Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 8/27/2010

Leave a comment

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):

Louis (2010): It’s disappointing to read the negative reviews from the preview audiences for such an appealing-sounding project: a modern silent film about young Louis Armstrong growing up in Storyville, with Jackie Earl Haley as a Chaplinesque villain and live musical accompaniment by jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and classical pianist Cecile Licad. Playing successive nights in Chicago (Aug 25th); Detroit (26th); Bethesda, Md. (28th); New York (30th); and Philadelphia (31st). Louis official site.

SCREENINGS (MOUNT VERNON, NY):

The Milk of Sorrow [La Teta Asustada] (2009): Magical realist tale with an interesting premise: women who are abused during pregnancy transmit their sorrow to their children through breast milk.  Most critics found the pace poetic, others complain it’s too slow, but all agree it features an interesting alternative use for potatoes.  Peru’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2010.  The Milk of Sorrow official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Godkiller: Walk Among Us (2010): From the product description: “a twisted, sci-fi/horror adventure about a 16 year old boy’s odyssey through a post-nuke wasteland (populated by fallen gods, organ-stealing hookers, and sex-addicted technowizards) as he searches for a new heart to save his dying sister.”  Animated, from an indie comic, and it’s gotten fairly good notices in the genre press.  Lance Henriksen and Bill Mosely supply voices. Buy Godkiller: Walk Among Us.

“Kick Ass Heroes” [Four Film Super Collection: Fantastic Argoman (1967)/Green Inferno (1988)/Robo Vampire (1988)/Red Eagle (1970)]: We haven’t seen any of these, but at least one of these losers could fall into the so-bad-it’s-weird-category: Robo Vampire, which features a poorly costumed robot and Taoist hopping vampires and was directed by the infamous Godfrey Ho.  Green Inferno is better known as Cannibal Holocaust II.  We have to confess to admiring the boxcover’s shameless marketing moxie; it’s designed to fool the extremely feeble minded into thinking that they’re purchasing the overrated Hollywood blockbuster.  They might accidentally get exposed to something interesting instead. Buy “Kick Ass Heroes”.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Death Note Collection (2006):  Read our capsule review of part I of Death Note.  This release contains both installments of the interesting and mildly weird story of a college student who finds a book which allows him to kill anyone whose name he writes in it, and the eccentric techno-detective who hunts him down.  Contains a disc of extras. Buy Death Note Collection (Death Note/Death Note II: The Last Name) [Blu-ray].

Shogun Assassin (1980): Not very weird, but definitely cult-y: this bloody Japanese samurai story was re-edited by Americans from two previous “Lone Wolf” movies to produce what many fans believe is actually a superior film.  The tale involves a masterless samurai assassin with a son and a baby cart full of weapons who is hunted by ninjas, and it’s wall-to-wall fight scenes. Buy Shogun Assassin [Blu-ray].

Time Bandits (1981): Read the Certified Weird entry.  Cause for celebration: Terry Gilliam‘s early masterpiece joins the high-def ranks!  The only downside is that there’s only one extra, a new fifteen minute interview with Gilliam.  It’s still great news for Blu-ray owners. Buy Time Bandits [Blu-ray].

Withnail and I (1987): Capping off a fantastic week in cult Blu-ray cinema is this beloved (though non-weird) British black comedy about a pair of unemployed actors “enjoying” a boozy weekend retreat at an uncle’s cabin. Buy Withnail and I [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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

ED WOOD (1994), TIM BURTON’S GLORIOUS SWANSONG.

2 Comments

In 1980 , two years after Ed Wood‘s alcohol related death at 54, film critic Michael Medved and his brother published “The Golden Turkey Awards” and gave Wood the award of being “The Worst Director of All Time” and naming his film Plan 9 From Outer Space “The Worst Film of All Time.”  The forever constipated Mr. Medved must had the biggest bowel movement of his life when he discovered that he and his brother unintentionally put the wheels in motion for the cult celebrity status of Wood who, to Medved, was little more than an object of derision.

Quite simply, Ed Wood was an outsider artist, whose medium was film.  He managed to create two highly personalized “masterpieces” of naive surrealism; Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) with “star” Bela Lugosi, who was clearly at the end of his tether.

In between these two films Wood made Bride of the Monster (1955) , also starring Lugosi (the only one of the three Wood films in which Lugosi actually ‘starred’), but that film was more of a concession to the genre and lacked the pronounced Woodian weirdness found in either Glen or Glenda or Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Fourteen years after Wood’s cult status rocketed out of the pages of Medved’s book, Tim Burton produced his valentine to Eddie.  Clearly, Ed Wood was as personal a film for Burton as Glen and Plan 9 had been for Wood.  Burton faced immense difficulty in mounting the project and was given what, for him, was a small budget.  Artistically, the endeavor paid off and even did so financially, in time, although it took Touchstone years to realize the film’s cult potential for the DVD market.
Still from Ed Wood (1994)
In 1994 Tim Burton was the perfect artist to bring Ed’s story to the screen.  Burton, recognizing a fellow auteur and genuine oddball, treated Wood, not with derision, but with the respect he deserved.  Before Ed Wood, Burton, although trained at Disney, was still an outsider with Hollywood backing, which makes him (in that regard) a kindred spirit to Stanley Kubrick.  Burton’s first big budget feature effort Continue reading ED WOOD (1994), TIM BURTON’S GLORIOUS SWANSONG. →

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009)

6 Comments

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has been promoted onto the Apocryphal List of the Best Weird Movies Ever Made. Please read the official Apocrypha entry.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Werner Herzog

FEATURING: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes,

Still from Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

PLOT: While investigating the slaughter of an immigrant family, a pill-popping and coke-sniffing New Orleans cop’s penchant for gambling and for rolling his escort girlfriend’s clients gets him into deep trouble with his department and with dangerous men; to save his life, clear his name, and crack the case, he must pull off several double crosses while strung out and sleep deprived.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Watched with a doggedly literal mind, this version of Bad Lieutenant could almost be seen as a straightforward thriller/police procedural, but most who check out this flick will come away with the nagging feeling that there’s something exceptionally strange afoot in NOLA these days.  Less than a handful of hallucinations dog our drug-soaked antihero through the port, but the visions that do appear pack one hell of  a wallop.  Cage’s jittery, over-the-top performance and the enigmatic, dreamlike ending Herzog supplies notch two more points in the “weird” column.

COMMENTS: In 1992 underground auteur Abel Ferrara made a notorious movie about a corrupt New York City cop who shoots heroin, smokes crack, molests teenage girls, shakes down criminals for bribes, and tries to solve a case involving a raped nun while hallucinating and dodging a bookie he owes an unpayable debt.  Bad Lieutenant was an overwrought, magnificent Christian parable that sought to demonstrate God’s infinite capacity for forgiveness by presenting a character that audiences couldn’t forgive.

In 2009 renowned German auteur Werned Herzog made a movie about a corrupt New Orleans cop who snorts heroin, smokes crack, molests young women over the age of 21, rolls johns for drugs and money, and tries to solve a case involving a murdered family while hallucinating and dodging a mobster he owes an unpayable debt.  Herzog defiantly claimed never to have heard of Ferrara or the first Bad Lieutenant movie, but screenwriter William M. Finkelstein notably kept his mouth shut.

It’s a good thing that Herzog, who apparently wanted to title the film Port of Call New Orleans, Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: ORDER OF CHAOS (2010)

1 Comment

DIRECTED BY:  Vince Vieluf

FEATURING:  Rhys Coiro, Milo Ventimiglia, Samantha Mathis, Mimi Rogers, Susan Ward, Chip Joslin

PLOT: An honest attorney finishes last by following the rules until a sinister neighbor hires

onto the firm and throws his life into a state of turmoil.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Order Of Chaos takes the old, my new friend turned out to be an obsessive psycho stalker plot from movies like Bad Influence (1990) and sends it in an entirely different direction.  It is a slick, offbeat thriller, but it was not made to be weird.

COMMENTS:  Strong performances, stylish editing and an unexpected storyline distinguish this offbeat chic thriller from filmmaker Vince Vieluf.  An upstanding trooper of a guy, John (Coiro) is a natural subordinate.  An avowed approval seeker, John devotes himself to pleasing two dominating women: his belittling fiancée Jennifer (Mathis) and castrating boss Miss Craig (Rogers).  John leads a life of quiet desperation by the numbers.  Adhering to a rigid, tedious schedule with compulsive military precision, John’s day begins with a morning workout.

Running on his treadmill (a symbol of his corporate ladder climbing) John blue-tooths a minute by minute, blow by blow progress report of his activities and plans to his boss hours before work even starts.  The conversation includes numerous acknowledgments of “yes ma’am, yes ma’am,” as John absorbs lengthy instructions and mandates.

But his efforts to please the demanding, flippantly brusque Miss Craig are paying off!  He is her “Man Friday” (read that as “piss-boy”—her personal honey bucket toter).  Craig treats John like a plebe in a fraternity, yet the ever dutiful John asks “how high?” whenever he’s instructed to “jump!”  If John keeps following at her heels like a good dog, he just might have a shot at partner at some indeterminate point in the distant future.

Evenings, John promptly trots home to Jennifer to walk the dog and take out the trash.  Jennifer is the prize in the relationship, and John had better not forget it.  Indeed, he is Continue reading CAPSULE: ORDER OF CHAOS (2010) →

Guest Reviews

GUEST REVIEW: JOHNNY GUITAR (1954)

5 Comments

Guest review by Kevyn Knox of The Cinematheque

Directed by Nicholas Ray

“There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforward there is cinema.  And the cinema is Nicholas Ray.” – Jean-Luc Godard

Johnny Guitar is one of those films one must not take too seriously.  Now don’t get me wrong, the film is indeed a great work of cinematic art (possibly director Nick Ray’s best work) and its classically gorgeous look and progressive visual style make it a wonder to behold, but its over-the-top giddiness and the way it verges on camp (especially in the dialogue and performances) make the film something altogether different.  Something almost dreamlike—almost as if you are not watching a movie so much as hallucinating what you might think a movie could or should be.

Johnny Guitar, the film that Truffaut once called “Hallucinatory Cinema,”  is almost magical in its approach to what film is and still should be.  This strange characteristic turns this redefined western into almost an experimental work of art.  Something that defines not what the western genre is, nor even what it could be, but what it might be if torn asunder and flipped onto its proverbial backside.  Something one could see Quentin Tarantino attempting today, but made instead back in the mid-fifties when life was staid and suburban and everyone was just crazy about Ike.
Still from Johnny Guitar (1954)
Derek Malcolm of The Guardian said of the film, “This baroque and deliriously stylised Western, along with Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious and Raoul Walsh’s Pursued, proves it is possible to lift the genre into the realms of Freudian analysis, political polemic and even Greek tragedy.”  Amen brother.

Other westerns of the time delve deeper than the typical genre-specific Hop-a-long Cassidy territory of the earlier mode—The Searchers is a Freudian masterpiece for sure and the films of Anthony Mann (and to a lesser degree Budd Boetticher) have stretched the ideas of right and wrong to Continue reading GUEST REVIEW: JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) →

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!