Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Year of the Doggleganger

My year in Dogglegangers... First off, David James Keaton's trippy mindfuck The Last Projector gets a prize for coining my new favorite term, doggleganger, but looking back 2014 has had a theme. Here's what I mean.

Everybody Has a Plan - Ana Piterbarg's drama about identical twin brothers, one of whom murders the other to fake his own death and then takes his brother's life only to find he's escaped one tight spot only to end up in a worse one. 

Enemy - Denis Villeneuve's paranoia noirsicle will haunt your fucking dreams. That is, unless you're already an android. Easily one of the best movies of the year - elements of David Lynch, Brian DePalma, Jose Saramago, Franz Kafka and Jack Finney go in a blender and emerge a perfect nightmare.

The Double - Richard Ayoade's adaptation of Dostoevsky's tale of the you you'd like to be leaving the you you are behind and the lengths the you you are might go to to ruin it for the you you're not.

The One I Love - Charlie McDowell directs Elizabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in this oddly dramatic comedy about predators from another dimension. Or something. Once again Duplass finds himself in the offbeat comic version of the year's thematic trump suit as he did a couple years back with Safety Not Guaranteed appearing in the same year as memorable offbeat time travel flicks like Looper and The Sound of My Voice. Hmmm. What's he doing next?

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