Next week we’ll have reviews of the recently re-released post-apocalyptic robot movie Hardware (1990); ponder 2009’s Palme d’Or winner, The White Ribbon [Das Weisse Band]; and scratch the gory Japanese sc-fi’er Meatball Machine (2005) off the reader-suggested review queue.
The weirdest search term used to locate the site this week (with apologies to runners-up “bizarre insect porn” and “1960’s movie women in bras in capsules”) was “process of intercourse with movies.”
The review queue received a massive infusion of suggestions this week. Here’s how it stands: What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams) (coming in two weeks); Meatball Machine (next week); Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); Gozu; Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple; Southland Tales; Arizona Dream; Spider (2002); Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Danger: Diabolik; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines; 964 Pinocchio; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; Frownland; The Seventh Seal; Taxidermia; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Walkabout; Private Parts (1972); Possession; Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; Malice in Wonderland; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); The Human Centipede (First Sequence); and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory . Whew!
In other news, we’ve decided to phase out star ratings for movies. Parsing the difference between a one-and-a-half star and two-star movie has turned into a thankless, as well as meaningless, chore. From here on out, we’ll only be tagging movies with one of three self-explanatory quality ratings: MUST SEE, RECOMMENDED, or BEWARE. Most movies won’t get any rating; see those movies if you like the subject matter, director, star, plot description, or some other feature of the movie. (We realize that some people will be tempted to seek out only movies marked “BEWARE”.) It’s your call, but we don’t think you’ll be missing anything if you skip an unlabeled movie. We can also use these tags to recognize and recommend movies that are excellent in their fields, but may not show the necessary level of bizarrity to deserve a place on the List.
We’re also adding another tag/label, WEIRDEST. If you’re only looking for weird, and don’t care whether the movie is good or not, you’ll want to browse this tag. We’ve been struggling with the tension between selecting the best weird movies and choosing the plain ol’ weirdest movies. Many of the weirdest movies are uneven, distasteful, or too amateur to recommend, but we recognize that many readers will prefer to seek out the abysmal and disgusting Nekromantik ahead of an excellent, but not nearly as weird, movie such as Don’t Look Now. The WEIRDEST! tag is a way to recognize movies that may not be good enough to make the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of All Time, but definitely deserve props for going totally weird.
We’ll be using these tags exclusively from now on, and slowly re-rating the older movies.
Finally, let us plug the 366 Weird Movies 2009 Yearbook one last time… if you’re interested in purchasing a copy, please click here.