We’re ready to take suggestions and votes in the comments for our next Weird Watch party, scheduled for Saturday, January 29 at 10:15 PM ET.
If you’d like to attend our watch party, then the important thing is to RSVP in the comments, where you can make a screening suggestion, or just say you plan to be there. As always, we’re looking for five likely attendees before officially scheduling.
Nominations are open for movies on any of the three platforms we’ve used—Netflix, Prime or Tubi/Kast. When making your nomination, simply comment with “I think we should watch Weird Movie on Netflix” or “I propose Strange Movie on Tubi” or “How about Weird Movie 2: Electric Boogaloo on Prime?”
When the party is set to begin we’ll announce it in three places:
On this site (if you’ve signed up for regular email alerts via the sidebar you’ll also get a notice that way)
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
FILM FESTIVALS –(Sundance Film Festival, Online, 1/20-1/30):
The 2022 movie season officially kicks off with Sundance, where a hopeful horde of independent films, including a few off-the-wall ones, vie for a handful of distribution contracts. Due to the omicron surge, this year the entire festival was moved to online-only status at the last minute.
There are usually a couple of weird films to be seen at Sundance (last year, Prisoners of the Ghostland was a hot ticket), but this year the pickings look a little slim for cinematic strangeness. Among titles we’ve noted previously, the festival will screen the gender-bending Rwandan sc-fi musical Neptune Frost and Speak No Evil, a psychological horror film that’s one of the subjects of the Göteborg Film Festival’s hypnotism experiment. Of new arrivals, here are a couple we will keep our eyes on:
Hatching – A Finnish girl finds a giant egg and raises the hatchling as her pet and surrogate daughter. In the Midnight section.
Something in the Dirt – Despite threatening to break into Hollywood’s A-list, Aaron Moorhead andJustin Benson stay indie for at least one more movie, a supernatural mystery with a plot that’s under wraps (but which, given their previous work, probably has a weird twist to it). In the “Next” section.
FILM FESTIVALS –(Slamdance Film Festival, Online, 1/27-2/6):
Sundance’s more affordable, punkier sibling kicks off a week after its big sister. $10 gets you a pass to see everything on the slate—a bargain even if you find only two or three films you enjoy. Here’s what caught our eye:
Snow White Dies at the End – A movie about a backwards-farting society and the brave forward-farters who defy convention (at least, that’s what the synopsis says; the trailer doesn’t really hint at that subplot).
And of course, loads of shorts, which are more likely to hold weird promise than the features (they even have a section titled “Department of Anarchy”).
“Scott Pilgrim” (202?): Sex Bob-om, Ramona Flowers (and her seven evil exes) and the rest of the gang live again, as the graphic novel Edgar Wright turned into a cult hit (and a canonically weird movie) is getting an animated series (styled as an “anime.”). Bryan Lee O’Malley, author of the original graphic novel, is onboard as writer and executive producer. Will it be weird? No telling, but we suspect the film version will always remain tops in that regard. Hollywood Reporter has the scoop.
NEW ON HOME VIDEO:
The Mafu Cage (1978): After their father’s death a woman takes care of her sister, who is obsessed with her pet gorilla (“mafu”). An experimental psychological drama originally sold (to disgruntled audiences) as a horror movie, it certainly sounds like an oddity. Scorpion releases it for the first time on Blu-ray. Buy The Mafu Cage.
This section will no longer be updated regularly. Instead, we direct you to our new “Repertory Cinemas Near You” page. We will continue to mention exceptional events in this space from time to time, however.
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:
Join us tomorrow night for our Weird Watch Party, the demented puppet fairy tale Gutboy: A Badtime Story (2017). The show starts at 10:15 PM on Amazon Prime (subscription required). The link to join will drop here, on Facebook, and on Twitter around 10 PM (subscribers will get an email reminder, too).
Next week, Gregory J. Smalley will still be attending to family business but still should have time to drop a review of the reader-suggested Hanger (2009) (it’s not a movie that requires a great deal of thoughtful analysis). Giles Edwards will also dip into the reader-suggested queue for Steven Soderbergh‘s Kafkaesque Kafka (1991). There may be an additional surprise dropped in there for you all, as well. Onward and weirdward!
What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that we have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.
Our project to re-rank the entire Canon of 366 Weird Movies continues, as we incorporate the sixteen newly promoted former-apocrypha movies into the newly reordered list. (This all sounds more complicated than it really is, we swear.)
Last round, 84 voters cast ballots (up from 53 voters on the previous round). All 10 of the promoted Apocrypha outpaced the old Canonical entries they were pitted against.
Now, let’s see how far the new arrivals can climb. We’ll pit the ten former Apocrypha movies that got more votes than any Canonical movies against the ten next most popular Canonical movies based on this 2019 poll. We’ll repeat this procedure until no new arrival proves more popular than the remaining Canonical entries. (This could take a while.)
Here’s the next round. You may choose up to ten movies you feel are the most deserving. We’ll leave the poll up until midnight, January 20.
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
FILM FESTIVALS –(Göteborg Film Festival, Göteborg, Sweden, Jan. 28-Feb. 6):
We normally wouldn’t cover this relatively minor festival, but big props to them for a novel marketing ploy that may actually be more than a stunt. For three movies screening at the festival, the audience will be put under hypnosis by a professional hypnotist. The three movies selected for this experiment all sound worthily weird: Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s ethereal Memoria; Land of Dreams (another dream-auditing movie, this time co-written by Jean-Claude Carrière); and Speak No Evil, a psychological horror film debuting in Sundance’s Midnight section a week before. Might we suggest adding a double feature revival of Heart of Glass and The Element of Crime to the slate at the last minute? It’s a wonderful cinematic enhancement: it either works to increase your appreciation of the films, or works as the art-house version of a William Castle gimmick. The only hitch is possible Covid cancellation. The trailer is definitely worth a watch for devotees of the surreal. Variety has a nice article on the experiment.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
King Car (2020): Read Giles Edwards’ festival review. Another 2021 film in which people have sex with cars, only this car is really more into being a cult leader than getting laid. It’s playing in theaters somewhere (Alamo Drafthouses?), and simultaneously on demand from Alamo. No official site found.
NEW STREAMING (ARROW VIDEO, SUBSCRIPTION):
Hotel Poseidon (2021): Read our festival review. If previous Arrow streaming debuts are any indication, this nearly plotless triumph of soggy art design will be released on Blu-ray and alternate VOD channels soon. Hotel Poseidon at Arrow.
This section will no longer be updated regularly. Instead, we direct you to our new “Repertory Cinemas Near You” page. We will continue to mention exceptional events in this space from time to time, however.
You can still make a nomination or vote for January 15’s Weird Watch Party through this weekend. And if you haven’t voted yet in our latest round of re-ranking the 366 Canon to account for the List’s newest additions, you can do so here.
Next week Gregory J. Smalley will be taking care of some personal business. In the meantime, you will be able to read Shane Wilson‘s informative musings on Saul Bass’ psychedelic killer ant movie, Phase IV (in the reader-suggested queue), while Giles Edwards will brave Béla Tarr‘s Damnation (1988) for your edification. And the next round of 366 re-ranking will begin on Thursday, as the incoming class of weird movies faces off against challengers from the old guard. And we hope to make our brief preview of which movies look promisingly weird at Sundance 2022 (a project originally scheduled for this week, until the festival took their schedule temporarily offline for retooling because omicron convinced them to scrap all live screenings and go full virtual.) Onward and weirdward!
What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that we have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.
Our project to re-rank the entire Canon of 366 Weird Movies continues, as we incorporate the sixteen newly promoted former-apocrypha movies into the newly reordered list. (This all sounds more complicated than it really is, we swear.)
Now, let’s see how far the new arrivals can climb. We’ll pit the ten former Apocrypha movies that got more votes than any Canonical movies against the ten next most popular Canonical movies based on this poll. We’ll repeat this procedure until no new arrival proves more popular than the remaining Canonical entries. (This could take a while.)
Here’s the next round. You may choose up to ten movies you feel are the most deserving. We’ll leave the poll up until midnight, January 12.
We’re ready to take suggestions and votes in the comments for our next Weird Watch party, scheduled for Saturday, January 15 at 10:15 PM ET.
If you’d like to attend our watch party, then the important thing is to RSVP in the comments, where you can make a screening suggestion, or just say you plan to be there. As always, we’re looking for five likely attendees before officially scheduling.
Nominations are open for movies on any of the three platforms we’ve used—Netflix, Prime or Tubi/Kast. When making your nomination, simply comment with “I think we should watch Weird Movie on Netflix” or “I propose Strange Movie on Tubi” or “How about Weird Movie 2: Electric Boogaloo on Prime?”
When the party is set to begin we’ll announce it in three places:
On this site (if you’ve signed up for regular email alerts via the sidebar you’ll also get a notice that way)
