Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Her: Spike Jonze returns with a romantic comedy about a writer who falls in love with an artificial intelligence. Likely to be only glancingly weird, at best, but Jonze (Being John Malkovich) is always worth a look. Her official site.

Wrong Cops: Quentin Dupieux‘s third feature is a comedy about cops-gone-wrong entitled, oddly enough, Wrong Cops. It has been expanded to a full-length feature from a 43-minute short that played at Sundance in January, and the cast includes Eric Wareheim, Marilyn Manson, and former “Twin Peaks” spouses Grace Zabriske and Ray Wise. Wrong Cops official site.

SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, CA, Dec. 23):

Nutcracker Fantasy (1979): A Rankin/Bass styled stop-motion Japanese adaptation of the Nutcracker, with a two-headed Rat King and no mention of Christmas whatsoever. Never released on DVD, this is another incredible obscurity dug up by the deranged archivists at Cinefamily.

NEW ON DVD:

Toad Road (2013): Drugged-out losers decide to drop acid and head down the abandoned country road that local legend claims leads straight to the gates of Hell. Partly improvised, it’s gained multiple comparisons to the work of Harmony Korine. Buy Toad Road.

The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976): A woman who survived abuse as a child grows up to kill (and, er, dismember) the men she sleeps with. Although this had an exploitative promotional campaign and was one of the movies that managed to get itself banned in Britain as a “video nasty,” it’s by all accounts a serious attempt at a downbeat psychosexual drama (with hallucination sequences, flashbacks and Freudian symbolism). Buy The Witch Who Came from the Sea.

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.