Tag Archives: Spanish

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNICORN WARS (2022)

Leave a comment

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

Unicorn Wars is currently available for VOD rental.

DIRECTED BY: Alberto Vázquez

FEATURING: Voices of Jon Goirizelaia, Jaione Insausti, Itxaso Quintana, Ramón Barea

PLOT: Cuddly teddy bears are at war with mysterious unicorns; meanwhile, simians are undertaking a sinister ritual.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: If rainbow caterpillars devouring Snuggly’s oozing form doesn’t do it for you, Unicorn Wars has plenty more madness to share—most of it far more disturbing.

COMMENTS: Dark visions come in all colors, it seems, as proved by Alberto Vázquez’s latest animated feature, Unicorn Wars. Traditionally a medium for children’s and family films, cartoons have a lesser-appreciated history as a means of capturing distress and madness which, for various reasons, may be impossible to convey with live-action, even when heavily injected with unsettling practical effects or CGI. Be they Gerald Scarfe’s vivid grotesques from Pink Floyd: the Wall,  or Ralph Bakshi‘s racially-charged brutality in Coonskin, or ‘s and Cristóbal León‘s eerie stop-motion in The Wolf House, or Vázquez’s own dark flights of fantasy in Birdboy, animation can be a sure-fire way to capture the uncapturable, and to illuminate some of the most harrowing imaginings put to screen. Unicorn Wars joins this canon of wrenching, disturbing fare. And it does it with cutesy teddy bears.

Bluey and Tubby are brothers in boot camp. Their bunk-mates include Pompom, the Cuddly-Wuddly twins, and Coco, the grizzled teddy who has seen it all. Under the harsh mentorship of their drill sergeant (“Here, ‘cuddles’ are made of steel, blood, and pain!”), the latest recruits are preparing for a mission into the heart of the nearby forest to investigate the fate of lost outpost. Bluey is driven by ambition and insecurity, striving to be the best, and tormenting his brother Tubby. Meanwhile, in the forest, María the unicorn seeks her lost mother, last seen in what is perhaps a vision: a viscous dream of ill-formed goo and an all-consuming monster. The new teddy troops are dispatched, ultimately setting into motion a final confrontation between the teddy bears and the unicorns.

Unicorn Wars is dark, dark, dark, but it presents itself as, perhaps, something of a comedy-of-incongruity. (The humor is of the type found in the needlessly unsavory “Happy Tree Friends.”) Vázquez puts his boot-campers through the typical montage motions: dehumanizing treatment, callous mental conditioning (the hymnal chant, “Dead Unicorn, Good Unicorn”, well illustrates the mindset of these pastel-painted patriots), and violent rivalries. The mood shifts resolutely away from uneasy comedy once the troupe enters the woods and messily devour a clutch of rainbow-toned caterpillars. The ensuing psychedelic frenzy, rendered in all the colors of the blacklight rainbow, is when Unicorn Wars kicks into full sprint, removing any hope for the characters—and viewer.

I will readily admit that this is one of the most harrowing movies I’ve seen. Jaundiced though both my eyes have become over the years, I was still speechless and immobile all through the climactic finale, where teddy bear massacres unicorn, unicorn gore teddy bear, and brother destroys brother. Were it not for its many moments of deeply troubling events, and occasional blasts of sickening horror, I would have “Recommended” Unicorn Wars. As it stands, I can only warn potential viewers: this is heart-wrenching, eye-glazing drama, soaked in bright pinks, powder blues… and reds.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Provocative, bright, weird, and completely out of left field, Unicorn Wars is one hell of a drug..” -Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? (contemporaneous)

Unicorn Wars [Blu-ray]

Unicorn Wars [Blu-ray]

    New starting from: 14.19 $

    Go to Amazon
    Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: LA TETA Y LA LUNA (1994)

    Leave a comment

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

    Teté and the Moon, The Tit and the Moon

    DIRECTED BY: Bigas Luna

    FEATURING: Mathilda May, Biel Durán, Gérard Darmon, Miguel Poveda

    PLOT: Frustrated at losing access to his mother’s chest following the birth of his baby brother, young Teté becomes enraptured with Estrellita, a dancer who comes to town as part of a traveling show; he competes for her attentions with her husband as well as a lovestruck young man.

    Still from Teta y La Launa (1994)

    COMMENTS: Part of the charm – and also the frustration – of the coming-of-age film is that it relies on the point of view of someone too young to fully understand the world around them. An innocent, unburdened by years of maturity and perspective. We watch them with a combination of longing for their ignorance and sympathy for their embarrassment.

    La Teta y La Luna doubles down on this by handing over the narration to its central character, Teté. Not a grown-up Teté looking back at his youthful folly with rueful hindsight, mind you, but the boy himself, speaking in the past tense but still deep in the thrall of his adolescent, unearned bravado. When he confidently tells us that he “devastated” a foe’s motorcycle, we can see for ourselves that he’s lamely kicking it to no effect. So he would seem to be an extremely unreliable narrator indeed. Except when it’s surely our eyes that deceive us. For when Teté informs us that every woman in a bodega is offering her breasts to him, what we see is exactly that. How could this possibly be? Surely this is wishful thinking to the greatest extreme.

    For you see – to paraphrase Loudon Wainwright III –  Teté is a “tit man.” Ever since his newborn brother arrived, the pleasure of suckling at his mother’s teat has been denied to him, and he has been in search of a replacement. (The title pulls off a neat double meaning, referencing both the main character and his overriding obsession.) So the one thing we can trust absolutely is that he immediately settles upon Estrellita, the beautiful dancer who has just come to Teté’s small oceanfront village.

    He’s hardly alone in being drawn to the comely ballerina, which complicates our understanding of the film’s point of view. Teté’s teenage rival, Miguel, is nearly sick with longing from the moment he encounters Estrellita and begins to sing to her with a voice that should earn him a gig fronting the Gipsy Kings. There’s nothing ironic or misleading about his pain. Meanwhile, Estrellita’s husband Maurice is given all the hallmarks of parody: despite looking like a grizzled and silver-maned biker, Maurice’s talent is as a modern-day successor to Le Petomane, and Estrellita makes love to him on their trailer waterbed and collects his tears in a jar while he makes her eat a baguette which he wields in place of his manhood. He’s ridiculous even as he cuts a dashing figure, but again we don’t doubt what we see. If we can take Miguel and Maurice at face value, who’s to say that Teté isn’t exactly what he presents to us?

    So let us now turn to the object of all their affections. Mathilda May has already distinguished herself in these hallowed halls as a beautiful actress who is willing to put her full and uncovered beauty on display, and that reputation is certainly burnished here. If we are to believe Teté, she is ready and willing to provide him with access to a veritable firehose of milk from her bared breast. Luna’s camera is as in love with Estrellita’s chest as most of the male characters. But this objectification becomes extremely awkward in the face of Estrellita’s increasing discomfort. She dotes on her husband, and he responds with jealousy and resentment. She shows her unease with Miguel’s repeated declarations of love, but loses agency in the face of his increasing threats of self-harm. And we never even get to see what would logically be her concerns with Teté’s blunt and inappropriate requests. (For Teté, none of this appears to be sexual, but it surely is for her.) For the princess at the heart of this fairy tale, there’s a worrisome ignorance of her needs and fears. La Teta y La Luna is obsessed with Estrellita’s chest, but not much with the heart that beats underneath.

    The film wraps up with a happy ending for everyone, most significantly for Teté, who gets to feed from both Estrellita and his own mother, a conclusion that bears no resemblance to anything approaching reality. The tone throughout is bright and charming, but it’s a strange and selfish lesson this tale delivers: “Persist and you’ll get what you want, fellas.” It’s a tale as old as time, but maybe it’s time for a rethink.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Completely perverted, totally surreal, but irresistibly charming.”– Henrik Sylow, DVD Beaver (DVD)\

    (This movie was nominated for review by Wormhead, who called it “a surrealistic spanish/french film by Bigas Luna.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

    List Candidates

    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: LA PIETÀ (2022)

    1 Comment

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

    La pieda

    DIRECTED BY: Eduardo Casanova

    FEATURING: , Manel Llunell

    PLOT: Young Mateo is diagnosed with cancer, much to the maternal delight of his uncommonly protective mother, Libertad.

    COMMENTS: Nestled between the Venn diagram data sets for “Sledgehammer” and “Soft” lies La Pietà, Eduardo Casanova’s sophomore feature. If you’ll permit the flowery language, as the film’s leads would, there is, verily, a great deal of “nestling” here in general. The title card’s image, the climax’s mise en scene—and regularly throughout, one character is seen in the arms of another, especially young Mateo embraced by his suffocatingly loving mother. Libertad, for ’tis her name, loves her son to a degree so monumental it risks crushing him under the weight.

    Within the confines of a sepulchral home wrought of soft-black marble and pink curtains, Mateo lives under the protective wing of the omnipresent Libertad. They dine together, watch television together, and occasionally sleep together. On the occasions they leave the home they (both) attend rehearsals for Libertad’s dance ensemble; later, when it is revealed one or both of them suffers a malady, they (both) spend time at hospital. Libertad is forever fretful her dear boy may wander off if he is not at her heels. Meanwhile, dear boy does often hear the siren’s call Outside That Door; a foray there triggers his downfall into complete dependency.

    A parallel story concerns the family of a military official attempting to flee North Korea (the film is set just prior to the passing of Kim Jong-il), adding further to this obvious treatise on dictatorial behavior and the reliance cultivated in the subjected. Mother grills Mateo about the quality of his bowel movement over dinner; she offers to help him bathe, and insists on trimming his toenails (which becomes an unlikely plot point); and, when the lad is weakened by chemotherapy, Libertad finds his helplessness far too alluring. Mateo is vaguely aware of how this behavior is damaging him. As he navigates his world of soft-black stone and pink fabric, he has augurs and guides: his estranged father (who has mommy issues of his own), his therapist (trying to pry apart the symbiotic pair), and Consuelo, a mysterious hospital patient who desires her own freedom.

    Nestled in the heavy-handedness (of both the mother and the director) are those subtleties I mentioned. Beneath the situational cringe humor lies a subtler vein of comedy. Libertad’s conversation with a hospital receptionist about pink ribbons for breast cancer is an honest-to-goodness chuckler (“There’s no color for brain cancer?”) Casanova references his debut, Skins, with a brief shot of “Poopie Loops”, whose box features the ass-faced woman. Mateo’s pregnant step mother’s insistence (yes, there is a lot of maternity going on) that she is not smoking when she demonstrably is makes for a bleakly amusing counterpoint to Libertad’s obsessive need for control.

    Her control, in turn, reflects the director’s control of his sets, costumes, scenes, and choreography. La Pietà kicks off with a baroque dance number, which ticks along perfectly right until the singer collapses in a fit of helpless tears. But even in his overblown metaphors, Eduardo Casanova softens the edges with chiffony, pastel-pink.

    Read our interview with Eduardo Casanova.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “A Freudian field day, the campy-dark humor blends softly into surreal depictions of simulated birth, shared baths, full frontal bits on display and savage scenes of Mateo’s declining will to reject his mother’s authority.”–Holly Jones, Variety (festival screening)

    List Candidates

    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ARREBATO [RAPTURE] (1979)

    9 Comments

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

    DIRECTED BY: Iván Zulueta

    FEATURING: , Will More, Cecilia Roth

    PLOT: A horror director whose work and relationships are in decline due to his heroin addiction receives a package from an eccentric acquaintance containing a mysterious short film.

    Still from Arrebato (Rapture) (1979)

    WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The Spaniards in our audience would never forgive us if we simply disregarded this one.

    COMMENTS: As we learn from Mike White’s informative commentary track to Arrebato, director Iván Zulueta was an experimental filmmaker (with one prior feature to his name)—and, at the time he made this movie, a functional heroin addict. This background may explain why the two main characters in Zuleta’s sophomore feature are a filmmaker who is working on his sophomore feature, but seeing his work sabotaged by his growing drug problem, and a younger experimental filmmaker who appears to seek advice from the established director, but actually has more to teach than his mentor. In Arrebato the “raptures” of filmmaking and of opiates become entwined to the point where it’s impossible to decide which serves a metaphor for the other. An oblique version of the Christian sense of “rapture”—being snatched from earthly existence and spirited away to paradise—may also be at play, further complicating matters.

    The film’s structure is unusual. It begins with Pedro sending a mysterious audiotape and film strip to José; the tape will supply a running narration throughout the film that explains much of the backstory. Listening to the tape induces two flashbacks describing the characters’ previous encounters. We meet Pedro in the flesh in these flashbacks, and his portrayal by Will More is… curious. On tape, his voice affects an unnaturally raspy delivery; in person, it’s high-pitched, like a kid’s. We first meet him in his child-man persona, throwing a childish fit when an experiment in filming a tree is briefly interrupted. He then hangs around in the background silently, with a bug-eyed stare, or shows up holding a creepy doll. When he takes cocaine, however, the drug paradoxically slows him down and turns him into a coherent, if heavy-lidded, adult; his hairstyle even changes from an unkempt bushy mop to a slicked back greaser ‘do. Later, the script will give Pedro the chance to act in a parody of a motorcycle fetish film, and to languish as a strung-out junkie (in withdrawal not from heroin, but from the ecstasy of film). More’s crazy performance is sort of like a Spanish operating under a heavy dose of barbiturates. Some will find it adds pleasantly to the weirdness; I thought it was distractingly goofy.

    It’s not always clear, without paying attention to contextual clues (i.e. the progression of José’s addiction), what time period we’re in; still, the movie’s reputation as “confusing” is greatly overblown. The narrative, in fact, is simple to follow; the real confusion is thematic. This is one of those movies that has too many ideas, and might have done better to focus on just one or two. To the central idea of a merger between drug and filmic rapture states, we have a series of inserts of Pedro’s experimental short films (mostly in the herky-jerky time-lapse style); philosophical excursions revolving around notions of rhythm and pause; coded homoeroticism (Pedro and José lounging together in bed); inconsistent references to vampirism; Pedro’s oscillations between childhood and adulthood; a female character voiced by a pre-fame Pedro Almódovar; the suggestion of Pedro and José  as a split personality; a Betty Boop-themed seduction; and all of the various senses of “rapture” constantly crowding each other out. These colliding ideas and gambits harmonize inconsistently: the exploration of José and Ana’s disintegrating relationship works well as a subplot, but some bits, like Pedro’s detour into depravity through a punk rock-scored rough-trade threesome in an elevator, don’t make much sense. It almost goes without saying that there’s no rational explanation for the ending. Arrebato is a mostly delightful, sometimes frustrating mess, best seen as Zulueta’s onscreen self-psychoanalysis, performed in a  post-Franco atmosphere of loosened censorship that encouraged ecstatic excess. Any meaning the tale suggests disappears into the spaces between frames.

    Arrebato was beloved by many Spaniards (and championed by Almódovar), but was unavailable outside of Spain for many years— and rarely screened even there. That changed in 2021 with the release of a restored version of the film to U.S. theaters, followed by a DVD and Blu-ray from weird/queer distributor Altered Innocence, via their arty “Anus Films” (groan) imprint. Visually, the print is grainy rather than pristine, appropriate for a movie in which the physicality of celluloid is immanent: the shooting, editing and processing of film is central to the plot. The experimental soundtrack (by Zulueta, with a contemporary punk anthem thrown in) is exceptional. The only special feature is the aforementioned Mike White commentary track, which gives important background information assisting viewers in appreciating this odd and sometimes difficult film.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Arrebato is a blighted, frightened piece of work. You may want to back away from it sometimes, but its weird, nodding, incantatory pull keeps you hanging around for another fix.”–Nick Pinkerton, 4 Columns (2021 re-release)

    (This movie was nominated for review by “squater,” who raved “I’m sure any weird movie lover will recognise Arrebato as one of the weirdest movies in the world.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)