Tag Archives: 2006

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.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS (2006)

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DIRECTED BY: Steven Shainberg

FEATURING: , , Ty Burrell

PLOT: Diane Arbus is an artistically repressed housewife whose creativity is stirred when a circus freak moves upstairs.

Fur: an Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Although I hesitate to rule any movie that includes Nicole Kidman shaving a wolfman off the list of the weirdest movies ever made, the fact is that the disappointing Fur never really flies.

COMMENTS: While I admire the chutzpah behind the concept of an “imaginary portrait” that, as the prologue explains, seeks to convey the “inner experience” of the artist, I’m afraid Fur doesn’t deliver the goods. Fur never really delves into Diane Arbus’ inner experience, instead choosing to metaphorize it as a Beauty and the Beast romantic fantasy that ends up feeling surprisingly conventional, given the (deliberately) ridiculous premise. That premise involves the future famous photographer (a wan and lovely Nicole Kidman) as a frustrated housewife who becomes obsessed with her new upstairs neighbor who always wears a mask in public and clogs her drains with wads of hair. The stranger is soon revealed to be Lionel, played by an extra-downy Robert Downey, Jr., and he serves as a White Rabbit that leads Diane/Alice down a rabbit hole into a Wonderland of carnivalesque visions. (The “Alice in Wonderland” references are heavy during the first Platonic night Arbus spends in his lair, including a tiny door, a note instructing her to drink a cup of tea, and even actual shots of a white rabbit). Fur gets its surrealistic impulses out of the way in that initial meeting between Diane and Lionel, which segues into Arbus’ dreams, broken up by establishing conversations with the always-in-control Lionel. Diane plans to shoot a portrait of her neighbor as her first artistic venture into photography, but rather than setting up a tripod, she spends more and more time gadding about Manhattan with Lionel, who introduces her to his glamorous cadre of freaks and outsiders that includes an armless woman, a prostitute, an undertaker, a transvestite, and, naturally, dwarfs, dwarfs, dwarfs! Her long-suffering and very devoted husband Allan understandably grows jealous at her absorption into Lionel’s world—I laughed out loud when, late in the film, he grows a thick beard to try to compete with Lionel’s locks! Although Downey’s “sensitive” performance received praise in some quarters, I wasn’t happy with the portrayal of the character. For someone who had been shunned due to his looks for his entire life, Lionel comes across as too confident a seducer of the submissive Diane. He’s far too cocky for a guy who looks like a cocker spaniel. The movie builds to a truly unsatisfying consummation that senselessly defangs—er, defurs—Lionel’s deformity, which is ironically the opposite of what Arbus’ photographs did to their subjects. Even accepting Lionel not as a real character but as the personification of the allure of the grotesque, Fur doesn’t give us much insight into Diane’s passion. Creativity it is simply analogized to romance, and left at that. We never get any sense of the fire Arbus must have had for her work, only her ardor for a symbol. Although I’m no fan of biopics and their enslavement to historical fact, I think that in Arbus’ case a more traditional, non-imaginary portrait may have served its subject better. Or, maybe just a portrait with more imagination.

Diane’s husband Allan Arbus, played here by Ty Burrell, is the same Allan Arbus who starred in Greaser’s Palace and other movies. He did not take up acting until after Diane left him to follow the photography muse. He even appeared in two films with the young Robert Downey, Jr.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…far too impressed with its own weirdness.”–Dana Stevens, Slate (contemporaneous)

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

Capsules, Shorts

CAPSULE: CHINGASO THE CLOWN (2006)

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“Chingaso the Clown” runs for 15 minutes (12 minutes without credits) and can be viewed on YouTube in its entirety by clicking this link. The film is mildly Not Safe for Work (NSFW) and would likely be rated R for language and violence.

DIRECTED BY: Elias Matar

FEATURING: Quinn Larson, David Hyatt, Roberta Orlandi

PLOT: A man paints his face and heads off to seek revenge on crime kingpin Bastard the Clown and his Clown Army.

Still from Chingaso the Clown (2006)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Ending on a cliffhanger, “Chingaso the Clown” not really a full length standalone film; it’s a pitch for a feature that was never made. It’s not bad, but even at full length this action movie parody wouldn’t be weird enough to qualify for the List solely because its chief combatants wear greasepaint and crack bad puns.

COMMENTS: We at 366 Weird Movies pledge that we’ll give any movie a hearing, so long as it meets a basic minimum level of weirdness and quality. “Chingaso the Clown” is proof of that promise. However, we don’t promise that we’ll get to it promptly. The short film “Chingaso the Clown” was made in 2006, and we were asked to review it in 2010; at that point, director Elias Matar was still hoping to expand the short into a feature. He’s since made a different feature film (Ashes, a about a doctor who accidentally creates a zombie virus) and let the chingasotheclown.com domain expire, which suggests the project has been abandoned. Which is a bit of a shame, because “Chingaso the Clown,” the short, isn’t half bad, and almost certainly could have been turned into a viable feature ( has released much worse full length films, some of which were probably completed for less than it cost to make the short version “Chingaso”). The premise—an alternate universe in which unscrupulous clowns run the world’s crime cartels—is high concept enough, although the mime vs. clown rivalry angle is lifted from 1991’s Shakes the Clown. The acting is much higher quality than is usually seen in this level of filmmaking: as vengeful Chingaso, Quinn Larson has only one note but nails it; David Hyatt is suitably Joker-esque in the most difficult role as the villain; and former Miss Italy (and sometime television actress) Roberta Orlandi adds a touch of Hollywood glamor that legitimizes the project. The direction is also competent: angles and lighting are interesting, visual effects are inexpensive but judiciously used, and the film shows good attention to detail with no obvious continuity problems. The fight scene choreography could be improved but isn’t off-putting, and the script is mildly amusing throughout, with one, maybe two decent belly laughs. Is it weird? Not so very, but the B-movie spoof crowd would have eaten this up, if it was served to them cheaply enough (they’re a miserly crowd). Unfortunately, ‘s impressive The Last Circus was released in 2010 and pretty much stole the thunder from any subsequent clown vs. clown slugfests. Sorry we didn’t get to the review before that, but even a glowing review from us wasn’t likely to make the difference between funding “Chingaso” and letting the poor guy hang up his floppy shoes for good.

More important than the fate of “Chingaso the Clown” itself is what the movie says about the state of the low-budget film industry today. Two decades ago, before cheap digital cameras and the proliferation of broadband internet, the skill required to make a film like “Chingaso” would be in high demand. Today, however, competition is cutthroat: anyone can make a short movie, and most people who do are giving them away for free on YouTube. We, the entertainment consumers, are drowning in a sea of product, and at this moment in time it’s not good enough for a producer to be skilled. You’ve got to be lucky, too, and even going viral only gives you Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes to exploit your popularity.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the film is so wonderful that it’s a shame the feature-length version has yet to be made… the excess of violence achieves a unique balance between the hilarious and the grotesque.”–Phil Hall, Film Threat (festival screening)

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

Watch “Chingaso the Clown” on Youtube

Capsules

CAPSULE: SHEITAN (2006)

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DIRECTED BY: Kim Chapiron

FEATURING: Olivier Barthelemy, ,

PLOT: Four young people agree to spend Christmas at the country home of a beautiful stranger they meet at a Paris club, but the oddball caretaker takes an intense and unhealthy interest in one of the crew.

Still from Sheitan (2006)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The adjective “weird” pops up a couple of times in reviews describing Sheitan, but we suspect that the misusage must be due to a lack of exposure to the truly bizarre stuff. Up until Sheitan‘s final act, there’s little—other than Vincent Cassel’s oddball performance—to suggest this French slasher lies very far outside of the normal range of teens-in-a-cabin horror. Unusual direction and a strange finish nudge Sheitan just barely into the weird column, but not enough to compete with the big weird boys.

COMMENTS: Honestly, despite a gonzo performance by an uncomfortably peppy Vincent Cassel, a steamy male-male-female threesome, and a startling final image, the thing that sticks with me most about Sheitan is how hateful its protagonists are. The movie starts with the fours youngsters at Club Styx, where the most emblematically despicable of the lot, Bart, is chilling out with drunken resentment. He finally works up the courage to make a clumsy pass at an understandably disinterested chick, then starts verbally abusing her when she rejects him. He sucker punches a Prince Charming who steps in to defend the innocent girl’s honor, spits in a bouncer’s face, and gets a well-deserved bottle upside his head. This, ladies and gentlemen, is our antihero, and he doesn’t get much more pleasant from here on out. He dreams about taking advantage of a female friend while she sleeps, kicks a goat, and blames everyone around him for all the bad karma he brings on himself. Although his buddies are shallow, sex-obsessed petty thieves, their worst quality is that they willingly remain friends with Bart. Bart is so abhorrent that when the clearly deranged groundskeeper Joseph (Cassel) of the house at which the gang has decided to spend Christmas Eve immediately emerges as Bart’s nemesis, we enjoy it. The perpetually grinning Joseph (Cassel’s jaw must have hurt like hell when he left the set each night) makes ambiguously homosexual suggestions to Bart, while at the same time constantly forgetting the boy’s name. The annoyance Joseph breeds in le bagge de douche whets our appetite to see these kids finally get bumped off in grisly ways (but warning: the obnoxious cast survives for far too long). There’s no doubt that this reversal of our expected sympathies is deliberate, or that it has the disquieting effect of tempting us to root for the “evil” character. As an experiment playing with the audience’s feelings and expectations, Sheitan is successful; that does not, however, make it pleasant watching these nitwits. There is symbolism along the way: religion, from the Garden of Eden to the birth of Christ, is referenced frequently and sometimes cleverly. And the fact that each of the feral French twentysomethings is from a different ethnic background—an African, an Arab, an Asian and a native Gaul—seems somehow significant. On the movie’s plus ledger, Cassel is possessed and magnetic, Mesquida is a sexy revelation, and the hallucinatory ending leaves us with some lingeringly sick imagery. Still, the thing I will remember about the movie is it’s painful vision of odious, amoral youth with horrible taste in music. This movie really hates young people, which is cool and all—hey, we all want those damn kids to stay off our lawns—but Sheitan goes just a little too far.

Sheitan is sometimes considered part of the “New French Extremity” genre of transgressive horror, along with movies like ‘s self-mutilation feature In My Skin (2002), Alexandre Aja’s ultraviolent slasher Haute Tension (2003), and others. It’s Deliverance-style urbanites-at-the-mercy-of-peasants theme is reminiscent of the similarly unpleasant but far weirder NFE feature Calvaire (2004). Ultimately, Sheitan isn’t very “extreme”—you will see more blood in any typical Hollywood horror—but it shares the genre’s queasy pessimism about human nature.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…deeply weird, art-housey, nerve-shredding French horror…”–David Mattin, BBC (contemporaneous)

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