Hacker Cinema
The Usual Suspects
1995 · Film · 106 min
Directed by Bryan Singer
The lone survivor of an explosive heist gone wrong recounts for interrogators the events that began with five disparate criminals assembled for a police lineup - with alleged criminal mastermind Keyser Soze at the center of it all.
7 positive1 negative15 neutralfrom 23 commenters
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23 comments on Hacker News
This is just some guy's top 50 favorite movies. And if you'd gone just one year further, to 1995, you'd have gotten Heat, Braveheart, Casino, 12 Monkeys, The Usual Suspects, and Toy Story. The Basketball Diaries doesn't hold up, at all, but Apollo 13 was great.
(I will stick up for Heat, but my god, the shoulder pads).
I don't think that conclusion tells the whole story. If you take a great movie with a very famous twist in in it, they are not good because of the secret/twist, but the secret/twist definitely has greater power if you don't know it beforehand.
For example, there are some movies like The Prestige, The Crying game and The Usual Suspects there is a set up and when the twist happens, you look back and realise the movie was hinting at it at various points but you didn't expect it. If you knew, you would see the hints much more easily and the look back would not be as fun. This sort of has the same impact as a magic trick. It's fun to be fooled.
Some other movies like Se7en, Chinatown and "Easy Rider" I would call "bolt from the blue" where the impact is mostly like being punched in the guts. It's not fun but again if you are not emotionally prepared by knowing what will happen it is much more powerful.
I wouldn't say any of those had a flimsy story. In in all cases the enjoyment comes from the writing, direction, performances etc all being of a very high standard, not just from the twist. The twist really adds something though.
5: "Keyser Söze", logo is from Usual Suspects 6: "descartes", Ceaser cyper 7: "lucifer", lyrics from Symphony of the Devil 8: "bletchley park", images translate to w3w location 9: "conrad", reference to the movie "The Game" 10: "pineappowl", send "Hi" email to 3.243F6A8885DD3B903D0F@gmail.com 11: "ambidextrous", the image file name contains planets "susaturnortmarsxedvenusibma" planets removed and reversed 12: "playback", novel by chandler
I went to a lot of movies in college, at the university film center. They put out a quarterly calendar, with a little blurb for each film. Most were pretty pedestrian, but I still recall that they somehow got me to the theater for _The Usual Suspects (1995)_ without giving away any details.
Obilgatory reference here to Rick Polito's summary of _Wizard of Oz_: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."
'Stranger Things', 'Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels', 'The Usual Suspects', 'Pulp Fiction'... all immediately come to mind as man-in-hole stories.
Reductive/deconstructive literary criticism helps highlight novel elements of the subject story. I can't fathom being upset about it, but then again, I didn't watch 'Cars'. Maybe it is a particularly bad movie?
> People today confuse reviews with criticism. The two are not the same.
They are if you're talking about journalistic film criticism (vs. academic film criticism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_criticism
> Personally, I like guys like Mark Kermode, who can say "this movie was complete and utter nonsense and I had a great time" or "this was a really smart movie, but it just didn't work".
I think you're implying that Mark isn't a film critic, but that's what he calls himself (his bio: https://www.markkermode.co.uk/). Also, movie critics recommend "bad" movies (https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/speed-2-cruise-control-1997) and dump on "beloved" movies (https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-usual-suspects-1995) all the time.
>How many reviews of movies have you seen from a senior, experienced reviewer got a film really totally wrong?
Tons. Even legendary critics like Ebert got movies wrong. He gave thumbs down to Full Metal Jacket, Blue Velvet, The Thing, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Usual Suspects, Ace Ventura, Tommy Boy, and many more.
I distinctly remember feeling like 1995 was absolutely amazing year for cinema.
Toy story, Braveheart, Apollo 13, Usual Suspects, Heat, Casino, Seven, Clueless, 12 Monkeys, Babe, Get Shorty, Leaving Las Vegas, etc.
A great time to be going to the Cinema.
I love that movie. And I think there is a lot to that point. But, it’s fiction.
And if I may indulge my own biographical fiction thinking, I think his secret is that nobody believes that he is lying to them. Everybody believes anything he says. Nobody trusts a genius. And there is the paradox, a genius can never convince anybody of anything, but a simpleton can convince everybody of everything (e.g. The Usual Suspects).
Yeah, that intro to Dark City was a crime against the audience. And honestly I think it was really shortsighted/cowardly of the studio. If you look at two movies that came just a year later, The Matrix and Sixth Sense, a big surprise reveal was central to both of their appeal. And this shouldn't have been a surprise to the studios... the twist in The Usual Suspects came half a decade earlier, not to mention Empire Strikes Back.
My second least favorite thing studios do is cut the trailer in a way that makes the movie seem totally different or even a totally different genre.
Aside: a friend gave me the Sixth Sense dvd as a birthday gift one year, which I had yet to see, and my idiot roommate at that time was in the room couldn't restrain himself from trying to cleverly address my friend in a way that communicated he knew the twist. Except he'd never touched on clever in his life and gave it away instantly. Nice one Paul. Nice one.
Reminds me of a quote from the film The Usual Suspects-- "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
The system remains that way in part because a large number of people are duped into believing it is in their best interest to keep the system in place, despite the minuscule probability of actually benefiting from it.
If anyone thinks ANY political party can have all the answers, they aren't using their brain. In addition, our structure today is about keeping the fights as an us vs them, while the corporations steal our lunch while we are distracted. It reminds me of a quote from the movie "The Usual Suspects", 'The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.'
I should have clarified: there's no sampling bias. These are incredibly popular movies. Here are some movies not on Netflix streaming that I've wanted to watch this year: Gladiator. Star Wars IV. Shawshank Redemption. The Wizard of Oz. When Harry Met Sally. The Princess Bride. All Star Trek movies. Goodfellas. Lord of the Rings. Gone with the Wind. All Godfather movies. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Airplane. American Graffiti. The Usual Suspects. All Jim Carrey movies except a bad one (the Grinch) and one I've never heard of (the Number 23). Toy Story. There's Something About Mary. All Austin Powers movies.
The last time I tried searching for a good movie to watch on Netflix streaming, I gave up after 10 minutes. I'd think of one movie after another after another. Nothing was there. All it could suggest was "related titles," as if that's what I would want.
> selective voluntary amnesia
I'm lucky (?) enough to have the involuntary form of this to some degree for media. I will often forget the plot points of a movie I've watched within days to weeks, and in many cases after a year I have completely forgotten ever even having watched it. I'll pick a movie, my wife will say "we've already seen that", I'll say "I don't think so", she lovingly puts up with me because she luckily likes re-watching movies, and even by the end of the show I'll have nothing but a vague sense of deja-vu the whole time.
I have on multiple occasions, rewatched movies with twist endings like The Usual Suspects and still been surprised on the second or third viewing.
I'd rather have my wife's photographic (videographic) movie recall though...
I care about spoilers and there's heaps of films that I'd like to get around to seeing when I get a chance, including quite old films.
I really hate it when I people give away spoilers. Like when I read something that casually gave away the ending of The Usual Suspects, which I'd been looking forwards to seeing.
To each their own. I enjoy a large assortment of films. The Avengers and Batman Begins - or 12 Monkeys and The Usual Suspects - or The Triplettes of Bellville and The Lives of Others - or 12 Angry Men and The Seventh Seal. Hardly fair to say that someone who would 'enjoy' 'cinema' would 'rather pluck their eyes out' than 'watch' a 'film' like this 'anywhere'.
Interestingly, you used the term 'Film' to describe The Avengers, which some people would jump down YOUR throat for - since this was an almost All-Digital release.
I think a problem with "rewatchability" is that it can vary drastically with the amount of viewings. I'm going to substitute Aliens for Transformers, because "watchable" is not a word I would use to describe Transformers.
Aliens is very rewatchable. It has tense but predictable action (the aliens kill everyone, "get away from her", etc.). Sure, it's best the first time, but Aliens only ceases to be rewatchable when you get tired of watching Aliens.
Films like Primer, Fight Club, and The Usual Suspects, are very rewatchable once, with a sharp decline afterwards. The Soze/Durden effect is incredible once. The next time, you want to watch very closely to catch all of the obvious hints that you missed. You might still miss some, but not many. By the fourth time, it's almost pointless.
I don't think I'm typically bothered by spoilers, but The Usual Suspects stands out as an example of where it definitely hurt my enjoyment of that movie. I mean, I still liked the movie, but man, I can only imagine how much more I would've enjoyed it without the spoilers.
Also, by this point The Sixth Sense is ruined for me, so I'm not sure I'll ever get around to seeing it.
How about, in addition to helping people track the movies they watch, you display information about which directors/actors/etc they seem to like best (based on the movies they have `liked', of course...)
Also, after clicking through about 50 movies on the `Discover Movies' page, I had `The Usual Suspects' show up about 15 times in a row on the page. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie, just figured I'd submit this particular behavior as a bug...:p
Judging by the comments here, it's clear that if you just prefaced this link with "Hi HN, here's my site, it's a little slow right now since it's in beta, but we plan on scaling it up before we launch.", then it may have been more positively reviewed.
For what it's worth, I typed in Usual Suspects and I do like all the top 5 results. The "creative pick" for me was a movie called Unknown, which I've ironically never heard of before. I'm going to watch it tonight.
Also, I don't understand why you say "In association with Netflix" at the bottom, but all the results have a tag for Blockbuster-- am I missing something here?
One thing I did not like was that if I hover over white space in the results, it still displays the summary of the movie. I found that jarring, because I expect to actually be hovering over either the thumbnail or the link(s) for the item before seeing additional info.
I think the feature that shows you why you're recommending (e.g., "less complex") is really cool. However, one of them seemed kind of spoilerish, because it was recommended as "less double crosses"-- most of the time with a whodunit, part of the story is wondering who's going to get double crossed. So it may not be as specific as a complete spoiler, but it's still not preferable to me.
I do have to second hating the forced auto-complete clicking. I could tell by the way the UI was acting that it's how it worked, so I didn't have a problem, but I see how a lot of users would.
On the movie detail page, you don't need the three links to Related Movies, Movie DNA, and Details; they're all right there in plain sight. I'd also be interested in seeing a complete "Movie DNA" breakdown, since you're clearly only making the top 10 or so available. Maybe that's proprietary knowledge and you don't want to let go of it.
Not a big fan of the tag cloud for filtering results. When I look at that, I just see a big blob of text and my brain shuts off without processing it. I don't know what approach would be better off the top of my head, but the tag cloud is not working for me.
In general, there's a cluttered feel to the details page. I like the info, but the design could use some TLC.
Question: where did you get the movie data? I'm assuming based on the info at the bottom that you're using Muze, which I've never heard of until now. How does it compare to IMDB's web service? How do you use it? Are you happy with it or are there things that really bug you? Was it easy to integrate into your site?
I like the site, love the recommendation engine which is clearly where 95% of the effort probably went, and think it could be a really useful service. Make the changes I noted above and you may just have me hooked. :)
The usual suspects counts more as a movie where you have the OH THAT MAKES SENSE feeling at the end of the movie rather than pure mindfuck.
While you will have to rethink the whole movie once you've reached the end, you are left with some sort of answer. Some of these movies on the other hand, like Memento, will make you wonder WTH really happened for hours and days after actually watching it.
He mentions both of them:
(Bruce Willis was balding the whole time?!) I love The Matrix. But
However, I think both movies where actually vary straightforward. I suspect they where popular in large part because they felt like mind bending movies, but most people never felt lost. The Usual Suspects is another great example of this. "Wait that was BS?"
There are two movies I watched a second time immediately after finishing the first time through. Usual Suspects and Primer.
I'm torn whether the confusion in the end is am emblem of the loss of control, or bad editing.
I like how the movie helped me boil down all time travel sci-fi into a series of categories.
For example: can you stop yourself from going back in time?
Back to the Future: no. If you stop yourself, you won't exist in the past. Paradox.
Primer: yes. You will now enjoy a double.
Another idea I love about time travel: a paradox of ideas or substance. Give yourself a book to publish from the future. Who wrote it?
Star Trek 4: McCoy gives Kirk a pair of vintage reading glasses. Kirk leaves them in the past knowing McCoy will buy them in the future. Who made the glasses?