I love this film and happily rate it a 10/10
The Albanian fortuneteller gives Leonard what he needs to defeat Medusa's Russian-trained dancing vegetarians (the ballet shoes) and steal the sphere (the red engagement ring box with a bee), and later, she gifts him with frozen meat patties and a hot dog that defeat the rest of Medusa's team
The fortuneteller's gibberish is an example of Zaum (which does have identifiable words), which fits into the film's Dadaist, Absurdist, Surrealist, free-form inventiveness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaum
Medusa's right hand man is Man Ray (Dadaist, Surrealist); Leonard's wife's butler is named Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp: Dadaist, conceptional art); on the table in Leonard's bedroom are piles of art books, two of the books are of Max Ernst (Dadaism co-founder and Surrealism art movement) and Pablo Picasso
The opening credits feature colouring-book animals; in colouring books you have a basic framework and you fill that frame with any colour and design you want
During Leonard's first jaunt to International Tuna - cylindrical storage cannisters are freshly painted in bold blue and green and red (most of them blown up by Leonard in his attempt to gain entry into International Tuna), and that reminded me of Jean-Luc G-dard's freshly painted colour schematics (G-dard the New Wave Picasso; he also heavily utilized yellow); the three colours are also primary colours, the same colours in the three tubes of liquid within Medusa's sphere that control thought, found in large vats in International Tuna
There's a lot of 80's placement in the film, from Adidas to Alka-Seltzer to Bill Cosby to Buck Rogers (Leonard's outfit) to Coca-Cola to Jane Fonda to Johnson's Baby Powder to Lava soap bars (stacks and stacks, another ode to Jean-Luc G-dard....) to Palmolive liquid dish detergent to Peabo Bryson to Porsche, a quick shot of his bathroom shower's water levers reveal labels for Perrier and Evian, and the back one liquid dish detergent is obviously Dawn, and the profusion of lobsters and butter are a nod to Red Lobster's 80's television commercial extravaganza, Red Lobster bibs were a fad back then, and Playboy hit mainstream during the 1980's, especially their PlayboyTV, plus there is a reference to Jaws: the barking rainbow trout morphs into Jaws when the "trout" devours Quincy Adams
The montage of Leonard getting ready for a date reminded me of the Rocky film training montages; Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV were released before Leonard 6
The relationship between Leonard and his butler reminded me of Batman's relationship with Alfred in Batman (1989), which was released after Leonard 6, but nevertheless there was a similarity there
"The musclebound minions burned by meat" were burned by meat because they do not eat meat and are literally burned at the thought of being in physical contact with slabs of meat; this also reminds me of Dracula's reaction to garlic
Other things I noticed
It's funny that Monroe-the-Agent is killed because US President James Monroe crafted the Monroe Doctrine of non-interventionism, a doctrine heavily supported by Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Polk, some of whom helped him craft it, and Monroe-the-Agent (along with the other agents) violate the principle of non-intervention doctrine by interfering with Leonard's retirement, and violate the doctrine itself by launching a war in LatinAmerica: Medusa who with her devouring of mangos and grapes and bananas and with the brassy Brazilian style of her gowns partially represents Latin America, and with her colonization of animals she partially represents Europe colonizating Latin America, and Europe's colonization of Latin America was the catalysts for the Monroe Doctrine; futurist cubes of meaning....
That gorgeous stained-glass cupola in Leonard's bedroom, and the busts of Greek philosophers, including Hippocrates in the dead centre of the shelf above his dressing room
The paintings above his bed - bleak isolated landscapes, visual windows into his heart
Frayn the butler is a reference to Michael Frayn, the famous contemporary British playwright known for his theatrical farces, most notably Noises Off, and the British actor playing the butler, Tom Courtenay, acted in one of Frayn's plays
The parallels between Leonard's daughter and Lisa Bonet (doing nudity for no reason, hooking up with an older man; even though Kravitz was only a few years older than Bonet, he was by that point a worldly experienced man, whereas she was still fresh out of her parents' home and the Cosby set); the daughter used a stage name, and in real life Lisa Bonet changed her name in the late 1990's, very odd
Leonard's wife Allison left him because she caught him in solarium naked with a naked nineteen year-old woman, striking each other with birch leaves
And finally, when Leonard is Bucked Rogered up and "armed", his butler Frayn recites from various famous war speeches, in order -
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
[L-rd Alfred Tennyson - The Charge Of The Light Brigade]
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered
[Shakespeare's Henry V]
Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes
[unsourced, most associated the American Revolutionary War]
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender
[Winston Churchill, WWII speech]
Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
[Shakespeare' Richard III]
Pick up your gun and get on your horse and get on your way
[don't know]
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Réponse de Rickers
le 24 septembre 2018 à 03h22
I liked this movie, too. I don't think it's a 10, but it's not a 2, either.