Your Favorite / Most Clever Movie Titles

ooo, i like these.

yeah fbi, I was saying generally one word titles don't do it because they're too easy/obvious, and don't convey much meaning. like, they convey the meaning of the word but not necessarily the movie.

like "rush hour." we know it's got cops from two different countries and a lot of martial arts, running, chasing, shooting, and fighting. but "rush hour" brings to mind everyone rushing to work or being stuck in traffic. they chose it because it sounds fast paced and "action" oriented, but it really doesn't match and it really doesn't "mean anything."

but, braveheart, wasn't that a real name applied to a real man in history? wasn't that name applied in that storylike way older cultures gave names, very very heavy with meaning? Like Dances With Wolves says SO many things about the movie and the man you're about to see - a man who dances with wolves. What kind of man would "dance" with wolves? What does it mean to dance with wolves? The title alone makes you think about it.

The title "The postman always rings twice" makes you think - why's the postman ringing twice? Why's he ALWAYS ringing twice? Why's he ringing at all, and for whom is he ringing?

"the butterfly effect" has a whole world of meaning - literally. what's the effect a butterfly going to cause, there's a whole connotation there of a scientific theory, and in the movie it's applied to a story, how one tiny thing affects everything else until at the end of the thread of circumstance it's a huge major impact you never conceived of.

sometimes movie titles perfectly capture the nuance and core complication in the movie, or the key character, itself.

example - i totally avoided "little children" regardless of reviews, nominations, kate winslet, or reading the synopsis. I knew it was something i should watch and wanted to but that name was driving me crazy. i was like, i dont' want to watch a movie about grown people behaving like little children.

then i watched it. and it was good ... and it was exactly about grown people acting like little children. it drove me mad. but that was me. in the end, that movie title perfectly captures the very raw essence of that movie.

i'm an etymology and linguistic freak. the meaning of words and why people choose them and the meaning of labels and why people chose them ...

the beauty of a phrase and how it fits something, what it carries with it, what it represents.

some of these titles you guys bring up, it's like, they're so evocative. you may or may not have ever seen teh movie but the title alone is intriguing.

i knew because of the title "the three burials ..." that I wanted to see that movie, even though it's a "modern western" (my term) and i'm not really into those. the title alone was mysterious. who gets buried. why? why is a mexican man getting buried 3 times, and by who, for what?

and even for "non serious" fare ... "The Devil Wears Prada" ... that is SO evocative. yeah it's fluff, yeah the book reads in a couple hours, yeah it was a quick sell for mainstream markets. but the title alone is oozing razors, wit, arrogance, style, excess, class differences, ego and seduction. who's the devil? why do they wear prada? why do we care that the devil wears prada, why are we learning/observing the devil in the first place ...

so much meaning behind such brief clever little strings of words.

someone says "Silence of the Lambs" and there's just so much intense history there. that movie rocked the movie watcher world. it turned horror/suspense on its head. took it to a whole new level.

can anyone hear or look at that title and not think all kinds of creepy, uncertain, slinky, cold, foreboding, and dangerous things?

I find a movie title good if it expands on the themes explored in the movie. I know what I just said may have come out pretentious or meaningless, but some movies actually succeed at doing that.

For example, Unforgiven makes you wonder about the movie a bit more. What's not forgiven? By whom? Maybe it’s about destiny, and how it didn’t forgive or allow Eastwood character to become good. Or, it couldn’t forget about his bad deeds, and wanted to punish him? Or was it his conscience? An excellent title. Made me think.