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Discussed in this episode:
The Empire [L’Empire] (2024): Commandant Van der Weyden and his sidekick Charpentier are back (although they may have a smaller role to play) in this sci-fi spoof about warring tribes of aliens in human form. This film, aimed squarely at fans of Bruno Dumont‘s curious brand of Gallic absurdity, arrives on Blu-ray and VOD this week. Buy The Empire.
Friendship (2025): Tim Robinson brings his awkwardly surreal shtick to the feature film format as a man trying to make friends with his cool neighbor. Getting excellent reviews, although critics sometimes seem confused as to whether its a comedy or a psychological horror movie. Friendship at A24.
Kryptic (2024): Read Giles Edwards’ festival summary. The horror about a woman encountering a mysterious cryptid in the Canadian wilderness may be playing theaters somewhere, but you’re more likely to find it in its simultaneous VOD incarnation. Kryptic official site.
Tall Tales (2025): A visual album by Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke, with surrealistic visuals from artist Johnathan Zawada. We learned about this too late to warn you about its one-night-only theatrical debut on May 8, but we are confident it will show up later in one form or another–Oscilloscope is involved and will likely be treating it in a similar fashion to Godfrey Reggio‘s Once Within a Time , with limited engagements followed by a physical and streaming release. Tall Tales official site.
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:
As announced, next week’s guest will be contributor/friend-of-the-site Alex Kittle, who contributed to the latest Re-Animator 4K UHD box set release from new player Ignite Films (order here). In written reviews, Shane Wilson revisits God Told Me To (1976); Enar Clarke responds to our call to review more weird stuff from Africa with a look at Cameroon’s Les Saignantes [The Bloodiest] (2005); Giles Edwards checks out Bill Plympton‘s Mutant Aliens (2001); and Gregory J. Smalley preps for summer by taking in the madness of Nicolas Cage‘s The Surfer (2025). Onward and weirdward!
I caught Tall Tales in the cinema, and it was definitely extremely weird in bursts and overall enjoyable (and came with a weird world building zine too) however it really is just a album worth of music videoes, which like anime, is probably a medium with a much higher baseline for weirdness so not sure if it’s worthy of consideration for the list.
It’s also an interesting example if A.I. can be used ethically to make up (things were licenced and the work was more guided by human hand rather than just generated through prompts) but the general sloppiness and unnatural sheen typical of it still occasionally stood out especially in the faux-claymation bits.
Thank you for the first-hand report! We’ve never put a “visual album” on the List but we do like to let people know they’re out there.