(( The Number 23, The Machinist, and The Shining are three movies off the top of my head that are heavy into symbolism and mind warping. ))

Let's see, in the vein of SKU and mentioned here, Innocence. Coffins. Schools. You know how it goes.

After rewatching Repo Man with my mom the other night, I reconfirmed my suspicion that there's a whole hell of a lot more going on in there than you'd think at a glance. Alex Cox has always been an artsy director, for all that, but Repo Man looks and sounds like it wouldn't be out of place in the middle of a Troma marathon on USA Up All Night, back when that was actually a thing. It's era specific. It's crass and awkward, and low budget and the word "zoinks" could describe most scenes. But, at the same time, it's everything you need to know about America in ninety minutes. It's jobs and blowjobs and bullshit, machismo, religion, bills and credit, and the ever-increasing price of gas.

Masked & Anonymous shouldn't work. It goes in all directions, the cast is all-star to highlight that it's all-star. It's indulgent. Most everything seems just thrown in to throw it in. But, something can catch you attention in the debris and stick with you, grow inside you. Maybe it's when you realize that "the future" is now, and the White House is in Los Angeles with the bus just going around the city. Maybe it's Jessica Lange saying, "We've got dead aliens, stacked up in warehouses. What more do you want?" and never addressing it again. The ghost of a blackface minstrel murdered for speaking out. Bruce Dern unchaining the Beast to devil a singer, all the while drinking like a fish and talking about Abraham Lincoln. Or, the curtain promising a Man Eating Chicken and giving it to you just beyond.

I was about to add something about Gothic or Crimes of Passion, when Whore came to mind, and The Music Lovers, so instead, I'll just say, watch all the Ken Russell you can. Aggressively subjective cinema, most often in response to other movies, to pop biographies, received wisdom, or specific people taking his interest or pissing him off. Whore is almost literally Pretty Woman being punched in the face all night while reminding us we pay. Gothic is, on the surface, a supernatural thriller about the night Frankenstein was conceived, but along the way makes a strident parody of gothic tropes, the absurdity of biopics, tears apart the myths of creativity and stories that write themselves, the masks of celebrity sells.

Same goes for Patricia Rozema, even her children's stuff, but particularly When Night is Falling and Mansfield Park. Anxieties, intimacies, and the perpetual existence of both a personal life and, well, the whole rest of the damn world.

I can tell I'm getting to be a film snob because more movies come to mind that are interesting from a cinematographic standpoint than a philosophical one.  Damn

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

Masked & Anonymous shouldn't work. It goes in all directions, the cast is all-star to highlight that it's all-star. It's indulgent. Most everything seems just thrown in to throw it in. But, something can catch you attention in the debris and stick with you, grow inside you. Maybe it's when you realize that "the future" is now, and the White House is in Los Angeles with the bus just going around the city. Maybe it's Jessica Lange saying, "We've got dead aliens, stacked up in warehouses. What more do you want?" and never addressing it again. The ghost of a blackface minstrel murdered for speaking out. Bruce Dern unchaining the Beast to devil a singer, all the while drinking like a fish and talking about Abraham Lincoln. Or, the curtain promising a Man Eating Chicken and giving it to you just beyond.

I need to watch this again.  Not all of it stuck with me, but the atmosphere was really lovely, and I do remember the bunny scene.  Wasn't that where the title drop happened?

Right now all that comes to mind is Brazil.  It stands with Brave New World at the pinnacle of dystopian fiction for me, nothing else can touch those two.  Too often they fall into being preachy parables, (Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Hunger Games) but these two present a flawed future in which the flaws are so human, there is no easy fix, no easy rebuttal.  Brazil takes place in a world which, while nightmarish, when broken down, is disturbingly on-par with our own.

Wait, no, I lied.  There's also Her, which kind of… stealth changed my life?  It just… it completely changed how I thought of relationships.  All relationships.  It's sweet, it's lovely, it's honest, and it's a vision of the future that's in love with the present, and that is actually really rare.  In many ways, I think SKU is a truly vital story that illustrates a lot of the hidden pitfalls and dangers of relationships, and Her is it's converse, a story about how truly wonderful being around other people can be.