DIRECTED BY: Martin Scorsese
FEATURING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams
PLOT: A U.S. Marshall with a tragic past investigates a mysterious disappearance at an
asylum for the criminally insane on a craggy, isolated Massachusetts island in the 1950s.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Scorsese sprinkles a few flakes of weirdness into his mainstream thriller for [...]
[AKA: The Ordeal]
DIRECTED BY: Fabrice Du Welz
FEATURING: Laurent Lucas, Jackie Berroyer, Brigitte Lahaie
PLOT: Small time entertainer Marc Stevens ventures along a rural route to reach his
next gig, but everything goes profoundly wrong. His car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, a stranger takes him to an inn, and he finds himself trapped in a [...]
DIRECTED BY: William Friedkin
FEATURING: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr.
PLOT: A lonely and none-too-bright waitress with a tragic past and an abusive ex-con
ex-husband takes up with a mysterious man who is convinced that their ramshackle motel room is infested by bugs.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Bug is a well-acted, claustrophobic and dramatic exploration [...]
DIRECTED BY: Jennifer Lynch
FEATURING: Bill Pullman, Julia Ormand, Michael Ironside
PLOT: Two FBI agents/weirdos harass criminals and innocents alike as they
search for a couple of murderers to whom they might have ties.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Think CSI or NCIS meets Natural Born Killers. The weird quotient is totally crushed by the earthbound [...]
DIRECTED BY: Chris Fisher
FEATURING: Daveigh Chase, Briana Evigan, Ed Westwick
PLOT: Samantha Darko goes on a cross-country road trip and learns along the way
that, once again, the world will end at a predetermined time unless she figures out a way to stop it. Where’s Jake Gyllenhaal when you need him?
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: In [...]
DIRECTED BY: Robert Mulligan
FEATURING: Chris and Martin Udvarnoky, Uta Haen, John Ritter
PLOT: Adapted from his novel by Tom Tryon, two enigmatic twins seem to be connected
to a community’s run of misfortune. Could it have anything to do with a cursed family crest and a dead man’s severed finger?
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: [...]
AKA π; π: Faith in Chaos
“Very much like the universe itself, the more technologically advanced we become and as out picture of π grows larger, the more its mysteries grow.”—From “Notes on π” on the Lions Gate Pi DVD
DIRECTED BY: Darren Aronofsky
FEATURING: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis
PLOT: Max, a reclusive mathematics genius, searches for a pattern [...]
DIRECTED BY: Marc Forster
FEATURING: Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling, Naomi Watts
PLOT: A private practice psychiatrist takes over the case of a suicidal art student after
his regular therapist takes a leave of absence due to stress, and discovers the case has metaphysical as well as psychological implications.
WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINE: Stay gets a pretty weird vibe [...]
“Something weird is going on here. What is it about us? Even in ‘Nam it was always weird. Are we all crazy or something?” –line in original screenplay to Jacob’s Ladder
DIRECTED BY: Adrian Lyne
FEATURING: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello
PLOT: Jacob Singer (nicknamed ”Professor” by his army buddies due to his glasses and Ph.D.) is wounded in Vietnam [...]
PLOT: 1950s private eye Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) is hired by a suave,
sartorial client (Robert DeNiro) to track down a crooner; as the search takes him from Harlem to New Orleans, Angel finds that every lead he interviews ends up dead.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: With its (sometimes literally) dripping atmosphere, mysterious dreamlike flashbacks, [...]
