A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Contractor’s Routine: Indie about a contractor named Jacob who has lucid daydreams about killing people, and an imaginary friend named Esau who tries to keep him in line.  Sounds weird.  We’re not sure what to make of the fact that the official website reprints the film’s Sundance rejection letter as if it were an endorsement.  Only playing in San Francisco, where it was shot; we’ll look for it on DVD.  Contractor’s Routine official site.

Film Socialisme (2010): Jean-Luc Goddard’s latest film is enigmatically described as “a symphony in three movements,” titled “Things Such As,” “Quo Vadis Europe,” and “Humanities.” It’s split critics right down the middle, and it looks very weird. Opening at the IFC Center in Manhattan, with very sparse screenings at specialty venues across the US to follow through the summer.  Film Socialisme at Lorber Films.

Yellowbrickroad: Years ago, an entire New England hamlet disappeared when the entire population marched up a mysterious trail; now, the original trailhead has been found and some researchers plan to follow it. The low-budget project sounds like it has a real Blair Witch Project vibe, but most interesting (to us) is the fact that this movie is being distributed by a blog (bloody-disgusting.com).  Yellowbrickroad official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Kaboom (2010):  Read our capsule review.  Gregg Araki‘s latest mix of sex and teen weirdness arrives on DVD. Buy Kaboom.

Never Apologize (2007):  A recording of a one man show in which Malcolm McDowell reflects on his association with Lindsay Anderson on the “Mick Travis” trilogy (If…, the Certified Weird O Lucky Man!, and Britannia Hospital).  Fans of McDowell or of the fascinatingly weird series may want to check this out. Buy Never Apologize.

Passion Play (2010):  Fantasy fairy-tale starring Mickey Rourke as a jazz musician and Megan Fox as a “Bird Woman,” also with Bill Murray and a grown-up midnight movie teen idol Bud Cort.  It flopped at the Toronto International Film Festival and currently holds a remarkable 4% at Rotten Tomatoes (at one point it was 0%, until a favorable review rolled in from the New York Post). If there’s something really wrong with it, we’d like to see for ourselves. Buy Passion Play.

Undertow [Contracorriente] (2009):  We’re going to let The Guardian‘s Steve Rose sum this one up for us: “...if you only see one gay Peruvian fisherman ghost story this year…“ It’s south-of-the-equator magical realism, natch, and was Peru’s official selection for foreign film Oscar consideration. Buy Undertow.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Cat O’Nine Tails (1971):  Blue Underground continues releasing their Dario Argento catalog on Blu-ray with this early giallo (the director’s second film), starring Karl Malden investigating murders at a genetics laboratory.  Reportedly not his best movie (apparently, the director himself thought it was his worst), but Argento completists will want to take note. Buy The Cat O’ Nine Tails [Blu-ray].

A Clockwork Orange (Anniversary Edition) (1971):  Stanley Kubrick‘s classic weird and disturbing morality fable, featuring an iconic, star-making performance from Malcolm McDowell, about an experiment to rehabilitate a young criminal by chemically castrating his free will.  The new special features are Malcolm-centric, including a DVD commentary by the actor and two new featurettes. Buy A Clockwork Orange (Anniversary Edition) [Blu-ray].

Passion Play (2010): See description in DVD above. Buy Passion Play [Blu-ray].

Stanley Kubrick: Limited Edition Collection:  Includes Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the Certified Weird A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999).  It also includes a short hardback book with essays on the movies.  If we’re not wrong, all of these have previously been released on Blu-ray except Lolita and Barry Lyndon, which are simultaneously being released in single disc versions, and which also happen to be the only two that arrive without any special features.  It’s still a great introduction to the master director who was unafraid to go weird up until the very end. Buy Stanley Kubrick: Limited Edition Collection [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

The Brother from Another Planet (1984):  A mute alien, who looks like an African-American human, crashes his spaceship in Harlem as he hides out from (white) alien bounty hunters.  This offbeat comedy/immigration allegory from John Sayles made some waves when it was released, but never quite became a cult classic. Watch The Brother from Another Planet free on YouTube.

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.

Coming up next week: be sure to load us up on Monday for our list of the top 10 weird movies not (yet) available on DVD (in the USA). You’re almost certain to see some titles you’ve never heard of before, along with a few of our most requested movies. Later in the week we’ll have reviews of the dysfunctional deaf-mute tale The Quiet (2005); give you our reading of Peter Greenaway’s nude calligraphy opus The Pillow Book (1996); and Alfred continues his Tod Browning series with the silent jewel-heist movie Outside the Law (1920) (later remade as a Steven Seagal kickboxing movie—just kidding).

Lots of weird search terms stuck out from our server logs this week. We sometimes assume that by now someone has registered a www. domain for every crazy combination of terms imaginable, but that’s not true in the following two cases, where disappointed Googlers had to settle for 366weirdmovies.com instead of the sites they sought: “www.boobs romantic movies.com” and “www uh baba sex moyeoy.” We give an honorable mention to the search for “surreal busty movies”—a genre that, if it only existed, would combine two of our favorite things. We almost went with “can some body authorised his friend to collect neco original result 2007 for him” as our weirdest search term of the week, until further research indicated that this phrase almost makes sense if you’re Nigerian. With that one eliminated, the way was open for this week’s inscrutably weird winner: “black bird in a weid weid see.” We think the searcher may have meant to compose a request for “blackbird in a wide wide sea,” but that reformulation makes doesn’t make any sense either.

Here’s the reader-suggested review queue as it stands today (more titles after the break): Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (the inspiration for Monday’s top 10 “unavailable at present” list, actually); The Pillow Book (next week); Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel (2004); Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

We thought we’d pass on this interesting idea for a contest to our readers.  The winner gets their laugh or scream featured in an actual independent horror film, complete with a screen credit.
Every Scary Movie Needs At Least One Great Scream!

The producers of The Funny Man want 10,000 of them! We are inviting fans from all over the world to submit their own madcap, blood curdling, maniacal scream or laugh for a chance to be featured and credited in The Funny Man movie.

The Funny Man is a psychological horror thriller in the vein of Psycho, about an attractive young woman named RACHEL who offers a struggling bipolar comedian a ride home. Unfortunately, her simple act of kindness is rewarded with more than just a few harmless jokes.  Before the evening ends, RACHEL finds out that the comedian has a psychotic and extremely dangerous “twin brother” who derives pleasure from wearing a creepy sponge-like mask and video-taping his victims.

Participation is easy. Simply upload your best bloodcurdling scream or maniacal laugh to your favorite video sharing platform such as Vimeo or Youtube, then visit The Funny Man fan page on Facebook and post a link to your video on The Funny Man comment wall.  The window of opportunity is open from now until June 25th, 2011.  The scream or laugh that receives the most appreciation in terms of “likes” and comments by other fans will be featured in our movie.  It’s that simple! In addition to seeing your actual scream or disturbed laugh in our movie, the winner will also see their name in the films credits and receive an official IMDB film acting credit.

Post your scream or madcap laugh video on The Funny Man Facebook page here:

http://www.facebook.com/righthookfilms.thefunnyman

For more information about “The Funny Man” visit the official blog here:

http://righthookfilms-thefunnyman.blogspot.com

A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

The Tree of Life: Terence Malick returns to the screen after a six year absence with this coming-of-age story starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn that’s being described with words like “impressionistic,” “abstract,” and other encouraging (but sub-weird) adjectives.  It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which is encouraging; also encouraging is the fact that professional troll critic Armond White and professional yahoo critic Rex Reed hate it.  The Tree of Life official site.

SPEAKING OF CANNES…:

You may have wondered why we didn’t provide you with a listing of the films playing Cannes this year last week, while the festival was still running. We want to assure you that we were just waiting to hear who the winners were before we weighed in with our weird picks. We didn’t forget about Cannes. We certainly weren’t only reminded of it when we heard about prankster Lars von Trier’s weird and ambiguous comments about his “Nazi heritage.” Without further ado, we rectify our planned oversight (cough) and cover what’s weird at Cannes:

• Hors Satan [Outside Satan] – Nearly silent movie about a French hermit who may be Satan. Variety called it “Another ‘WTF?’ film from Gallic writer-director Bruno Dumont.” Un Certain Regard.
• Martha Marcy May Marlene – Psychological thriller about the mental struggles of woman who has escaped from a cult trying to adjust to “real” society. Un Certain Regard.
• Melancholia – Lars von Trier‘s latest is apocalyptic sci-fi; a planet (called Melancholia) is set to collide with Earth on a woman’s wedding day. Played in comepetition, and Kirsten Dunst walked away from the fest with Best Actress honors.  Charlotte Gainsbourg, Keifer Sutherland, Charlotte (Zardoz) Rampling and John Hurt round out the fine cast.
• The Skin I Live In – Pedro Almodovar (who has never gone fully weird, but is certainly always off-center) delivers a mad scientist revenge movie with significant superficial similarities to Eyes Without a Face. Played in competition.
• Sleeping Beauty – From Australia comes this modern folktale that sounds like it has more to do with The House of Sleeping Beauties than with the classic fairy tale.  We like writer/director Julia Leigh’s quote: “I’m interested in Wonder Cinema…”  Played in competition.
• Tatsumi – Animated, it combines a biography of Japanese comics artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi with adaptations of five of his dark, sad short stories.  Un Certain Regard.

Some previously weird directors have shown up at Cannes this year with more conventional fare: Nicholas Winding Refn trots out the action/character study Drive with Ryan Gosling, while Takashi Miike delivers a second straight samurai epic with Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai. Here’s hoping these gentlemen find their way back to weirdness soon…

NEW ON DVD:

The Big Bang (2011): Antonio Banderas stars as a hard-boiled private eye encountering seedy LA weirdos while searching for missing diamonds in a case that turns out to be more than it appears.  Critics branded it “Lynchian,” but also denounced director Tony Krantz (Sublime) as a surrealist hack. Buy The Big Bang.

The Great Dictator (1940): In the not-weird-but-notable category comes the Criterion Collection’s release of Charlie Chaplin’s satire of Adolph Hitler, in which a Jewish barber and Führer lookalike is mistaken for the great dictator.  It features the classic scene of Hitler dancing with an inflatable globe.  Buy The Great Dictator [The Criterion Collection].

Solaris (1972):  Considered the Soviet answer to 2001, Andrei Tarkovsky’s science fiction mindblower involves a cosmonaut’s trip to a planet (that may be alive) where his memories begin to materialize.  This re-release by Criterion corrects a mistake in their previous edition: some scenes were previously presented in black-and-white that were originally intended to be tinted blue. Buy Solaris [The Criterion Collection].

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Big Bang (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy The Big Bang [Blu-ray].

The Great Dictator (1940): See description in DVD above. Buy The Great Dictator [The Criterion Collection Blu-ray].

Solaris (1972): See description in DVD above. Buy Solaris [The Criterion Collection Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Sita Sings the Blues (2008):  An animated account of the Hindu epic “The Ramayana,” intertwined with director Nina Paley‘s autobiographical account of her relationship with her husband and set to the vintage jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw.  A very highly regarded debut, made on the director’s laptop and distributed for free.   Watch Sita Sings the Blues free on YouTube.

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.

We haven’t checked in on everyone yet, but we currently believe that none of the 366 Weird Movies staff was raptured yesterday; this means that we can go on with our next week of reviews as scheduled.  If you weren’t raptured either, then next week you can check out our reviews of the psychological thriller Dead Awake (2010), about a junior mortician who finds things getting strange after he fakes his own funeral; Inferno (1980), Dario Argento‘s borderline incoherent followup to the Certified Weird Suspiria; Philip Ridely‘s return to film, Heartless (2009), about a man with a heart-shaped birthmark on his face who makes a deal with the devil in a Hellish modern London; and catch up with Alfred as he returns to his series on Tod Browning to inform us about The Show (1927), a tawdry carnival melodrama that could be seen as a dress rehearsal for Freaks (1932).

There were some nice entries in our unofficial “Weirdest Search Term of the Week” contest.  A couple of short-but-sweet three-word search phrases deserve at least an honorable mention: “lezbo bridge film” and “chicken part catalogue.”  In the category of most random use of a gay slur in a search string, the winner is  “janis joplin and homo hendrix songs in across the universe.”  And, while we don’t like to pick a Weirdest Search Term of the Week that contains naughty words, we had to make an exception for this beauty: “japanese children of know f**ky movie.”  Now, the searcher actually may have been looking for a Japanese funky movie (in which case we have him or her covered), but that still doesn’t explain the children of know…

Here’s how the reader suggested review queue stands (more titles after break as always): Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (this appears to be unavailable at present, actually); The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →