Hacker Cinema
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
2020 · Film · 135 min
Directed by Charlie Kaufman
Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
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8 comments on Hacker News
> I struggle to remember hardly anything memorable from Netflix, especially their movies
For me there have been a few movies, off the top of my head:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold_the_Dark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irishman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraction_(2020_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Thinking_of_Ending_Things
In addition the first seasons of The Witcher and Altered Carbon, and the show Dark.
I canceled my subscription around 2020 though, got so fed up by the UX, so haven't watched much since.
I'm a huge fan of Kaufman, I think I've seen almost everything he's done. In my opinion, "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" is not his best work. But I have to admit, I think of the themes in this movie more than almost any other film of his.
I read a few interpretations of the film before I watched it and I would actually recommend people to do the same. I think it is worth spoiling the premise behind the movie to understand what is going on. The film is purposefully obtuse which is off-putting to some. In fact, the "twist" of it wouldn't be obvious to most people who watch it. But to appreciate the depth of the story you have to get passed the surreality of the presentation.
Like "Synecdoche, New York", what remains once you strip away the fantasy is pretty bleak in an existential angst kind of way. But that is pretty much what you get with Kaufman: a bleak existential crisis.
If you have Netflix, check out one of Kaufman's more recent films, "I'm Thinking of Ending Things". It's an (increasingly loose) adaptation of Ian Reid's book of the same name. The book is deliberately disorienting and unsettling which makes Kaufman's style really shine.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80211559
Adaptation is a great movie but I wouldn't really say it resists being understood - it tells a fairly straightforward narrative (the only catch, I guess, is the question of how much of the climax and denouement is "real" and how much of it is "cinema"). Even Charlie Kaufman's most recent film, "I'm Thinking of Ending Things", fits that bill an awful lot more I think.
2022 - Kimi, After Yang, Crimes of the Future, White Noise, Official Competition, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Tar, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
2021 - Nightmare Alley, The Card Counter, Zola, The French Dispatch, Come True, Don't Look Up, I Care A Lot,
2020 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Mank, The Sound of Metal, Possessor, His House
2019 - Climax, Uncut Gems, Parasite, Vivarium, First Cow
2018 - The Clovehitch Killer, Prospect, Mute, Anon, Mandy, The House That Jack Built, Cam, Sorry to Bother You
2018 had a glut of Netflix sci-fi B-movies that I think are very solidly good if not so great. I think they're underrated so I included them. I might have also messed up on the years.
These are all films I've seen. There are many others that I suspect are even better that I haven't seen.
Film critic reviews are the Hacker News of the film world: nerds nerding out.
I once went out with a woman who was highly steeped in film criticism and such. I think she volunteered as dramaturg at a theater company or something like that. We watched "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" together, and I thought it was the most dismal, dispiriting, horrible movie I'd ever seen. Afterward she opened my eyes to how a critic would interpret it, the symbolism, the cultural currents, etc. I hadn't picked up on any of that. I still hate that movie. But I guess I can see a bit better how, if you're in on it, it can be fun to pick things apart in that certain way. It's like a secret language that only you and a few others speak. There's nothing quite like speaking your native tongue when living in a foreign land.
I think a lot of the professional critics are like that. We don't speak their secret language. We commoners are the foreign land they must survive in. They're having a conversation among themselves. It's not for us.
At least, that's what it's become.
Comedies - Spontaneous, Popstar, Everybody Wants Some
Deconstruction/Meta/Anti-trope -Jump Street movies (count for both this and comedy as do some of the others), The Lego Movie, Cabin in the Woods, Better Watch Out, I'm Thinking of Ending Things
'Film' instead of movie - Another Round, Thorougbreads, The Lighthouse, Ex Machina
I have been revisiting Charlie Kaufman's films within the wake of the "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" release, and "Synecdoche, New York" remains my favorite. If anyone here is considering watching it after seeing OP's comment, I highly encourage you to give it a watch.