Welcome back to Thursday Movie Picks by Wandering through the Shelves! Last week I was absent, but this week I'm back alive and kickin'. According to the theme of the week, three to five movies are picked and shared with the reason. Should anyone be interested in joining in, feel free to visit the main page here.
Our theme for this week is: Doppelgänger. Such a theme, isn't it? Lucky I've found recent films from my repertoire in 2014 to actually eligible to get picked this week. I picked three films about doppelgänger and all of them are mind-blowing at best, cringe-worthy at worst. So, here's my picks!
01. The Double (2014, Richard Ayoade)
In this quirky retro-futuristic story, Ayoade introduces as to Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg), a clumsy, passive guy whose life is troubled when his double, James Simon (also Jesse Eisenberg), is coming along. Both characters are completely different and they're holding grudge to each other. It's an identity crisis drama, which takes its quirkiness too seriously, but that's okay.
02. Enemy (2014, Denis Villeneuve)
Denis Villeneuve with puzzles and twists is one thing; but, this man with puzzles, twists, and a shade of surrealism is a whole new thing, which turns out being a whole new excitement. Adapting José Saramago's The Double (O Homem Duplicado), Villeneuve experiments with his new flavour-making it looks like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, more precisely-with two Jake Gyllenhaal.
03. Coherence (2014, James Ward Byrkit)
This one is the most obscure among those three. How can a perplexing multi-reality sci-fi be served in a small-budget reunion talk drama? The answer is: adding layers of complexity in the script like Coherence does. It's a Schrödinger Cat manifestation in a lively living room drama with more entry and less exit. It embraces the solid scientific ground like Shane Carruth's Primer and crafts it in a digestible story.
