Floatworks recommends: five movies that will make you think

Depending on your selection, a movie can be a way to escape reality for a few hours and fully immerse yourself emotionally in the lives of the characters on screen, or it can be a way to switch off completely and laugh along to some total nonsense. Hey – we’re not judging! Here at Floatworks, we’re big fans of flicks that make you think, and there’s a world of introspective feature films out there to make you consider your own place in the world, and challenge your perceptions of consciousness. Here are a select few of our faves…

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Perhaps only the second film Jim Carrey has made where he’s playing an affable, every-day-man character – and not in a comedic caricature (The Truman Show being the first). Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind deals with the delightful prospect of being able to erase memories of painful events or experiences – in Carrey’s case here, a past relationship. In this particular movie reality, the technology for ‘Eternal Sunshine-ing’ someone is new and not perfected, and some rather unfortunate cosmic unravelling begins to play out. Now just imagine if we had this technology today…

WATCH IT WHEN: You’re considering erasing some painful memories of your own.

FINAL VERDICT: Perhaps a more linear flick than the others here, it’s an emotional rollercoaster of a film regardless.

Vanilla Sky

The 2001 remake of 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes packs a punch with its stars Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz and Jason Lee in a mind-bending psychological thriller that explores lucid dreaming, alternate realities, and love triangles – all with an ending entirely open to interpretation. Give it your full attention… then watch it again and reform your opinion of what’s actually happening entirely.

WATCH IT WHEN: You have total, absolute focus. Vanilla Sky jumps about a lot, and you need to stay on top of it to get through.

FINAL VERDICT: Any film that leaves you wondering about its outcome days, even weeks, after viewing gets a gold star in our book.

I notice something different every time I watch Vanilla Sky. Now my new interpretation of it leaves me more satisfied than when last viewed

— Joshua (@Jay_2the_Bee) 8 August 2017

Samsara

Alright, this isn’t a movie in the conventional sense, but it is freely available to watch if you can find it in the deepest darkest depths of Netflix. Completely devoid of narrative or dialogue, the 2011 project bills itself as a nonverbal, guided meditation that explores everything from spirituality, the human existence to the miraculous and unexplained. Sounds kooky, but it’s utterly absorbing, and as a means of video to help you explore your own consciousness and learn more about yourself via introspection, it’s not just in a field of its own, it’s floating in its own solar system.

WATCH IT WHEN: You need an audiovisual accompaniment to meditation, or you need an engaging way to try meditating for the first time.

VERDICT: Well, this one’s really down to where you let it take you…

Trance

James McAvoy is an esteemed art auctioneer in this 2013 Danny Boyle head-spinner, who may or may not have helped, then double-crossed an international gang of thieves into stealing one of the world’s most valuable paintings. Only he has no recollection of any of the events up to the artwork’s disappearance, despite everyone believing – including his hypnotherapist, enigmatically played by Rosario Dawson – that he knows, somewhere in the ether of his own subconscious, where the painting has been stored. With an utterly gripping final hour that sees plot twist after plot twist play with your own belief of what’s going on, this is a truly absorbing watch.

WATCH IT WHEN: You forgot where you put that thing you’ve been looking for.

VERDICT: Classic Danny Boyle – big, boisterous, beautiful and beguiling

Inception

This 2010 Christopher Nolan thriller stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by entering his victims’ subconscious, and its legacy is so engrained in our collective consciousness, it’s not uncommon to hear someone use ‘Inception’d’ as a verb to describe something dreamlike or otherworldly.

Along the way, DiCaprio is offered the chance to wipe his criminal record by means of inception: implementing another person’s idea into a target’s subconscious. Sound confusing? It is on first watch, but if you have a basic understanding on some of the prevailing theories behind consciousness, you’ll find extra nuggets of thoughtspiration on repeated views. Nolan has spoken before about how he wanted the film to explore the idea of people sharing a dream space, and being able to alter their own consciousness through practice. Sounds alarmingly familiar…

WATCH IT WHEN: You want to start exploring lucid dreaming for yourself.

VERDICT: It wasn’t the one that won Leo the Oscar… but it would’ve got our vote!

Have we missed off your favourite film that makes you go ‘Hmm…’? Tell us all about it on Facebook or Twitter…