I like movies that play with your mind. Films where you don't really know what's going on until the ending (and maybe not even then). For example:

Memento
Jacob's Ladder
Sixth Sense (of course)

Anyone have any more? (careful not to give away the endings)

The Sting! One of my favorites.

Ed

Total Recall.
:wavey:

The Others.


Sonya

Seen it, seen it, seen it :)

Hmm... I bet you've seen Arlington Road already, too.

Oh, and one that was really slow, but the twist makes it almost worth the other two hours of it... Session 9. I think it may have been straight to video. It has the first guy from NYPD Blue in it, but I can't remember his name. The redheaded detective.

Sonya

I rented Arlington Road, but turned it off and returned it halfway through. Maybe I should have stuck around for the ending :)

Haven't seen Session 9, I'll look for it (David Caruso?)

That's his name! Be warned, if you rent it, you have to commit to watching to the end. Even though, if you're anything like me, you'll want to turn it off and go to bed halfway through. I'd recommend waiting until it's one of the cheap old release rentals, though.

And Arlington Road is worth another watch. It's definitely got a good twist to it. :)

Sonya

I highly recommend The Thirteenth Floor 1999. Be sure NOT to read the liner notes on the DVD or VHS. They give away WAY too much of the story.

I also highly recommend Body Heat 1981, if you're not bothered by the sex scenes. Your mind will be tied up in knots trying to figure out what's really going on. The movie is Kathleen Turner's film debut and Lawrence Kasdan's directorial debut. This film is on my top 10 favorites list!

Gene

Your mention of Body Heat reminded me of The Last Seduction, a very good twisty movie (again, if you don't mind the sex scenes). Both movies have great femme fatales.

I've always had a sneaking regard for 'Last Tango in Paris' always notorious for the bedroom acrobatics but an interesting interaction between Brando and Schneider but then again I always prefered butter to margarine !

Ed, I love the 'The Sting' Newman and Shaw streets ahead of Redford in the acting department. Charles Durning as Snyder and Eileen Brennan as Gondorfs girlfriend superb.
Shaw was born 3 miles down the road from me in Westhoughton.

I don't recall Tango having a surprise ending. In fact, when I saw it I was even watching the clock so the ending was no surprise at all :) I did like the scene with the sinking life-preserver, though.

Which end are we talking about here Doug !

Originally posted by chris h
X
Shaw was born 3 miles down the road from me in Westhoughton.

Did you ever get to meet Shaw? How come some of that didn't rub off on you? :D

Ed

Fight Club
American Psyco
Being John Malcovich
are some of my favorites....

Seven -- two police detectives try to solve a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins. The movie does contain some scenes of tortured victims, but it doesn't flood the audience with blood and gore. Your imagination is allowed to work during the height of the horror.... which is always the most frightening aspect -- the film scenes running through my mind.

I wanted to tell em' about Seven, and you beat me to it.
Stars Brad Pitt, if anyone's interested. I liked this one, but the ending, ohh ma, ma.

Blood Simple is one I only saw once, yrs ago, and they never play it. It is quite scary, and has a scene never done before or after. Might have been a early Cohen Bros. film.

all I can think of right now.
Hi Doug

Vanilla Sky...

...about as twisty as you can get.

Just finished rewatching another movie with an excellent twist ending, "Primal Fear", which reminds me of another one, "Presumed Innocent".

Recently rented "Frailty", with a nice twist to it.

Don't "forget" Memento!

How about an uncomfortable twist as in:

The Crying Game

A recent one that had numerous twists (and made a lot of law enforcement people uneasy) ....

Training Day (Denzel Washington)

Then there was the Jodie Foster seeking alien life flick ...

Contact

... and who can forget the neverending twists in both the theatre and television ....

The X Files

Well, I think I'm probably the only person on earth who actually liked this movie, but it's one of my favorites ...

Angel Heart

I've seen it. DeNiro as the devil, good twist (at the time, been done to death since then).

I guess I don't see enough movies... :)

I didn't know the twist had been done to death - not the DiNiro as the devil one, the other one at the end when Mickey Rourke finally finds Johnny Favourite...

I still love it though. :D

Shawshank Redemption, The usual suspects, L. A. Confidential, Minority Report, to name a few, were interesting with rather unexpected endings.

A recent movie that has a strange twist and is a bit scary is "The Ring". Anthony Hopkin's "Red Dragon" also quite good.

Well, I just saw the twistiest movie I've seen in a long time. It was so twisty, I'm still trying to figure out if it was playing fair all along (I suspect it was). "Basic", with John Travolta and Samuel Jackson. I won't even bother trying to describe the number and degree of twists, but the screenwriter is one cruel sonofagun :)

The Devil's Advocate with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves and DannyR's choice of Vanilla Sky are my votes. There is more than meets the eye in both films...

I agree,I still don't understand Devil's Advocate eventhough I watched it twice. I have watched Matrix several times, but a lot of stuff i am not sure i understood correct. Had tough time with minority report as well.

The Usual Suspects
Minority Report

I just saw "Lucky Number Slevin", excellent twists (more than the typical twist count, as well).

Two of my favourite films that are full of twisty goodness and deliciously unsettling in that 'subtle yet unrelenting' kind of way. "Donnie Darko" and an Aussie film "Alexandra's Project" highly recomended.

Not mentioned yet..."The 6th day" and "Collateral Damage" . It's an Arnold Swarzenegger movie, I know, but has a surprising twist to it. In Collateral Damage, don't remember him firing a gun, that's another surprise.

"One Hour Photo" - Robin Williams

"What lies beneath" - Harrison Ford & Michelle Pfeiffer

"Hide and Seek" - Robert Deniro

Most recent, I expect "The DaVinci Code". Skipped this one when it was showing because I've read the book. I'll probably rent the DVD after 2 years.

'House of Games' is an exceptional movie - with one twist after another, right up to the very final scene.

It's a David Mamet movie from 1987 - which should give you a good idea of what kind of movie it is.

Incidentally, Mamet also made 'Glengarry Glen Ross', which is another truly excellent movie - also with quite a few great twists.

They're both slightly more leftfield than the movies that have generally been mentioned in this thread so far, so I thought it's possible you may not be familiar with them.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093223/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/

Enjoy

U - Turn with Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Lopez, Joaquin Phoenix. Wickedly fun film, 1997.

oh come on...the most obvious..."lost highway"...or any david lynch film for that matter....hehehe the man is psychotically brilliant


edit:...yes, uturn...any movie that opens with a ween song playing is my kind of movie

No Way Out (1987)

The movie ends with an extremely surprising plot twist.

Just saw "Where the Truth Lies". Any Atom Agoyan film would qualify as twisty, though. He's unusually adept at pulling the rug out from under you. Everything will make perfect sense, then "whoops", then it makes even more sense and "whoops". But he never cheats, and it's all tied up in the end, albeit sometimes in ways we wish it weren't.