It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ADOLESCENCE OF UTENA (1999)

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Shôjo kakumei Utena: Adolescence mokushiroku (Revolutionary Girl Utena: Adolescence Apocalypse); AKA Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

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DIRECTED BY: Kunihiko Ikuhara

FEATURING THE VOICES OF: Tomoko Kawakami, Yuriko Fuchizaki, Takehito Koyasu; , Sharon Becker, (English dub)

PLOT: Newly arrived at school, Utena finds herself in a duel for the freedom of the beautiful and mysterious Anthy, and must fend off multiple challengers while navigating her new-found betrothal.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: For an ostensible transfer of a popular TV series to the big screen, Adolescence of Utena delights not only in jettisoning any obeisance to its source material, but moves in strange and unpredictable directions. Whenever you think you’ve got Utena’s number, you definitely don’t, right up to its outrageous conclusion.

Still from Adolescence of Utena (1999)

COMMENTS: The first moments of this big-screen successor to the popular manga and TV series “Revolutionary Girl Utena” suggest a fish-out-of-water story, as the impossibly wide-eyed title character is led on a tour of the architectural wonder and human-interaction Petri dish that is the Ohtori Academy. Who will she meet? What will she learn? Who will become friends and enemies? A classic shōjo manga in the making. And as soon as those moments end, you can forget all about them, because Utena’s encounter with the cheekily devoted Anthy will shortly become the only thing of importance.

The two girls have an unusual meet-cute, with Utena wandering onto a flower-festooned platform and inadvertently instigating a duel for the rights to Anthy’s hand. It turns out this kind of  accidental heroism happens to Utena a lot; for such a powerful champion, Utena is remarkably unsure of herself. We soon learn why, but the careful crafting of her character lends great potency to her developing relationship with Anthy, empowering what could easily be reduced to cliché. A scene in which the two girls have to create life-drawings of each other, far from feeling obvious or superfluous, develops real romantic power.

All of this takes place in a lush and fantastic design that adds another layer of surrealism and wonder. The school is a wild mashup of Roman architecture and civic planning by M. C. Escher. Places and people are all decked out in a wild palette of colors, with heightened military costumes complemented by crazily flowing hairstyles of pink, magenta, and green. Director Ikuhara supplements these visions with intriguing abstractions, like the radio hosts who only appear in silhouette. Even when the plot and backstory become too dense to be certain you’re following, the visuals are never less than striking, often gasp-inducing.

Adolescence of Utena is already unusual, but the final third raises the bar significantly as our heroine begins to suspect that the universe is hiding a fundamental truth about its nature. She’s right, in a way that rhymes thematically with fellow 1999 release The Matrix; but where ’ Neo had to be flushed out of a simulation to find clarity, Utena makes her escape by turning into a uterus-shaped hot rod and doing battle with a city-sized monster car. It’s a remarkable visual, and it’s hard to undersell the surprise generated by the pivot the movie takes at this juncture. The film’s final image, with the two lead characters in a nude embrace and riding their sex luge into the horizon, is a fitting denouement for a film that has committed fully to following its own path.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

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    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…for fear of spoiling the most wild moment in a film made up of wild moments, I would be very reluctant to say what happens in the film around the 65-minute mark, except in general terms, but it is both the most intensely, if fuzzily, symbolic event in the film, involving an extraordinary physical transformation that allows the full scope of Utena’s revolutionary potental to express itself… When it gets to the actual visionary moments, where Utena starts to perceive the greater world than just herself (and this is, basically, the arc of the plot: it’s a coming-of-age story, though one that has been buried deep below the expressive dream imagery), it turns into full-on surrealist explosions of roses, clouds, spaces defined purely in terms of line and shape with no sense of what kind of space they are, though they come across as fundamentally Gothic in their ancient weight and richness.”–Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending

    “A film of absolute beauty, it’s also the weirdest thing I have ever seen. Now that’s a pretty big statement, but I’ve racked my brain, and I can’t think of anything weirder… Yes it’s weird, but all of that weirdness is in the form of metaphor, allusion, and illusion.” – Stephen Porter, Silver Emulsion

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

    I think this movie is weirder than average
    I think this movie is better than average

    Capsules

    CAPUSLE: RETURN TO REASON: FOUR FILMS BY MAN RAY (1923-1929/2023)

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    DIRECTED BY: Man Ray

    FEATURING: Alice Prin, Robert Desnos, Jacques Rigaut, Man Ray

    PLOT: Four experimental films form Man Ray shown in rhythmic sequence, set to a partially-improvised score by ‘s band SQÜRL.

    Still from "Les Mystères du Château du dé" (1929)

    COMMENTS: Though May Ray considered himself a painter, he experimented with photography for decades. In the 1920s, as part of his explorations, he decided to try his hand at making motion pictures. Paradoxically, he cut strips of film into their individual frames, dusted them with salt and pepper, covered them with tacks and pins, exposed them to light according to his Rayograph process, then spliced the images back together. La retour à la raison/Return to Reason (1923) was his first result, two minutes of visual chaos in which random objects and detritus dance across the screen.

    Ray had originally planned to screen Retour with a performance by George Antheil, but the enfant terrible of avant-garde music failed to appear. Antheil’s atonal sound remains associated with Ray’s films (Kino Lorber previously released Return to Reason with an Antheil score, as part of the collection “The Silent Avant Garde,” in 2022). This latest release by the Criterion Collection provides a moodier, atmospheric take on Ray’s imagery, through SQÜRL’s signature feedback-laden guitars, electronic tones, and resonant drums. The score’s dirge-like cadences slow things down, encouraging the viewer to notice each intricate detail in every frame while falling under their spell.

    Jarmusch, familiar to readers of this site as the director of Dead Man, is also a guitarist, and has written scores for many of his films together with musician Carter Logan. The duo’s sound, at times reminiscent of late ’90s-era Sonic Youth, wraps the listener in a sonic net woven of reverb and ambient drones. Electronic blips and beeps rise out of the static, like distant signals from sonar equipment; deep resonant tones echo like the moan of foghorns. A sudden metallic tinkling, like a forgotten wind chime on the porch of an abandoned house caught by a stray breeze, heightens the uncanny atmosphere.

    The disc presents the films in rhythmic, rather than chronological order. The first, L’Étoile de Mer/The Starfish (1928), inspired by Robert Desnos’ poem, has the most coherent plot of the four. A man falls in love with a beautiful woman who gifts him a starfish in a jar. Filmed as though through a pane of rain-streaked glass, or from behind an aquarium wall, the impressionistic visuals come into focus only at key moments. The intertitles feature lines of the poem, but unlike in many silent films where the title cards explain the action, here text and image juxtapose each other in surrealistic fashion; for example, the phrase “women’s teeth are such beautiful objects” precedes a shot of the female character (portrayed by the famous Kiki de Montparnasse), lifting her skirt to adjust her stocking garter.

    Emak Bakia (1926) follows. With financing from stockbroker Arthur Wheeler, and featuring his wife driving her Mercedes around Biarritz, Ray created another, longer experimental film (22 min.) in Continue reading CAPUSLE: RETURN TO REASON: FOUR FILMS BY MAN RAY (1923-1929/2023) →

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: WORKING CLASS GOES TO HELL (2023)

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    Radnicka klasa ide u pakao

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    Working Class Goes to Hell is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

    DIRECTED BY: Mladen Djordjevic

    FEATURING: Tamara Krcunovic,  Leon Lucev, Szilvia Krizsán

    PLOT: A group of former factory workers find solace in satanism.

    Still from Working Class Goes to Hell (2023)

    COMMENTS: When a movie opens with murals of socialist era workers on the crumbling walls of an abandoned building, you understand pretty well what it will be about: a society in disarray looking back to an idolized past while trying to find hope in desperate times.  And it is, as we follow a group of former factory workers trying to negotiate a better future for themselves and secure severance payment for an accident that happened years ago and took the lives of many of their loved ones.

    Everything changes for the weirder when Mia, a man with some disturbing ideas of the apocalyptic kind, arrives in the group. At first, he persuades the group to conduct Satanic rituals to communicate with their dead loved ones. Then he offers more wish fulfillment.  Will they find what they are looking for, and what will be the price?

    Serbian director Djordjevic is known mostly for his shocking 2009 The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, a provocative piece of cinema that went largely unnoticed because of the release of an even more disturbing Serbian movie in the same year, the infamous A Serbian Film. But whatever comes from this director needs to be examined as potentially weird, especially when supernatural events are mentioned.

    What we have here, though, is a contemporary moral parable with hints of the supernatural and the apocalyptic. More grounded than a typical horror—only some bad omens like birds falling dead hint at the supernatural—this tale portrays moral decay and the worship of false idols in an ambiguous, non-didactic way. While the idols prove to be hollow in the end, a new unity emerges from the experience of common rituals, reigniting the passion of our characters to continue fighting for their rights. It is almost wholesome.

    Balkan cinema is known for eccentric magical realist works, like the filmography of . Here the tone is less lighthearted, but a similar exaggeration of reality in a portrait of societal upheaval takes shape, climaxing with an urgent act of vigilantism. There are many nods to the history of the country too, from the Ottoman Empire to its recent socialist past, giving context and enriching the narrative.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…even if the director lets his tale go on for too long, with a messy narrative in need of trimming, he still delivers an appealingly whacko and unique work.”–Christopher Reed, Hammer to Nail (festival review)

    I think this movie is weirder than average
    I think this movie is better than average

    Miscellanea

    WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 12/26/2025

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    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.

    NEW ON HOME VIDEO:

    Bugonia (2025): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s Apocrypha Candidate review. The Bugonia Blu-ray dropped two days before Christmas (showing you just how much big studios value new-releases on physical media these days). Buy Bugonia. Also available in 4K UHD or 4K Steelbook editions (both come with standard Blu-rays included).

    Dream Story [Traumnovelle] (2024): A man attends an erotic ball put on by a secret society of debauchees. A low-budget German based on (but more faithful to) the same source material as ‘s Eyes Wide Shut, starring Nikolai “son of Klaus” Kinski. Click here for the NSFW trailer. On VOD only. Rent or buy Dream Story.

    Perfect Blue (1997): Read the Canonically Weird entry! Shout! Factory’s lavish 4K edition of ‘s anime psychological horror (released two days before Christmas, sadly) includes a 4K UHD disc, standard Blu-ray, booklet, art cards, poster, almost two hours of never-before-seen lectures from Kon, and more. Buy Perfect Blue.

    NEPOTISM CORNER:

    Davy & the Goblin: Giles Edwards (as Orson Bennet portraying Old Reuben Hayseed) narrates this “odd little children’s novel from 1884” (audio only).

    WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:

    We resume Pod 366 next week after Christmas break with our official unveiling of the staff’s consensus picks for Weirdest Movies of 2025. Meanwhile, we continue with written content: Micheal Diamades addresses the post-socialist, pre-Satanist Working Class Goes to Hell, Enar Clarke chews on the Criterion Collection’s selection of Man Ray shorts,  Return to Reason, Shane Wilson dives back into the reader-suggestion queue for 1999’s The Adolescence of Utena, and (alongside that staff list of weird movies) Gregory J. Smalley shares his list of his personal top 10 of his favorite mainstream movies of 2025 with you. Happy Boxing Day to all who celebrate!

    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.

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