Tag Archives: Meta-movie

366 Underground, Capsules

366 UNDERGROUND: PSYCHO APE: PART II – THE WRATH OF KONG (2024)

Leave a comment

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

Weirdest!

Psycho Ape 2: The Wrath of Kong Indiegogo page for more information, including ordering

DIRECTED BY: Addison Binek, Greg DeLiso

FEATURING: Bill Weeden, Kansas Bowling, Floyd Cashio

PLOT: During the trial of Psycho Ape, the filmmakers make a sequel to Psycho Ape.

Still from Pyshco Ape Part II: The Wrath of Kong (2024)

COMMENTS:

Good afternoon, reader, we now take you to the Psycho Ape Part II -the Wrath of Kong review, already in progress:

…and that moment when the presenter is challenged to a staring contest with the camera lens and proceeds to gaze at the viewer for  several minutes—all while clips of this, that, and particularly the other spool out on the in-frame—it’s clear that these jokers (by which I mean Binek and Deliso) are really just doing whatever they want. The scattershot approach to this compelling nonsense keeps you on your toes, because who knows what will happen next? Will it be flashback? Complaints from Psycho Ape actors about not being in the sequel? More courtroom shenanigans? Or maybe it will just be a long segment featuring Bill “Doctor ZOOmis” Weeden getting his right ear pierced after avoiding this for decades?

This mash-up of , , and has everything to say, virtually all of it about how this is a sequel to a film, set twenty-five years before, during, or after the original, an original which…

I’m going to have to ask you to hold that thought as we have just received a live-breaking report from our man in the field, Giles Edwards.

 

[ON THE SCENE REMARKS FROM GILES EDWARDS]

Shocking, if true. We now return to Giles in the studio.

…so I’m not sure what more to say. From the nonsensical trial of Psycho Ape, to the odd nod to prey-predator polyamory, to the direct re-creations of classic film scenes (Titanic, The Dark Knight, and The Temple of Doom, among others), to the regular blasts of product placement, this is goofy, meandering, and defiantly pointless—with a degree of self-awareness not usually becoming for a feature film. But it’s always lively, and wraps up well before interest might wane. The talent gathered for this (presumably from a deep well of friends and acquaintances), though mixed in proficiency, is invariably cheerful, with a deep, deep, deep awareness that while they probably shouldn’t bother with this thing of a movie, they Can, and so, boldly, they Do.

Back to you.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It does not matter if one finds this to be good-bad, bad-bad, or just plain blah; this is an experience that should be had by everyone interested in low-budget and experimental filmmaking.” — Bobby LePire, Film Threat (contemporaneous)

 

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ASTEROID CITY (2023)

4 Comments

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

Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Jake Ryan, , , Grace Edwards, Tom Hanks, , Brian Cranston

PLOT: Playwright Conrad Earp writes “Asteroid City,” about a photojournalist visiting the titular location with his gifted son for a Junior Stargazers convention; everyone is stranded there when an extraterrestrial event causes the town to be quarantined.

Still from Asteroid City (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: We’ve been waiting and waiting for Wes to go full weird; he takes his swat with Asteroid City. It’s also the weirdest movie Tom Hanks has ever appeared in—a low bar, for sure, but that has to count for something.

COMMENTS: Skipping over the prologue for the moment, Asteroid City is everything you expect from a Wes Anderson movie: symmetrical, meticulous, stylized, deadpan, with a large cast of familiar faces portraying well-defined quirky characters snapping out witty dialogue. The locale is a mid-century America desert village—a one-road stop with no more than a gas station, diner, motel, observatory, train tracks, and an unfinished on-ramp to nowhere—with atomic tests periodically sprouting mushroom clouds in the background. The color palette is turquoise skies and beige sand, with the occasional burst of radioactive orange, bathed in (as the stage directions instruct) clean, unforgiving light. Anderson manages to make shot-on-location look like shot-on-a-sound-stage; you’re amazed when a car drives off into the distance and doesn’t crash into a matte painting backdrop, but somehow just keeps going. The film locates itself in a gee-whiz Cold War fantasy, a mythical time where bright middle-schoolers design their own jet packs and particle beams and everyone has complete faith in the US military—and why shouldn’t they? They haven’t lost a war yet.

All of this makes for a perfect sandbox for Anderson to drop what may be the most impressive cast he’s yet worked with into. Wes stalwart Schwartzman takes the lead as a stoic pipe-smoking war photographer, with a “brainiac” son and a trio of elementary school triplets (who think they’re witches) in tow. Scarlett Johansson plays a movie star attracted to battered woman roles. Tom Hanks shows up as a grumpy grandpa (in a role that was probably originally written with in mind.) Steve Carrell is the solicitous local motel owner (beginning almost every sentence with “I understand.”) is an astronomer. is a mechanic. There are various-sized cameos by , , and, um, . Furthermore, a gaggle of students, parents, teachers, military personnel, singing cowboys, and others inhabit the hamlet, making up a real, if temporary, community. And yet, the stage never feels too crowded; everyone gets their moment to shine in this mosaic of comedy.

It plays like a quite usual, sophisticated, twee Anderson outing, except that it isn’t. In the first place, the artifice is doubled (or tripled), since the main story is, in fact, a play written by a Tennessee Williamsesque playwright (Edward Norton) and directed by an East Coast workaholic (Adrian Brody), whom we see at work developing the production. And we’re further introduced to these characters through a television documentary hosted by Brian Cranston (who occasionally, and amusingly, drifts into the theatrical production). The action occasionally shifts from the main story (in widescreen color) to the fictional background material (in black and white, Academy ratio). At about the film’s midpoint, Anderson inserts what may be the most audacious—and hilarious—scene he’s ever shot. (You might guess what the event is, but never in a million years would you guess the manner in which it happens.) And the third act goes especially bonkers, as the playwright explains that he wants the finale to be a case of the entire cast dreaming due to their shared cosmic experience, and enlists an actor’s studio to help stimulate his creativity. More fourth wall breaking follows, there’s a hoedown featuring a song that starts with the lyric “Dear alien, who art in Heaven,” and a repetitive chant at the climax flirts with the surreal. The film doesn’t always hang together, but the dialogue is razor sharp, the cast is magnetic, and the laughs are abundant. I don’t know if it’s Wes’ best movie, but it is his boldest and most consistently surprising.

Asteroid City doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say, and that is, it seems, what it wants to say. “I don’t understand the play,” Schwartzman complains, breaking character. The answer is that he doesn’t have to understand it. The author doesn’t. He just needs to act it.

The Asteroid City DVD/Blu-ray comes with a short making of featurette. We would not be surprised to see a more elaborate release down the line (the likes to publish every Anderson feature they can get their mitts on.)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The purest distillation of what this director brings to cinema, it’s beautiful to look at, surreal, nostalgic and funny in a weird, distanced way.”–Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle (contemporaneous)

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNCLE KENT 2 (2015)

Leave a comment

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

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: ,

FEATURING: Kent Osborne

PLOT: Defying advice from friends and professionals, Kent Osborne pursues his vision of making the unnecessary sequel to Uncle Kent.

Still from Uncle Kent 2 (2015)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: It’s alternately mumblecore, surreal, awkward, and spiked with one big shot of violence; all told, Kent’s journey through a San Diego convention is pretty strange. But its bed-rising, guest-star-studded 5 & 1/2 minute jack-off finale really took commitment.

COMMENTS: I became so intrigued that I very nearly looked up who the heck this “Kent Osborne” guy is. But no: I came to know him well enough through Todd Rohal’s Uncle Kent 2, with all his insouciant eagerness, playful eccentricity, and defiant self-satisfaction. The onscreen storytelling is low key madcap, with the inexplicable and impossible gelling with the mundane, like Walter Mitty’s daydream jaunts through banality. There are too few “fluffy” movies in the realm of weird cinema, and I am grateful for having met Kent Osborne in such an outing.

This Kent Osborne (Kent Osborne) faces difficulty only once, in facing down his one detractor: Joe Swanberg. Swanberg directed the little-seen microbudget mumblecore drama Uncle Kent, and sees no reason to revisit the premise (loose, indeed, though it was in the first place). He is an utter killjoy at the opening party scene. The following morning, Kent sees his physician on an unrelated matter (chronic ear-worm). After a very long “follow the finger” neural exercise, his physician advises strongly against his patient paneling at a convention in San Diego to promote his latest comic book, “Cat Agent.” But as Kent defied Swanberg’s downerism, so he defies medical advice. What ensues is a whimsical exploration of artistic living and convention culture that becomes increasingly masturbatory.

I will return to this “masturbation” in a moment, but first you should be grounded in an underlying premise behind Uncle Kent. The singularity is real, and it is coming. For those unfamiliar with “simulation theory,” in brief, it is very much as it sounds: we live in a simulation. All these developments toward computerized living are but a replay of something that has already occurred: mechanical intelligence, and humans confined to a Matrix-y way of living. The sweet thing about Kent in Uncle Kent 2 is, he doesn’t mind. He goes through motions, as we all do, with upbeat resignation. He revels in rewatching, and sharing, his own artistic output.

At the convention he makes the acquaintance of a “Cat Agent” cos-player, and the strangeness within his life and this movie accelerates. As he is about to have sex with her, the incarnation of his own mind’s work, she zaps out of existence. He gathers a post-Apocalyptic gaggle of citizens terrified by the rapture-style disappearances. In the middle of a pitch to a co-star of Uncle Kent, just after she requests he begin masturbating for her, she disappears as well. But, Kent masturbates anyway. He’s finished making a movie about himself and his work. Hotel staff, strangers, Swanberg, and even appear and interrupt but, the climax comes—as is its wont—and everything wraps up nicely. Rohal knows we’ve done this all before: mumbling, relationships, whimsy, low drama, mid-comedy, and you know what? That’s all right. We’ve got time to kill. Uncle Kent 2 is casually wacky ride (and unless you’re too close to the TV, it won’t make you go blind).

Uncle Kent 2 received a surprise Blu-ray release in 2023 from Factory 25.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… the wtf movie of the year. Though it’s not likely to land with, or even screen to, a mainstream audience, Uncle Kent 2 is so thoroughly dedicated to messing with its viewers, the film deserves the very highest accolade at the piss-takers ball, if only such a thing existed.” -Zach Gayne, Screen Anarchy (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: SYMBIOSPYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE (1968)

1 Comment

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

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: William Greaves

FEATURING: William Greaves, Don Fellows, Patricia Ree Gilbert

PLOT: Director William Greaves hires two actors to perform a short melodramatic dialogue in Central Park, then has another camera crew film his process of directing them, while yet another crew films the second crew.

Still from SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: Take One (1968)

COMMENTS:If you ever wished a movie consisted of all behind-the-scenes footage and no real content, here you go. William Greaves’ conceit is to repeatedly film a one-scene stage test for a feature that he never intended to make. As he guides the actors through their melodramatic line readings, a camera crew films his direction; a second camera crew films the first. They also film anything that happens on set, whether it be a crowd of gawkers, a homeless veteran who wanders out of the woods, or a policeman checking to see if they have permits to film in Central Park. Greaves wears the same distinctive green mesh shirt through the entire shoot, making it appear as if all the action takes place on a single day. Every now and then, the movie switches to split screens to show the crew and actors activities from different angles, and funky jazz (from Miles Davis’ classic “In a Silent Way” album) punctuates the action. If the act of observing a thing changes it, as the physicists say, then what does the act of observing oneself observing oneself do?

All this sounds like it could be unbearably self-conscious art exercise from stoned hippies, but it’s unexpectedly fascinating. It’s the “coup” staged by the crew, who take it upon themselves to film their own spirited private discussions where they wonder what the hell Greaves is up to, and why he seems to be playing at being incompetent, that ignites the film.  In 1968, they’re not a crew of jaded postmodernists: they sincerely discusses questions of reflexivity and artificiality versus reality, and try to find deeper meaning in the lines which they insist are drivel. They aren’t defensively ironic, as the tone would be were such a project made today; they are unafraid of seeming pretentious. This layer of revolt is essential to the film, supplying conflict and texture. And the viewer never knows if Greaves instigated (or even partly scripted) the crew’s spirited bull sessions, or simply lucked out when they took it upon itself to supply what becomes the most interesting part of the film. You wonder if Greaves is pulling some kind of Andy Kaufman-styled cinematic prank.

Shot in 1968, this movie was not exhibited until 1971, but slowly grew its legend through rare festival and museum screenings, gaining a series of influential champions among fellow filmmakers. This movement culminates in Symbiospsychotaxipalsm: Take 2 1/2, a sequel released in 2005 with the backing fans of and , which is included on the Criterion Collection disc. As far from a standalone feature as is possible to imagine, 2 1/2 starts with 30 minutes of unused footage from the first movie featuring two of the actors , then, after some reflections from the director and crew about the project, fast-forwards the story to see what has happened to these characters 35 years later (answer: they are still doing screen tests, and Greaves is still filming everything). The sequel is a worthwhile supplement, but mostly it serves to highlight the lightning-in-a-bottle success of the original. Youth has faded and the magic can only be remembered, not recreated.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a movie-within-a-movie at a time when most of the meta-cinematic action was coming from Andy Warhol and Jean-Luc Godard. But Greaves goes one better. He’s doing Godard doing Cassavetes.”–Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe (2006 revival)

(This movie was nominated for review by Russa03. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: ESCAPE FROM THE ‘LIBERTY’ CINEMA (1990)

Leave a comment

Ucieczka z kina ‘Wolnosc’

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

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Wojciech Marczewski

FEATURING: Janusz Gajos, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Teresa Marczewska, Piotr Fronczewski, Wladyslaw Kowalski

PLOT: There’s a problem at the Liberty Cinema screening of a new movie, and it isn’t projector or sound issues: the film’s cast has decided to boycott their performance on screen, leaving the head censor nonplussed, particularly as there’s a concurrent outbreak of spontaneous opera singing afflicting the city’s populace.

COMMENTS: The world’s weariest apparatchik is having a bad day. His head is pounding, his hand is cut from a broken drinking glass, his stomach is wrenching after consuming contaminated tap water, his assistant eats cotton candy at a staggering rate despite admonitions otherwise, and his secretary informs him that actors in the film being screened at a local cinema have gotten stroppy and refuse to perform. What is our hero to do? True to his background, he forbids it, categorically: he forbids the theater manager’s sudden singing, he forbids the actors’ boycott, and most emphatically of all, he forbids the eating of cotton candy.

But it’s in vain.

Escape from the ‘Liberty’ Cinema was made and released shortly after the collapse of the Soviet-backed government in Poland, but is set during the bureaucratic death throes of that regime. When news of the screen actors’ rebellion reaches him, the local Communist party boss insists that the film play on—to sold-out shows, no less—but without attendees. “There will be cinema, but no viewers,” because if the Party likes anything, it’s being a bastion of (legitimate) art. If it likes two things, it’s hitting quotas, and so the money for the sold-out shows is extracted from a welfare fund manager who wants a spot on the local Party council. Deterioration—of the buildings, of the social fabric, of the soul—permeates the setting. The city’s denizens are so worn down they can’t even bother to rebel any more, leaving Art to don the mantle of subversion: either through the film’s recalcitrant performers, or the citizen’s spontaneous outbursts of opera, against their will.

Despite its full-throated cynicism, Escape is, somehow, a comedy. Our censor-hero is an eminently relatable character. As he witnesses the district’s descent into art-house subversion, his ailments alleviate, and he even gets in some laughs chatting with the performers on display at the ‘Liberty’. The projectionist practices poor English, seemingly responding to job (or consulate?) interview questions running through his mind as he prepares the reels, again and again, three times a day, to screen for an empty house. The cotton-candy chomping assistant receives elocution lessons from the in-movie movie’s leading lady, eventually wrapping his mouth around the correct pronunciation of, “Give me back the coat!”

Writer/director Marczewski mercilessly skewers authorities—even raising the specter of Poland’s complicity with the Nazis’ genocide—but simultaneously loves each of his film’s characters. I can imagine he may even have written himself in as the wunderkind critic sent from Warsaw. Seated in the front row, this impish boy of a man beams with pride when he shows off “true” cinema (appropriately, Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo) to the Communist functionaries. Beyond even his successful social commentary, Marczewski somehow manages to meld utmost cynicism with tender pathos.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A very clever absurdist comedy that can be enjoyed either with or without its sharp social and political commentary…”–Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital (DVD)