After an accident precipitated by a malicious gnome, a dashing man descends into a living nightmare. Executive produced by Terry Gilliam.
CONTENT WARNING: Bad language, cartoon nudity.
Tag Archives: Musical
IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE HOLE (1998)
Dong, aka The Last Dance
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DIRECTED BY: Tsai Ming-Liang
FEATURING: Yang Kuei-Mei, Lee Kang-Sheng
PLOT: In the face of a growing epidemic and environmental calamity, two of the only remaining occupants in an apartment building struggle to maintain their lives and find themselves inexorably drawn to each other through the hole in the ceiling that connects them.
COMMENTS: It never stops raining in The Hole’s Taipei. Condensation drips down every surface in the apartment building where we spend the entirety of the film, and its’ so humid that our two lead characters, the Man Upstairs and the Woman Downstairs, strip down to their sweat-soaked undergarments as soon as they get home. Wallpaper peels off the walls like it was held on by a Post-It note. For drinking, though, boiling is an absolute must. The world is becoming unlivable, and yet people still cling to the past. When an older man is unable to find a favorite bean paste, but learns that he can have the exact same product under a different brand name, he responds with devastated silence, unable to even consider a change of such magnitude. Even in the face of complete loss, the commitment to the world we think we know remains strong.
Created for the French television “2000, Seen By” project, which also counts such films as Don McKellar’s Last Night and Hal Hartley’s The Book of Life among its number, The Hole is a grim preview of the near future, featuring such highlights as environmental catastrophe, massive class inequality, and a rapidly spreading worldwide plague. For us pandemic fans, that last one hits like a prescient ton of bricks, even though though it’s the source of the most science fictional element of the film, as this particular plague curses the afflicted with cockroach-like behavior, crawling about the floor on all fours and retreating to dark, enclosed spaces. Yet despite this outwardly negative view of the new millennium, Tsai infuses The Hole with a hopeful streak, as the residents of this rundown apartment complex defiantly persevere in the face of adversity.
The titular aperture, which inadvertently connects the Man Upstairs and the Woman Downstairs, is appropriately the most emblematic show of humanity’s persistence. They go to their jobs, stock up on toilet paper, boil their water, and stare longingly at the incessant rain, but the hole forces them to cut through their routine and see each other. Initially a source of conflict, it wrecks their privacy, and they sometimes pick at each other out of humorous spite. It ultimately proves to be a means of connection, however, becoming increasingly important as things fall apart.
The movie’s most overt sign of optimism, and its most radical element, is the occasional shift into glitzy musical numbers, as Yang gets gussied up and leaves her apartment to dance and lip-sync to the tunes of Chinese chanteuse Grace Chang. In the best tradition of Dennis Potter, the tunes are thematically appropriate and graft peppy dance numbers directly onto the dank, crumbling sets. Tsai actually dedicates the film to Chang, saluting her as a source of comfort in dark times, and she ultimately soundtracks the bittersweet coda. The film does not take a clear position on whether this is true cause for hope or bitter irony, but the cheery vocals and Yang’s joyfully amateurish dancing provide a strong endorsement for fiddling while Rome burns, and lift The Hole beyond its compatriots in the sad future brigade.
Look up any discussion of the filmography of Tsai Ming-Liang and you’ll inevitably stumble upon the term “slow cinema.” We’ve seen one of the most extreme examples of that genre on this very site. The Hole is unquestionably deliberately paced, but that is well-suited to a tale where life itself seems to be coming apart in slow motion. The rain is constant, the hole will never be repaired, so when change does come, it’s galvanizing. When we waited through our own pandemic, connection is what we were desperate to get back to at the end. The Hole knew that two decades earlier, and the waiting is what makes the payoff exquisite.
The Hole is now (if you’re reading this in summer 2026) in theatrical re-release.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by B. Gibson. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ROCK-A-DOODLE (1991)
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DIRECTED BY: Don Bluth
FEATURING: Voices of Glen Campbell, Phil Harris, Christopher Plummer, Ellen Greene, Charles Nelson Reilly, Eddie Deezen, Sorrell Booke, Sandy Duncan, Toby Scott Ganger
PLOT: Chanticleer, the rooster whose morning crow brings daylight, leaves for the big city to become a singing star after the Duke of Owls banishes sunlight.
COMMENTS: Walt Disney Animation, purveyors of fine animated fairy tales since 1937, tried in three separate decades to build a feature out of the medieval tale of the arrogant Chanticleer, whose call was thought to summon the sun. The rooster boasted a fine pedigree, including an appearance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and a starring role in a play by Edmond Rostand of Cyrano de Bergerac fame, so a film showcasing a big singing bird seemed right up the studio’s alley. Alas, despite repeated attempts and the efforts of some of the Disney crew’s greatest storytellers in the studio’s history (including Uncle Walt himself), they never found a way to make the story work, finding the central character too unlikable. Maybe it’s just a point of stubborn pride that Disney apostate Don Bluth, who notoriously ditched the 70s-era Mouse House due to its lethargic approach to animation, concluded he was the man to crack the code.
Bluth’s solution was to deliver story in bulk. In addition to the source tale, we’ve got the addition of a new villain with a plot to block out the sun permanently, a mapped-on telling of the later years of a certain king of rock ‘n’ roll and his manipulative manager, the adventures of a bunch of country animals new to the city, and most oddly, a live-action framing story in which a young boy is reading the very story we have been watching, only to be dragged into it himself by a torrential rainstorm accompanied by a surprise dose of magic. The resulting movie somehow suffers both from a surfeit of plot and an alarming lack of it. There’s an awful lot going on, and it’s well-animated, but there’s not enough time for anything to get the attention it needs. (Subtract the credits, and the film barely squeezes by at an hour.) The movie is an undercooked omelet with too many ingredients.
Rock-a-Doodle reeks of post-production panic. The rapid-fire intro strongly suggests a first act hacked to pieces by studio notes and confused comment cards, and the solution seems to be enlisting Harris (a Disney mainstay making his final film appearance) to ladle more and more narration on top of the hastily edited footage in an effort to knit the disparate elements together. Logic takes a beating; it’s hard to reconcile The Duke’s plan to destroy all sunlight with the fact that Chanticleer is shown that the sun continues to rise without him.
Bizarrely, the movie consistently undercuts its best idea: Chanticleer as Elvis. It’s a cute notion to pair up the cock who heralds the sun with the pelvis stops millions of hearts, and the bird’s coxcomb is an amusing analogy to Elvis’ famed pompadour. Bluth and Co. know this is the twist that sets their version apart, and they almost go all in. Bringing in Glen Campbell to voice the character (his ability to impersonate Presley was so pronounced that songwriters frequently hired him as a stand-in for demo recordings). Enlisting Elvis’ own backing group, the Jordanaires. Lacing the film with choice elements including Vegas glitz, rockabilly tunes, and a Colonel Tom Parker analogue. And then, having gone to such great lengths to rhyme with the legend of The King, the filmmakers proceed to interfere with every single one of Chanticleer’s musical numbers, burying them beneath dialogue, sound effects, or narration. We don’t get to hear a single performance all the way through until the closing credits. Every chance to appreciate the joke is obliterated. It’s a perplexing act of self-sabotage.
Rock-A-Doodle feels like an idea that might possibly have worked if given the chance. It also feels like an idea that was thrown into the meat grinder because it didn’t work at all. It’s hard to know which is right. All we can know for certain is that Disney said no thrice, while Bluth said yes once, and it’s the little guy who probably rues his decision.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Suren. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
Rock-A-Doodle
- ROCK A DOODLE ROCK A DOODLE (1 DVD)
- PHYSICAL FILM
- HAO BOSCH
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Go to AmazonCAPSULE: PINK LADY’S MOTION PICTURE (1978)
Pinku redi no katsudo dai shashin
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DIRECTED BY: Tsugunobu Kotani
FEATURING: Keiko Masuda, Mie, Isamu Ago
PLOT: A director, a producer, and a folklorist seek the perfect idea for a movie to promote the pop band “The Pink Lady.”
COMMENTS: How to promote a pop band cinematically? Through a musical, of course, but what kind? This movie takes this question as its starting point, exploring it through three distinct tales that traverse genres and styles.
The subject here is the iconic, albeit obscure, pop musical duo “The Pink Lady,” mad up of two girls singing as one. According to Wikipedia, they were a short-lived, briefly popular act from the late-70s and early-80s, featuring Mie and Keiko Masuda (formerly known as Kei). The movie makes clear from early on—especially through its exaggerated acting—that it will retain a lighthearted comic tone, while at the same time being self-conscious and self-referential.
This aspect of self-parody becomes apparent as we watch a film director, a folklorist, and a producer come together to brainstorm ideas for an upcoming movie about the duo. Each one of them has his own idea of what this movie should be, and chaos ensues. For viewers, this results in a fun romp, a mix of genres, each depicting a different take on the musical they want to create. We have an old-fashioned romantic melodrama, a cheesy sci-fi monster movie, and a western. Mie and Kei are always the protagonists, with playful musical numbers accompanying the story beats.
Pink Lady’s Motion Picture isn’t afraid to embrace absurdism. It doesn’t always makes perfect sense, and it doesn’t need to. But it’s not subversive or transgressive in any serious way; it’s harmless, mindless entertainment for mass consumption by a local, albeit westernized, Japanese audience. The flick is also of sociological interest, depicting, through the juxtaposition of disparate cinematic genres, a society divided between tradition and foreign influence.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: OM DAR-B-DAR (1988)
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DIRECTED BY: Kamal Swaroop
FEATURING: Anita Kanwar, Gopi Desai, Lalit Tiwari
PLOT: A young boy named Om comes of age amidst diamond breeding frogs, melodramatic love affairs, and other absurdities.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Almost completely incomprehensible at first, like a Hindi “Finnegan’s Wake,” Om Dar-B-Dar requires at least a second viewing to fully appreciate its eccentricities and chaotic nature.
COMMENTS: At first, the narrative seems straightforward, but don’t be fooled, this is as surreal as a movie can get. We follow a family, father Babuji and his two children, a thirty-year-old woman named Gayatri and a young boy with the unique name Om. After a short voiceover introduction giving us a bit of a socio-political background, Om seems to emerge as the tale’s main character. However, something is off.
Dialogues between Om and his family start casually but stray immediately into the absurd. A love affair begins between his sister and a young man, full of extravagant musical numbers in the familiar Bollywood style, albeit with nonsensical lyrics. Early on, the movie shows a willingness to break with stylistic conventions and to parody and deconstruct long-established genres through absurdism. Gayatri’s love affair subverts the language of erotic melodramas, for instance, while the main narrative of Om’s life plays like an epic saga on steroids.
And then it really gets weird! Characters rant about space travels or express a longing for female emancipation, while embarking on a variety of bizarre schemes involving diamond breeding frogs, or imitating God for profit. Humorous sketches pseudo-poetic and pseudo-philosophical ramblings abound, all while delivering caustic commentaries on the commercialization of spirituality.
Om’s life flash-forwards before our eyes through rapid editing full of jump cuts. Occasional gaps in time or space create a sense of disorientation and the fragmented narrative contributes a dreamy quality. Hypnotic sound effects like voice echoes, or psychedelic futuristic tunes, are applied. There’s even a complete, albeit momentary, disruption of the audio at one point.
Om Dar- B -Dar is an enigmatic puzzle thanks to the unconventional way it combines the everyday with surrealism. It will appeal mostly to those that have some familiarity with Hindu tradition and history, though, as many mythological and cultural references can be found among the absurdity. The rest of us will scratch our heads and open an online encyclopedia.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by debasish dey, who suggested it with the following background: “…a 1988 Indian Postmodernist film directed by Kamal Swaroop. The film, about the adventures of a school boy named Om along with his family, employs nonlinear narrative and an absurdist storyline to satir[ize] mythology, arts, politics and even philosophy. The movie was described by its director as a story of Lord Brahma, and it sprouted from the idea that in Hinduism, although Lord Brahma was considered the father of the entire universe, strangely no one ever worshiped him. The director also said that the film’s script was written based solely on dreams and images that he had and claimed he ‘cannot think in words.’ ” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)