Tag Archives: Apocalyptic

Capsules

CAPSULE: EVANGELION 1.11: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE (2007/2010)

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DIRECTED BY: Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno

FEATURING: Voice actors

PLOT: Tokyo-3 is under assault by mysterious robot-like creatures known as “Angels”; two teenagers pilot the mechanical Evangelions that are the only things that can defeat the invaders and save humanity, while simultaneously dealing with pop quizzes and high school bullies.

Still from Evangelion1.11: You Are (Not) Alone (2010)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  How do you assess the weirdness of anime, a fantastical genre in which underage nude sexpots with powder blue hair and blood red eyes don’t raise an eyebrow?  An average anime is pretty damn weird to the uninitiated, but like other specialized subgenres (such as the kung fu film) anime follows its own conventions.  Once the seasoned viewer internalizes those rules, the resulting films don’t look quite so strange.  That means that, to be considered as a candidate for the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of All Time, an anime needs to be weird even by Japanimation’s exalted standards of oddness.  By reimagining stock giant robots as avenging angels in a mystical scenario worthy of a pop-art Book of Revelations, but embedding the messianic tale within the ordinary travails of an extremely wimpy high school freshman, Evangelion 1.11 nearly vaults over this raised weirdness bar.  The hurdle this particular film can’t quite overcome, however, is the fact that it’s incomplete, only part I of a planned “rebuild” series of four movies—and that there’s already a previous entry in the franchise it’s remaking that reputedly blows 1.11 away with its bizarreness.

COMMENTS:   Forget the plentiful, and plenty spectacular, duels between giant robots.  (Obsessive fans of the series may stress to you that neither the Angels nor the Evas are technically giant robots, but don’t be fooled: if it looks like a giant robot, clatters like a giant robot, and shoots death rays from its fingertips, it’s a giant robot).  Set aside the fantastic visions like the giant mutating cube that drops a diamond drill bit into downtown Tokyo-3.  Even overlook portentous (pretentious?) lines of dialogue like, “The Apocrypha of the Dead Continue reading CAPSULE: EVANGELION 1.11: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE (2007/2010) →

List Candidates

BORDERLINE WEIRD: SOUTHLAND TALES (2006)

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DIRECTED BY: Richard Kelly

FEATURING: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, , Miranda Richardson

PLOT: In an alternate-universe America controlled by a surveillance-happy government, the lives of several Los Angeles residents—including a disabled veteran, a police officer, an amnesiac movie star, and a cell of political revolutionaries—intersect on the eve of the apocalypse.

still from Southland Tales (2006)
WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINE:  Although its many subplots pile weird images and ideas on top of each other, many of them remain totally superfluous, and the film as a whole is a disappointing nexus of influences and half-baked premises rather than a cohesive work of art.  However, it does contain some moments of mesmerizing weirdness, and could have a chance of being certified weird in the future.

COMMENTS:  To follow up his impressive debut feature, Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly clearly wanted to challenge himself.  With Southland Tales, however, he bit off more than he could chew. All of Donnie Darko’s best and worst tendencies are on display (with an emphasis on the latter), but this time the showcase is twice as long, with enough intricate storylines and bizarre sci-fi subtexts to fill a dozen less ambitious movies.  With his second film’s epic size, Kelly lost the gently emotional touch that made Donnie’s coming-of-age so poignant; his fiery creative passion is still very perceptible here, but it’s obscured behind layers of apocalyptic razzle-dazzle, broad satire, and sophomoric humor.

In Southland Tales’ alternate timeline, Texas was struck by terrorist nukes in 2005, triggering World War III; this back story is filled in via a YouTube-style montage of video clips and hyperlinks.  It’s a genuinely original method of exposition, but alas, it’s a rare example of Kelly’s innovative spirit overcoming his love of non sequitur jokes and stunt casting.  While Donnie Darko just had Patrick Swayze’s unnervingly effective performance as a demagogic motivational speaker, Southland Tales crams in a disorienting array of surprise cameos and Continue reading BORDERLINE WEIRD: SOUTHLAND TALES (2006) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

2. SILENT HILL (2006)

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“Je me suis drapé dans ma conception du fantastique, et ce n’est pas celle de tout le monde.” – Christophe Gans

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Radha Mitchell, Laurie Holden,

PLOT:  After her adopted daughter’s sleepwalking problem turns hazardous, her concerned mother decides to investigate the name of the town that she mutters in her narcoleptic fits: “Silent Hill.” The pair travel to the titular locale, a modern ghost town that has been abandoned for decades due to a coal fire that continuously burns underground. Once inside the city limits, mother and daughter are separated, and the mother’s search for her lost child leads her through increasingly bizarre and portentous adventures in the haunted town.

Still from Silent Hill (2006)

BACKGROUND:

  • This film was adapted from the cult/horror Sony Play Station video game, “Silent Hill”. Movie adaptations of video games were (are) a relatively new phenomenon, and had generally not been well received by either movie critics or fans. Although these movies debuted with the advantage of a built in fan base, Super Mario Bros. (1993), Wing Commander (1993), and Doom (2005) had all been massive critical and box office flops, and that’s leaving aside the efforts of Uwe Boll. Although the Lara Croft and Resident Evil franchises became minor hits, by 2006 the entire video game adaption genre had already become a critical punchline, synonymous with diminished expectations.
  • Director Christophe Gans, a French b-movie film-geek turned director, was a fan of the “Silent Hill” game series and convinced that he could fashion the first truly successful game adaptation. He had previously had a surprise international (and modest stateside) hit with Brotherhood of the Wolf [Le Pacte des loups] (2001), a weird but energetic historical/detective/horror/kung fu hybrid.
  • Screenwriter Roger Avary assisted on the scripts for Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994),  as well as handling both screenwriting and directing duties on his own projects, such as Killing Zoe (1994).

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Blankets of ash falling over a deserted town like snow, until the eerie stillness is broken by the shrill wail of a 1950s era air raid siren.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Gans paints his murky canvas with the expected monstrosities from deep inside the id, but it’s the film’s disjointed storytelling that turns it from a mere visual romp through scary-town into something totally disconcerting and off-kilter.


Original trailer for Silent Hill

COMMENTS:  The critics agree: Silent Hill is a fantastic looking picture, but the script is Continue reading 2. SILENT HILL (2006) →