Any year that features a new movie by Alejandro Jodorowsky is sure to be a banner year in cinematic weirdness, and 2014 certainly qualifies. It was also a banner year for the British Isles, which gave us four weird movies (three made by Englishmen and one by an Irishman, with one set entirely in Scotland and one in England in the 17th century). France chipped in two surreal movies, while Spain, Chile and Canada gave us one apiece.  An Israeli director helmed the last weird movie. For the first time since we’ve been keeping this yearly list, no American movie made the list, although big name Hollywood actors— Jake Gyllenhaal, Jesse Eisenberg, Robin Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Fassbender—did dominate the slate, giving a false impression that the state of American strangeness is better than it actually is. In reality, in 2104 domestic producers shied away from surreality. In short, gentlemen, I am afraid we have a weirdness gap. America needs to start weirding it up once more, so we can return to being the weirdest nation on Earth (with apologies to the Japanese, who remain the weirdest populace on a per capita basis).

Besides the invasion of foreign surreality, the other big weird story of the year was the sudden increase in doppelganger sightings. These rare creatures inexplicably showed up in two of the year’s weirdest movies, as well as in three lesser films (+1, Coherence and The One I Love).

Besides the invasion of foreign surreality, the other big weird story of the year was the sudden increase in doppelganger sightings… oh wait.

Without further ado, here is our list of the ten weirdest movies of 2014, presented, as always, in random order—the weirdest of orders.

9. Under the Skin – Scarlett Johansson stars (and, yes, disrobes) as an alien sent to Scotland to pick up lonely men and take them to her loft, where she sinks them into a pit of black goo for reasons only space aliens understand (makes as much sense as anal probes, at least). She (it) gradually, and reluctantly, learns what it means to be human. In April Alex Kittle commented “the action moves slowly, but is filled with wonderfully bizarre imagery and powerful space-y scoundscapes” and said it was “easily among the best of 2014, and may well turn out to be the weirdest.” It certainly does end the year among both the best and the weirdest.

10. Witching & Bitching [Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi] – Alex de la Iglesia must have been drinking henbane infusion when he came up with Continue reading 10 WEIRDEST MOVIES OF 2014 →

As I wrote in my rundown on the Online Film Critics Society Awards, I found 2014 to be a year of many very good movies, but no clear masterpieces. Although I saw nothing in 2014 I would qualify as a general must-see, the positive side of that lots-of-good-no-great equation means that there were so many worthy top ten contenders that I had to leave many worthwhile films off my final list. It was a very good year, as it turns out, for science fiction, and for British films, and so I’ll kick off my list of honorable mentions with Jonathan Glazer‘s quiet Scottish movie about undercover space aliens, Under the Skin. I also wish I could have found room for the year’s best thriller, Gone Girl; Wes Anderson‘s typically great Grand Budapest Hotel; Coherence, the best microbudget film of the year; and the crazy train that was Joon-ho Bong‘s Snowpiercer. With those out of the way, let’s get down to the ten films that did make the cut (three of which we also added to the 366 Best Weird Movies of All Time):

10. The Double:  Certified Weird! A timid clerk (Jesse Eisenberg) named Simon James finds his vocational and romantic opportunities are being seized by a confident co-worker named James Simon, who looks exactly like him. Based on Dostovevsky, but the mood of this unsettling existential black comedy is much closer to Kafka (with plenty of nods to Brazil). The dystopia feels familiar, but hauntingly so. I’m not ashamed to make the obvious joke: this would make a great “double feature” with Enemy.

9. The Dance of Reality: Certified Weird! Alejandro Jodorowsky begins his imaginary autobiography with a bare-knuckle boxing match against an effeminate circus clown dressed as a carrot, a father who’s the spitting image of Joseph Stalin, and a mother who only communicates through operatic singing, and it only gets stranger from there. Jodorowsky’s unexpected late-season movie has all of the weirdness and occult spirituality of his cult hits El Topo, The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre, but there’s something different, too. He’s lightened up in his old age, and now brings a consistent sense of humor and playfulness to ciname. If this is the 85-year old director’s last film, it’s a beautiful swan song that sits comfortably alongside his best work.

8. Guardians of the Galaxy: “Star Lord” (a buffed-up Chris Pratt) recruits a crew of galactic riff-raff, including a wisecracking racoon and a tree with a limited vocabulary, to stop an evil villain or two from acquiring a futuristic MacGuffin. A crowd-pleasing mix of action, spectacle, and comedy. Although they are always high quality, this is my favorite Marvel movie, probably because it takes place in a “galaxy far away” rather than the Marvel Universe per se (yes, I am aware an Avengers crossover is being discussed). Great fun; it’s no surprise it comes from James Gunn (co-writer of the Certified Weird Shakespearean classic Tromeo and Juliet).

7. Boyhood: Watch Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) survive a bratty sister, first love, and a succession of stepfathers as he grows from a boy to a man in this narrative experiment shot over 12 years with the same actors. Even though nothing out of the ordinary happens, it’s Continue reading TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2014: THE MAINSTREAM EDITION →

Yesterday I gave you my expert take on the weirdest movies of 2013; today, I’ll be giving you my opinions of the best movies of the year, without regard to genre. This year, there’s only one title which overlaps both lists, although I imagine the average popcorn-chomper would find the top two entries on this “mainstream” list to be far too weird for their tastes. Without further ado, here’s your countdown of my top movies of 2013:

10. Drug War: The days of John Woo, Jackie Chan and the Hong Kong New Wave of the 80s and 90s already seem like a part of the distant past. Although many of the luminaries of that movement dispersed to Hollywood or Australia after the Chinese took over the town in 1997, one director who chose not to flee for greener pastures was Johnnie To. He has continued to churn out action-oriented gangster films. At bottom his latest epic Drug War is nothing fancy, but it is a superior police procedural with thrilling action scenes that remind us of the salad days of HK past. Plus, it is one of the few movies to explain why deaf-mutes make the best footsoldiers in your drug army.

9. Before Midnight: If you like actors’ showcases and relationship talk sprinkled with references to myth and philosophy, have I got the film for you! Richard Linklater returns, along with stars Julie Delphy and Ethan Hawke, for the third peek in 18 years at the relationship between Jesse (now a successful novelist) and headstrong Celine. Urbane and blisteringly painful at times.

8. Spring Breakers: Harmony Korine‘s lightly experimental take on today’s nihilistic youth hearkens back (in spirit) to his 1995 screenplay for Kids. In our rundown of the weirdest movies of , I wrote that “critics who had previously loathed Korine’s grungy, transgressive works tended to view this 2013more satirical fare favorably, while the Trash Humpers set was largely unimpressed.” I confess that I am in the camp that treats this more polished work with a kinder pen. I think that the key to this movie’s success is that Korine has finally accepted that he is at heart an exploitation filmmaker working with an arthouse toolkit, rather than the other way around. James Franco should, but won’t, win Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.

7. Mud: Part of a big year for Matthew McConaughey (who also impressed as the homophobic AIDS activist in Dallas Buyers Club), this film casts him as Mud, a romantic miscreant hiding out on an uninhabited island. When an adolescent boy finds Mud and decides to help him reconcile with his lost love, will the impractical loser be able to live up to the kid’s idealism? Accomplished storytelling that weaves in multiple subplots and minor characters, blending drama, romance and adventure with a coming-of-age message that’s neither too bitter nor too sweet. Easy to recommend.

6. 12 Years a Slave: Adapted from the memoirs of Solomon Northrup, a 19th century African-American who was born a free man in New York but kidnapped and sold into slavery, 12 Years is likely to win Best Picture at the Oscars, and I won’t complain. It features fine acting by Michael Fassbender as a ruthless plantation owner, Kenyan Lupita Nyong’o as a much-abused “favorite” slave, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the noble Northrop. It’s a very good movie that falls short of being great, but it earns bonus points for being the best theatrical film ever made about American slavery. The lack of other quality movies exploring this inherently dramatic historical outrage is frankly bizarre, and it’s equally strange that it fell to a British director to make the (so far) definitive film about the topic.

5. All Is Lost: Survival movies were a major theme of 2013, and J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost was the purest of them all. Robert Redford stars as a man Continue reading TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2013: THE MAINSTREAM EDITION →

The air is crisp, and your breath hangs in front of you in clouds. Or, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, the air is balmy, and sweat drips into your eyes. You’re wondering whether you still have that herbal hangover remedy recipe that you used last year (was it ginseng and ma huang, or gingko and milk thistle?) You’re trying to remember the words to “Auld Lang Syne” and deciding precisely which acquaintances you’ll be forgetting in the upcoming year. And you’re rushing to the Internet to see what the experts have declared to be the ten blankiest blanks of the annum just past.

Yes, it’s that season again, the time critics look forward to all year—time to grind out another year’s end best of list to fill up a few inches of real estate on your readers’ web browsers . In weird movie terms, 2013 was a very mixed year. On the one hand, there’s no obvious consensus weird classic (like 2012’s Holy Motors) jumping out at you from this year’s lineup. But what 2013 lacked in depth it made up in breadth. We weren’t scraping to come up with ten truly weird contestants this year; instead, we were reluctantly leaving off stuff like the juvenile-delinquents-from-outer-space musical The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, which would have been a shoo-in in 2012. This year the movies at the bottom of our rankings give the ones at the top a run for their money. It may ultimately be quantity over quality, but it did make it easier to pick out something challenging from the “new releases” section to watch on a Saturday night, which makes 2013 a successful year in our book. So now, in random order—the weirdest of orders—here’s our survey of the strangest of the strange from the past year.

4. Upstream Color: A Thief infects a woman with a will-sapping worm and empties her bank account; she’s eventually psychically linked to a pig, but fortunately meets a man whose gone through the same experience. Their pigs also fall in love. Solving the question of what literally happens in Upstream Color is only the beginning of the riddle of Shane Carruth‘s bewildering followup to his confusing but logically rigorous time travel film Primer.

8. Antiviral: This queasy mixture of satire and body horror starts from the premise that in the future, people will pay good money to become infected with viruses that have recently been coursing through the bloodstream of their favorite celebrities. Director Brandon Cronenberg promises to carry on the disreputable work of his sire, David.

10. The ABCs of Death: Averaging four-and-a-half minutes per letter of the alphabet, this twenty-six short film primer on death contains three extremely weird entries (two of them from Japan, natch), along with a host of blander moments. Uneven by nature, with lots of senseless gore and “toilet horror,” but watch for the deadly masturbation contests, Nazi furries, zombie clowns, and the Asian Dr. Strangelove. Noboru Iguchi‘s “F is for Fart” is an apocalypse of bad taste guaranteed to have the average viewer scurrying for the exit, hitting the eject button, or aborting the download (check all that apply).

1. John Dies at the End: Two slackers take the drug “Soy Sauce” which allows them to see an upcoming invasion by inter-dimensional cockroaches and eventually travel to an alternate universe to save the world. John dies, or does he? Many fans of the witty original novel hated this adaptation; fortunately for us, we don’t read books, and so we loved every confusing-as-hell minute of this messed-up mish-mashterpiece of a movie.

6. The Rambler: Absurdly cool Dermot Mulroney keeps his shades and cowboy hat on at all times as he rambles through a weird West full of Continue reading TOP 10 WEIRDEST MOVIES OF 2013 →