Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Ladyworld (2018): Eight teenage girls are trapped in a house by an earthquake in a surreal distaff take on “Lord of the Flies.” Screening in Los Angeles and New York this week, coming to VOD in late August. Ladyworld official site.
NEW ON HOME VIDEO:
Hush Hush, Nellie Oleson (2019): Kelly Hughes documentary Hush…Hush, Nellie Oleson! about his “increasingly absurd (and gory)” attempts to fit former “Little House on the Prairie” actress Alison Arngrim into a low-budget experimental horror film. VOD only. Buy or rent Hush Hush, Nellie Oleson
CERTIFIED WEIRD (AND OTHER) REPERTORY SCREENINGS:
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). We won’t list all the screenings of this audience-participation classic separately. You can use this page to find a screening near you.
- Columbus, OH , 8/2-8/8 – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). At the Gateway.
- Columbus, OH, 8/2 (midnight), 8/3-8/4 –Donnie Darko (2001). At the Gateway.
- Los Angeles, CA, 8/4 – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). At the Egyptian.
- New York City, NY, 8/2-8/3 (midnights) – Kung Fu Hustle (2004). At IFC Center.
- New York City, NY, 8/8 – School Daze (1988) with Sorry to Bother You (2018) (double feature) (free screening). At Lincoln Center.
- San Diego, CA, 8/3 (midnight) & 8/4 – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). At Ken Cinema.
- Schenectady, NY, 8/2 – Phantom of the Paradise (1974) with “We Sold Our Souls LIVE!,” a multimedia presentation from Grady Hendrix. At Proctors.
- Tuscon, AZ, 8/7 – The Wicker Man (1973) (“Final Cut”). At the Loft.
- Vancouver, BC, Canada, 8/2 – Paprika (2006). At the Rio.
- Vancouver, BC, Canada, 8/8 – The Holy Mountain (1973). At the Rio.
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE: Next week, all Fantasia Festival 2019 reviews must go! We’re clearing out our stock and passing the savings along to you! Save on reviews of the Russian black comedy Why Don’t You Just Die?; the children’s anime fantasy The Moon in the Hidden Woods (act now and get a bonus interview with the director!); the early-release preview of the restored classic Son of the White Mare [Fehérlófia]; another preview, this time of the coming-soon-to-theaters thinking man’s sci-fi offering Freaks; and Giles Edwards final grab bag of Fantasia leftovers and left-field recommendations. All this before Tuesday, by which time we’re expecting to recieve Alfred Eaker‘s highly anticipated report on his second summer blockbuster assignment, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And in case that’s not enough for you, Shane Wilson will also chime in on a couple of odd shorts now streaming on Netflix: Paul Thomas Anderson‘s 15-minute Thom Yorke music video “Anima” and David Harbour’s30-minute mockumentary Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein. Just because you’re on summer vacation doesn’t mean you can take time off from reading 366 Weird Movies; in fact, you should be using your free time to catch up on all the sizzling weird movies news. Onward and weirdward!
What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.
I’ve been mulling over what to say about this movie for close to twenty-four hours and I’ve still got nothing. My fear is, I suppose, that if I started going on about the various misteps, I might not stop, and that would send an inaccurate message about Jennifer Reeder’s earnest, feminist, melodramatic feature debut. Various crummy home lives are explored as we observe a small cross-section of No Name, USA, in this movie about people making decisions of varying degrees of emotional stupidity during the aftermath of a student’s disappearance and death.
And boy did it. And in so coming, my faith in J-Horror was restored. Obviously this is mainstream fare—I wasn’t jumping out of my seat or suffering nightmares afterwards—but it had an unsettling edge to it, characters who evolved, and a really gangbusters finale involving exorcists from all known religions, cracking timbers, and blood-soaked caterpillars. Director Tetsuya Nakashima made what will be looked upon fondly as one of my favorite Christmas movies (yep, things come to head on 12/25), as well as one of my favorite dream sequences, where we can see the rice-omelette visions of a cheerfully sleeping two-year-old girl. I’ll admit it was a bit long-winded, but that allowed for a rare, full dissection of all the characters’ motivations—and while I didn’t find them entirely 
Flowing from a deep well of tedium, this J-Horror Ringu “re-boot” made me nostalgic for a film I haven’t actually seen. (Shame, shame.) Over the course of one-hundred long minutes, I was challenged to feel sympathy for young hospital psychologist, Mayu (Elaiza Ikeda), find her insufferable brother, Kazuma (Hiroya Shimizu), endearing, and be remotely crept out by the “mysterious girl” (Himeka Himejima). It failed on all counts. The director of the original franchise, Hideo Nakata, was at the helm and managed to drain whatever life was present in the original to present an over-lit, under-developed story which only managed to elicit an enthusiastic response from the audience on two occasions. The first was from a direct nod to the video of “girl-with-hair-emerging-from-well”; the second was a raucous laugh at the discovery of a victim that reminded me of nothing else so much as
Director Abe Forsythe accomplishes what I had thought impossible: wringing another blood droplet from parched Zombie Movie cloth. (Bad metaphor: forgive me, it’s early.) Little Monsters opens with an hilarious montage of a couple constantly bickering while the credits run, setting things up nicely for dead-beat, former musician Dave (Alexander England) to hit rock bottom and crash at his sister’s place. While there, he connects with his nephew, and ultimately meets the nephew’s kindergarten teacher, Miss Clementine (Lupita Nyong’o, playing her as a cross between a schoolmarm and a manic pixie dream girl). What follows is a field-trip to a local zoo, which happens to be situated right next to an American military research facility. (Forsythe knows well that he’s re-treading the zombie thing; when troops are called in there’s the exchange, “Zombies? Again?” –Yeah. “Fast ones, or slow ones?” –Slow ones. “Thank God it’s the slow ones.”)