Movie Monday -- Mind Games

Share on your blog unforgettable movies with characters who forget, or deal with memory loss and spells, linking back here at the Bumbles. Here are two greats ...

Dead Again. Oh, shit, how to explain this plot? Kenneth Branagh plays a detective who is called to an orphanage to investigate the strange case of Emma Thompson, a mysterious woman who just showed up one day, mute with shock and therefore unable to explain who she is or why she's there. Through hypnosis, she explains all she knows about a famous murder that happened in the neighborhood decades before. How does she know so much the case, and why is she only able to recall it under hypnosis? Why does she show up now, more than 40 years after the murder and the execution of the killer? Why is he so drawn to her? Why does she seem so terrified of him? How much more can I tell you without giving away the plot twist? This is a classy, cool piece of entertainment, and now that I'm thinking of it, I want to see it again RIGHT NOW.

Suddenly, Last Summer. Oh, shit, how to explain THIS plot? Katharine Hepburn is the incredibly wealthy old socialite mother of a very famous, newly dead poet. She wants Dr. Montogomery Clift to lobotomize her breathtakingly beautiful niece, Elizabeth Taylor. Kate insists Dr. Clift do it now, before Liz gets over her temporary amnesia. She'll give him scads of money for his hospital if he piths the poor girl's brain before she can reveal what happened last summer, and the scandalous and truly, truly weird family secret that shocked and traumatized her into memory loss. Like Dead Again, this movie is top-flight, with a multi-Oscared cast and director and a story by none other than Tennessee Williams. Which is not to say the story won't end with you saying, "God, I'm glad I'm not rich and brilliant because this family is fuckin' NUTS!"