I liked Adaptation a lot too. Mandy is pretty different, retro-psychedelic horror might be a name for it. It features a top-tier Cage freakout scene or two that must be witnessed
Gone in 60 Seconds is fantastic, except that one tiny scene in the final fight where he's hanging from his fingertips and the bad guy stands around almost stepping on them without noticing. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to some extent, but that scene is an insult, and so close to the end that the sour aftertaste lingers past the credits. I should really just rip the Blu-ray and edit it out.
This has been bothering me for like 10 years and it has to come out now even though it’s only kind of relevant to the topic.
Spoilers for Face/Off if you haven’t seen it go watch it it’s amazing.
Okay, so Face/Off has the craziest ending to a movie ever. And you’re thinking to yourself “What that the good guy wins in the end and everyone is happy? That’s not unexpected.” But you have to look at the finer details.
After Sean Archer is back in John Travolta’s body at the end and he’s like “I don’t need this bullet scar anymore, it’s cool, I’ve healed.” He goes back to see his family. He walks in the door and his wife and daughter are like “Yay you’re our dad and not some crazy person again yay!”. The following things that happen need to be broken down individually for it to fully be understood how insane it is what happens:
• What is with the weird run your hand down the face thing they do? It’s so bizarre and it’s never explained. His daughter is like “Sorry I shot you…” and he just runs his hand down her face like a weirdo. Why.
• Archer goes “There’s something I have to ask both of you…” and the just brings in some random kid they’ve never seen and is like “he needs a place to live” WHAT?!?! This kid was in a shoot out in a drug den like a week ago. He was raised in a terrible environment. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be placed in a normal family or anything, but the kid needs like all the therapy. He’s going to have emotional problems. Are you really ready to deal with all that Archer? Really? Your family just went through a crazy thing and you’re like “Here is a huge responsibility we need to take on now.”
• The daughter says “My name is Jamie” and the DOES THE WEIRD FACE HAND THING! Why do they do that? It’s so weird. Is she like assimilating him into their collective. And he, completely unphased by the hand thing in a show of immense self control, is just says “My name is Adam.”
• Then Archer says “Show Adam to his new room.” And the daughter and Adam run off and then the most insane thing I’ve ever seen in a move happens. Archer looks at his wife and is like “….Okay?” and she goes “nod nod….okay…” and they kiss. End of movie.
To that last point…WHAT?!?!!?!? Am I taking crazy pills or something? This dude just decides that they’re raising a kid WITHOUT ASKING HIS WIFE FIRST!?!?! If I brought home a dog without discussing it with my wife first, she would be pretty pissed but a WHOLE DAMN KID?!?! A kid, who as mentioned, is going to need intense therapy and extra support? A kid who, it would seem, is there only to replace your other kid who died which is whole ‘nother kind of fucked up (see the life of Salvidor Dali).
Most of that is fine except for doing the hand thing to a stranger, and maybe the not asking about adopting.
The hand thing is clearly an established expression of affection within that family. Lots of families have little codes or nicknames or in jokes. It is odd that the kid didn't react poorly to it, although I think it was done to him earlier in the film when Travolta has Cage's face.
The wife would clearly be aware of the dad's trauma about losing their boy, and there may be a whole thing about it that we never see of them spending years considering if they could or should have another child. Maybe Travolta called ahead and asked his wife if they could foster the kid for a bit and the "okay?" was more of a "do you think we are ready" kind of comment.
I respect you and your opinion, but if you have to assume that much stuff happened off screen it’s a them problem. I’m sticking with my original assessment.
Also, in a movie where someone wakes up from a coma and somehow finds the doctors to perform the surgery on him (including the voice changer thing which would need a recording of Travolta’s voice) to put someone else’s face and body on his and then murders them without anyone being the wiser, the “it’s cool that this kid lives here right?” Part is still the most unbelievable to me.
In a movie where criminals are sent to a secret magnetic shoe prison on a oil rig in the middle of the ocean and a man jumps off the top of said oil rig and falls like 200 ft and doesn’t just die on impact, the kid thing is still less believable to me.
Also, my family do weird things that are in jokes and stuff, but hand thing just like, it’s too weird to just be in the movie. If there was a scene where they were like “we do this hand thing to show we love each other because GamGam use to do that during the war” or something then sure. But the fact that it goes unexplained is the real problem.
The hand thing doesn't go unexplained. We see it in the flashback where his son dies. With such a young kid it just seems like the classic "a parent adores their child so much they just have to touch them" that happens all the time in real life.
How is the kid thing more unbelievable because the movie has face swapping and magnet prison technology. If anything it should be easier to believe that people adopt victims of trauma, especially when he has already had time to bond with the kid. Why aren't you complaining about why we don't get extra scenes of the people inventing the magnet boots instead of why we didn't see years of marital discussions about the finer details of having another kid.
I got it on Blu-Ray, because fuck "buying" things on streaming platforms. I'll rent stuff there, but let's not pretend "buying" is anything but an undefined extension on your rental.
