PLOT: Snippets of scenes involving passengers on a cruise ship are followed by a long segment exploring a rural French family who run a gas station; it’s topped off with impressionistic travelogues to Egypt, Palestine, and other locales.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s weird—by way of being random and impenetrable—but it’s also boring. Really boring. Had Jean-Luc Godard’s name not been attached, this movie would remain happily unseen by all but a handful of unlucky film festival attendees.
COMMENTS: Jean-Luc Godard has been telling French magazines that “cinema is dead” (though he would say “le cinéma est mort” and translate it as “film dead.”) Film Socialisme is the work of an auteur who truly believes that sentiment: it’s a dispassionate, bloodless dissection of moving images. It offers us actors but no characters, situations but no drama, incidents but no story, ideas but no argument, and challenges but no rewards. Deliberately obtuse, Film Socialisme sets out to frustrate: the first thing English speakers will notice is that Godard chooses not to fully translate the French dialogue, opting instead to tell the story through what he calls “Navajo English.” Large portions of the French dialogue are left untranslated, and when the viewer does see subtitles he reads only snatches like “watch notell time” and “itshim wariswar.” Sometimes the language will switch from French to English or German or Russian, sometimes in the middle of a conversation; one presumes that this provides brief opportunities for Francophones to enjoy “Navajo French.” Structurally, Film Socialisme is divided into three chapters. The first, titled “Des choses comme ça,” takes place aboard a cruise liner and explores fragments of stories from various travelers that don’t appear to add up to anything: a woman is trying to learn to speak cat by watching kitties on her laptop, a couple have a conversation about the Allied landing in North Africa while ignoring an apparently drunk woman Continue reading CAPSULE: FILM SOCIALISME (2010)→
We’ve now certified over 100 of an eventual 366 movies here, and it’s time to step back, take stock, and make a provisional list of the “Best of the Weird”—and a list of the “Weirdest of the Weird.” We first took a stab at this list about two years ago, and my how things have changed since then (at least, at the bottom). We’ve added new movies, and reshuffled our ratings for some of the others, and—well, you can read for yourself.
Recognizing that “weirdest” and “best” aren’t always the same thing, we’ve actually created two top ten lists here: one for the best movies that fall into the weird genre (these are the ones to start your timid friends off with), and one for the absolute weirdest movies we’ve seen (these are the ones to put on at a party when you want to clear the room). Because we’re giving you two top ten lists for the price of one, you’re actually getting 20 recommended weird movies. Well, actually 19, since one movie appears on both lists, but who’s counting? Oh, wait, we are, that’s the entire point…
Feel free to agree with my choices, disagree, or hurl hurtful epithets at me in the comments. But do remember that this list only covers movies we’ve already reviewed. Your favorite movie we omitted may be coming down the line, and may make this list the next time we formulate it (in another two years or so).
With that said, let’s get to it!
# 10 Best Weird Movie: Kwaidan (1964). “Although on the surface it’s just a collection of bare-bones ghost stories, in telling these tales director Kobayashi wisely jettisons reality in favor of a stylized, expressionistic, visually poetic aesthetic that gently detaches the viewer from everyday life and floats him into an ancient spirit world that seems simultaneously to have never and always existed.”
#10 Weirdest Movie: House [Hausu] (1977). “Rife with images of flying heads, murderous painos, laughing watermelons, an invisible wind machine, and a truly demonic kitty, the film’s surrealist atmosphere and ever-shifting styles are as hilarious as they are inscrutable. There is no way to get a handle on Hausu—the viewer is completely at the mercy of Obayashi’s bizarre whims.”
#9 Best Weird Movie: The Wicker Man (1973): “Hardy and Shaffer create an atmosphere like no other; it’s an encounter of civilized man with strange, primeval beliefs…. The viewer himself undergoes a dread confrontation with Old Gods who are at the same time familiar and terrifyingly strange.”
Now that we’ve certified over 100 movies weird, we’ll be kicking off next week by taking a second pass at our semi-official “top 10 weird movies” list. I know this will be a rehash for you long-time 366 veterans, but it’s a useful service for new visitors who want a best-of-the-best primer to start off with; and, you would not believe how much Googlers love top 10 lists! Don’t worry, though, we’ll still be adding new reviews to the database, including our take on Jean-Luc Goddard’s divisive latest movie essay, Film Socialisme (2010), and, from the reader-suggested review queue, we’ll break down the bizarre stop-motion fairy tale Blood Tea and Red String (2006).
We’re getting more and more search engine traffic—over 1000 unique queries most days. This is making it harder, not easier, to find a Weirdest Search Terms of the Week, as we’re forced to scan the server logs with a quicker eye to keep the project from eating up our little bit of free time. Nonetheless, we’ll continue to point out the strange noises we do find amidst the massive signal. First, we’re proud (though a bit confused) that we continue to hold a top 5 ranking for the term “saxyshat.” Also, we are now going to be on the lookout for “an alien movie that made some womens boobs grow” (personally, if I can find it, I think it would be worth a shot to show this one to my girlfriend). We’re less enthused about the “movie where pregnant goat moves to woman,” and “monsther minds perverted wit tens ladys porno movies” is just outside our area of expertise. Our weirdest search term of the week, however, goes to ‘illuminati face “skinning” children.’ We knew the Illuminati worked in mysterious ways, but for God’s sake, can’t they leave the children out of it?
Here’s the massive, ever-growing reader-suggested review queue: Blood Tea and Red Strings (next week!); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
An industrial accident turns a beautiful village into a graveyard. Birdboy has met with many positive reviews and has been preselected for the 84th Academy Awards.
Content Warning: This short contains brief drug use and violence.
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):
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos (2011): The heroes of the long running anime series find themselves embroiled in a rebellion. This is being released in the original Japanese with English subtitles to please purists. It’s playing all over the U.S. and Canada, but for one day only in some locales, so schedule accordingly if you want to catch it. Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos official Facebook page.
FILM FESTIVALS– SUNDANCE (Park City, Utah, Jan 19-29):
It’s that time again: time for Sundance, the make-or-break festival for American indies. If last year’s slate is a predictor, about a third of the movies listed here will fail to find a distributor and virtually disappear, another third will struggle hard to earn only a limited release, and of the remainder one or two will become minor hits. Nonetheless, it’s still our earliest indicator for what we’ll be anointing as “weird” in 2012. Sundance festival home page.
Beasts of the Southern Wild – A six-year old girl named Hushpuppy contracts a fever, which seems to usher in the apocalypse and a plague of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. Screening Jan 20-24, 26.
Bobby Yeah – We don’t usual spotlight shorts, but this 23-minute film by the talented and macabre Robert Morgan is an exception. Watch the trailer to see why. Jan 20, 21, 24 & 27.
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared – We’re breaking our rule of not mentioning short films for a second time, but this time it’s because we scooped Sundance by featuring this creepy kids song about creativity gone too far way back in August. If you must see it on the big screen, then you can catch it screening before the indie drama Kid-Thing Jan 23-24 or 26-28.
Elena – Modern Russian class-struggle drama about an aging woman maneuvering to secure her husband’s inheritance. Yawn, Sundance, we already reviewed this one. Give us something new. Jan 21-22, 24, 27-28.
Excision – Horror film about a spooky, morbid teen girl who decides to lose her virginity and then, per the synopsis, “the weirdness really begins.” Not much is known about this one except that it’s playing in the “Midnight” category and it features both Traci Lords and the man who gave disgraced Traci her “big” break— John Waters. Jan 21, 25, 27-28.
Grabbers – Irish monster movie where potential victims discover they can dissuade alien invaders from snacking on them by raising their blood alcohol levels. A “Midnight” feature. Jan 23, 25-27.
It’s Such a Beautiful Day – Once again, we don’t focus on festival shorts, but we’ll make a third exception for Don Hertzfeldt‘s latest, since it’s the third installment of the stick-figure psychodrama Everything Will Be OK, which we first embedded way back in May. See it Jan. 21, 23, or 27-28, screened in the animated shorts program.
John Dies in the End – Cult director Don Coscarelli adapts a popular webseries about two losers saving the world from a psychedelic drug being used by aliens to take over the planet. In the “Midnight” category, natch. Jan 23, 25-26, 28.
L – A man lives in his car and delivers honey to a narcoleptic for a living in this “willfully bizarre,” bear-obsessed Greek feature. Co-written by the co-writer of Dogtooth, so it starts with weird Hellenic cred. Jan 23-25, 27-28.
Oversimplification of Her Beauty – An impressionistic, experimental, partially animated portrait of a young artist and his desire for a beautiful woman. Part of the “New Frontier” series. Jan 21, 23-24, 28.
Room 237 – Documentary about a phenomenon I didn’t realize existed, but am not at all surprised by: people who believe that Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining contains hidden messages revealing vast international conspiracies. One loony theorizes that the entire movie is Kubrick’s coded confession that he helped fake the footage of Americans landing on the moon. Jan 23-24, 26, 28.
This Must Be the Place – Here’s a truly odd premise for a comedy: a retired goth-rock star hunts the Nazi who persecuted his father at Auschwitz. Starring Sean Penn, of all people, as the laconic, androgynous angel of vengeance. Jan. 21-22, 25, 28.
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie – The Cartoon Network cult comics get their own billion dollar extravaganza, but blow the entire budget on celebrity cameos by Jeff Goldblum, Zach Galifianakis, and Will Ferrell, among others. The plot has something to do with shrim [sic]. Jan 20-21, 24, 27-28.
V/H/S – A horror anthology wherein burglars are hired to break in to a home to steal a rare VHS tape, but find that every cassette they watch is stranger and more disturbing than the last one. Playing at Midnight. Jan 22-24, 28.
whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir – Here’s something you’ll probably never see on home video. If I’ve understood the synopsis correctly, this black and white dystopian noir selects, semi-randomly and in real time, a combination of film clips, voiceover dialogue, and background music to create an experience that’s different with every showing. Catch it Jan. 22, 24-25.
Wrong – A man looking for his lost dog encounters bizarre characters and risks losing his sanity. This is director Quentin Dupieux ‘s followup to his weird hit Rubber, and per the synopsis this one is “equally bizarre.” Jan 21-22, 24, 26-27.
NEW ON DVD:
Belle de Jour (1967): Catherine Deneuve is a housewife by day, hooker by night in this masochistic, surrealistic erotic fantasy from Luis Buñuel. At one point she’s tied up and splattered with shovelfuls of mud while workers insult her; strong stuff for a 1967 art film. The Criterion disc comes with 30 minutes of supplemental material. Buy Belle de Jour (Criterion Collection).
Bombay Beach (2011): Footage of three residents of the decaying Salton Sea region—a bipolar boy, a high school athlete fleeing gang violence, and a retired oil-rig worker—is mixed with musical montages from Beirut and Bob Dylan to create what the makers describe as a “slightly surreal documentary experience.” Buy Bombay Beach.
Caterpillar (2010): The Japanese emperor declares a deaf-mute quadruple amputee a Sino-Japanese war hero and orders his wife to take care of him—including sexually. Not so surreal, but certainly unusual, and the scenario recalls the weird anti-war classic Johnny Got His Gun. Buy Caterpillar.
Cold Sweat (2010): An elderly couple abduct women, strip them to their underwear, and douse them in liquid nitroglycerin to force their obedience in this odd low-budget Argentinian horror-thriller. The consensus seems to be its utterly ludicrous but shamelessly fun. Buy Cold Sweat.
The Overcoat [Il Cappotto] (1952): A lowly bureaucrat buys, then loses, a fancy overcoat, then returns from the dead to look for it. No idea how strange this seldom-seen Italian adaptation of Nicolai Gogol’s short story is, but the original tale was odd enough that Vladmir Nabokov gave a famous lecture on it in which he concluded “great literature skirts the irrational.” Buy The Overcoat [Il Cappotto].
The Platinum Pussycat (1968)/The Sexploiters (1965): We mention this Retro-Seduction Cinema double-feature release for Pussycat [AKA The Losers]; it’s a gangster sexploitation/action feature, and simultaneously a silent film with tinted footage. It may not be good, but at least it’s sure to be bad in a different way. Less is known about The Sexploiters. Buy Platinum Pussycat/The Sexploiters.
Redline (2009): An anime about a futuristic race, and a rebel who tries to win it while foregoing the customary arsenal of weaponry. It sounds like an animated Japanese version of Death Race 2000, from a director who worked as an animator on Ninja Scroll and Funky Forest. Buy Redline.
Simon (1980): A psychology professor is brainwashed into thinking he’s a space alien, and winds up living with a hippie cult who worship TV Guide. Starring Alan Arkin and Madelaine Kahn, we had to mention this long-forgotten satire based on the plot synopsis. On DVD-R from Warner Archive. Buy Simon.
The Oregonian (2011): Read our capsule review. Many readers have asked about the availability of this movie (which debuted at Sundance last year). Here’s your chance to see what the fuss is about. We’ll keep an eye out for a DVD release. Rent The Oregonian on Video on Demand.
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Flatliners (1990): Medical students experiment with inducing near-death experiences by deliberately stopping their own hearts; they have postmortem hallucinations. The cast features then up-and-comers Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, and Kevin Bacon; it’s somewhat mainstream, but hey, it’s free. Watch Flatliners free on YouTube.
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!
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