Movie-watching has been a dominant pastime of the general public for the past century. But how many audiences actually watch movies closely enough to notice all the details and finer nuances of the narrative? Commercial cinema has never really been about paying great attention to detail.
The general understanding in Hollywood is that a commercially successful film needs to be something so broad in scope that casual audiences can follow the plot while only paying half attention to the screen. But some filmmakers are not satisfied with making big, broad films. Over the years there have been a number of movies made that reward paying close attention. Let us take a look at some of the best movies that Hollywood has to offer where the devil is in the details.
20Predestination
Time travel storieshave long been notorious for being narratively confusing. Amidst time loops and temporal paradoxes and questions about free will, it is almost impossible to make a narratively coherent time travel movie that holds up in the face of scrutiny. The makers of 2014’sPredestinationtook this as a personal challenge when they set out to make the time and mind-bending film.
In the 1970s, a series of conversations between a male secret agent and a female writer uncovers a convoluted story involving their shared past and possible futures. As the agent involves himself deeper in the writer’s life, his mission to stop a terrorist from exploding a bomb also comes into question.Predestinationis the kind of movie where you might need to keep track of the plot with a pen and notebook. Noticing all the finer details in the narrative allows viewers to fully appreciate possibly the most bizarre ending to a time travel movie Hollywood has ever shown.
19Fight Club
When people talk about cult favorite movies,Fight Clubis the kind of film they are talking about. Originally a failure at the box-office,Fight Clubbecame a sleeper hit in later years as audiences had to watch the movie again and again to appreciate the finer details of the story that make it so compelling. On the surface, the film is about unhappy middle-class men finding an outlet for their frustrations by beating the tar out of each other.
But this setup is simply the first act in a deeply personal psychological thriller that has important things to say about the emptiness of consumerism and and dangers of group-think.Fight Clubalso famously hasone of the biggest twist endingsin the history of Hollywood which is made all the better by the series of clues hidden in the movie leading up to the twist.
18American Psycho
Before he played an unhinged rich guy who likes to go out at night and beat up strangers inThe Dark Knighttrilogy, Christian Bale played an even more unhinged version of the character in the black comedy cult classicAmerican Psycho. Bale plays Patrick Bateman, a wall street yuppie with the perfect body, perfect life, and an unquenchable thirst to hurt and destroy the people around him.
American Psychowalks a fine line between realism and satire, and the only way to determine the film’s true intentions is by paying close attention to details regarding Patrick’s behavior and the attitude of the people around him towards his crimes. Unfortunately, the movie has been repeatedly misunderstood by certain sections of the audience who believe it promotes violent fantasies instead of holding them up to mockery, aswas the film’s true intention.
17The Sixth Sense
When it comes to movies with twist endings,The Sixth Sensehas come to define the genre more than any other movie in the past two decades. Released in 1999, the film heralded the arrival of a bold new voice in cinema in writer-director M. Night Shyamalan. Malcolm is a child psychologist with a troubled marriage who is called in to attempt to help with the special case of 9-year-old Cole.
The quiet and withdrawn child seems to suffer from a condition that makes him believe he can communicate with deceased people. As the audience along with Malcolm are drawn deeper into Cole’s world, it becomes clear that there is more to the story than seemed evident at first. Aside from its compelling horror and dramatic narrative,The Sixth Senseis a prime example of a script where every little detail matters when looking at the reality of the relationship between Malcolm and Cole.
There was a time when newbie filmmaker Shane Carruth was drawing comparisons to the likes of Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, and James Cameron, all on the back of Carrruth’s debut movie itself, the micro-budget time travel thrillerPrimer. Aaron and Abe are a couple of engineer friends who discover a method of moving backwards in time thanks to a machine they built.
Eager to test out out the capabilities of the machine, the two friends conduct a series of tests that center around moving backward and forward through time a few hours at a time. Unfortunately, the duo soon start experiencing alarming side effects of their time spent in the machine, and events begin to spiral out of control. A lot of the organic hype surroundingPrimerhad to do with fans digging deeper into the film’s finer details to make sense of the topsy-turvy narrative, evenmaking detailed timeline chartsto explain how the plot moves forward. Then backwards. Then forward again.
15Shutter Island
Master filmmaker of the gangster genre Martin Scorsese hasa much more diverse filmographythan audiences might be familiar with, including children’s filmHugoand the biblical dramaThe Last Temptation of Christ. In 2010 Scorsese teamed up with his long time muse Leonardo DiCaprio to make the psychological thrillerShutter Island.
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On a remote island dedicated to the rehabilitation of the mentally ill, US Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule are sent by the government to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a woman who was being treated at the island’s Ashecliff Hospital. As Teddy and Chuck dig deeper into the matter, they run into all sorts of strange and deadly obstacles. With Teddy pressing resolutely on with his investigations, matters threaten to overwhelm him with the hidden truth of his presence on the island.
14The Royal Tenenbaums
Wes Anderson has become the poster child for movies that prize painstaking attention to visual detail. Even if Anderson is making a simple family comedy drama, you can be sure that everything that appears on the screen has serious thought behind it to cater to a certain aesthetic. No Wes Anderson movie does this better thanThe Royal Tenenbaums.
The film tells the story of three siblings of the Tenenbaums family who are re-united as adults at their father’s house following news that the latter is suffering from stomach cancer. As the adults once again pick up the threads of their childhood connections, hurt feelings and past trauma bubble to the surface.The Royal Tenenbaumsis a stirring example of Wes Anderson’s trademark aesthetic flair, while also providing a strong enough narrative backdrop to support the visual feast the filmmaker offers to audiences.
13Inception
Christopher Nolan is offer considered the thinking man’s blockbuster filmmaker. And no one movie solidified that reputation more thanInception. Working with an all-star cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, and Cillian Murphy,Inceptionweaves a twisted yet compelling tale of dream walking and a man’s desperate desire to reunite with his children.
The film deals with different layers of the dream world, separate from but entirely dependent on the real world. Visual clues are littered throughout the movie for those willing to pay attention, to explain the true meaning of particular scenes and dialogs. All of this culminates in the final scene of the film showing a spinning top, which led to years of heated debate on the internet regardingthe true nature of the climaxof the story.
12Glass Onion
The originalKnives Outwas a straightforward homage by filmmaker Rian Johnson to the classic form of an Agatha Christie mystery novel. With the sequel,Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Johnson joyfully rips apart the pattern established by his own previous movie to provide a satire on mystery novels that rely on red herrings, misdirections and other forms of fooling the audience.
On a private island owned by a tech billionaire, a group of friends from the billionaire’s past come together to celebrate their years of partnership. The arrival of gentleman detective Benoit Blanc signals that the party is about to turn into something much stranger. Inevitably, one of the guests gets murdered, and it is up to Blanc to shed light on the mystery. Johnson keeps the audience entertained as he peppers the narrative with clues and motifs to keep viewers guessing, leading up to a hilarious and subversive ending.
112001: A Space Odyssey
Before filmmakers like Wes Anderson and David Fincher became well known for their attention to detail while making movies, legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was showing them how it’s done throughout his career. And no movie takes better advantage of Kubrick’s zeal for detail than2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered the greatest sci-fi movie ever made.
Telling a sprawling epic dating all the way back to the dawn of human civilization,2001: A Space Odysseycharts the history of man’s quest to conquer the universe and become an intergalactic species. There are breathtaking scenes set in space that still hold up to scrutiny decades later despite not having the benefit of modern VFX.2001is so compelling and realistic in its details that it led to an undying conspiracy theory thatKubrick had secretly orchestrated the footageof the real-life moon landing.
