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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: MARUTIRTHA HINGLAJ (1959)

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AKA Hinglaj, The Desert Shrine

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DIRECTED BY: Bikash Roy

FEATURING: Uttam Kumar, Sabitri Chatterjee, Anil Chatterjee, Pahari Sanyal, Bikash Roy

PLOT: A young man and woman are rescued in the desert by a group of pilgrims of various castes and faiths. 

Still from MARUTIRTHA HINGLAJ (1959)

COMMENTS: Movies about religion run similar dangers to those from any long-running franchise. Built as they are around a deep canon embraced by a particularly ardent regiment of hardcore fans, the producers must satisfy the expectations of devotees while extending an outreach to any potential converts. It’s hard to be all things to all people, especially when you’re relying on the moral rectitude of the universe.

Marutirtha Hinglaj, however, is not concerned with appealing to the unenlightened, and that’s honestly to the film’s benefit, because we heathens can appreciate the pilgrims’ passion and determination at face value. An understanding of the apparent tolerance between the Hindus and Muslims on the dangerous trek, familiarity with the unique powers of redemption granted by the goddess Durga, and even the finer points of why highborn girls aren’t supposed to run away with street-rat boys are all concerns you can set aside with this movie. Hinglaj is perfectly legible as a study of the human quest for forgiveness and emotional peace, no matter how much turmoil is required to achieve it. Christian travelers to Lourdes or even rock fans making the trip to Jim Morrison’s grave can relate.

The film was based on a popular travelogue of the time, and if we were just following this group as they made their way through the desert, it would be a fairly straightforward accounting of the journey. Director Roy’s major contribution to the narrative is the introduction of the forlorn couple whom the marchers rescue from the wastelands. Thirumal is a poor fortune teller tasked with predicting the future for well-off bride-to-be Kunti. They fall madly in love (the initial transgression) and then elope (compounding the problem), which is when tragedy finds them. Roving bandits attack the couple, robbing them and assaulting Kunti, a crime that they view as punishment for their earlier wrongdoing (a frustrating instance of culturally approved victim-blaming that is probably the most inexplicable belief for a 21st-century audience). It’s a lamentable fate, not least because Roy crafts a charming montage of the illicit pair’s moneymaking ventures on the road, demonstrating their overwhelming charm as he plays music while she dances. Thirumal beams with rapturous love for his wife, but we also start to see his palpable jealousy at onlookers’ attention, which foreshadows the madness that will soon overtake him as he pivots between passion and faith.

It is difficult but essential to understand the moral code on display here. The conditions for the march across the Indian wasteland are maddeningly difficult, but of course the challenge is what ennobles the effort. They have been promised complete forgiveness for their mistakes—some of which are revealed to be quite severe—but the future looks to be as bright as the present is dark. Even Kunti, who believes herself to be unpure as a result of both her actions and the cruelties forced upon her, comes to hope for the deliverance that reaching Hinglaj will bring. By contrast, Thirumal’s mania isn’t because he doesn’t believe in the possibility of healing, but because he’s certain that he doesn’t deserve it. His struggle is balanced by the kindness and sympathy of the traveling company. The weight of this conflict lifts Marutirtha Hinglaj out of the real world and into an elevated plane of moral debate. It’s a little strange to watch these intensely earnest travelers, and when shot against Roy’s dramatic backdrops, which deftly combine imperiously vast locations in the Makran desert with unusually authentic soundstage filming, the whole proceeding takes on a surreal quality.

Marutirtha Hinglaj isn’t out to convert anyone. It’s perfectly acceptable to look at the whole enterprise as proof of the madness of religious belief. Yet there is a beauty in the purity of these travelers’ moral code, and a dramatic correctness in the way that the story metes out an appropriate justice. The film makes a weird gamble on the drama of the mystery of faith, and seems to have earned a nod of approval from the gods.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…I was moved by this film. It may be a bit dated, but there’s so much to think about here, that I will probably be dwelling on this story for some time… it hangs on urgent questions of life and death. The parallel moral journey is thus impossible to dismiss. When belief and devotion play out in extreme survival scenarios, it seems important to take them seriously.” – Miranda, Filmi~Contrast

(This movie was nominated for review by Debasish, who called it “a very existential movie with spiritual and surreal undertones.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

Marutirtha Hinglaj (Brand New Single Disc Dvd,

Marutirtha Hinglaj (Brand New Single Disc Dvd, Bengali Dvd, With English Subtitles, Released By Angel Digital)

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    Capsules

    CAPSULE: A BLIND BARGAIN (2025)

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    DIRECTED BY: Paul Bunnell

    FEATURING: , , , Lucy Loken, Annalisa Cochrane

    PLOT: A Vietnam veteran heroin addict gets hustled into a scheme where his aging ex-actress mother will be a test subject of Dr. Gruder, who promises to reverse aging with some highly unconventional treatments.

    Still from A Blind Bargain (2025)

    COMMENTS: Dominic Fontaine (Jake Horowitz) is a Vietnam veteran now residing in 1970s southern California, and he’s got a few problems. He’s down on his luck, caring for an aging mother, has a heroin addiction, and owes money to mobsters who regularly deliver a few kicks to his ribs to urge him to speed up his payment plan. That convergence of obstacles drives him through the lobby doors of the Gruder Institute and right into the care of one Dr. Gruder (Crispin Glover), with a stop to meet flirty intake nurse Ellie Bannister (Lucy Loken), who takes Dominic’s blood and signs him up for methadone treatments. Luckily, indie audiences are already familiar with heroin recovery practices thanks to Trainspotting. But A Blind Bargain is a quite different movie, where the drug addiction takes a back seat to the other kinds of weirdness going on. (It is also the second movie I can think of, after Naked Lunch, where bugs and drugs fit into the same plot.)

    Turns out that analysis of Dominic’s sample shows that his mother’s blood would be valuable for research—valuable enough that the Gruder Institute offers $500 per pint (in 1980 dollars). Dominic’s mom, Joy (veteran actress Amy Wright), who thinks she’s going for spa treatments, happens to be a has-been actress who yearns for her old silent film days. She’s an easy sell for a treatment that restores her youth. From this set-up, we advance into an unpredictable labyrinth of character interactions and a typically gothic mad scientist story.

    I should mention that A Blind Bargain is an attempt at remaking / reclaiming an infamously lost film of the same title, released in 1922 as a silent feature starring . Since I haven’t seen the original (and likely never will without a time machine), I can’t comment to how much of this is faithful to the original script and how much is invented this time around.

    For weird movie fans, Glover alone could be enough of a reason to see it; he invests every line and gesture with his unique eccentricity like the master character actor he is. Jake Horowitz is notable as well; infinitely watchable with his steely blue eyes and Zig-Zag-man beard, he plays a convincingly desperate sad-sack without making him a sniveling wimp or a conniving scoundrel. Amy Wright came all the way from Synecdoche, New York to show she can still act circles around the best of them. The early pacing is perfect, with a tempo that takes just enough time with each scene to let us absorb the plot, such that you’re carried right past the odder scenes before you can ask too many questions. The editing, between eccentric old-school screen wipes and music that punctuates the playful quirkiness, hints that we’re in that humor-horror canyon where the movie can make a little fun of itself.

    That said, despite a few drug-inspired hallucinations and some impressively off-kilter lines and even dashes of magical realism, the story never ramps up into truly weird territory. I sat waiting for a big shock, an alarming gross-out, a horrifying revelation, but all I got were mildly unexpected moments. The ending is upon us before we’ve quite digested act three, and a great deal is left unexplained,  especially romantic tensions that suddenly pop up between several characters. Mad science and body horror are frequent topics in our archives, with many movies that quaff a bigger shot of madness than this one does. Be that as it may, this film seems to be everything its creators intended. A Blind Bargain is comfort quirkiness for the film festival crowd, lovingly made with a zesty pace and a dedication to freaky medical practitioners everywhere.

    A Blind Bargain is in limited release at the time of this review. We’ll let you know when it’s widely available.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Writer/director Paul Bunnell has made a trippy, bonkers and unconventional horror thriller with stylish cinematography, but it’s also tedious and exhausting.”–Avi Offer, “The NYC Movie Guru” (contemporaneous)

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    CAPSULE: MOTHER MARY (2026)

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , Michaela Coel

    PLOT: A pop star seeks out her estranged seamstress to make a new dress for an upcoming performance.

    Still from Mother Mary (2026)

    COMMENTS: Mother Mary is a pop singer known for her elaborate costumes featuring halo-styled headdresses (a motif she may have recently abandoned). Now, I don’t know modern pop music from Tuvan throat singing (not quite true—I own a Hun Huur Tu album—but you get the point).  But I gather Anne Hathaway’s Mother Mary is supposed to be huge, the type of singer whose trysts with NFL stars get featured on TMZ. The Catholic nomenclature obviously recalls megastar Madonna, while her costuming suggests Taylor Swift by way of Bjork. Critics more familiar with this genre than I am often trot out Lady Gaga as an analogue, along with a number of other names that sound vaguely familiar (vague familiarity being the essential currency of popular music). Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs (who also appears in the film and, coincidentally, also has a Mother Mary role under her belt) supply the generic pop soundtrack.

    At any rate, Mother Mary is secretly a wreck. Her last big public performance ended in an embarrassing and concerning platform malfunction, and she’s apparently been in a bit of a slump since. OK, creative crisis, got it. After an unsatisfactory wardrobe session sends her into a crisis of insecurity, she flies off to see her old estranged seamstress, Sam (Coel). What follows is a long sequence of the two women warily circling each other; Sam is not at all happy to see her old friend, but nevertheless passive-aggressively agrees to make her the new dress MM hopes will reignite her creative spark. The film turns into an extended conversation as Sam takes measurements, selects fabrics, and asks her client to do an interpretive dance (without musical accompaniment, because she has sworn a vow to not listen to Mother Mary’s new work). The designer pokes at old resentments, while the idol she helped create desperately (and pathetically) attempts to mend fences. The supernatural twist is divulged about halfway through, but it’s less hauntingly mysterious and more a disappointingly literal metaphor for the women’s shredded relationship. What began as a talky two-hander suddenly turns into In Fabric, but with no humor whatsoever.

    It’s no knock on the two principals, who turn in excellent work, but Mother Mary never really finds anything interesting to say about its subject. The best produced parts are the concert clips—which convey a degree of spectacle that suggests why people might actually flock to see the otherwise vapid Mother Mary—and a few ethereal sequences with a flowing red spirit. But the story itself never approaches the profundity of a good Lana Del Rey single. Pop stars are bland, so maybe, by definition, movies about pop stars should be bland—-even when they try to spice things up with bloody symbolism.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “‘Weird’ is a dismissive adjective for things that people don’t readily understand, or for complex work that wears its idiosyncrasies on its bell sleeve. But the writer-director behind The Green Knight and A Ghost Story has taken the most accessible subject imaginable — stratospheric pop stardom — and made something wonderfully, gloriously weird out of it.”–David Fear, Rolling Stone (contemporaneous)

     

    Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FUNNY BONES (1995)

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    DIRECTED BY: Peter Chelsom

    FEATURING: Oliver Platt, Lee Evans, , ,

    PLOT: When the son of a legendary comedian bombs in his Vegas debut, he retrenches by returning his boyhood home in the faded resort town of Blackpool in search of material that he can pinch to re-tool his act.

    Still from Funny Bones (1995)

    COMMENTS: Among the many lessons we’ve learned throughout film’s existence , one that recurs consistently, is that comedians are the saddest bastards around. Mainstream moviemakers have never tired of reminding us that every joke-teller is merely a modern-day Pagliacci pleading with their therapist for release from the misery. Funny Bones finds an even sadder level: the comic who isn’t funny. Can you imagine such a predicament? Here you are with the pedigree, the material, the opportunity, and the moment the spotlight hits you, you die on the vine. Sheesh, even Pagliacci could get his act together come performance time.

    This is the fate of painfully unsuccessful Tommy Fawkes (Platt), who doesn’t seem to know what funny actually is but knows for certain that he’s not it. His journey to understanding or acceptance or even surrender could be the foundation for another depressed-comedian narrative, but writer/director Chelsom has more he wants to explore: the ramifications of infidelity, the unforgivable crime of joke theft, the nature of Blackpool as a dying resort for acts of questionable merit, and even a crime thriller about the theft of valuable treasures from a group of French gangsters. When the film introduces a Chinese powder with the power of youthful regeneration, you may earnestly wonder if it’s about to take a hard left turn into science fiction. Funny Bones is impressively patient with the many storylines it wants to explore, but that also means nothing takes priority, so the “B” plots and “C” plots occupy as much screentime as the ostensible central story. It’s an approach that may work well for a television season, but less so for a two-hour feature.

    Part of what makes Funny Bones such a peculiar watch is trying to decipher how it actually feels about comedy. On the one hand there’s Tommy, who has absolutely the wrong act for a featured spot in Vegas, but who tries to rectify the situation by auditioning a series of “Britain’s Got Talent” rejects. Jack, who we are expected to believe was utterly devastated by an incident with an overly aggressive scene partner and is allegedly so broken as to be almost unable to communicate, is his polar opposite (Jack’s first appearance is on a dangerous perch atop Blackpool Tower, where the community leaders think he might be a risk to himself.) Nevertheless, we see him excel in multiple forms of performance; he has a quick wit (when asked if he has lived in Blackpool all his life, he responds, “Not yet”), he delivers a wild lip-sync routine, and finishes with circus acrobatics. There’s a hint that Jack’s approach to humor is pure, a notion either affirmed or contradicted by the casting of Jerry Lewis as a physical comedian who hits it big as a joke-teller. In any case, Tommy’s supposed to learn something at the end of all this, and the movie may not have a clear sense of what that lesson ought to be. He has spent the film confidently predicting his own demise, both onstage and in real life. The film suggests he is wrong, but exactly why is not at all clear.

    Funny Bones revels in its English-ness, from the idealization of the penny-ante human tricks that make up the Blackpool entertainment scene to the extremely low-key reactions to even the most monumental events. A heist from a mortuary delineates the difference between the English and American responses. (I also have to call out the sheer audacity of casting both British film stalwarts Richard Griffiths and Ian McNiece, actors whom I have spent far too much time mistaking for one another.) It is a curious little drama played out on the field of comedy. I actually respect the variety of interesting people the film introduces, and the Trojan Horse-tactic of sneaking a look at a lost way of life through the door by way of a big, brassy American character study. I just don’t think it works. Most comedians would tell you that the further away you go from your premise, the harder the punchline will hit when you bring it all back. Funny Bones, however, just keeps winding away, going wherever it will, but not really getting anywhere in particular.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…it plays like a production that was, at one point, granted complete creative freedom to pursue any bit of whimsy and grotesquerie it wanted to find. The final cut is a collision of tones and ideas, but it remains distinct in its intent to be unpredictable and oddly sincere, hunting for the meaning of family and emotional stability in the mine field of professional comedy…Daddy issues are vivid in ‘Funny Bones,’ but they’re soon eclipsed by the weirdness of Blackpool…” – Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com

    (This movie was nominated for review by Jonathan Allen. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)         

    Funny Bones

    Funny Bones

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      CAPSULE: THE MOVIE ORGY (1968)

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      DIRECTED BY: Joe Dante

      FEATURING: Ann-Margret, Ngo Dinh Diem, Dwight D. Eisenhower

      PLOT: A compilation of B-movies, ads, infomercials and TV shows from the American landscape of the 1950s and 60s.

      Still from The Movie Orgy (1968)

      COMMENTS:  Even within the weird, surreal, and WTF cinematic canon, The Movie Orgy is not your typical cinematic experience. It has more in common with experimental non-narrative cinema, although it will alos appeal to fans of the obscure. This mammoth compilation lasts around five hours and, if taken in from start to finish, is truly a demanding watch. It is the debut of the acclaimed Hollywood director Joe Dante, and what an ambitious debut it is. From the first minutes self-referential humor is over-the-top, as introductory segments from a variety of shows welcome the viewers. For the next few hours alien invasions and creature features parade over the screen, along with the most random advertisements, problematic infomercials showcasing the mindset of a different era, and many other oddities.

      The Movie Orgy is a true treasury, a time capsule of Cold-War anxieties—manifested mostly in giant monsters—along with American puritanism. It will appeal to those loving obscure, long-forgotten, and lost media. And be sure, there is an audience for this kind of content. Niche streaming service Eternal Family even has a category for this type of media called “Lost & Found Oddities” with works provided by archives such as A/V Geeks or Found Footage Fest Archive.Tthis aspect of the movie doesn’t make it bizarre, however, just nostalgic, and tailored to a specific interest.

      The weirdness here mostly is found within the included movies themselves. These flicks are, in the majority, disasters, with the most notable of them  being the iconic Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958). In fact, Attack is used as a thematic axis of sorts for the disparate structure: segments accompany the viewer throughout the entirety of Orgy, creating a sense of continuity despite the chaotic style of this post-modernist collage.

      The editing is subversive, reminding us we are in the liberal late 1960s after all. A parade of soldiers from a military propaganda video gives way to a beauty sergeant and a pageant of sexy models. An underlying political commentary can be found in many such moments.

      As mentioned above, there is no narrative here. There is, however, a kind of climax towards the last hour, where many action scenes from monster flicks rapidly follow one another. Then, as an epilogue, we see a long list of farewells and conclusions, selected from a variety of shows.

      WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

      “The Movie Orgy isn’t really a movie. It’s more like a hallucinatory party for the certifiably movie mad.”–Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule (2004 screening)

      The Movie Orgy [Blu-ray]

      The Movie Orgy [Blu-ray]

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