3. The Fountain
A meditation on love, spirituality and the nature of time, The Fountain is a wonderfully ambitious failure from Darren Aronofsky, a visually stunning, well acted film that, depending on who you ask, is either a visionary, Kubrickian masterpiece, or a load of overblown, portentous, yet good-looking twaddle. The film takes place over 1000 years, depicting a determined conquistador and his Queen, a modern-day scientist and his cancer-stricken wife, and then in the future, a space traveler lamenting his lost love; these three arcs are in of themselves fascinating to watch, yet Aronofsky can't find a suitable way to tie them all together. The visual motifs employed throughout - specifically The Tree of Life - just don't offer up enough explanation, and though Aronofsky is clearly being intentionally vague, that doesn't really take away from the fact that this was a great movie premise sorely in search of an ending to link it all together. Instead, it seems needlessly incomprehensible.