreversible, or the previously mentioned
Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom. For psychological uneasiness anything by Bunuel, or Roman Polanski's
Repulsion, would do. Robert Altman's
Images is another good one. For dreamier type stuff ala
Eternal Sunshine, Alain Resnais'
Last Year at Marienbad is one of my favourite "pretentious arthouse" films and is getting a Blu-Ray release soon from Criterion (which I was super excited about, until I learned about Blu-Ray region coding :mad:), and there's also Tarkovsky's
Solyaris, and
The Mirror which doesn't make a lick of sense to me.
The Machinist and Cronenberg's
Spider are good "unreliable narrator" films. One I haven't seen is
Fantastic Planet, a trippy French animation.
And a special mention must go to (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RvmJan17q8)
La Jetée.
