In honor of the new movie Inception, I wanted to showcase a few other movies that seem to "trick the mind". These are the type of films that ask you to free your mind, and step into another world.
The 5 Best Trick the Mind Movies:
The Matrix (1999)
The film depicts a future in which reality as perceived by humans is actually a simulated reality created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population, while their bodies heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. Upon learning this, computer programmer "Neo" is drawn into a rebellion against the machines, involving other people who have been freed from the "dream world" and into reality. The film contains many references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures; philosophical and religious ideas such as the Advaita's Maya(illusion), "Brain in a vat" thought experiment; and homages to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hong Kong action cinema, Spaghetti Westerns, dystopian fiction, and Japanese animation.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
The film tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms, newly arrived in Los Angeles, California, who meets and befriends an amnesiac hiding in her aunt's apartment. The story includes several other seemingly unrelated vignettes that eventually connect in various ways, as well as some surreal scenes and images that relate to the cryptic narrative. The New York Times writes that while some might consider the plot an "offense against narrative order ... the film is an intoxicating liberation from sense, with moments of feeling all the more powerful for seeming to emerge from the murky night world of the unconscious."
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The story follows the ascent of mankind into the near-future space age through minimalist performances and a stron visual style. It primarily deals with thematic elements ofhuman evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life, and is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, ambiguous imagery that is open-ended to a point approaching surrealism, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue.
Being John Malkovich (1999)
A man takes a new job on the 7th-and-a-half floor of an office building and stumbles upon a membranous room that leads inside the head of stage and screen actor John Malkovich. There he can see life through Malkovich's eyes before being systematically ejected from the room and onto the New Jersey turnpike. The man then rents out Malkovich's head to others, eventually letting his wife inside where she falls in love with another woman who, in turn, thinks she has fallen in love with John Malkovich. Memento (2000)
This film is often used to show the distinction between plot and story. The film's events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives — one in color, and the other in black and white. The black and white sections are told in chronological order, showing Leonard conversing with an anonymous phone caller in a motel room. Leonard's investigation is depicted in color sequences that are in reverse chronological order. As each sequence begins, the audience is unaware of the preceding events, just like Leonard, thereby giving the viewer a sense of his confusion. By the film's end when the two narratives converge we understand the investigation and the events that lead up to Teddy's death.
