Tag Archives: Comedy

Capsules, Shorts

CAPSULE: GIRL INTERNET SHOW: A KATI KELLI MIXTAPE (2023)

1 Comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Kati Kelli

FEATURING: Kati Kelli

PLOT: Selections from Kati Keli’s surreal, satirical YouTube channel mixed into a feature film, plus her only completed short, “Total Body Removal Surgery.”

Still from "Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape" (2023)

COMMENTS: It’s not the first thing Kati Kelli uploaded to YouTube, but the most accessible entry point to this bizarro YouTube creator’s world is “Marva the MILF,” a 14-episode series that works as recognizable satire. It’s the only strain where Kelli plays a consistent character, a 50-year-YOUNG unapologetic golddigger and would-be glamour influencer in a blonde wig wearing too much bronzer. Cluelessly arrogant Marva refers to her audience as “babies” (or sometimes “fuglies”) and complains about her daughter ignoring her beauty advice because she (eye-roll) “wants to be herself.” Marva even stays in character while jumping on the ASMR trend: while tapping her fingernails as she mimics applying mascara to the viewer, she whispers “I’m not sponsored, I’m just a big fan… I always blow hubby’s money on this brand.”

But that focused character is a big departure from the usual inventory of her “Girl Internet Show” channel, which quickly turned manic when Kelli discovered the joys of Adobe After Effects suite. Future, non-Marva episodes quickly went techno-maximalist, with hyper editing, text flying about, shots of social media feeds, Kelli’s head swelling into a bulbous monstrosity, altered film speeds, random musical accompaniment, cartoonish sound effects, gif bluebirds circling her head, miscellaneous filters, stock photos of broccoli zipping across the screen, and basically any kind of embellishment that seized her short-attention-span fancy. Sure, she still mocked the vapid self-absorption of overly-dramatic V-loggers and beauty influencers, but the satire was more of an excuse for relentless experimentation and absurdity than the meat of her vegan aesthetic. Episodes might be anything from a fashion show to a commercial spoof to a fake confessional to relatively sedate entries like Kelli gyrating maniacally while holding a glass of wine or wearing a skull mask, playing a ukulele, or shaking a ragdoll to simulate dancing while singing monotonously. The entire “show” is shot in a single apartment, often with her pop-surreal, occasionally obscene artwork displayed on the walls; when it’s necessary to add another character, Kelli simply dons a wig, or incorporates a Barbie doll. (She does have, at least, the assistance of an unseen and uncredited cameraperson—and a housecat.) It doesn’t hurt anything that Kelli is conventionally gorgeous, with luminous olive-green eyes, full lips, and a model’s figure, which only makes her choice to specialize in completely uncommercial culture-jamming media hit harder. And although her comedy is mostly of the absurd non-sequitur variety, she gets across the occasional zinger, as when describing her multitudinous mental maladies, she muses, “I’m also diagnosed as being an amazing kisser… actually, by the same psychologist who diagnosed me as having daddy issues.”

Kelli also made a parody of Spring Breakers featuring only Barbie dolls.

Kelli’s final completed piece was the short film “Total Body Removal Surgery,” a Kickstarted project which was not posted to YouTube (it’s the only truly exclusive content included on the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray). Although Kelli plays a new character named “Tippy Rose” and for the first time includes other actors (memorably, the freakishly lantern-jawed Dr. Locker, played by none other than Escape from Tomorrow‘s Roy Abamsohn) and non-apartment locations in the video, the fractured multimedia aesthetic will be completely familiar to “Girl Internet Show” fans. The brief story concerns the titular medical procedure and the satire of cosmetic surgery is obvious, though done with Kelli’s usual verve.  Sadly, Kelli died suddenly—of, of all things, an asthma attack—only three days after “Total Body Removal Surgery” was completed. This mixtape version of her legacy, assembled by admirer and her husband Jordan Wipple, flows well and is a fond remembrance of her out-there artistry. Rather than being a completed product, Kelli’s work suggests a talent that was just beginning to find her legs in her late 20s, cut off just as she was ready to launch. It’s a shame that she was never able to expand her canvas beyond YouTube, but her work should inspire a generation of independent artists looking for a template for how to create engaging art with nothing more than a camera, a few wigs, dolls, the After Effects suite, and broadband wifi.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…not just a hilarious, weird anthology, but also an elegy and a tribute to a loved one and an outsider artist.”–Anton Bitel, Projected Figures

Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape

Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape [Blu-ray]

  • Region Free Blu-ray

List Price : 36.97 $

Offer: 22.36 $

Go to Amazon
List Candidates

FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BUDDY (2026)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Casper Kelly

FEATURING: Delaney Quinn, Cristin Milioti, Tristan Borders, Madison Skyy Polan, and the voice of Keegan-Michael Key

PLOT: A group of children’s-show friends attempt to escape from the increasingly homicidal titular unicorn.

Still from Buddy (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Buddy’s lair is carved directly into the sheer walls of the uncanny valley, sure, but the denouement’s dreamy poignancy secures Kelly’s caper a place in our weird hearts.

COMMENTS: You may not know it, but Buddy wants to be your friend. And even though he’s just met you, he loves you very much. But unless you want to spend the remainder of your existence (or perhaps longer) cycling through an endless series of singing, dancing, frolicking bromides, do not extend your hand to this beastly television host. Watch out for your family, too, because once they’ve gone Buddy, there’s no going back.

Buddy will appeal to a number of audiences: horror fans seeking something candy-coated and full of carnage; adventurous viewers yearning for the sinister side of wacky; drug aficionados who have themselves tasted of the butterscotch psychotropic flower petal; and especially anthropologists studying television culture of the late second millennium. This film is a simulacrum of excesses that, in hindsight, feel almost barbaric.

I am not referring to the creepy gore found in Buddy, no. I speak of the bombardment of treacly songs and horrific performance foisted on the youth of yesteryear—and, regrettably, today as well. Strip away Buddy’s murderous rampages, and there’s still an ever-pulsating technicolor blob of repulsiveness. When we root for Freddy and her liberated buddies, we’re not just invested in their physical safety: we want them to escape to live a well-adjusted life, with all its surprises and misfortunes.

Casper Kelly leaps out of the fire and into the impossibly vibrant world of 1990s children’s programs with his latest film, and the product of his imagination both sears the eyes and slashes the mind, all while also capturing the heart. During Kelly’s introduction to his movie, he commented on his own children’s viewing of the various late-20th-century “children’s classics.” I can only hope and pray that those days are gone, that the memories fade, and that in years to come we can look upon Buddy as a totem of daytime horrors past.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…get’s [sic] more and more fun the weirder and weirder it gets… A deranged, go for broke experiment that makes the most of all of its bizarre ideas…”–Derrick Murray, Nerdbot (festival screening)

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SOUR MINNOWS (2026)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Harrison Atkins

FEATURING: David Brown, Suzanna Son,

PLOT: Ricky workings on writing projects until memory lapses begin plaguing him after a grocery run.

Still from Sour Minnows (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: When men lick the road with abandon, and small fish appear in your pocket, and boom mics come alive, things ain’t quite right.

COMMENTS: “Really? You don’t find that disturbing?” Tepper has just been scrolling through his phone, landing on a picture of an ornamental plant growing from a raised stone urn. Roommate Ricky  doesn’t share Tepper’s discomfort about this image and the benign object within. But by this point in Sour Minnows, it is already difficult to tell what may and may not be ominous, as the narrative has already proven as slippery as a fish.

The point of view slides around between the three main characters, screenwriter Ricky, his somewhat-girlfriend Aura, and the distracted Tepper. Each character becomes progressively compromised as they find themselves in situations they can’t control and awaken with only a hazy recollection of the events. Aura slathers a department-store evening gown with a rotted bird corpse, in order to astrally-project her hand into Ricky’s car to smear his headrest with the goo; Tepper’s mind wanders into a nearby window, either removing his television from the room or removing his own self; and Ricky attends a fancy media event where he receives a cryptic note before traveling through a tunnel connecting the men’s room to his home, frightening his sleeping doppelganger as he looms at his bedroom door.

If you’re comfortable with a lack of clarity and semi-detached performances (“Are you doing a ‘bit’?”), Sour Minnows is quite a treat. I saw it once, at its second screening, when the festival programmer introduced the movie with his remark that this would be the fourth time he’s watched it. Subsequent viewings probably unlock coherency, but even my one-time visit to the odd world Harrison Atkins has crafted and confettied proved satisfying. Not unlike the Tepper’s reaction to the urn, Sour Minnows is a bit disturbing, and more than a little absurd.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…you’ll probably know within minutes whether this movie is your kind of weird… a very weird film, but the surreal story is always rooted in friendship… If that’s your kind of cinema, you’ll feel like you’ve found your people.”–Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots (festival screening)

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ZSAZSA ZATURNNAH (2026)

Leave a comment

AKA Zsazsa Zaturnnah vs the Amazonistas of Planet X

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Avid Liongoren

FEATURING: Voices of Phi Palmos, Adrienne Vergara, Io Balanon, Siglo Pecho, Joelle Yuvienco

PLOT: Ada, owner of a local hair salon, has a crush on the  grocer across the street and must rise to heights of heroism to defeat murderous aliens from planet Planet X.

Still from Zsazsa Zsaturnnah (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The fact that this is one of the queerest movies I’ve seen, both in the modern sense and the word’s original definition, tips my balance of judgment here. A string of silly, sexualized kaiju encounters (eggplant, anyone?) culminate in a showdown involving a cock-and-balls super weapon, so there’s certainly that, too. Zsazsa might make for a great animated sci-fi queer double feature alongside Strange Frame.

COMMENTS: Ada enjoys his quiet life, in his quiet town, working at his quiet hair salon. He enjoys, a great deal, innocently ogling Dodong from his viewpoint across the street (often falling into an inadvertent drool as the comic-book visuals morph into Steel-y pastels of hunkitude). He enjoys, somewhat less, the company of Didi, his in-your-face assistant who somehow managed to land devotedly in his employ. He enjoys, not at all, the prospect of devouring a large space rock—emblazoned with the enigmatic word, “ZATURNNAH”—at Didi’s behest; but as Didi quips, Ada has had no difficulty fitting large things into his mouth before. Open wide, gulp, fizz, blast, and behold our superhero: muscle-bound, flowing-haired, curvaceously-carressable Zsazsa!

Adapated from a comic series, and previously interpreted in live action both on screen and on stage, Zsazsa is wholly unleashed in its animated form. Avid Liongoren pushes the vibrant versatility of the medium to fabulous, fantastical heights as colors grab the eye and zippy lines whoosh us through mighty battles, culminating in a zombie horde ka-powing before the actual final showdown. That battle, against the strange forces behind the series of invasions that plague the small town, squares us off against an odd bit of commentary: a mighty queen from a far off planet who has destroyed all men and believes that Zsazsa is wholly female. There is a smirking tension in Zsazsa between misandry, misogyny, and a nebulous middle thingy. Ada is, quite firmly, a gay man, though with classically feminine tendencies, and the queen of Planet X has no experience with this.

But I risk taking things too seriously. Zsazsa bursts with Lisa Frank energy from the get-go, and the pep doesn’t let up throughout the movie. In the midst of the endless sight gags, zippy one-liners, and cartoonish combat is a message: strength comes from within, and it has nothing to do with whatever spiky space rock you may have deep-throated into yourself.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… the actual subject of the film perfectly accentuates the strangeness of its animated frames… Fans of campy cinema, drag aesthetics, and comic-book fantasy should have an absolute blast with this wild genre combo.” — Joshua Hayes, Josh at the Movies (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE FEELING THAT THE TIME FOR DOING SOMETHING HAS PASSED (2023)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something is Gone is available to purchase or rent on-demand.

Recommended

The fourth installment in the “Pete’s Perverted Pix” series.

DIRECTED BY: Joanna Arnow

FEATURING: Joanna Arnow, , Babak Tafti

PLOT: Ann, a middle-aged single woman, has an unsatisfied lust for dominant men, but most of the men in her life are dispassionate duds.

Still from The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023)

COMMENTS: The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed ties with Your Vice is a Locked Door and Only I Have the Key for the film I have reviewed with the most cumbersome title. “TFTtTfDSHP” will serve as the abbreviation.

TFTtTfDSHP is a deadpan comedy and a character study that’s almost too candid in dissecting the mind of the frustrated kinkster in the wild, driven to settle for the nearest thing to warmth in a cold world. Can a film be considered weird based on one performance? Writer/director/lead actress Joanna Arnow bares all in a story that’s at least a bit autobiographical (right down to having her real-life parents play her parents), while acting out a study in frustrated feminine sexuality. Her performance is so fearlessly open that it’s nothing less than heroic. This is one of the most honest portrayals not only of real-life alternative lifestyles and sexual expressions, but of 21st-century cultural frustrations in general. At the same time, Arnow, even while casually fingering herself while naked at the breakfast table or costumed as a pig-slave, keeps a firm grasp on her character’s humanity and dignity. She makes it clear that her Ann is actively the agent in her own world, seeking something better for herself. Her definition of better just happens to be different from most of ours.

For those of you who wonder “why do people want BDSM in the first place?”, films like this and Secretary provide clear answers. Secretary’s Lee has a psychologically damaged background and deals with it by engaging in thrilling, edgy fantasies so spicy that an ordinary relationship won’t cut it. In TFTtTfDSHP, Ann lives in a millennial-gray world of trivial humiliations and disrespect. She’s the black sheep of her family, her coworkers take sadistic joy in making her work life miserable, and she lives a lonely, friendless existence in a threadbare apartment in an indifferent city. A couple of hours of bedroom role-play is her only chance to feel like a whole person, to be the focus of somebody else’s attention for awhile. Her character comes off as a whiff anhedonic, hitting like MTV’s Daria all grown up to discover that adult life is just as miserable and unfulfilling as she expected it to be. Feeling intentionally humiliated, degraded, or objectified at least gives her the chance to feel something.

Even in gratifying this small pleasure, Ann is frustrated. We start with her ongoing nine-years-long relationship that amounts to being the booty call for Allen (Scott Cohen), an aloof, uncaring galoot who treats her like a piece of furniture. She’s desperate to mold Allen’s indifference into deliberate sadistic intent, but Allen is a man so devoid of imagination that he can’t even think up good scenarios when Continue reading CAPSULE: THE FEELING THAT THE TIME FOR DOING SOMETHING HAS PASSED (2023) →