This Christmas, a reindeer in the living room loses its legs, a helicopter hovers over the dinner table, and a yeti dances around the tree.
CONTENT WARNING: A.I- generated.
All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)
CAPSULE: THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO (2025)
La misteriosa mirada del flamenco
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Diego Céspedes
FEATURING: Tamara Cortes, Paula Dinamarca, Matías Catalán, Pedro Muñoz, Luis Dubó
PLOT: A family of drag queens raise an orphan girl in the shadow of a mining operation in Chile in 1982, but the miners blame them for a deadly plague they believe is spread by the gay men’s gaze.
COMMENTS: The setting of Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is more than somewhat absurd. A house of cross-dressing men (they call themselves “transvestites,” in the lingo of the period, not “trans” in the modern sense) stands alone at the base of the mountains, at the edge of the village where the miners live. The family within is tolerated by the macho community, although disparaged with slurs. The men avert their gaze, superstitiously believing that the deadly plague spreading through the village is passed through the transvestite’s gaze. The half-dozen occupants of the house raise Lidia, an orphan girl of about 11, with the glamorous Flamingo serving as the girl’s surrogate mother. Other than the prepubescent Lidia and, perhaps, the ambiguously gendered older matron of the clan, Mama Boa (played by trans actress Paula Dinamarca), there are no (cis-)women in the community; even the miner’s children are exclusively male. Perhaps for this reason, the transvestite’s home also serves as the community bordello, with the women putting on evening drag shows and beauty pageants. The more intrigued, or desperate, miners opportunistically sneak into the girls’ rooms to sate their carnal needs. This creates an eternal tension, with the miners tolerating, fearing, and sometimes desiring the transvestites, leading to the ever-present threat of violence—and the girls aren’t afraid to get into a scrap, when their seductive charms fail to get them what they need.
The straight world, therefore, is halfway accommodating, but always harbors a threat. It’s a dynamic that may be familiar to modern gays, although appearing here in exaggerated form. In this fairyland, the transvestites are free to be who they are; but that freedom comes with a price. They are eternal outsiders. True love is hard to find in this desert. Flamingo nurtures her maternal instincts through surrogate motherhood, and Lidia is fiercely loyal to the queer clan, but death—from violence, or disease—always threatens.
The Chilean mountains and desert valleys, reminiscent of the mythical American west, are captured beautifully through Angello Faccini’s excellent cinematography—although the unnecessary use of the 4:3 academy ratio sadly robs us of some of the classic grandeur we might hope for. The film is not quite magical realism per se—nothing actually impossible happens, outside of a dream sequence or two—but it’s of course heavily influenced by the movement. Flamingo is, instead, a slightly dreamlike dramatic fable set in a highly improbable world. It is, perhaps, the world as seen by Lidia, a pre-sexual being who loves the only family she knows, but is on the cusp of learning about the wages of the sinful world.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: STRAIGHT LINE (2025)
A man walks across New York City in a perfectly straight line (while watching out for wizards).
CONTENT WARNING: Adult language.
CAPSULE: AJ GOES TO THE DOG PARK (2025)
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Toby Jones (II)
FEATURING: AJ Thompson, Crystal Cossette Knight
PLOT: Mild-mannered AJ’s life is thrown into disorder when Fargo’s mayor changes his beloved dog park into a dog-free “blog park,” so he decides to run for mayor himself.
COMMENTS: Comedy is subjective. Surreal comedy is even more subjective. AJ Goes to the Dog Park bills itself as “a surreal and gag-driven comedy.” I suppose the jokes are “surreal,” if you consider The Naked Gun “surreal.”
OK, so I guess the part where AJ’s dogs randomly turn into stuffed animals for some scenes is mildly surreal. But mostly, the gags are like the one where AJ and his future elbow-wrestling coach stand in the library perusing an old dusty tome together; when they leave, it is revealed that the book is not being held by the coach but by a pair of disembodied hands supplied by an extra crouching out of frame. This visual pun is unexpected, sure, but like 90% of AJ‘s jokes, it’s straight out of the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker playbook.
Not that that’s a bad thing. The jokes mostly didn’t land for me, but when you fire off 2 or 3 gags a minute, it’s inevitable that a few are going to get through. And this Fargo, North Dakota-based project, while cheaply done—it looks like an extended YouTube sketch, with uniformly amateur actors and self-consciously bad CGI/practical effects—is entirely earnest and refreshingly unafraid to fail. (AJ also takes a soupçon of spiritual inspiration from fellow Midwestern comedy indie Hundreds of Beavers, although it’s nowhere near as relentlessly original, witty, or—yes—as surreal as that cult hit.) AJ himself is a pleasantly bland slacker with no ill-will in his soul who just wants to walk his lapdogs and follow his daily routine, and it’s impossible to root against him. The plot, at least the first section, is brisk and easy to follow, with AJ tasked with completing a sequential set of challenges to wrest the Fargo mayoralty away from its arrogant, dog-unfriendly current occupant, helped along by the aforementioned elbow coach, a freshwater pirate, and a pair of turncoat civil servants. With regular surprises thrown into the mix, this makes for an easy and pleasant watch through the first 50 minutes or so. After (mild spoiler) AJ achieves his goal, however, the movie sort of continues on with far less direction, indulging a big flash forward as it segues into a sort of wistful reverie about losing track of its own plot that doesn’t entirely jibe with the movie’s first part—then ending with an apocalyptic finale with helicopter gunships fighting a D&D demon and his army of haunted skeletons that really doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie, but will at least wake you up. Well, maybe that last part does hit the “surreal” note they were bragging about…
Director Toby Jones must not be confused with the top-rank actor of the same name. This Toby Jones is a writer best known for his work on the Cartoon Network’s “The Regular Show.” This is actually the third (and most ambitious) “AJ” movie: the Jones/Thompson pair had made two shorter films (one was animated) starring the AJ character, and apparently have since they were teenagers in Fargo. Dog Park debuted as a “secret screening” mystery movie in some markets, where audiences felt ambushed by a way-off-center low-budget offering that many felt didn’t constitute a “real movie.” That unfortunate marketing ploy resulted in a barrage of angry 1-star IMDb ratings. AJ is probably not a movie meant for the big screen, but if you go into it knowing what to expect, there shouldn’t be anything here to offend your cinematic sensibilities. It’s juvenile, but not crude, like a live-action Bugs Bunny cartoon; something your inner 10-year old might enjoy. “Modest-but-zany” is the keyword here.
AJ Goes to the Dog Park can be streamed on multiple services (some free); there is also a Blu-ray with director’s commentary and other extras,
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: LIGHT CAN’T ESCAPE (2024)
A renter comes to accept that she shares her unit with a miniature black hole.