  Brad Pitt's "Fight Club" and Haley Joel Osment's "The Sixth Sense" made Kevin's list of movie mindblowers.
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For all the historic monuments, cities and even planets Hollywood explodes, few movies truly blow your mind.
Inception, with its alternate realities and bewildering dreamscapes, certainly qualifies. But what other films have stunned audiences, not with computer-generated effects, but storytelling?
Warning, though, if you haven't seen these movies already, 1) what's wrong with you and 2) beware of spoilers ahead that could separate your head from your shoulders.
The Sixth Sense (1999): Bruce Willis is Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist hoping to treat Cole (Haley Joel Osment), a nine-year-old outcast who says he's tortured by ghosts. Or as Cole puts it, "I see dead people." Ultimately Malcolm shows Cole how to cope with the gift as more a blessing than a curse, only to be confronted with the jaw-dropping truth: He's a ghost. And even while he was helping the boy, Cole was returning the favour -- suggesting how Malcolm can finally communicate with his wife (Olivia Williams). Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's breakout smash is still his best: spine-tingling and soul-stirring.
Memento (2001): Guy Pearce has a "condition." After vicious thugs assaulted him and raped and killed his wife, he can no longer form new memories. So as he hunts for the men responsible, he is forced to rely on an intricate system of tattoos and notes-to-self to tell himself who to trust and who to kill. Writer-director Christopher Nolan's puzzler is an intricate marvel of ingenuity and dovetails to a grim realization: The past isn't what Pearce's brain-injured avenger remembers, it's what he's built for himself to give his life purpose.
Chinatown (1974): Roman Polanski's chilly, creepy homage to detective fiction is a perfect film -- and my favourite, period. So I'm probably bias. That said, the twist sprung by screenwriter Robert Towne is a perverse head-spinner when Jack Nicholson's private eye confronts Faye Dunaway's femme fatale about the identity of her murdered husband's young mistress. "She's my sister! She's my daughter!" After he slaps her, she shouts, "She's my sister and my daughter!" John Huston is memorably menacing as her father, the crooked figure who looms over a massive conspiracy.
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Fight Club (1999): David Fincher's satire of consumer culture and male aggression is blistering, outrageous, hysterical -- and punctuated by a revelation that shows how disturbed Edward Norton's nameless protagonist really is. For the entire film, he -- and the audience -- have believed he's been seduced by the machismo of Brad Pitt's soap salesman-turned-cult leader Tyler Durden. Turns out, Durden is only an alternate personality our "hero" created in order to help him break out of his IKEA-furnished existence. And maybe that would be OK, if they didn't want to kill each other now.
Mulholland Drive (2001): I could tell you what the byzantine plot adds up to, except, frankly, even after multiple viewings, I'm still sure I only have a rudimentary grasp of all that's transpired in David Lynch's erotic, moody head-trip about a gorgeous amnesiac (Laura Harring) and an aspiring movie star (Naomi Watts).
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): Speaking of indecipherable brain-benders, there's Stanley Kubrick's psychotropic science-fiction opus about the origins of mankind, a discovery on the moon and a doomed mission to Jupiter that intends to answer the meaning of human existence. Imaginative or frustrating? Confounding or illuminating? What can't be argued is Kubrick's mastery of cinema.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980): Five heavily breathed words that sent shockwaves through the popular culture: "No, I am your father." But Darth Vader's identity isn't the only twist that made this Star Wars episode exceptional. Consider the grim fates that befall the heroes -- Han Solo is frozen, Luke Skywalker realizes his life's been a lie -- and the cliffhanger conclusion. These are bold creative choices for a sequel that was money in the bank.
Jacob's Ladder (1990): Tim Robbins is a Vietnam veteran haunted by visions and flashbacks to a harrowing experience during the war in which he almost died. What's wrong with him? Is the victim of a military experiment? And can his sensuous girlfriend (Elizabeth Pena) be trusted? Eventually he uncovers the startling answer: He was killed in Vietnam and now must ascend to the next life.
The Others (2001): Admittedly, the revelation that Nicole Kidman and her children are, in fact, ghosts is not what is so unsettling about this English gothic period piece. It's the circumstances of their deaths: that she suffocated them and then killed herself.
The Usual Suspects (1995): Who is Keyser Soze? That's the question at the core of Bryan Singer's crackling pulp fiction about a crew of criminals drafted by an enigmatic mastermind. Christopher McQuarrie's screenplay leap-frogs through time, narrated by Kevin Spacey's Verbal Kint, a lowlife who doesn't know when to shut up. That's apropos, we realize as the credits roll, because everything we've listened to for the past two hours has been an elaborate fabrication.
kevin.williamson@sunmedia.ca
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