I mean movies like brazil, city of the lost children and even a clockwork orange. Movies that are about weird backgrounds and a strange plot, movies that are more of a visual 'experience' than something else.
I know only a few of this kind of movies and I would greatly appreciate any recommendations any of you would make :)
"Liquid Sky"
ugh..
"Nadja" is probably pretty close
You should of course try David Lynchs' masterpiece Eraserhead!
The twin of City of the Lost Children - Delicatessen is also entertaining.
And then there's Videodrome.
Also I liked Naked Lunch.
Maybe "Repo Man" would fit in here also.
I just watched "Donnie Darko" again today - it had been a while. Excellent movie, and one that I would definitely recommend from that genre.
_____________________________________________________________________
Post Edited (03-21-04 00:13)
12 Monkeys would do well on the list, since Terry Gilliam did Brazil
Well, if you enjoy movies like that you should hit up most movie by directors previously mentioned. David Lynch you should know, Terry Gilliam you seem familiar with, Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who directed CITY OF LOST CHILDREN and AMELIE, but also, unfortunately, ALIEN RESURRECTION). Still, most of these movies are easy to find.
I would also like to recommend some weirder flicks. GREASER'S PALACE, reviewed on this site, is one of the strangest things you will ever see. If you can understand it, well, you are a better person than I.
But maybe that's not weird enough for you. Remember those creepy puppet shorts on MTV in the 80's? Well that was the Brothers Quay. They've also directed a live action movie called INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA, which is weird as hell. Not really all that deep, but one of the best visual experiences I've seen in a while.
I don't even want to go into the works of Jan Svankmajer. That Alice in Wonderland thing he did was not pleasant to watch, I don't care what any of you say.
Or say you just want to get into some low-budget weird early 90's films. If you can get your hands on THE DARK BACKWARD or RUBIN AND ED, well you've got yourself something. I can't say what. Get back to me when you've watched both of them back to back.
If you don't want to go that deep, just watch INTACTO. I'm looking forward to talking to somebody about that one.
. . . . The 'qaatsi triumphert (what?) is purely visual, with a score (have only seen and own Koyaanisqaatsi). Though it's pretty much a very different set of films to experience (no narrative really), but you may already know about them.
Zardoz immediately springs to mind. Some nice imagery at the beginning. And some weird imagery throughout.
Oh yeah, how could I forget - Pink Floyd's The Wall. I think it's got enough of a plot to qualify as a movie. Then there's Pink Floyd at Pompeii and Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same. Heavy Metal was pretty wild as well.
For regular movies, Time Bandits has some very cool stuff. And there's some movie called Labrynthe with David Bowie.
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas comes to mind.
Oh..and Sleepy Hollow.
Definitely Time Bandits, Terry Gilliam seems to have a liking for this type of movies. There is also the Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Thanks. Keep them coming :)
I have seen the terry gilliam trilogy already btw, and the jeunet/caro trilogy too (I made a topic about it a while ago)
To be honest I have never heard of David Lynch but I'll find some of his stuff :)
Again, if I may be allowed to mention some of the films reviewed at this site.
For the villains: "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"
For the ending (the only one I still can't understand): "Cemetery Man"
For the hallucination and dream sequences: "Lair of the White Worm"
For it just being "bad": "Plan 9 from Outer Space"
For trying to do a "straight" western with an all-midget cast: "The Terror of Tiny Town"
For the whole film: "Wizards"
And since I mentioned the film with the most surreal ending, here is the film with the most surreal opening I have ever seen: "Titus." Based on Shakespeare's play, "Titus Andronicus."
And one other category, any film that tries to do it "straight," without a single adult in it. That would include the all-bird film "Bill and Coo" and the all-children, gangster musical "Bugsy Malone." Even, if the cars in the latter are pedal cars, and the Thompson submachine guns shoot not bullets, but whip cream.
And not a movie, but, a television show from Australia, the teen soap "The Tribe." Not an adult in the cast, but, the children doing everyting adults would do, including being seen in bed and in the hay together, bedhopping, and getting pregnant. One would never get away with that here in America.
How about The Forbidden Zone. Herve Villacheze(sp?) as the king of an alternate dimension. Cardboard sets (literally!), a topless princess, a frog-headed butler, a guy playing the pat of a teenage girl...
Make sure you try his Tv series "Twin Peaks" you can find it collected. Make sure it's not "Twin peaks- fire walk with me" which was a movie based on the series.
You might also try Dr. Seuss's only live action film, "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T." I truly enjoyed most of the movies that have been listed so far (anything from Terry Gilliam is bound to have some interesting imagery, though "Fisher King" was a bit disappointing to me), and I think any movie with Dr. Seuss-like sets in live action would fit what you're looking for.
I can second these choices: Greasers Palace, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
Also, if you can find it, also by Robert Downey (Sr. not Jr.) -- Pound (a film he made between Putney Swope and Greaser's Palace, the whole thing takes place in a dog pound, all the dogs being played by members of his repetory company)
The 1930s exploitation classic, Maniac -- totally bizarre.
The Ruling Class with Peter O'Toole -- the first half is hysterically funny, the second half -- well you have to see it....
Performance
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was a great movie. I saw it twice this weekend, which is a really unheard of move for me. Go see it, if you can find a theater that's playing it. It's great.
Harold and Maude..hilarious. Although I had a hard time believing the age difference between them.
Oh, no, you can believe it - it was a real age difference!
Actually what I meant was...Wow what an age difference!
Speaking of David Lynch...."The Lost Highway" is one freakin' bizarre movie!
I had to watch it twice in a row to figure it out.
a clockwork orange... definitly a good movie
Don't forget Mulholland Drive. I watched it with a friend, and after it ended, we literally spent about half an hour in silence, each trying to piece together what we saw.
Then, of course, Eraserhead is in a class of its own... No way around it: David Lynch rocks.
*Spoiler* (I guess)
Even though she was covered up, the scene of them in bed made me sick. Ugh.
Incubus - 1966 Starring William Shatner. For some reason they thought it would be neat to have all the dialogue in Esperanto. No s**t! They showed it on SciFi last year, they spent some money remastering it . It hadn't been seen in almost 40 years.
Cripes, fellows, I mean nobody has mentioned the REAL CLASSICS here.
Given the category, how can you leave out Bunuel's & Salvador Dali's collaboration(s) "Un Chien Andalou(The Andalusian Dog)"? Or Jean Cocteau's "Le Sangre de Poete(Blood of a Poet)?
Blood of a Poet(1934/French): A boy is rescued from a potentially fatal snowball fight by an insect-winged Negro giant with bug-eyes who appears in the middle of a snowstorm. A hand grows a mouth and speaks. A man falls through a mirror that becomes liquid. This is the easy stuff . . .
Andalusian Dog(1929/Spanish): A man slits open the eyeball of a woman as a razor-like cloud crosses a full moon in the sky. Ants pour from a severed hand. A man appears pulling a grand piano and the rotting corpses of donkeys. A bare breast morphs into a sea urchin(And do remember, this is 1929). Again, the easy stuff . . .
Cocteau's "Orpheus" is good too (1952 or so). Beatniks ride their scooters through another liquid mirror into -- well, who knows where?
I dig the guy who mentioned "The Forbidden Zone" -- I agree.
Vermin can do better than Mulholland Drive, I know!!
Other old movies that fit here:
Anything by Carl Dreyer: Vampyr, The Passion of Joan of Arc, etc.
Anything by Fritz Lang: Metropolis, Seigfried, M, etc. etc.
Man, I'm rediscovering silent pictures and '30's pictures in a big way. You can't beat some of this bizarre surreal absurd imagery!!
peter johnson
Well if it's strange you are looking for, "The Pale Sky" is pretty odd. A man wakes up from a coma to find out that his penis has been donated to another patient. He goes looking for him.
Can't think of much that hasn't already been mentioned.
I suppose there are a few fantasy kids' movies that are pretty surreal. The Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka, Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang. All are based on literature, so the filmmakers can't really get all the credit for making them weird. One I rented recently was George Pal's 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, which appeared to be a showcase for the talents of Tony Randall. Weird movie, but cute.
Post Edited (03-24-04 09:01)
For 30s absurdity, try "Million Dollar Legs" with Jack Oakie and W.C. Fields -- a surrealist hoot from start to finish -- Fields is the President of a country where all the men are named George and all the women are named Angela; the country's official love song is called "Woof Bloogle Jig" -- and everyone, including Fields, is an Olympics-class athlete!
Wheeler & Woolsey also did a couple of early-30s films that were very surreal - can't think of titles right now.
And of course, surreal and absurdist elements weave their ways in and out of the Marx Brothers' early-30s Paramount films (a strand discarded when they went to MGM).
. . . . Darren Aronofsky films are a bit odd.
Bloody Mullholland Drive! Half of the cinema studies people in my Uni course do nothing but b***h about that damn movie over and over again!
Waking Life, Fear and loathing in Las Vegas are two surreal favourites.
But when it comes to truly sick, wacky movies you need two words, five syllables:
Day-vid-Crone-En-Berg
Nuts in every sense of the word!
Cronenberg, for sure.
Atom Egoyan would be another director I'd recommend. Check out The Adjuster for a movie that mixes the ordinary with the bizarre. A bit arty, but entertaining and funny, with a disturbing edge.
To other surreal films that came to mind: Cube is highly entertaining and very weird, and no list of the weird and surreal would be complete without the Japanese masterpiece, Tetsuo: The Iron Man.
That sounds like a nightmare.
Not quite in the same league, but I liked a movie called Paper House. A sick girl draws a picture of a house and when she sleeps/passes out, she dreams of the house. She ends up becoming obsessed with the house and with the boy she meets there.