Capsules, Shorts

CAPSULE: CINEMA 16: EUROPEAN SHORT FILMS (U.S. EDITION) (2007)

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DIRECTED BY: Juan Solanas, , Christopher Nolan, Roy Andersson, Toby MacDonald, Lynne Ramsay, Jan Svankmajer, Mathieu Kassovitz, , Virgil Widrich, Ridley Scott, , Balint Kenyeres, Anders Thomas Jensen, Martin McDonagh, Nanni Moretti

FEATURING: Natalie Press, , Rúaidhrí Conroy, Klas-Gösta Olsson, Kris Marshall, Johannes Silberschneider, Tony Scott,

PLOT: This collection of sixteen award-winning shorts made by Europeans (mostly Brits) is a mix of dramas, comedies, and experimental pieces.

Still from Jabberwocky (1971)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Compilations aren’t eligible for the List.  Although there are several short films on this set that are both weird, and great for their length, none of them have the weight it would take to displace a full-length feature film from the List.

COMMENTS: Like any box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get with this collection of sixteen shorts—it could be a caramel, a raspberry creme, or one of the dreaded coconuts.  The wide array of styles from artists working free of commercial concerns makes collections like this excellent primers on what cinema can accomplish, and this selection  from short film specialists Cinema 16 is one of the most award-studded compilations you’ll find.  Not having to worry about the box office receipts allows short film-makers to experiment with technique and go weirder than they otherwise would; indeed, about half of the movies here have at least a nodding acquaintance with the bizarre, while a couple are full-fledged works of surrealist art.  But no matter what direction your tastes run, rest assured there is something here to delight, and to bore, every film fan.

For completeness’ sake, I’ll briefly run down the realism-based entries first, in ascending order of quality.  We’ll then spend a little more time with the experimental offerings, a few of which are extremely important to the world of weird film.

The oldest film, Ridley Scott’s 1956 Boy and Bicycle, about a lad who takes a bike ride to the Continue reading CAPSULE: CINEMA 16: EUROPEAN SHORT FILMS (U.S. EDITION) (2007) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: BUNNY AND THE BULL (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Paul King

FEATURING: Edward Hogg, Simon Farnaby, Verónica Echegui

PLOT: An agoraphobic young man remembers (or hallucinates) a trip he took across Europe with his hard-drinking, sexually voracious, gambling-addicted pal Bunny.

Still from Bunny and the Bull (2009)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  It’s a mildly surreal comedy that’s in the weird ballpark, but it’s not nearly unhinged enough to make the List on weirdness alone, and too uneven to be counted among the best weird movies ever made.

COMMENTS: Bunny and the Bull begins by introducing us to Stephen Turnbull, an shut-in with severe OCD issues who files his used dental floss and checks the pH of his urine every morning, then shows in flashback how he degenerated from a functioning neurotic to a full-fledged basket case.  An emergency involving rats violating his boxes of hermetically sealed vegetarian lasagna forces him to phone Captain Crab for a takeout meal, unlocking a flood of memories.  The logo on the takeout box inspires Stephen to remember the time he was stood up by a girl he intended to propose to at a Captain Crab.  In the movie’s first anstract sequence, he imagines a restaurant constructed entirely out of painted paper; even the fish swimming in the aquarium are cardboard cutouts.  The motif carries over in the next scene, where an entire horse race is re-enacted with similar animated, spray-painted two-dimensional figures.  These two scenes set up the expectation that the entire movie will carry through this hazy-dream-version-of-a-high-school-play look, but as Stephen and Bunny begin their tour of Europe, subsequent sequences are shot on realistic looking sets, though sometimes employing blurry rear-projection or other random visual trickery.  Then, halfway through the movie the cinematographer pulls out a new look: a world full of gleaming brass CGI clockwork contraptions.  The different visual signatures each look great on their own, but the schizophrenic hopping about from one to another makes you wonder if they switched art directors halfway through film, then ran out of money in the special effects budget.  Bunny‘s visuals are frequently likened to those of The Science of Sleep, but that comparison only holds for the cardboard-cutout scenes; the lack of a Continue reading CAPSULE: BUNNY AND THE BULL (2009) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: EVANGELION 2.22: YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno

FEATURING: , Allison Keith-Shipp (English dub)

PLOT:  Following the events of Evangelion 1.11, the Angel incursions against Tokyo-3 increase in intensity, and two new teenage Evangelion pilots are integrated into the NERV defense team.  Also, the world ends, I think.

Still from Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance (2009)


WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: What to do with Evangelion?  A combo teen soap opera/end-of-the-world saga starring giant robots, the series is weird, but in a way that’s actually sort of conventional (in anime terms). Even worse, there are now four movies (and a long running TV series) telling essentially the same story—with two more on the way. Should all the movies make the List? None? Only the weirdest one? Whatever the case, I don’t think this installment is capable of being counted among the best weird movies ever made; but I’m also thankful we get to defer the issue until we’ve checked out the series’ entire run.

COMMENTS: Here’s a typical battle between an Angel (periodically appearing bad guy) and an Evangelion (giant robot that can only be piloted by a teenager). Battleships fire pink and yellow shells at the Angel, a wire-frame robot with a pendulum hanging between its legs, as it marches towards them, instantly freezing the blood red sea with every stride and leaving a huge snowflake as a footstep. It shoots laser beams from a globe and blows the battleships, causing the scarlet water to erupt into cross-shaped spouts. A warplane drops a giant robot (hereafter “Eva”); it evades the green-tipped black lines the Angel fires at it as it falls. The Eva blows up the Angel with a gun, but it immediately reconstitutes itself. The Eva next stomps on the Angel’s laser-firing spike, which causes translucent pink and yellow auras to fill up the sky. Eventually the Eva’s foot forces the spike all the way into its command globe, and the Angel explodes into a pink cross. Each melee shot lasts for a second or less, increasing the confusion as to what the hell is supposed to be going on. In Evangelion Angels can take any form, including scuttling robots with dinosaur-skull heads and 1970s-era Pink Floyd laser light shows, and they operate according to rules that are never explained.  (I’m fairly sure the Angels have no actual protocols Continue reading CAPSULE: EVANGELION 2.22: YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE (2009) →

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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Fnord. Dear readers, please ignore this mysterious code: 9FGRZWS6WJX5.  It is intended for Illuminati eyes and will be gone soon enough.  /Fnord.

You may want to bone up on your Evangelion history, because we’ll start off next week with a review of the second installment in the re-reboot of the sexually-confused-teenagers-in-giant-robots-fight-candy-colored-angels series, Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance.  Following that, we’ll dip into the reader-suggested review queue for the agoraphobic-European-road-trip-flashback comedy Bunny and the Bull (2009).  We’ll follow that up with a review of a disc inspired by the reader-suggested review queue: Cinema 16’s amazing compilation European Short Films, featuring early works by 366 favorites like Christopher Nolan, , Roy Andersson,  and Jan Svankmajer.  (Funny story: we thought this disc would fulfill our obligation to review ‘ “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117”; but when we bought it we didn’t realize that there were completely separate lineups of films for the Region 0 and Region 2 versions of European Short Films.  So, “My Wrongs” isn’t on the version we purchased, and we’ll have to find it elsewhere).  Not only that, but we’ll also throw in a review of Luis Buñuel’s religious hypocrisy parable Nazarin (1959).

It was a decent week for weird search terms used to locate the site.  We begin with this weird-sounding search for “soft virgins of horror island;” what’s even weirder about this search string is that a story by this name actually exists.  (It’s a bondage-themed pulp tale from the 1950s—see it listed on the cover of “Shock Mystery Tales” here).  Also of note is the search for “bronson throat flossing,” a hygiene procedure which which we are happily unacquainted.  For our Weirdest Search Term of the Week, our staff selects “weird movies that are ecleeeenet.”  We like to think we offer the most comprehensive coverage of truly ecleeeenet weird movies you’ll find anywhere!

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands: Bunny & the Bull (next week!); Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings;  Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

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