Favourite movie

Rating: 10/10 (10 April 2015)

This is so beautiful! The actors are great, all of them. I think, I like Chazz Palminteri best, but then Benicio del Toro was awesome to, and Stephen Baldwin as well, and PETE POSTLETHWAITE, and EVERYBODY! (Kevin Spacey doesn't need any additional praise, he's gotten plenty already.) The score fits beautifully, and of course the script is flawless.
Apart from Sunset Boulevard this was the first movie I'd watched that turned its plot upside down at the end. As soon as I had left the cinema in '95 I knew that I had to get the tape in order to watch it again. And they KNEW viewers would react like this, they relied on it, the film COUNTED on it. It has to be watched repeatedly in order to be appreciated.
This movie got me into binge watching. I watched the tape lots of times. Several times with pen and writing pad, remote control at the ready to pause and rewind, taking notes in order to find a flaw with the script. Once, for about ten minutes, I thought I'd found one: How could Verbal be telling Agent Kujan about what Keaton and McManus saw and experienced on the ship, when he claimed, he himself hadn't been there? Then I realized that for this precise scene it wasn't Kint doing the storytelling – it was Kujan himself, delivering mere hypotheses.
I think I bought the DVD as soon as it was released, even before I owned a DVD-player.
I could watch this a thousand times and still be thrilled and discover new details. The camera closing in on the hawsers; Hockney seeing the light when it's too late; the way the surface of the coffee in the cup fades out to become the cave at the beach at night; Kint waiting silently in the office; taking in his surroundings, while apparently nothing happens at all for a too-long moment. Later we find out that the rest of the plot came into being in those few seconds. Kujan finally understanding and dropping the cup. I get goosebumps only thinking about it.
Pure beauty. I can't understand people getting excited about Avatar or Avengers, when there's a movie like The Usual Suspects around, honestly, I just don't get it. Must definitely watch it again this weekend.