Tag Archives: Comedy

Apocryphally Weird

62*. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

2 Comments

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

“If we say that an individual’s character is revealed by the choices they make over time, then, in a similar fashion, an individual’s character would also be revealed by the choices they make across many worlds.” ― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

DIRECTED BY: Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)

FEATURING: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong

PLOT: Evelyn Wang is overwhelmed operating a Simi Valley laundromat, caring for her elderly father, enduring an ongoing IRS audit, and trying to maintain her strained relationship with her daughter. Into this maelstrom steps an alternate-universe version of her husband, who informs her that a rage-fueled supervillain incarnation of her daughter is threatening to destroy the entire multiverse. Only Evelyn, using martial artistry and emotional intelligence that she never knew she possessed, can traverse dimensions and embody wildly different iterations of herself to stave off disaster.

BACKGROUND:

  • The original script was written with in mind, with Yeoh envisioned in a supporting role. Once the lead character was switched to a woman, Yeoh was the only choice for the role.
  • The Daniels cited inspiration from sources as diverse as the films of Wong Kar-Wai, the video game Everything, and the children’s book “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. “
  • The directors began work on the film after turning down an opportunity to work on Marvel’s “Loki” series, itself a show set against the backdrop of a multiverse. The duo worried that other contemporaneous multiverse projects, including Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and “Rick and Morty,” would make their concept out-of-date.
  • The film was released under different Chinese-language titles depending upon the market, including In an Instant, the Entire Universe in mainland China, Mother’s Multiverse in Taiwan, and Weird Woman Warrior Fucks Around and Saves the Universe in Hong Kong.
  • The team of martial arts performers and choreographers includes self-taught brothers Andy and Brian Le. (They are showcased in the fight over a suggestively shaped IRS auditing award.) Daniels discovered them on YouTube and hired them based on their familiarity with Hong Kong-style fighting techniques.
  • Appropriate to the diverse backgrounds of her family, Evelyn speaks Mandarin with her husband but Cantonese with her father, while her daughter’s Chinese is that of someone unskilled in the language.
  • An unexpectedly dominant force at the 95th Academy Awards, snagging 11 nominations and taking home seven statues for Best Picture (one of only a handful of films with science fiction/fantasy elements ever to take the top prize), Directing, Original Screenplay, Editing, and acting honors for Yeoh, Quan, and Curtis. More importantly, Yeoh took home the Weirdcademy Award for Best Actress.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: I know, I know. The hot dog fingers, right? They do make for a superb visual shorthand (sorry) for the film’s breed of weirdness, it’s true, especially when an alternate Jamie Lee Curtis uses her encased-meat digits to tickle the ivories in a rendition of “Clair de Lune.” But is it truly greater than a spectacular bagel that truly has everything on it? Or the transdimensional power of eating lip balm to imbue the consumer with extensive martial arts abilities? Or the introspective moment featuring two rocks as the only souls in the world? EEAAO luxuriates both the oddities of universes different from our own and the peculiarities unique to each realm. Fortunately, the film spares us from having to pick one of them by concocting a spectacular montage of our heroine across all universes and timelines, including some we will never explore outside of this split-second vision. It’s a dizzying triumph of editing and a wonderful visualization of both Evelyn’s dilemma and her power.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Hot dog fingers; rocky relationship

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Everything Everywhere All At Once is a family drama festooned with the trappings of Matrix-style ontological discussions, multiversal alternates, elaborate martial arts set-pieces, and parodies both reverential and cheeky. That mix alone would garner our attention, and the decision to center the story on characters well outside the Hollywood norm —Asian, immigrant, working-class, gay—further pushes it outside the mainstream. On top of that, the glorious and unexpected choice to ground all this mayhem in an atmosphere of playfulness and joy gives the film further offbeat credentials. It exemplifies this movie’s wonderfully deranged logic to employ googly eyes to stave off the apocalypse. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fun.

Original trailer for Everything Everywhere all at Once

COMMENTS: “I thought you said when she says (stuff) like that, it Continue reading 62*. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) →

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BOYS GO TO JUPITER (2024)

4 Comments

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

Boys Go to Jupiter is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Voices of Jack Corbett, Grace Kuhlenschmidt, , Tavi Gevinson, Julio Torres

PLOT: It’s winter break in Florida, and teenage dropout Billy 5000 is gigging to get five grand, but instead finds a donut-shaped alien creature.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Mid-’90s-style computer-animation visuals in a mid-’00s-style slacker dramedy with a mid-’10s-style soundtrack make Boys Go to Jupiter something of a disorienting experience. Also: a dozen or so odd little aliens, a hyper-intelligent dolphin running a juice concern, and a Spanish-speaking mini-golf dinosaur skeleton.

COMMENTS: Too smart for school, but not mature enough to succeed as an adult, Billy 5000 also suffers from a strange last name, a misguided sense of purpose, and the weight of an impending technical correction crushing down on him. He seems all right, though, being one of those lucky teens: laid-back, sensible, and at least subconsciously accepting that life is stacked against him. Besides, he’s about to happen upon a singular opportunity for personal growth—it just won’t be the “Moolah” variety proselytized by the influencer he follows, or by rocking his Grubster™ gig.

Julian Glander has concocted (programmed? certainly directed) an unusual bildungsroman here, which could have so easily been drab and charmless had its pieces not been this selectively chosen and particularly assembled. The vibe from the simple 3-D animation isn’t uncanny so much as dreamlike, an element heightened by the prudent use of narrative pop songs. Billy flies above his delivery route, musing on life and wondering why everything feels so heavy… only to ground the scene with the realization he’s been carrying a sack of golf balls in his insulated delivery bag. (Freckles, the protagonist’s slightly younger—and far frecklier—friend starts as an aspiring hip-hop artist before deciding that the acoustic guitar is much more his thing: his grunge-style power ballad about different ways to eat eggs is a credit to the genre.)

The casual inclusion of outright surreal imagery is rattling, in a cute kind of way: simple faces may take up entire window frames, and, as hinted above, a Brontosaurus skeleton at a miniature golf course offers words of solace to its proprietor. Coupling the animation and the absurdity with an indie-drama vibe pays off handsomely, and that’s before we even get into the alien podcasters and dolphin machinations. Boys Go to Jupiter is both very strange and very laid-back, and zaps you for almost an hour and a half; a slice of life served up as exotic cocktail.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a movie notably unafraid to manifest the weirdest of the weird…”–Natalia Winkleman, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: EBONY & IVORY (2024)

Leave a comment

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

EBony & Ivory is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Gil Gex,

PLOT: Stevie arrives by rowboat in Scotland to stay with fellow musical legend Paul at his “Scottish cottage”; they go swimming, look at sheep, and have hot chocies and foot strokies, but never actually get around to (directly) composing the title song.

Still from EBONY AND IVORY (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: If you’ve seen one Jim Hosking movie, then this is another one. Let there be no doubt about that. This is a Jim Hosking movie with Jim Hosking humor. Jim Hosking fans will approve.

COMMENTS: Blind (?) Stevie arrives on the beach in a rowboat, wearing a fur coat and lugging three suitcases. Paul calmly stands on the beach awaiting him. A synthpop tune plays; it doesn’t sound like anything Wonder or McCartney would write. “How was your journey?” asks Paul. Stevie responds that it was a very, very, very, very long journey, then repeats himself so there will be no doubt. Paul chuckles. Stevie asks, accusingly, “So, it’s funny, is it?” “Yes, it’s funny,” Paul replies. It isn’t. Or is it?

Jim Hosking has a unique formula to which he’s unreservedly, suicidally dedicated: a base of mundane absurdity, with frequent grossout moments and infrequent bursts of surrealism. His anti-comedy tricks include characters who are simultaneously childlike and obscene and who describe their interior thoughts like particularly unimaginative narrators, long-winded repetition of unfunny dialogue until it (hopefully) becomes funny, and deliberately flat performances that occasionally express a single emotion—aggravation. Oh, and he also favors oversized prosthetic penises. If you’re a Jim Hosking newcomer, see The Greasy Strangler first—because, as outlandish and off-putting as it may be, it’s more approachable than Ebony & Ivory. If you find that one amusing, there’s a good chance you’ll also enjoy this lower-key, slightly less transgressive offering.

Stevie is easily irritated, given to bursts of profanity and shouting most of his dialogue, and usually found picking an unnecessary fight with Paul. Paul (the cute one, the one the girls go mad for) is generally easygoing, although Stevie can provoke him. They have no character development to speak of. They mention (but don’t actively pursue) musical collaboration. Despite constantly arguing, they do somehow become fast friend at the end. They eat, drink, smoke joints, argue, go swimming in the nude, and stare at an expressionless sheep for entertainment. Running gags include spitting out the phrase “Scottish cottage,” discussing vegetarian ready-meals, background music that conspicuously does not match the mood of the scene, Stevie’s blindness, and hot chocies and foot strokies. There’s also a 5+ minute sequence where Paul tries to explain the nickname “doobie woobie,” a pseudo-sex scene, and a strange marijuana-inspired dream sequence. The movie gets much weirder at the end, with the pair randomly dressing like “ghosts from yesteryear” and communing with a massive bullfrog, followed by a climax with perfectly harmonious black and white sheep, which must be seen to be disbelieved.

Ebony & Ivory features only two characters, trapped together in basically one location for 90 minutes, which means that you really have to jive with the comedy style, or be bored out of your mind. It’s a cult item that’s beyond the power of recommendation. If you’re at all intrigued by this description, you’ll probably like it. If you’ve seen and enjoyed Hosking’s other work, you’ll probably like it. But if you don’t find endless repetition of catch phrases hilarious, you’ll probably want to give it a very, very, very, very wide berth.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s hard to tell if it’s the best or worst movie of the year, largely because it’s so wantonly weird that it erases the distinction between the two… a niche offering with a genuinely avant-garde spirit, and if that limits its appeal (and it will!), adventurous moviegoers will find it to be a unique descent into a bizarro world of eccentric catchphrases and demented flights of fancy. No matter what the next five months bring, you won’t see a crazier 2025 film.”–Nick Schager, The Daily Beast (contemporaneous)

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BUFFET INFINITY (2025)

Leave a comment

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

Buffet Infinity is now available to rent or purchase on-demand.

Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Simon Glassman

FEATURING: Kevin Singh, Claire Theobald, Donovan Workun, Ahmed Ahmed, and the voice of Simon Glassman

PLOT: An all-you-can-eat restaurant competes with neighboring stores at a strip mall as a sinkhole appears, strange noises plague the area, citizens go missing, and an occult presence seeps into the transmission.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: A narrative told through channel-surfing and a combo platter of the ridiculous and the sinister make Buffet Infinity a necessary addition to the Apocrypha menu.

COMMENTS: Westridge County is small, down at the heel, and more than a little boring. The local TV stations showcase a cavalcade of staid businesses: a doggie daycare on the verge of collapse, a pawn shop with a worryingly growing inventory, an insurance broker ready to cover questionable life events, a sandwich shop offering several types of sliced pig along with its signature sauce, a shyster lawyer happy to capitalize on his bitterness, a used car dealership suffering a violent aversion to high prices, and a buffet with suspiciously good deals and no apparent staff. Surfing the area’s TV broadcasts for one-hundred minutes, however, we glean the story of how Westridge County becomes increasingly derelict, dangerous, and decimated.

Simon Glassman is a fellow of who remembers, and, in a way, is nostalgic for a particular broadcast phenomenon which has all but disappeared. His chronicle of Westridge County’s collapse from crummy to cursed cranks true-to-life advertisements and news flashes one further turn on the dial to the absurd. The passive-aggressive war between Buffet Infinity (where something possibly extraterrestrial, and certainly evil, is going on) and Jenny’s Sandwich Shop ratchets up snarkily; though both cheerfully announce the ample parking “in the front”. (The sinkhole growing in the back-lot is the first indication something’s a bit off.) Public service warnings from “The Westridge Society for Religious Freedom” sound typo-ridden alarm bells about an impending supernatural intrusion that will rob the county of its people. But Ahmed Ahmed, the bad-rapping proprietor of the pawn shop, is ready to raise spirits through low prices on goods ranging from sound blockers to personal defense.

Glassman pulls aside the curtains drape by drape, with each surf through the channels unveiling a little more tension and a little more desperation. Glassman remarked during the Q&A session following Buffet Infinity that the film is ultimately just him dumping on a local strip mall. This much is certainly true, but the movie is much more. It dissects quotidian fears and challenges, with a heartier and heartier dose of the surreal, culminating in absurdly large portions of spectacle.

So head on down to Buffet Infinity! Its eighteen-to-twenty staff, each with their own homes and government ID numbers, will serve up platefuls of curious delights in the ever-expanding dining facility.

Just don’t enter the door marked “Prohibited”.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“What begins as a satire of small-town local television quickly spirals into a hallucinatory, absurdist descent into the mind of a community being devoured by its own identity. This is weird cinema at its best: committed, chaotic, and unnervingly hypnotic.” — Chris Jones, Overly Honest Reviews (festival screening)