Category Archives: Top 10 Lists

Top 10 Lists

TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2011 – THE “MAINSTREAM” EDITION

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Tomorrow we will present our official Top 10 Weird Movies of the Year List.  This list covers all movies released in 2011, weird or not.

This year, for the first time, I will be voting for the Online Film Critics Society Awards.  Taking this commission seriously, I have watched perhaps a hundred of the most highly acclaimed 2011 movies, with a few nominees still left to see before my vote is due.  From the perspective of a weird movie specialist, this process has provided me two benefits.  First, it’s given me that baseline of movie normality that I need to be able to recognize the stuff that’s really out there to the average viewer.  Watching only the strangest of the strange week in and week out skews your perspectives.  Hopefully, I will never again fall into the trap of thinking The Tree of Life is too conventional, as I did in my initial review of the movie.

Secondly, gathering that “baseline of normality” has made me appreciate the weird all the more.  Conventional award-winning movies are all alike; but every weird movie is weird in its own way.  You can tick off the list of qualities that great movies should have: moving performances, arresting cinematography, sparkling dialogue.  A weird movie may have these qualities too, but it also has a spark of divine madness or folly that sets it apart from the herd.

You may notice that six of my top ten choices could be pigeonholed as children’s movies.  That’s not by design (last year my list would have contained only one, Toy Story 3).  But I did not feel the need to bump the children’s movies off the list to make room for more “adult” fare.  The truth is that children’s films are the most lucrative segment of the movie market right now, and studios are taking more time and care (not just more money) in making them.  They’re writing clever, multi-layered scripts to appeal to adults as well as kids; spending more time on storytelling basics and character development; and crafting more exciting and spectacular set-pieces.  If movies made for grown-ups are to increase their share of next year’s list, well, then, they’ll just have to make better movies.

We’ll start off this list with 10 Honorable Mentions.  I would have been comfortable including any of the films below on my year-end list, but by the narrowest of margins each came up a little short.

50/50; The Artist; Bridesmaids; Cave of Forgotten Dreams; Martha Marcy May Marlene; Melancholia; Tinker Tailor Solider Spy; Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; Weekend; We Need to Talk About Kevin

And on to my Top 10 Movies of 2011:

10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2: I’ll be honest—although it’s a good film, Continue reading TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2011 – THE “MAINSTREAM” EDITION →

Top 10 Lists

WHERE’S THE WEIRDNESS?: TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES NOT (YET) AVAILABLE ON DVD (IN THE US)

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We frequently get requests to review certain movies that are unavailable on DVD in the United States.  In this digital age when even cigarettes are electronic, it seems every movie ever made should be legally available to watch, somewhere. Surprisingly, that’s not the case.  Sometimes movies are hung up in rights disputes; often, the ones we’re most interested in are so weird and specialized they fall through the cracks.

But truly strange stuff is showing up on DVD and Blu-ray all the time.  Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is a surrealist classic and a film school favorite, but it didn’t debut on DVD until 2009.  The bizarre haunted house horror Hausu (1977) was ignored and forgotten on release, but was rescued from obscurity more than thirty years later by no lesser entity than the Criterion Collection.  Even something as odd, ignored, and seemingly uncommercial as 1977’s Death Bed: The Bed that Eats—a movie that critics are still unable to confidently classify as incompetent exploitation or self-aware joke—recently showed up in the DVD ranks.  Many fans of cinematic marginalia grew up assuming that Skidoo, Otto Preminger’s 1968 counterculture satire bomb featuring Groucho Marx as God, among other oddities, would exist forevermore only as a brief plot synopsis in dog-eared movie guides, with a turkey symbol eternally etched next to it.  Skidoo was buried, maybe out of deference to the embarrassed stars (besides Marx, it also featured Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, singer-songwriter Harry Nillson and a host of distinguished character actors); but in 2008, Skiddoo showed up on TV, and this July it will make its first appearance on DVD.

The point is, we’ll never give up on anything appearing anymore, so long as someone, somewhere thinks there’s a buck to be made off of it.  There are a number of movies we’re going to hold off on reviewing immediately because they may get a release in the future.  We’ve listed some of the rarest and most important ones below.  In keeping with the venerable Top 10 tradition, we’ve limited ourselves to a decemvirate of titles, but believe us, there are a lot more missing movies out there. We skipped over some high-interest titles which are still available on Region 1 DVD but are extremely rare, such as Institute Benjamenta and Survive Style 5+.

10. Arrebato [Rapture] (1980).  Made in the years after the demise of Franco and film censorship, Arrebato, a drug movie about a filmmaker who believes his camera has a mind of its own, has an enraptured cult following in Spain.  The ideas here are sometimes said to anticipate David Cronenberg‘s Videodrome.  Neil Young (the film critic, not the Canadian songwriter) is one of few English speakers who’s seen and reported on it; he was less than unimpressed, calling it “a mind-blowingly pretentious exploration of creativity, madness and the addictive world of cinema.”  We’d still like the opportunity to judge for ourselves, since mind-blowing pretension is frequently a virtue in the weird movie realm.  In November 2010 Arrebato was released in Region 2 edition by the respected German company Bildstörung, with English subtitles.  Whether there will ever be enough interest to get it released on these shores is another question.


Clip from Arrebato

9. Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968).  Japanese sci-fi with a plane crash, UFOs, and alien blobs that turn their victims into vampires.  The visuals are unreal and stylized but very striking, almost expressionistic; Quentin Tarantino paid homage to Goke with the airplane flying through the blood red/orange sky in Kill Bill.  This film occasionally shows up on Turner Classic Movies late at night; if TCM can get the television rights, they likely can clear the video rights too.  Don’t sit on this masterpiece of classically odd Japanese camp, Ted Turner!


Japanese trailer for Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell

8. Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets [Sho o suteyo machi e deyou] (1971).  A Continue reading WHERE’S THE WEIRDNESS?: TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES NOT (YET) AVAILABLE ON DVD (IN THE US) →

Top 10 Lists

TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF 2010

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Happy New Year!  Looking back on 2010, we have to say that it was about two or three weird movies shy of being a great year; a lot of films that may end up being 2010 standouts haven’t made it out of the festival circuit yet.  But we did see a bonanza of great weird Region 1 DVD debuts from years past, including Antichrist (2009), Bronson (2008), Dillinger is Dead (1969), Hausu (1977), Taxidermia (2006) and You, the Living (2007), not to mention a restored version of Metropolis (1927), with footage that had been missing for almost 100 years!  So, it would be hard to say 2010 was a total waste.  Here’s our New Year’s Eve rundown of the weirdest movies of 2010 (so far):

  1. Enter the Void, the Weirdest Movie of 2010?Enter the Void: We had to cheat a little to qualify Gaspar Noé‘s neon psychedelic death-trip about a hallucinating expat ghost in Tokyo who sees his sister and best friend making love with glowing genitalia by reclassifying the film from 2009 (copyright date) to 2010 (date the editing was completed and the final version released to theaters), but it was worth it to get the most extravagant Buddhism-on-LSD movie of the last 35 years the top spot.
  2. Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) [Prezít svuj zivot (teorie a praxe)]: We’re cheating even more by nominating Jan Svankmajer‘s latest (about a man who impregnates his own anima while undergoing psychoanalysis) because we haven’t even seen it yet.  But based on what we know about the crazy Czech, and what we see in the trailer below, we don’t think we’ll be eating any crow over this choice (unless it’s for not giving Surviving Life the top spot).

  3. Black Swan: Darren Aronofsky makes Natalie Portman go crazy for her art in a dance fable mixing backstage melodrama, sexual repression, and body horror.  Portman growing feathers onstage as she dances her little heart out for the audience rates as the most beautifully weird moment of the year. Continue reading TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF 2010 →
Top 10 Lists

TOP 10 LIST EXTRAVAGANZA: TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF THE YEAR, DECADE, AND MORE

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Here’s my personal picks for top ten weird movies of the decade (setting aside the fact that it may be more reasonable to consider the decade as ending in 2010, rather than 2009).  This list only covers movies we’ve actually reviewed, so if you read on you’ll also find the top 10 movies we didn’t get to, the top 10 weird movies of 2009, and my top 10 picks for 2009 (regardless of weirdness).

TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF THE DECADE (2000-2009)

10. Elevator Movie (2004) – A loser is trapped inside an elevator with a former slut turned Jesus freak, for months on end, in a compelling low-budget surrealist drama mixing No Exit and The Exterminating Angel with a touch of Eraserhead.

9. Funky Forest: The First Contact (2005) – A jumbled up series of surreal short movies and music videos, linked by common characters and themes, but refusing to make sense; no one forgets the scene where the schoolgirl inserts a tube in her navel to give birth to a miniature sushi chef.

8. I Can See You (2008) -A neurotic, romantically frustrated loner goes on a camping trip with his advertising company buddies, and loses complete contact with reality.  Features a wonderfully bizarre musical sequence; an oily, omnipotent ad pitchman who talks to the protagonist inside his head; and a 20 minute psychedelic freakout at the climax.

7. Tideland (2005) – Terry Gilliam’s dark and controversial riff on Alice in Wonderland tells a bleak and frightening story of a young girl abandoned to the world of her imagination. There’s nothing explicit shown, but the nuanced and challenging scenes implying child abuse and molestation were too intense and downbeat for mainstream viewers.

6. Ink (2009) – Visually impressive low-budget fantasy about a mysterious figure who snatches a sleeping girl into a world of dreams. The nightmarish incubuses, with their smiley-faced facades displayed on malfunctioning LCD screens attached to their heads, are unforgettable, and the payoff is emotionally satisfying.
Continue reading TOP 10 LIST EXTRAVAGANZA: TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF THE YEAR, DECADE, AND MORE →

Top 10 Lists

366WEIRDMOVIES TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIE LISTS – THE FIRST PASS

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After officially inducting Time Bandits as the 37th entry on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of all time, it occurred to me—the project is now just over 10% of the way complete.  What better time to announce my personal (provisional) top 10 picks in two categories: the best weird movies ever made, and the weirdest movies ever made (without regard to quality).  Using only movies that have already been reviewed on these pages, this is what I came up with:

TOP 10 BEST WEIRD MOVIES

These are essential movies that should be viewed by any movie lover.  Even if they hate “weird” movies, watching these ten strong arguments for immortalizing weirdness on celluloid  will at least help them formulate the reason why.

10. El Topo (1970) – Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s surreal spaghetti western, in which he casts himself as a Jesus figure, is undoubtedly one of the most narcissistic movies ever made; but it’s fascinating precisely because it’s full of passionate personal symbolism and mystical obsessions.

9. Adaptation (2002) – Charlie Kaufman successfully translates metafiction into the film world with this satirical story of a depressed screenwriter writing the script of the film as we are watching it.

8. Oldboy (2003) – The cold hand of fate hangs over Chan-Wook Park‘s improbable, operatic and extreme fable of vengeance destroying the avenger.

7. Donnie Darko (2001) – The embodiment of teenage angst comes in the figure of Donnie, a teen suffering tormenting visions sent to him by a six foot tall demonic bunny rabbit; a lovable jumbled mess of a movie with a convoluted plot that packs an emotional wallop.

6. Carnival of Souls (1962) – The amateurism of the production paradoxically lends an aura of extreme creepiness to this story of a haunted church organist at odds with reality.

 TOP 10 WEIRDEST MOVIES

These are damn weird movies that you can put on at a party if you want to clear the room of squares.

10. Archangel (1990) – Amnesiac, nearly silent parable set in a eternally dark Russian city that keeps fighting World War I not knowing the conflict is over; features a coward strangling a Bolshevik with his own intestines.

9. Begotten (1991) – Visually inventive mystical parable that features God disemboweling himself; a parade of metaphorical, metaphysical tortures that is not soon forgotten.

8. Gummo (1997) – A fractured white trash nightmare about the lost denizens of an Ohio town; who can forget Solomon, the weirdest looking kid in the world, eating spaghetti in his filthy bathtub?

7. Dr. Caligari (1989) – A neon pink midnight movie made by an avant-garde porn director; look for the rack inspired by Salvador Dali.

6. Naked Lunch (1991) – David Cronenberg wisely chose not to attempt to literally translate William S. Burroughs’ hallucinogenic novel to the screen; instead, he made a movie about Burroughs writing the novel, high on bug powder and taking dictation from typewriter that talks out of its anus.

Place your bets now on the top 5 entries in each category before continuing…

Continue reading 366WEIRDMOVIES TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIE LISTS – THE FIRST PASS →