Home Entertainment Top List Thursdays – Top Twenty Twists Part Two

Top List Thursdays – Top Twenty Twists Part Two

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Welcome back to part of an epic Top List Thursday, where we reveal that Lourens was actually just three midgets in a trenchcoat pretending to be a person all along. WHAT A TWIST!

The Crying Game

Are we still gonna do it? I’m not spoiling this twist for anyone, because seeing the shock and disbelief on the face of anyone who makes it this far in the film is just beyond priceless for me.

Primal Fear

It’s not easy being a defense lawyer. When your client happens to be a robber or a murderer, the best that you can hope for is to argue away a few years off of the sentence that is about to befall said criminal. But when you genuinely believe that your client is innocent? That’s an excuse to drop everything and stop at nothing to prove that not guilty status.

That’s just what Richard Gere had to do for Edward Norton in 1997, as Norton’s Aaron Stamper had supposedly murdered a holy man, under the identity of a more violent personality. How could a meek and stuttering little man such as Stamper be so dangerous? Because the truth is, at the end of the film,there was personality disorder.

Stamper had faked his way through the entire proceeding, in a move that got him off the hook Scot-free. And he had Gere to thank for all of it.

12 Monkeys

Leave it to Terry Gilliam to once again create a movie that was simple on paper, but beyond weird on the big screen. Sent back in time to stop a calamity from pile-driving humanity undergorund with a 99% mortality rate, Bruce Willis’s Cole tries to keep his sanity together while also suffering from crippling hallucinations.

Is he mad? Is he really a traveller from the future? And what is it that he keeps on seeing in those flashbacks? Turns out that Willis was preparing to close a loop all along, as he witnessed his own death as a child, leading to some sort of causaul craziness that left him scarred all along.

Terry Gilliam, the master of the nightmare fuel slap across the face. ladies and gentlemen.

Room 1408

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in life, it’s that hotel rooms are never to be trusted. Especially when they’re sentient, malevolent and crueler than an entire pre-school of children towards the new kid. John Cusack found this out the hard way, as his foray into a supernatural location resulted in some mind games that left him a broken man.

A Beautiful Mind

If there’s one thing that I believe in, it’s that in life, you can be either academically clever, or smart enough to get through the pressures of life itslef. Rarely do the two levels of intellect overlap, and sometimes, they come with a pitfall or two. Such as in A Beautiful Mind, when Russell Crowe’s Joh Nash spends his life protecting America with his super-clever code-breaking skills.

Only, it turns out that it was all an illusion, and much like the voices I constantly hear, all in his head.

The Game

Leave it to David Fincher to craft a film that isn’t about Triple H, but instead the greatest mind f$%@ in history. We’ve all had a weekend doing something other than sitting in our undies eating beans, such as paintballing or going for a hike, but for an ennui-stricken Michael Douglas, he gets a lot more than he bargained for.

Thanks to a birthday gift from his brother, he soon finds himself caught in a life or death struggle, as he takes part in “the game”, an event which has apparently spun wildly out of control. With bodies piling up, life getting worse and nowhere to run, Douglas decides to leave the world, ala suicide.

Cue one dramatic jump, and it turns out that the Game had one last trick up its sleeve, much to a relieved Douglas. Well, until he gets his bill that is.

The Sixth Sense

The original M Night Shamalamadingdong film that made the twsit more than just a great song! Playing out like a vintage movie but with some great cinematography, audiences knew that there was something wrong, but they just couldn’t put their finger on that dead pulse. And then finally, after more than an hour of ghost-watching and cold breath, Ol’ Brucie finally realised the big twist: He was dead all along!

WHAT A TWIST!

The Empire Strikes Back

Believe it or not, but I’m actually quite a young guy. Just with incredibly outdated taste. So my first taste of Star Wars, wasn’t a vintage VHS version captured from Bop-TV, like Kervyn had. I saw those films for the first time as remastered experiences at the cinema back in the late 90s as a kid. And they were magical, even then.

I loved the first film, and it brought me back for the second one. Fast forward to later in the movie, and Darth Vader is laying a Sith-enfused smackdown on Luke Skywalker. It’s a fight that is more one-sided than our local elections. Fighting a losing battle, Luke finaly manages to nail Vader with a lucky strike, forcing him to reveal his trump card in a last ditch effort to make the young Jedi join the empire.

And it’s one of the most iconic lines in cinematic history, that had a boatload of secrecy attached to it in an age before Twitter and the net.

“No, I am your father”. Damn, that sent goosebumps down my spine the first time I heard it. And it still does, to this very day.

Donnie Darko

If there is one film that has divided audiences, it’s Donnie Darko. Weird, strange and genuinely unpleasant for most of the running time, it’s also a film that is open to intepretation. Is Donnie imagining everything? Is it all real? Why is Donnie so depressed.

And then everything is answered at the end, as we see that Donnie has been hallucinating the whole time, about the ramifications that his death would have on everyone around him. SHould he live and struggle through life, or should he just lie dead still so that he can be crushed by broken jet engine that is falling towards him?

Spoiler: The jet engine wins.

Psycho

C’mon down to the Bates Motel yo! We got TV, a bed and a shower where you’re guaranteed to be murdered by some crazy old lady with a sharp knife! Did I say that mama Bates was the culprit? My bad! It was actually Norman all along, dressed up in a wig and dress and carrying more madness with him than was legal at the time.

Last Updated: March 14, 2013

2 Comments

  1. Good list. I would have had Shawshank Redemption in the list as well, though.

    Reply

  2. Skyblue

    March 14, 2013 at 19:56

    Donnie Darko was an amazing experience. Also loved most of what was on the list. Never really got to see Psycho for a years after release so I had already seen other movies emulate the style which dulled the effect when I got to see it.

    Reply

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