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 (WIDE RELEASE):

The Green Hornet:  The martial arts-inflected hero Green Hornet is given a big-budget, comedy-tinged update.  It’s not weird, it’s a superhero movie; we mention it for those who are following (and with this release, possibly bemoaning) the career of Certified Weird director Michel Gondry.  The Green Hornet official site.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

I’m Dangerous With Love: Credulous-sounding documentary about the underground movement that treats heroin addiction by administering another illegal drug—ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic with a 24 hour duration used by African shamans.  Certainly an odd subject, and documentian Michael Negroponte has animated some sequences from his own ibogaine trip.  Playing the IFC center in Manhattan this week, future dates seem unlikely.  I’m Dangerous With Love listing at Michael Negroponte’s homepage.

Repo Chick: Alex Cox’s long awaited (by us, at least) “spiritual sequel” to the groundbreaking Repo Man is a “kooky” comedy casting what appears to be a modernized “Valley Girl” as the Repo Chick drawn into a kidnapping plot in Los Angeles.  Looks deliberately cheap and campy, shot mostly in green screen, and the trailer’s frankly uninspiring.  Where has Alex been since turning down the chance to direct Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?  Repo Chick will play New York this week and LA next before hitting DVD and Blu-ray Feb 8.  No official site (really?), so check out this post on The Geek Files instead.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

The Congress (est. 2011/2012):  What a promising pedigree for this animated science fiction piece: it’s from a story by admired sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem (whose Solaris was adapted into a great weird film), and directed by Ari Folman as a followup to his devastating and mildly surreal Waltz with Bashir.  The original story was a black comedy involving a dystopian future in which psychoactive drugs (including hallucinogens) are used to control every aspect of the populace’s behavior; in the clip below Folman suggests he’s drifting away from Lem’s plot, but we still expect something wild.

Pairs, I’ll Kill You (est. 2012): Horror anthology set in Paris, with a title that clearly lampoons Paris, Je T’aime. It probably won’t be thoroughly bizarre, but there’s an interesting lineup of talented directors, some of whom have gone weird in the past: Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice and the vampire segment in T’Aime) and Christopher Smith (Triangle), joined by the venerable Joe Dante, Paco Plaza ([Rec]), Ryuhei Kitamura (Midnight Meat Train), Xavier Gens, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, and Joern Heitmann. Read more courtesy of Goregirl.

The Rum Diary (est. 2011):  This is probably not going to be weird, but there are several interesting things about this project.  It’s from Hunter S. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) Thompson’s novel about drunken reporters in San Juan, Puerto Rico, it stars weird favorite Johnny Depp (who’s already portrayed one Thompson alter-ego in Fear and Loathing), and it’s the first movie directed by cult director Bruce (Withnail & I) Robinson since 1992’s Jennifer Eight.  We suspect it will be offbeat, at least.

NEW ON DVD:

The Chainsaw Sally Show, Season 1:  OK, I’m officially out of the modern horror loop.  This is advertised as a bloody sitcom about a busty chainsaw-wielding vigilante, from Troma studios and with unspecified participation (a “from” credit) by Herschell Gordon Lewis.   It’s based on director Jimmyo [sic] Burril’s 2004 movie Chainsaw Sally, which I’ve also never heard of.  I ‘m pretty sure the series didn’t air on NBC. Buy “The Chainsaw Sally Show, Season 1”.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989):  An advertising exec grows what is either a boil, or a second head, out of his shoulder.  This cult black comedy from Bruce (Withnail & I) Robinson has been out of print and largely unseen forever, so this is very welcome release from Image Entertainment. Buy How to Get Ahead in Advertising.

Uncle Boonmee (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) [Loong Boonmee raleuk chat] (2010): About a man who slips in and out of past (and future) lives at the moment of death. This Thai film won the 2010 Palme D’Or, but it arrives on DVD with no fanfare whatsoever. RedSun DVD’s apologetic ad copy for this one is intriguing: “Warning: This movie, like other mood-pieces is not made for casual moviegoers.  Its definitely not a mainstream movie, and if you aren’t prepared for it, you may feel confounded and perplexed after watching it…”  If that isn’t a recommendation, I don’t know what is.  Buy Uncle Boonmee.

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.

Next week we’ll officially enshrine the first of two movies selected by readers in the reader’s choice poll: the perverse Visitor Q (2001). We’ll also whittle down that reader-suggested review queue by one title when we take a crack at The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), and take a peek at Paul Naschy’s confusing and Eurotrashy Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973).

Plenty of weird search terms showed up in our server logs over the past week. We liked “wierd, unusal breast movies,” “passion of the christ reptilian,” (Passion of the Reptilian Christ, maybe?), and our heads spun a little when someone asked “was the human centipede a fact based movie?” For our weirdest search term of the week, we’ll choose “weirdest movies about diseased leo” (really? The searcher thinks “diseased leo” is a movie subgenre?)

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands: The Man Who Fell to Earth (next week!); Songs From The Second Floor; Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

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

IN THEATERS (WIDE RELEASE):

Season of the Witch (2010): Two medieval warriors (Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman) encounter supernatural obstacles as they escort an accused witch to her date with the Inquisition.  A weak-looking entertainment choice that has an outside shot at attaining so-bad-it’s-weird status; the usually perceptive Andrew O’Hehir says it should “claim a place in the top five all-time bizarre and pointless homages to art cinema.”   Season of the Witch official site.

SCREENINGS (Brooklyn, NY):

Americatown (2009)/Lightning Salad Moving Picture (2008): If nothing else, Americatown boasts the weirdest press release of the new year:  “For their second feature, the Superkiiids! took just two thousand bone-doggies, four folks and a minivan to explore and exploit the fruited plains, purple mountains, mythology and culture (pop and otherwise) of the United States of America, vision-questing into existence its microcosmic, hyper-realistic stepbrother heretofore known as Americatown! Land of the free-radicools, home of the bad-to-the-bone…”  Also screening is the Superkiiids! first feature, Lightning Salad, about the Wilmington, NC comedy troupe’s farcical commission to make Back to the Future 4.  Americatown/Lightning Salad Moving Picture at ReRun Gastropub Theater.

NEW ON DVD:

Machete (2010):  Robert Rodriquez‘s tongue-in-cheek exploitationer about an illegal Mexican immigrant chopping his way through a vast right-wing conspiracy isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s good, silly, bloody fun. Buy Machete.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Coraline (2009): Read our capsule review. This animated fantasy about a lonely (and bratty) kid’s discovery of an alternate world where her “other mother” is willing to pander to her every childish desire is creepy, and even a little bit weird—for a kid’s movie. This set covers all the format bases, contains both 3D and “flat” Blu-ray versions of the film, plus a DVD and a digital copy. Buy Coraline (Two-Disc Combo: Blu-ray 3D / Blu-ray / DVD / Digital Copy).

Machete (2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy Machete [Blu-ray].

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.

Next week, we’ll cleaning up some loose ends from the 2010 wrap-up.  First off, we promise the (slightly delayed) review of the absurd male-pregnancy comedy The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (2009); we’ll cover the latest crazy Japanese splatterpunk offering, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009); and we’ll throw in a free review of C Me Dance (2009), the fable about a good little Christian ballerina who saves infidels through the power of telepathy.

Weirdest Search Term Used to Locate the Site this Week:  If this were any other site, we’d probably consider “eating championchip fire from penis” to be the weirdest search term we’d ever encountered; but, despite the unfortunate preposition placement, we have exactly what the searcher is looking for.  Therefore, we’ll turn to another request for our weirdest search term of the week: “classic spagetti sex movies.”

That ole reader suggestion queue just keeps piling up on us, but now that the 2010 rush is behind us we can start digging into it.  Here’s how it stands: The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (coming soon!); Songs From The Second Floor; Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime; Battle Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

2010 ends in a theatrical whimper. Still, we take 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 Strange Case of Angelica [O Estranho Caso de Angélica] (2010):  The romantic story of a photographer who sees the dead as the living when he looks through his camera, from 101-year old (!) director Manoel de Oliveira.  I remember the critics being lukewarm on this one at festival screenings, but the NYC press is falling over themselves praising it now.  Opens in Manhattan this week at the IFC Center, with scattered dates throughout early 2011 in Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Rochester NY, Boulder CO, Seattle, and Columbus.  The Strange Case of Angelica official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Legacy (2010): A Black-Ops agent holes up in a hotel room after a botched mission and loses touch with reality. This mindbender was intended as a breakthrough role for TV star Idris Elba (“The Wire”), but it was barely released to theaters. Buy Legacy.

Skeletons (2010): Here’s one we overlooked when it was released in October. The storyline of this absurd comedy concerns two “exorcists” who literally remove skeletons from families’ closets. This was named “Best British Feature Film” at the Edinburgh Film Festival, over another nominee we have our eye on—Jackboots on the Whitehall, the puppet show about Nazis taking over England. Buy Skeletons.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon [AKA The Mansion of Madness] (1973): Despite the exploitative title, this is an arty and atmospheric adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether.”  There’s memorable imagery of lunatics doing looney things, but the film is quite slow. Watch Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon 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.