List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: THE BOTHERSOME MAN (2006)

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Den Brysomme Mannen

DIRECTED BY: Jens Lien

FEATURING: Trond Fausa, Petronella Barker, Per Schaanning

PLOT: Andreas Ramsfjell awakens after a suicide attempt to find himself in a seemingly perfect city where he is equipped with the perfect life. Unfortunately for Andreas, it doesn’t take long to discover that something is very much amiss.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: The Bothersome Man is a masterpiece beyond its weirdness. It’s a film even the normal crew should watch and enjoy. It’s rich with astute and pointed social commentary on our materialistic society and the importance people place on conformity over freedom in life. Not to mention that it’s devilishly funny!

COMMENTS: Many regular readers of the site must have experienced at least once in their life the curious befuddlement of a friend or colleague asking them why they like something different from general tastes. But that’s so weird, they might say. Or, my personal favorite: but surely you prefer [insert the more popular choice here]? The Bothersome Man tackles this ideal as a political, social and religious allegory.

Everything initially seems perfect in the city where Andreas wakes after his suicide. He is given a great job with plenty of start-up capital. He meets a beautiful woman with whom he quickly forms a relationship. Everything is wonderful. And then, the cracks start to show, in a Kafkaesque fashion. His increasing unease leads him to seek out others who might rebel, who wish to get away by any means necessary, be it suicide or more surreptitious means. It’s hard to escape the machine, though; without giving too much away, the pie eating scene, in this sense, is one of the best moments of the film.

The Bothersome Man‘s strong, tight script is well-paced over its 95 minutes. Muted color is used well, presented in such a way as the viewer doesn’t realize it as such until it’s important enough to do so. Jens Lien’s film is an accomplished piece of cinema which, particularly given its haunting and ominous conclusion, is a strong contender for inclusion on the List.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A surreal nightmare of gleaming surfaces and razor-sharp edges…”-Jeanette Catsoulis, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Tristano, who said it can be “compared to works like Brave New World or Roy Anderssons two last movies.”  Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS (2013)

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DIRECTED BY:  and

FEATURING: Klaus Tange, Birgit Yew, Anna D’Annunzio, Hans de Munter

PLOT: Dan Kristensen comes home from a business trip to find that his wife is missing. His investigation into her disappearance leads him down an intricate rabbit hole of murder, sex, scopophilia, demonic possession, and, especially, confusion, as he moves within the impossible spaces of his mysterious apartment building.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: With its influx of surreal imagery, bizarre plot twists, aggressive soundscapes, and grunge-decadence sets, the weirdness of The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears is not in question. Its place on the List is hard to solidify, however, as its weirdness doesn’t quite compensate for the dragged-out pace, irrelevant script, and unnecessary repetition.

COMMENTS: Hurling images of kinky sex, paranormal apparitions, and violent attacks before the viewer’s eyes, all edited in quick-cut fashion: The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears is quite the experience. Its filmmakers seek to unsettle and disorient, and at that they are certainly successful. Just as the regular-Joe protagonist is thrust into this impossible situation, the audience is taken on a strange and terrible journey that makes very little sense, and frustrates more than it entertains. As a whole the film is very scattered, peppered with moments of brilliance between overwrought segments of confusion. Cattet and Forzani seem to have opened up a big book of experimental film techniques and just took a stab at every trick they happened upon. Some sequences are marvelous, including a dream wherein Dan becomes stuck in a time loop, meeting and killing multiple versions of himself over and over. Another shows an older woman losing her husband to a sinister force in the room above the bedroom, as she is left with nothing to do but listen to the strange noises coming through the ceiling. Still another is filmed in a sort of fuzzy black and white time-lapse, as a woman is chased by an unknown demonic figure. Other sequences feel completely pointless, as various asides and barely connected subplots and characters appear and disappear on a whim.

This film never allows its audience to find their footing, but it also never really rewards the more loyal viewer for sticking around til the end. It was at first engrossing for its emphatic—almost combative—illegibility, bullying its way through numerous red herring plot twists and presenting an extreme giallo-throwback aesthetic. The sets are beyond beautiful, with most of the action taking place within Dan’s apartment building, surrounded by Art Nouveau filigree and deep, heady color combinations. The sheer number of bizarre happenings and nontraditional cinematic techniques employed is honestly impressive, but the constant flood of ideas eventually becomes tiresome, especially as the story (a term I use loosely here) proves more and more cyclical. There’s little momentum, and little payoff for a film that stretches very thinly over its 102 minutes. It’s clear the film would have worked better as a short, where Cattet and Forzani could have packed in all of their artsy grindhouse weirdness without wearing out their welcome. But for diehard giallo fans, it’d definitely be worth it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Formally experimental, headily disorienting and an aesthete’s wet dream, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is a schizophrenic blend of arthouse and charnelhouse.” –Anton Bitel, Sight & Sound Magazine

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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First off…

Next week, Alex Kittle will explore The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (Cattet & Forzani’s neo- followup to Amer), while new contributor explains what the deal is with The Bothersome Man (2006). Bothersome is in our reader-suggested review queue, and G. Smalley will take a look at another film from that clan, an unassuming little flick you may have heard of called Pink Flamingos (1972). Thursday you can take a breather from that weirdness as Alfred Eaker faces The Gunfighter, another  oater from the 1950s.

And, believe it or not (and you have no reason not to), the publication of the 2013 Yearbook is right around the corner… we may interrupt regularly scheduled programming for an announcement.

We didn’t see the usual host of weird search terms this week. We blame spring fever: folks who’ve been cooped up all winter must be leaving behind their perverse, pasty keyboard exploits for some (yech!) fresh air and sunshine. Still, we’ll highlight what we can in our never-ending quest to bring you the Weirdest Search Term of the Week. We’ll start with “movie about a girl who cant get wet shes an alien”—see, we told you we were having a hard time coming up with weird search terms! Just a little bit weirder was the search for “obscure hirsute movies,” which is only strange because the searcher assumes there are commonplace hirsute movies, and wants no part of them. For our Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however, we’ll have to bite the bullet and go with “80s 90s movie with old guy mustache dwarf eats chicken.” Next week, you guys need to come inside and start looking up bizarre stuff on the Internet. The novelty of the outdoors wears off quickly.

Here’s how the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue currently stands: The Bothersome Man (next week!); Pink Flamingos (next week!); Celine and Julie Go Boating; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Nightdreams; Rubin & Ed; The Real McCoy; Themroc; Candy (1968); Northfork; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 4/18/2014

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Our weekly 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.

FILM FESTIVALS – Tribeca Film Festival (New York City, April 16-27):

Besides an April 26 special screening of Certified Weird classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which concludes with a scientific panel discussing the possibility of the film’s memory-erasure technology becoming a future reality) and a suite of shorts collectively titled “Totally Twisted” (programmers describe the set as “Fun. Creepy. Weird.”), there’s only one film playing at Tribeca this year which looks to have some potential bizarre impact:

  • Der Samurai – A small German town believes itis being menaced by a wolf, but onepoliceman discovers the killer is actually a samurai (in lipstick). Screens Apr. 19, 22 & 24.

Tribeca Film Festival official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

The Lobster (est. 2104): Dogtooth auteur ‘ first English language movie involves a “Hotel” where singles are forced to find a mate in 45 days or be transformed into an animal of their choosing. The latest news is that John C. Reilly joined an ensemble cast that already included and along with Lanthimos regulars and . Read the latest news at Variety.

NEW ON DVD:

The End of Time (2012): An experimental documentary on the nature of time. Looks to be in the same cinematography-centric vein as Koyaanisqatsi and its progeny. Buy The End of Time.

Wrong Cops (2013): ‘s third feature is an absurdist comedy about cops-gone-wrong entitled, oddly enough, Wrong Cops. The cast includes , Marilyn Manson, and former “Twin Peaks” spouses and Ray Wise. Buy Wrong Cops.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Alice [Neco z Alenky] (1988): Read the certified weird entry! ‘s stop-motion surrealist version of “Alice in Wonderland” is a crucial addition to the Blu-ray ranks, even though the First Run Features disc arrives sans extras. Buy Alice [Blu-ray].

Touch of Evil (1958):  Orson Welles’ overheated noir about a Mexican lawman (Charlton Heston!) who uncovers border town corruption, embodied in the massive, commanding personality of bad cop Hank Quinlan (Welles).  Maybe it’s not completely weird, but if you’ve never seen it you’ll likely be amazed at the ornate camerawork, frighteningly quirky characters, Code-challenging evocations of drugs and rape, and general ahead-of-its-time style. This Blu-ray contains the same content as the 2-disc “50th Anniversary” DVD, including three separate cuts of the film and four (!) commentaries. Buy Touch of Evil [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.

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