Capsules

CAPSULE: THE WEIRD KIDZ (2022)

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The Weird Kidz is available for purchase or rental on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: Zach Passero

FEATURING: Voices of Tess Passero, Ellar Coltrane, Sydney Wharton, Glenn Bolton, Brian Ceely, ,

PLOT: Two seniors and three 6th graders go on a weekend campout and encounter the legendary Night Child.

Still from The Weird Kidz (2022)

COMMENTS: Wyatt, with the arms torn off of his jean jacket and a mustache that’s barely coming in, is taking his overweight little brother and his two school chums (and a bulldog) on a campout while their parents are out of town. To the 12-year-old trio’s surprise and delight, he also brings along buxom Mary. Black comics nerd Mel and incipient slacker Fatt are more fascinated by Mary’s cleavage than Dug, who’s main interests still revolve around video games and fireworks. Wyatt verbally abuses the boys, which impresses the girl even less than the homemade cassette power ballad demo tape he created for her with a subtle hidden message in it (“Girl, show me what you can do/Under the starry light/With those jeans so tight/Girl come play with me tonight…”) Wyatt’s insults all revolve around pubic hair (and the boys’ presumed lack thereof) and testicles, while the young trio’s rejoinders mostly involve butts, poop, and the smells associated with them. Mary teasingly takes the 6th graders’ side against Wyatt, bridging the age gap, but also chooses to spend her intimate moments with the burgeoning rock star.

I begin with a discussion of the adolescent characters rather than the monsters they fight because this is, wisely, where The Weird Kidz focuses its attention. The kidz spend more time hanging out, trading crude insults and drinking shoplifted beer, than fighting the Night Child. The gang covers the full spectrum of adolescence from beginning to end; the preteens and teens are at odds, but united in alliance against adults, and naturally they’ll come to appreciate each other more once they’re fighting for their lives together against the giant ant-creatures and an associated cult. A prominently featured, but casually handled, severed limb suggests both the level of seriousness of the threat and the movie’s overall attitude: it’s at least as much Meatballs as it is Evil Dead.

Passero’s drawings are stiff but serviceable, recalling TV animations like Mike Judge’s “King of the Hill” (and not quite to the level of “Rick and Morty,” with whom Kidz shares executive producer James Fino). A lot of viewers will give Passero extra credit for animating the entire thing by hand, taking a reported eight years to complete it. Personally, I’m more interested in the quality of the end product than the backstory, although admittedly the personal nature of the project lends it a degree of charm. Quite watchable and nostalgic, properly balancing grossout gags with the sweetness of youth; but given the blah art style, this might have worked better as a low-budget live action feature.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This bloody and brilliantly weird animated throwback is strange, violent, hilarious, and completely committed to its own wonderfully bizarre vision.”–Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots (contemporaneous)

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average

Apocryphally Weird

71*: KILL THE JOCKEY [ÉL JOCKEY] (2024)

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“A horse doesn’t know whether the rider on his back wears a dress or pants away from the track.”–Diane Crump

 

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Úrsula Corberó, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Daniel Fanego, Osmar Núñez, Roberto Carnaghi, Mariana Di Girólamo

PLOT: Horse jockey Remo Manfredini has fallen from the heights of his profession, afflicted with a host of addictions, tormented by his failing relationship with his fellow rider and pregnant girlfriend Abril, and feeling escalating pressure from his boss Sirena, a gangster who has tried to go straight by investing heavily in racing. After an incident on the track, Remo escapes the hospital and wanders the streets of the city trying to figure out what will bring him happiness, salvation, and renewal. All the while, he is pursued by Sirena’s henchmen, the police, and Abril hoping to save him from doom; ultimately, salvation may come in the form of an entirely new identity.

Still from Kill the Jockey (2024)

BACKGROUND:

  • El Jockey was Argentina’s official submission in the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards. The film debuted in competition at the Venice Film Festival. (It received no awards.)
  • The horse Remo rides into catastrophe bears the name Mishima, presumably shared with the notorious author and self-destructive political ideologue.
  • Ortega claims that the story was suggested in part by the Jack London novel “The Star Rover,” about a convicted murderer who escapes torture by going into a trance where he explores alternate lives. He has also cited a conversation with his ex-partner about how he could salvage their failing relationship. Her response–“You would have to die and be reborn. Then maybe you can fix it”–appears in the film.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Having driven a prize racehorse directly into a wrought iron fence, Manfredini wakes up with an egg-shaped head bandage and a case of anisocoria that makes him look like David Bowie. Remo stumbles onto the street in the manner of one of Monty Python’s Pepperpot ladies, but with a touching amount of uncertainty and wounded dignity. The look exemplifies the strange netherspace the character occupies and, through Pérez Biscayart’s haunted but ingenuous performance, the distance he must travel to find a better fate.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Locker room dance party; a baby always conveniently at hand

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The jockey is in a liminal state. Trapped between life and death, male and female, victory and defeat, substance and nonexistence, he is Schrodinger’s jockey. Remo’s journey to Dolores and beyond is played initially as screwball tragedy, then as black comedy, and finally as a redemptive triumph. Throughout, our hero walks through the film with a confusion and innocence that arouse sympathy even as the situations around him/her become increasingly absurd.  

Official trailer for Kill the Jockey

COMMENTS: As part of the handicapping for each race, jockeys Continue reading 71*: KILL THE JOCKEY [ÉL JOCKEY] (2024) →

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: CITY OF PIRATES (1983)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Anne Alvaro, Melvil Poupaud,

PLOT: Young Isidore lives a sheltered life in the Overseas French Territories During the Second World War, until an orphan boy lures her into crime and an escape to a mythic island.

Still from City of Pirates (1983)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Absurdities follow fast upon one another in Ruiz’s hazy, dreamy narrative.

COMMENTS: Raúl Ruiz is one of the most prominent surrealist film directors of the latter half of the twentieth century. An exile from Pinochet’s Chile, Ruiz produced most of his movies in France;  the 1970s and 1980s were his most formally radical years.

As with Three Crowns of the Sailor (1982), maritime adventures inspire City of Pirates‘ narrative. Any similarities with the early work are superficial, however; the focus here lies elsewhere. The plot revolves around a young woman named Isidore, who lives a middle-class, sheltered life with her family in the Overseas French Territories during World War Two. From the beginning, the violence of real historical events is tangibly nodded to through newspaper headlines. Our heroine’s mother states, “When we [humanity] get used to something, we start to crave something else,” suggesting a tale about humans’ propensity for war and destruction. The narrative moves forward through the appearance of an orphan boy, who lures Isidore into a series of absurd crimes as they make their way to a mythic island. There, a new series of allegorical misadventures ensues.

Political undertones become loud and clear through the absurdity of the events, which verge on the grotesque. Even without graphic imagery, the underlying violence haunts the viewers, while dominating and guiding our protagonists. At times, the war seems an abstraction, something happening in a parallel reality, like an imaginary naval skirmish in a garden of flowers. Yet, you can feel the seed of violence it plants under the skin.

The cinematography enhances this sentiment through blurry visual effects and over-stylized, almost expressionistic high-contrast lighting. Pastel tones, recalling fairy tales or old postcards, merge with a darker color palette and with sepia tones. But the most iconic visual element is the sporadic use of uncommon POVs foregrounding small details while marginalizing the main action, creating a sense of disorientation. In one of the most emblematic shots, Ruiz even put the camera inside an actor’s mouth.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…surreal fantasy is the form of the allusive pic. It thereby defies rational explanation. The pic asks the viewer to take a leap of faith into Ruiz’s strange humor and absurd storytelling… a pic of inspired madness… not meant for everyone.”–Dennis Schwartz, Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average

Pod 366: A Weird Movies Podcast

POD 366, EP. 193: WHEN THE SUN STANDS STILL FOR JAMES NEWTON

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Audio link (Spotify)

YouTube link

Discussed in this episode:

When the Sun Stands Still (2024): When Kenneth’s step-daughter disappears in the woods, detectives and a paranormal investigator try to decode increasingly mysterious events.

(trailer age restricted for brief near-nudity)

Harold and Maude (1971): Read the reader recommendation. A suicidal teen finds meaning in the arms of an elderly holocaust survivor. Buy Harold and Maude.

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:

We have no guest scheduled for next week’s Pod 366, but Greg and Giles will return with Pete to discuss the week’s weird news and releases (if any). In written content, Michael Diamades sails off to ‘ City of Pirates (1983), Shane Wilson plans to Kill the Jockey (2024) (again), and Gregory J. Smalley is will hang with The Weird Kidz (2022). Onward and weirdward!

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!