Tag Archives: Cult film

Apocryphally Weird

65*: SOUTHLAND TALES (2006)

Leave a comment

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

“Some audience members get very angry if they can’t process and understand the story in one viewing, and they see that as a design flaw in the film itself. Other people are more open to obscurity and complexity and the idea of needing to revisit something. Those are my favorite kinds of films.”–Richard Kelly

DIRECTED BY: Richard Kelly

FEATURING: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, Nora Dunn, Wood Harris, Christopher Lambert, John Larroquette, , , Mandy Moore, Holmes Osborne, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, , Miranda Richardson, , Will Sasso, Wallace Shawn, Kevin Smith

PLOT: In the near future, a terrorist attack transforms America into a cryptofacist police state. The third anniversary of that attack proves to be a day of great significance, with the launch of a new national surveillance agency, the release of an energy source/mind-altering drug called Fluid Karma, and the debut of an enormous luxury zeppelin improbably named for the wife of Karl Marx. On this day, the fates of multiple citizens collide, including an amnesiac action star who has written a startlingly prescient screenplay, a porn actor overseeing a burgeoning branding empire, a former beauty queen-turned-spymaster, a venal fundamentalist vice-presidential candidate who is being bribed by an assortment of neo-Marxist agitants, an international cadre of cult members whose purported invention of a perpetual motion machine masks an effort to bring about the end of the world, and, maybe most importantly of all, a war veteran and his twin brother searching for each other.

Still from Southland Tales (2006)

BACKGROUND:

  • Kelly envisioned the film as part of an epic multimedia saga. In-film titles identify sections of the movie as chapters 4-6; the first three chapters were released as graphic novels (now out-of-print collectibles).
  • The film had a notorious premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival when Kelly submitted the film before it was completed. He finished neither the editing nor the visual effects in time, and the extremely poor reception received by the work-in-progress prompted him to cut more than 20 minutes prior to general release (including virtually all of’s performance as an Army general). The version shown at Cannes has since been released, although Kelly himself describes the film overall as unfinished.
  • Several members of the cast are alums of “Saturday Night Live.” Kelly intentionally cast them to play up the screenplay’s satirical elements, and in general wanted to give his actors a chance to play against type.
  • Budgeted at $17 million, Southland Tales grossed less than $400,000 at the global box office.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: There’s little agreement as to whether Southland Tales is a good movie or not, but the one thing that seems to be beyond dispute is that is Timberlake’s Venice Beach lip sync to The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” is the standout scene. Timberlake’s yokel narrator Pilot Abilene spends the bulk of the film drawling overheated speeches that rely heavily on the Book of Revelation, which he delivers in the tone of a pothead conspiracy nut vainly trying to lift the scales from your eyes. But here, as he struts through a rundown arcade in a drug-induced haze wearing a blood-soaked undershirt and cavorting with a kickline of PVC-clad nurses, Pilot Abilene claims the screen for himself, demonstrating more comfort with the film’s absurdities than anyone we’ve seen thus far. It’s the one moment where Kelly’s delivers his commitment to over-the-top imagery with any degree of lightness; instead of the ponderousness of significance that accompanies every other set piece, this dance scene really dances.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Mirror on delay; rehearsing the performance-art assassination

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Richard Kelly is ambitious to a fault, a spectacularly indulgent filmmaker who never had an idea he didn’t want to film and who makes sure you notice every element of his worldbuilding. Southland Tales is a quintessential Kelly experience, with one layer of Philip K. Dickian paranoid surrealism piled upon another layer of Altmanesque interconnectedness, rinse and repeat. The film has been carefully crafted to confuse, with absurd situations, offscreen backstories, and red herrings combining to keep characters and viewers equally at sea.

Original trailer for Southland Tales (2006)

COMMENTS: What good is a blank check? If cinematic success affords a director the chance to fulfill their dream, what dream should Continue reading 65*: SOUTHLAND TALES (2006) →

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE BIRTHDAY (2004)

Leave a comment

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

The Birthday is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Eugenio Mira

FEATURING: , Erica Prior, Jack Taylor, Dale Douma

PLOT: Norman Forrester navigates his girlfriend’s father’s birthday party as he waits for the right moment to tell her how he feels.

Still from "The Birthday" (2004)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Whatever Corey Feldman is doing to portray Norman is up there alongside ‘s turn as a romantic lead in The Room (albeit hovering on the reality-side of believable), and that’s just for starters in this oddball bit of capering which unfurls like a forgotten b-side.

COMMENTS: Norman wears white socks with his tuxedo. His powder-blue ruffled shirt is more appropriate for a high school prom. Alison, his girlfriend, runs hot and cold, making her difficult for him to read. The father, whose birthday is being celebrated, is dismissive of Norman’s pizzeria job. Norman can’t unload a hotel room glass he picked up at the start of the night, an old school buddy insists they watch the strippers together, blackouts begin to plague the main event, and he never finds a moment to give his girlfriend that special gift. All told, it’s not a good night for Norman—and that’s not even taking into account his discovery of a death cult hoping to summon a ian-style god of hopelessness.

Norman is our constant guide for this special evening, whether we want him or not. His eyebrows are always rising and lowering; he often doesn’t know what to do with his hands; and his voice sounds like it should be coming from a tertiary Dick Tracy villain with one line. But we’re with that voice, and that awkwardness, for two hours. It’s a heckuva gambit on the part of both actor Corey Feldman and director Eugenio Mira. This fractured character is what’s needed, though, for channeling this irregular narrative, peopled as it is from the basement to the penthouse with differently aberrant characters. To perform Mira a modest disservice, the dialogue oscillates between the goofiness of The Hudsucker Proxy and the menace of Barton Fink. Is everyone having a great time? Are they doomed? As with life, there’s a bit of both.

The Birthday kicks off with an Art Deco font-flourished title card reading “The Most Amazing 117 minutes in Norman Forrester’s Life,” before fading into a shot of the named character emerging from a creaking elevator whose tinny music, after some repetitions, clarifies itself as a Muzak rendition of “It’s My Party.” Mira’s promise trundles along deliciously for the first hour, as he slaps snips and snatches of eccentricity into the mix—the belligerent father, the Valium-addled mother, the alarmingly eager-but-unhelpful staff, and even the hotel itself, with its strange secrets—culminating in a first act climax of soul-searching and monologue from Forrester as he descends into the basement.

For a reason that baffled me at the time, Mira seems to cut away the entire, hard-earned accumulation of dark wacky and silly foreboding, deciding that the second half will instead travel full bore into a kind of stupid story line. For a stretch, I worried that Yes, the first half is weird enough to carry the film and an apocrypha recommendation, but I’ll have to warn that—and before I knew it, Mira was building again. A final blow-out wraps up this strange birthday party with style and intensity. Norman, who has spent his life ducking down and backing away from conflict, is provided the ultimate test; and despite his white socks, ruffled shirt, and “My Goodness What is that Voice?” timbre, by the very end, my weird hopes had triumphed.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a cinematic enigma that most definitely won’t be for everyone. However, for lovers of the wonderfully weird and mesmerizingly Lynchian, it’s a lost gem begging to be discovered.”–Stephanie Malone, Morbidly Beautiful (2024 re-release)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

CAPSULE: TRAINSPOTTING (1996)

Leave a comment

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

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , , Jonny Lee Miller, , Kelly Macdonald

PLOT: Renton, a heroin addict struggling to get his life under control, is just one of a collection of misfit 20-somethings puttering around Edinburgh, Scotland, in this stark and blackly-comedic examination of the underworld.

Still from Trainspotting (1996)

COMMENTS: A commonly requested movie in our reader request queue, Trainspotting holds the ranks of cult classic, box office smash (relative to its budget), and critical hit. Not only is the movie itself enshrined by fans, but the soundtrack—one of the biggest reasons why this is a cult film to begin with—was a worldwide multi-platinum seller. To make sure that I don’t go off on anymore tangents about the soundtrack (because I adore it, natch), here’s my coverage over at my music blog gig so I can focus here on the movie; later, I’ll climb on my soapbox about drug legalization/awareness/safety. When it comes to this movie’s themes, I find myself almost distressingly overqualified to discuss it.

I trust that after almost three decades almost everybody interested has seen (or at least heard about) the film, so I’ll just fill in some light non-spoily details. Trainspotting has a Pulp-Fiction-like structure, with several intersecting lives on various trajectories, some headed up and some headed down, verily, to the gutter or the grave. At the center of this busy rat’s nest of urban squalor is antihero Renton (McGregor), heroin addict trying to get his life on track. His mates are Sick Boy (Miller), a blond pimp, co-junkie, and charming sociopath; Spud (Bremner), a luckless underdog with the personality (and IQ) of a Labrador puppy; Begbie (Carlyle), a brawling psychopath with a hair-trigger temper that even scares his closest friends; and Tommy (McKidd), a squeaky-clean and very self-righteous jock. Renton is trying his best to straighten out and fly right. But first he has to overcome his addiction, and then the gravitational pull of urban poverty. Renton stands at the threshold of a bleak and joyless existence, wondering if his own future is worth salvaging.

When it comes to weird-movie credentials, everyone seems to remember the toilet where Renton dives after his precious suppositories—a shot of it is in every trailer. Some recall the dead baby crawling on the ceiling, turning his head Exorcist-style before falling down on Renton, just one of many hallucinations the addict experiences during extreme withdrawal. But let’s not forget the overdose scene, where Renton nods off so hard that he physically sinks into the carpet about six feet deep… and we’re stuck in that POV all the way to the hospital, when a shot brings him bolting out of his drug coma (and return to wide-screen). His dealer, Mother Superior (“jumped the gun”), stuffs Renton’s limp body into a cab, and the cab driver in turn dumps him on the street in front of the emergency room like a Continue reading CAPSULE: TRAINSPOTTING (1996) →

Apocryphally Weird

34*. THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION (1985)

4 Comments

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

DIRECTED BY: Michael Rubbo

FEATURING: Mathew Mackay, Siluck Saysanasy, Alison Podbrey, Michael Hogan, Michel Maillot

PLOT: After suffering a terrible fright while exploring a derelict house, young Michael’s hair falls out, leaving him completely bald; possible salvation arrives in the form of a strange cure proffered by a pair of ghosts, which involves smearing a bizarre concoction atop his head. When an impatient Michael adds too much peanut butter to the recipe, his hair commences to grow wildly out of control. Not only does Michael have a new set of challenges associated with his uncontrollable coif, but he becomes the target of a dubious art teacher who covets the boy’s locks for the manufacture of magical paintbrushes. 

Still from The Peanut Butter Solution (1985)

BACKGROUND: 

  • Quebecois producer Rock Demers made his mark in the world of youth-oriented cinema with 1970’s The Christmas Martian, which was made to take advantage of Canadian tax breaks.  
  • The Peanut Butter Solution was the second of a planned dozen kids’ movies by Demers’ Les Production La Fete studio under the banner “Tales For All.” The success of the series earned the studio the moniker “Disney of the North.” 
  • The soundtrack includes two songs performed by future music titan Celine Dion. She was seventeen at the time, and these were her first English-language recordings.
  • The script began as a bedtime story director/co-writer Rubbo would tell his 6-year-old son.
  • Co-writer Vojtech Jasný, best known as director of The Cassandra Cat (1963), was a veteran of the .

INDELIBLE IMAGE: There are many memorable shots of Michael’s ever-growing hair, but probably the most lasting is the contraption he is forced to devise to prevent the hyperactive follicles from killing him in his sleep, resulting in a ‘do that resembles one of St. Basil’s onion domes. 

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Way too much hair down there; paintbrush sweatshop

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: What doesn’t? The film starts out with an unusual premise, surrounds it with a cast of characters who act in ways that bear no relationship to the way humans behave, and then sends the story in random directions that only magnify the craziness. You’ve heard the hype; the buzz is justified. It’s exactly as strange as you think it will be, and then some.

Original trailer for The Peanut Butter Solution

COMMENTS: I don’t remember how many years ago it was that my Continue reading 34*. THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION (1985) →