TheUsualSuspects Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Over at Cracked.com, they've made a list of the top ten worst twist endings of all time. Obviously that list has a lot of spoilers, but I'm going to attempt to write this post without revealing any of them. Why? To make sure you go over there, of course. So, if you're not worried about ruining the endings to some movies you probably shouldn't see anyway, then head over and read the hilariously confusing explanations, or attempts at explanations, and/or how some endings don't make enough sense to bother with explanations. I will let you in on the titles of the movies, just in case you are interested in seeing any of them in the future and would like to go in spoiler free. The ten, in order from "least asinine" to "most asinine", are: Stay (2005); High Tension (2003); Signs (2002); Hide and Seek (2005) and Secret Window (2004), which tie for #7, because they're considered the exact same plot (is that spoiling it for you guys? probably -- oh well, I tried); The Forgotten (2004); Basic (2003); Perfect Stranger (2007); The Number 23 (2007); Planet of the Apes (2001); and The Life of David Gale (2003).

I haven't seen the number one movie, but I can't imagine it's worse than the others that I have seen, especially Planet of the Apes. Basically, I think Cracked.com considers it the worst because it stars Kevin Spacey, who also starred in The Usual Suspects, which pretty much, along with The Sixth Sense, obviously, got Hollywood on this crappy twist kick to begin with (He was also in Se7en, which had another so-so twist ending). Look at those films; they all came out between 2001 and 2007. And what was the most common twist? The main character did it. Either he or she has a split personality, or amnesia, or suffers from some other psychological ailment. Other idiotic yet easily written twists include: aliens did it; it's all a dream (as if you need to steal from Bob Newhart, come on!); and, in the fashion of Suspects, it's all just made-up stories. Personally, I'm upset to not see my least favorite twist ending. It involved a whole crop of great actors who just so happened to be explained as existing inside the imagination of some mental patient. That one had the split personality plus the dream plus the Suspects idea that none of what we watched is real. Can you name it?

Oftentimes Hollywood's lack of originality leads to overexposed trends. Remember when every action movie seemed to be easily defined as 'Die Hard on a ...'? Remember when disaster movies were all the rage? And then twenty years later when they were all the rage again? Remember when there were like a hundred body-swapping comedies? Well, there appear to be fewer trends these days, or maybe it's just that Hollywood turns trends into full-blown practices, as in the case of sequels, comic book movies and fantasy films based on literary franchises. Nowadays even a promised trend, like the one involving religious Passion of the Christ copycats, isn't necessarily going to happen. But despite there being so few here-today-gone-tomorrow film fads, there's at least seven bad ideas currently in vogue in Tinsel Town, and all of them need to disappear soon, lest they too become permanent.

1. Torture Porn

I'm going to start with an easy, surely obvious one. Torture porn is the latest trend in horror, a genre that changes its predominant style every few years, and it may be the most despised -- at least by us non-horror junkies. I miss the days when a friend, an actual junkie, could drag me to a harmless scary movie that provided a few screams, a few laughs and afterward, at the most, a few silly nightmares. Now, with each new horror movie there's promise of a seriously depressing experience. After watching The Hills Have Eyes, I realized I hadn't been frightened at all. Instead I wanted to cry my heart out. I haven't been to a horror flick since, and my friend is going solo. Sure, I hear that Eli Roth's movies are a lot more enjoyable than watching a young woman raped while watching her father burned alive and her mother raped and then shot in the head, but I just haven't been in the mood to find out.

Apparently the torture porn trend is already on its way out. Hostel II performed poorly at the box office and Captivity may have peaked too soon, reaching maximum tastelessness before even opening in theaters. So what will be next? I'm rather looking forward to when slasher movies are in fashion again, when I can delight in seeing sinful human beings killed off quickly and deservedly by an implausible maniac. Which brings me to the next trend ...

In less than ten years Netflix has become not just a great company but also a great company model. Despite all attempts from Blockbuster and others to compete with the online rental service, Netflix continues to be the champion in its industry. But will the industry eventually be obsolete with all the other internet distribution options? Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that DVD rentals will indeed become extinct in the next 20 years, but he says that fortunately for him Netflix is not simply a DVD rental service. "If one thinks of Netflix as a DVD rental business," he told the Wall Street Journal, "one is right to be scared. If one thinks of Netflix as an online movie service with multiple different delivery models, then one's a lot less scared. We're only now starting to deliver the proof points behind that second vision."

One of Netflix's plans for the future is a streaming video-on-demand option, which they began rolling out as a bonus to subscribers in January (I still haven't received my upgrade, which is expected to hit all members by June). Hastings claims that by the end of this year 5,000 films will be available in that format. He defended the relatively small amount (compared to 75,000 titles available via snail mail) by pointing out that Netflix originally started out offering only 1,000 titles on DVD. Netflix has also been planning for the future of high-density discs by stocking every title available on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, though Hastings told the WSJ that the formats are not renting too well, and the competing brands are neck-in-neck neck and neck for this small market. He also said that he expects little increase on interest in the discs until one brand is declared the standard.

As we've told you recently, Bryan Singer has changed gears a little bit -- instead of jumping directly onto a Superman Returns sequel, he's going to be directing an untitled WWII thriller with his old Usual Suspects collaborator Christopher McQuarrie. Looks like things are moving along briskly, since the untitled film apparently has a title already. According to the Guardian, the film will be called Valkyrie, which was the code name of the plot to assassinate Hitler that the story deals with. Scripted by McQuarrie, Valkyrie concerns real-life Nazi officer Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg who, along with several others, carried out the famous assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944.

Unfortunately, von Stauffenberg's plan -- an exploding briefcase planted near Hitler during a meeting -- failed to kill the Nazi leader but did end up taking the lives of four of his subordinates. An entire second part of von Stauffenberg's plan, to mount a quick coup of the Nazi leadership and overthrow the regime in one fell swoop, was immediately aborted when Hitler survived the plot, and the conspirators were hunted down within hours. For his efforts, von Stauffenberg was executed by firing squad. The film is being financed by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner through their new United Artists company and its rumored that Cruise is circling the role of von Stauffenberg -- a move that is not sitting well with members of von Stauffenberg's family, as they worry Cruise will use the film to push some hidden Scientology agenda.

In 1971, a professor at Stanford University named Philip Zimbardo conducted an infamous psychological experiment on the psychology of incarceration. The experiment involved volunteers playing the roles of guards and inmates while living in a mock prison. It didn't take long for this test to degenerate into chaos -- the "inmates" of the experiment staged an uprising in response to physical, mental and even sexual torture they had experienced. In the end, the experiment was shut down prematurely, but it did manage to demonstrate how impressionable we all are when provided with a legitimate reason for inflicting distress on another person. More importantly, it was a scary example of the power of authority.

Variety has announced that the film version depicting the Stanford Prison Experiment has attached a director. Christopher McQuarrie will helm the real-life drama for Maverick Films this April. Although credited with writing the screenplay for The Usual Suspects, McQuarrie has only directed one film so far -- unfortunately, that film was The Way of The Gun. Maverick films have also bought the rights to Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect - Understanding How Good People Turn Evil , which doesn't hit the shelves until March.

The timing for the film couldn't be better, with questions of torture and cruelty in the news on a regular basis – hey, it could even be shown as a double bill with Errol Morris' new film. Whaddya think?

[via Dark Horizons]