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 at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Complete Unknown: Meeting at a dinner party, Tom (Michael Shannon) insists he knows Alice (Rachel Weisz), but she says she doesn’t remember him. Didn’t we see a similar idea done last year, at Marienbad? Complete Unknown official site.
Uncle Kent 2: Uncle Kent goes to ComicCon and loses his mind as the apocalypse approaches. What a weird idea: a sequel to a mumblecore drama almost no one saw, reimagined as a surreal comedy by strangeoid Todd Rohal. Uncle Kent 2 official site.
SCREENINGS – (Los Angeles, Cinefamily, Sunday, Aug. 28):
“The Phantasmagoric Films of Piotr Kamler”: An evening of seldom-seen shorts from the Polish surrealist animator, concluding with his unfairly underseen feature opus, Chronopolis. Also of interest at the ‘family this week: continued showings of Andrzej Zulawski‘s final film, Cosmos, and a newly-restored print of the shocking 1967 insane asylum documentary Titicut Follies. Check out the trippy trailer at “The Phantasmagoric Films of Piotr Kamler” at Cinefamily.
SCREENINGS – (Silver Springs, MD, AFI Silver Theater, Aug. 27, 29, 30-31):
Evil Dead 2 (1987): Read the Certified Weird entry! Sam Raimi‘s utterly over-the-top zombierama is about the most fun you can have in the theater, and arguably the greatest R-rated horror-comedy ever made. So what is AFI showing on Aug 28, when ED2 takes a break for a night? Just The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, that’s all. It adds up to a great week of weirdness for those in the DC metro area. Evil Dead 2 at AFI Silver Theater.
SCREENINGS – (New York, NY, IFC Center, Aug. 27 at midnight):
Blue Velvet (1986): Read the Certified Weird entry! David Lynch‘s masterpiece of psychosexual evil graces IFC’s midnight screen this weekend. An even more significant event, however, is their week-long revival of Fellini’s Cassanova, a film that is (for reasons mysterious to us) not currently available on home video. Blue Velvet at IFC Center.
FILM FESTIVALS – Venice International Film Festival (Venice, Italy, Aug 31 – Sep 10):
The world’s oldest film festival, Venice is still one of the most prestigious movie events of the year, although it has been losing ground in late years as many producers who miss the chance to debut at Cannes choose to premiere at the better-attended Toronto Film Festival instead. Still, Venice always lands a few scoops…
- The Bad Batch – Ana Lily Amirpour‘s much-anticipated followup to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night features Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey and was originally pitched as “a dystopian love story in a Texas wasteland and set in a community of cannibals.” Screens Sep. 6.
- David Lynch: The Art of Life – Documentary about Lynch, focusing on his formative years and on his painting; the third in an ongoing series of documentaries about the modern surrealist standard bearer. Sep. 4 & 6.
- Stalker (1979) – Andrei Tarkovsky‘s existential sci-fi mystery (which we certified weird) screens on Sep. 3 and 4.
Venice International Film Festival home page (English).
NEW ON DVD:
Woman in the Dunes (1964): Read the reader recommendation by Frederik Allemark. The Criterion Collection’s bare-bones 2007 DVD of Hiroshi Teshigahara‘s surreal masterpiece about a world covered in sand went out of print, but has been reissued with the company’s usual array of special features. Buy Woman in the Dunes [Criterion Collection]
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Modesty Blaise (1966): Fashion-forward spy Modesty Blaise travels to a Mediterranean isle to investigate a jewel heist. The semi-psychedelic spy spoof was a fairly big flop, but it’s one of those examples of late-Sixties cinematic excess that always make for a strange viewing experience today. Buy Modesty Blaise [Blu-ray]
Woman in the Dunes (1964): See description in DVD above. Crtierion’s Dunes reissue naturally includes a Blu edition. Buy Woman in the Dunes [Criterion Collection Blu-ray]
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.
The London Frightfest just finished playing this week too. Lovers of the weird and disturbing should look out for future screenings of “We Are the Flesh”, a bizarre Mexican offering combining the surrealism of Jodorowsky with the transgressiveness of Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom and uses it as a sort of metaphor for the political situation in Mexico.
Thanks Chris, that’s the kind of tip we can use. I’ll keep an eye out for We Are the Flesh.