Tag Archives: Science Fiction

Apocryphally Weird

62*. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

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“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multiverse projects, including Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and “Rick and Morty,” would make their concept out-of-date.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) →

Apocryphally Weird

61*. ON THE SILVER GLOBE (1988)

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Na srebrnym globie

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Recommended

“The Ministry may have had various reasons for curtailing production, but it’s not inconceivable that someone there simply thought that another 40 minutes of this stuff might just have been too much for viewers’ sanity.”–Jonathan Romney, Film Comment

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Andrzej Seweryn, Jerzy Trela, Iwona Bielska, Grażyna Dyląg, Waldemar Kownacki,

PLOT: Three astronauts are stranded on an Earthlike planet and populate it with their offspring over the years. Decades later, another astronaut, Marek, travels to the planet and is revered as a messiah who the people believe will lead them to victory over the birdlike Shern. Meanwhile, back on Earth, it is revealed that Marek was chosen for the mission by two scientist, one of whom was his girlfriend, who wanted him out of the way so they could continue their affair.

Still from on the silver globe (1988)

BACKGROUND:

  • Based on the novel series “The Lunar Trilogy,” which was written by director Zulawski’s great uncle Jerzy Zulawski.
  • In the books, completed in 1911, the “silver globe” is the Earth’s Moon; in this modern adaptation this obviously had to be changed to an extraterrestrial planet. The Moon location explains why travel between the two locations is a relatively simple and quick matter.
  • After his second film, The Devil (1972), was banned by Polish authorities, Zulawski moved to France in a mutually-agreed-upon exile. When his first French production, The Important Thing Is to Love (1975) became a prestigious art-house hit, the same authorities invited him to return to Poland to work on a project of his choice. He chose On the Silver Globe.
  • On the Silver Globe had a torturous production history. In 1977 Polish authorities shut down the shoot before completion, citing both cost and ideological objections, and ordered the footage destroyed. Fortunately, this instruction was not completely followed (in the film’s prologue, Zulawski laments that the government “murdered” 1/5 of his work). In 1988 the director was able to reconstruct the surviving footage and create a nearly complete film, using narration spoken over new footage of Polish streets to fill in the gaps for the missing scenes and hiring new actors to overdub some of the old ones. The reconstruction debuted at Cannes in 1988. You can find more detail in El Rob Hubbard‘s reviews of the film itself and on the documentary Escape to the Silver Globe (2021).
  • Much of the dialogue was taken or adapted from various mystical texts, rather than from the novel itself.
  • Voted onto the Apocrypha by readers in this poll.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: On a beach, dozens of soldiers are impaled (apparently through the anus) on spikes which must be thirty feet high. (One crane shot shows us an actor who is actually precariously perched on the pole.) Two robed Pharisee types in leprous caked makeup converse as they are shot from below, with the torture victims soaring above them like orbiting bodies in the sky.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Messy orange-blooded bird/woman sex; interplanetary travel pill

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: On the Silver Globe is a Cubist science fiction epic, presented as if it were being performed by a severely stoned 1970s avant-garde theater troupe enacting obscure Masonic rituals on a beach in Estonia at a point when every single actor is undergoing either a devastating breakup or a profound existential crisis (usually both). Without commentary, the plot is nearly impossible to follow in a single viewing, but the movie is definitely something you’ve never seen before.

Trailer for On the Silver Globe reconstruction

COMMENTS: On the Silver Globe‘s plot is so difficult to divine that  Continue reading 61*. ON THE SILVER GLOBE (1988) →

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CAPSULE: ELSE (2024)

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Else is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: Thibault Emin

FEATURING: Matthieu Sampeur, Edith Proust, Lika Minamoto

PLOT: A shy young fellow and an outgoing woman he recently met shack up together during a lockdown as a strange, body-altering disease runs rampant worldwide.

COMMENTS: Intricate foley work, meditative shots of organic geometry, creepy flesh holes in the wall, a sparky female protagonist, and laconically philosophical overtones: Thibault Emin’s narrative feature debut is a mélange of ingredients as offbeat as the inhabitants of an apartment for the cinematic French middle class. There’s whimsy; there’s melancholia; there’s paranoia; there’s political messaging; the style’s heady as a strong cognac; and there are lots and lots of creepy body morphing closeups, leaving to the viewer to run the cerebro-emotional gamut from “Oooh,” to “Ick,” to “Hmm..” And it’s accomplished with tasteful eroticism sprinkled throughout.

This is art-house drama with requisite lashings of romantic comedy. The aptly named Anx, who is often anxious, doesn’t quite fear being with others, but rarely seeks their company. He prefers to tinker away amongst the relics of his childhood home. He hosts a party, however, and there makes the acquaintance of Cass, a manic-pixie-dream-girl in the true French mold, who first forces him out of his shell, before the strange disease converts her into his… But I’m getting ahead of myself. Anx and Cass are stereotypes in many ways, but at least they’re believable. (Having attended a particular variety of liberal arts college in the early Aughts, I have met both of these archetypes in the flesh.) Seeing as we spend nearly the whole film with this pair, in one apartment, it is no small relief that their doings remain largely within the realm of the relatable and interesting.

Far more interesting is the nature of the affliction which begins striking down the world’s citizens within the first twenty minutes or so. It’s a skin condition (you have been warned), which has hints of mineral development along the lines of metamorphic rock formation (you have now been intrigued, I’d wager). The makeup effects—eventually morphing into set design, if you gather my meaning—are a wonder to observe, as the victims struck down by this ailment do not simply die: in most cases, they become something Else.

Else‘s building blocks are sourced, built, compressed, stretched, and twisted from and into any number of things. And the title and film—like the featured disease—isn’t explainable: it’s just there. There for us to ponder on, chuckle at, think about, and occasionally reel from with squicky ill-ease.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“To be honest, the theme of the movie should’ve tipped you off already, but just in case, get ready for goo, sticky things, and lots of weird close-ups…” — Lucy Muñoz, Cut to the Take (contemporaneous)

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CAPSULE: GWEN AND THE BOOK OF SAND (1985)

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Gwen Et Le Livre De Sable

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Voices of Michel Robin, Lorella DiCicco, Armand Babel, Raymond Jourdan, Jacques Ruisseau

PLOT: Sometime “After the gods have left…”, what remains is a desert landscape in which a few animals and nomads make their home; the only danger being the Makou, something that drops objects of various size onto the desert floor, forcing the nomads to live underground. Gwen, an orphan, falls in love with a strange boy, Nokmoon, who is taken away one night by the Makou. She and Roseline (a 173 year old woman) set off on a journey to retrieve him; in doing so, they encounter a mysterious cult.

Still from gwen and the book of sand (1985)

COMMENTS: The post-apocalyptic tale is a genre of its own, but when you take post-apocalypse and desert and put them together, you get The Road Warrior. It’s practically the template followed by its own sequels and countless homages/ripoffs. And when it comes to non-apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy, the template is Dune. These stories are usually heavily plot-driven, with a relentless forward momentum.

Gwen is desert post-apocalypse in a poetic mode. The title might make one surmise that the title character will undergo a series of adventures and challenges for the next hour or so, but it’s not so. The movie is gentler than that. It’s paced leisurely; there is a plot, but it drives lightly. Instead, the film focuses on visuals: characters walking across the sands on stilts, landscapes littered with objects such as oversized utensils and eyeglasses, close-ups of the pincipals. And it’s all the more striking for being animated with a gouache paint palette, which softens things, giving the impression of a dream. (One visual reference that I twigged was Henri Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy.”)

Gwen is about mood and atmosphere: the surreality of the landscape, how the nomads live in this world, how they hunt, how they travel. There’s little explanation of how this desert came to exist, other than the oblique “the gods have left,” or of the Makou. And that’s to the film’s advantage, especially as things get more surreal and the introduction of the Makou Cult (which includes pointed satire of religion). Although there are what could be referred to as “antagonists,” there’s no outright villain, as there would be in a more standard treatment. The music of Pierre Alrand, a longtime collaborator of Laguione’s, adds to the moody atmosphere.

Fantastic Planet, another French animation with a similar mood and adult approach, is Gwen‘s closest relative. Planet, however, is much more brutal in approach. Gwen is made for adults, but it’s family-friendly—although it’s probably way too slow and not antic enough for young children (although the visuals may attract them). Older kids could get more out of it, though again it’s paced much slower than current animated films. Fans of , and especially of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, might also get into the film’s rhythm and mood.

Gwen‘s first ever U.S. release on 4K and Blu-ray comes from Deaf Crocodile, in a limited or standard edition. The movie has a commentary by Samm Deighan, along with an interview with director Laguionie by Dennis Bartok and an intriguing video essay by Dr. Will Dodson and Ryan Verrill. The Limited Edition includes a 60 page booklet with essays by Laguionie, film historian Jennifer Barker, and critic/DC house writer Walter Chaw, as well as a slipcase with new art by Beth Morris.

(This movie was noimated for review by Russa03, who said it was “a surrealist, post-apocalypse animation and it’s beautiful to boot.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Gwen And The Book Of Sand (4k UHD + Blu-ray)

Gwen And The Book Of Sand (4k UHD + Blu-ray)
  • A teenage girl and her 173 year old companion take an epic journey in French director Jean-François Laguionie's hauntingly poetic animated classic.
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CAPSULE: THE EMPIRE (2024)

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L’empire

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Anamaria Vartolomei, Brandon Vlieghe, Lyna Khoudri, Julien Manier, , Camille Cottin

PLOT: Rival races of aliens, the Ones and the Zeroes, possess humans in a small French town.

Still from The Empire (2024)

COMMENTS: The Empire is an epic pitched in a very odd and minor key, and we expect nothing less from Bruno Dumont. It’s best described as a deadpan satire where alien factions battle for the fate of earth, but spend more time scouting, strategizing, swimming, and sleeping around than fighting each other. Why aliens chose a sunny and sleepy fishing town in northern France for the site of Armageddon is anyone’s guess—and maybe an essential part of the joke.

Much of what plot there is seems arbitrary and almost beside-the-point; in fact, it’s not entirely clear what the point is. The aliens possess villagers at random. The evil Zeroes have a prophetic Antichrist-like baby of destiny, but the good guy Ones don’t have much of a coherent plan to deal with it. They decapitate someone, maybe as a warning? An abduction resolves in an easily thwarted anticlimax. Mostly, the two teams cast sideways looks at each other when they pass in town, and take time out to confer with their respective leaders: La Reine for the Ones, who hovers in a cathedral spaceship complete with stained glass windows, and Belzébuth for the Zeroes, orbiting Earth in a craft that looks more like the palace of Versailles. The Empire‘s most fabulous character, Belzébuth dresses in a puffy white suit with a black bow tie, and is something like a cross between Evil from Time Bandits and a depraved Pee Wee Herman. Fans of Lil’ Quinquin‘s Captain Van der Weyden and Lieutenant Carpentier will be frustrated; the comic gendarmes put in a couple appearances, and Dumont teases that we may follow their investigation into the decapitation, but they actually play no role in the plot. (I’m a bit concerned about ‘s health—Van der Weyden barely mumbles one line here.)

The Empire is loosely a parody of science fiction epics—Jane and Rudy even wield (slightly modified) lightsabers—but it’s far from Spaceballs 2. If there’s a satirical target here, it’s the simplistic Manicheanism of humanity (and humanity’s blockbuster movies) . Despite their grand pretensions, the great cosmic struggle between the Ones and Zeroes is constantly subsumed into the minutiae of daily provincial life. Carnal attraction crosses battle lines. And the final showdown between the forces of good and evil is cheekily subverted, to say the least—as if both sides had been wasting their time all along.

The premise has a mildly amusing level of base absurdity, but the film is virtually free of laugh-out-loud moments. Fabrice Luchini’s clownish prince of evil amuses as he watches black blobs twerking, and a scene or two with Carpentier supplies possible chuckles. Still, the movie is well-shot and scored, the architecturally-minded spaceships are unique, and there are points of visual interest (and I’m not just referring to Vartolomei and Khoudri, who both have nude scenes and who are both stunning). It’s tempting to dub this The Empire Strikes Out. But although the mock-epic is a bit underwhelming, if considered as another thread in the tapestry of the expanding paranormal North of France Dumontverse, it’s scenic enough to make it worth a visit for the director’s fans.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a bizarre yet movingly humane satire that exposes the philosophical deficiencies of the movie genre that dominates global film culture… In Dumont’s eccentric way, The Empire forces the sci-fi genre to represent Western culture’s deepest mysteries. It’s like a Classic Comics version of a Robert Bresson movie with Spaceballs thrown in — a manifesto opposing the most corrupt and childish film genre.”–Armond White, National Review (contemporaneous)

The Empire [Blu-ray]

The Empire [Blu-ray]
  • The Empire
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