Sexy Darko

I watched the cult hit Donnie Darko hit at the weekend. It's entertaining, although the more you think about it, the more it seems to resemble an extended episode of Quantum Leap. The lengths to which various people on the internet have gone to deciphering every last detail, helped to a certain extent by the writer/director leaving large clues around about the fairly mundane explanation he has in mind ("Living Receiver", "Manipulated Living", "artifact" and "tangent universe", FFS).

But anyway. A few weeks ago I saw 'Sexy Beast', which was released around the same time, and I came up with a list of ways in which the two films are related. Contains some spoilers for both films, I expect.

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  The intrusion of a large physical object as a herald of the disruption to come (the engine in DD, the boulder in SB)
  
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  A sinister character who repeatedly goads the protagonist into a particular action, until he is killed by the protagonist.
  
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  The main character's gradual acceptance that he must carry out an unpleasant task, which he does ultimately motivated by love for another.
  
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  Most strikingly (and, hence, obviously, and not so interestingly): a guy in a sinister bunny suit as a motif throughout the film.