15 Weirdest Movies Of All Time
Some movies are so weird, that they become uniquely great. Not every director is ready to support Aristotle’s idea that any piece of art must have a beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes you just need to mash it all up and create something extraordinary.
Here you’ll find a list of 15 weird movies that you’ll most definitely want to watch. Enjoy!
“Inland Empire”, dir. David Lynch, 2006
An even more confusing twin movie of Mulholland Drive with another blonde in danger. The famous and wealthy actress Nikki accepts a neighbor who is mysteriously shooting with eyes and speaking with a strong accent in her mansion. For some reason, he heard about Nikki’s probation for a new role and mutters unpleasant prophecies about lost boys and girls under her breath.
Indeed Nikki is about to star in a caramel old-fashioned melodrama like La La Land directed by a complex visionary director. But the tide turns hard and you are witnessing a dozen dancing prostitutes, a camera playing with your vestibular apparatus, a song by Nina Simone, and three giant rabbits attached. The last full-length David Lynch took more than 10 years ago.
Inland Empire turned out to be an exemplary mind-blowing film, which either hits you hard or lightens up the light bulb above you. Taking the soul out of the viewer and, of course, entertaining him at the most inopportune moment.
“Corporation “Holy Motors”, dir. Leos Carax, 2012
Monsieur Oscar travels in a limousine from point to point, embodying different characters. He either puts on a certain costume to simplify the special effects and acts out a choreographic love story, then scares the crowd at the cemetery and then sings a duet with Kylie Minogue. He also leads a squad of mad accordionists.
Monsieur Oscar’s true motivation is easy to guess: his name hints at the Academy Award coveted by most commercial filmmakers, and the chameleon Denis Laban becomes the hero of another genre film every ten minutes.
He tries on the clichés and restrictions and at the same time tries to comply with all agreements with the mysterious company “Holy Motors”. It’s their limousines he drives, having some secret obligations.
Carax makes a painful and clean film about his relationship with film tradition and the industry and takes on the main role of the plasticine and almighty Laban as his agent in a fickle and melancholic world. The final scene, where Monsieur Oscar finally returns home, is worth a separate mention.
“Schizopolis”, dir. Stephen Soderbergh, 1996
Proofing why the omnipotent Steven Soderbergh will never become Steven Spielberg (also an important director and even more important producer) ‒ a black absurd comedy about twins. In crucial years, when Soderbergh could make millions of dollars or a dozen Oscar nominations, he unleashes an inner idiot in an evil, self-deprecating and very funny little film, shot for record pitches.
There are two main characters (both played by Soderbergh), a love triangle of the most boring and impassioned people in the world. A shot with the words “No idea”, jokes about Scientology and maniacs-voyeurs. And a few more scenarios of a one-story apocalypse, with a mix of conspiracy and a lot of banter about the midlife crisis. In short, everything you wanted to know about indie, but were afraid to ask.
“The Holy Mountain”, dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973
Many people watch this movie as a port of the obligatory part of countercultural education. You should return to “Holy Mountain” as an adult to understand how the Chilean director finds himself in the American underground through the history of theater, painting, religions, and mystical practices.
Jodorowsky, who grew out of the theatrical environment and was brought up on the literature of surrealism, removes the story of the Fool ‒ either Christ or just a man in search of justice and meaning ‒ who finds himself in a vicious city with fake values and distorted hierarchy. “The Holy Mountain” breaks up into hundreds of delightful frames and tells the story of finding oneself in modern times: the present time seduces, flatters pride, and promises wisdom and immortality.
Céline et Julie vont en bateau (Celine and Julie Go Boating), dir. Jacques Rivette, 1974
One of the main French films about inseparable girlfriends, which lasts more than three hours and resembles both “Alice in Wonderland” and the Proust stream of consciousness.
Brunette Céline and curly redhead Julie are inseparable opposites, spending all their free time with each other. Julie works in an inert work in the library, Céline learns to do magic tricks. During the film, Céline and Julie repeatedly change places, imitate each other’s manner, and reinvent their images. One teaches the other to dream and fantasize, while the other offers shelter and alliance in solving non-trivial tasks.
Rivette works with the theme of doubles (which Lynch can easily intercept from him later), but mainly with the way stories are told, when subjects and objects change places, and emotions elude description.
“Liquid Sky”, dir. Slava Zuckerman, 1982
One of the few films of the Soviet period with Russian roots, known in the English-speaking world ‒ primarily because of the progressive new wave soundtrack, borrowed aesthetics of Anger, Russell and Jarman, and fantastic fashionable youth.
In the depressing neon New York of the early 80s, little happens in daylight. Aliens begin to hunt the city ‒ they kidnap the gray matter of those people who experience narcotic ecstasy, but then find out that the pleasure from sex is much stronger.
The favorite spot of the aliens is the marginal penthouse apartment where the dealer and her model friend live. In the funniest apartment in the city, sooner or later, the countdown of the dead begins ‒ and the nymphomaniac Margaret is to blame for everything. “Liquid Sky” dreamed of being “Blade Runner” for its people and, having bypassed large studio films, now looks like a hastily filmed get-together with a stunning texture ‒ it can be imitated, but unthinkable to recreate.
“Crash”, dir. David Cronenberg, 1996
The Cronenberg of his Wild period created an important 90s film about the connection between trauma, danger, and sexual pleasure, based on the novel by James Ballard. The hero-film producer, to whom Cronenberg gave the name of the author of the book, has a fatal accident with a passenger of another car.
The girl driver, stuck in an accident, suddenly shows Ballard her chest. This sudden event intrigues him incredibly: he has been married for a long time with a successful front marriage, the most interesting thing in which is the discussion with his wife of their mutual betrayal.
After the accident, Ballard learns about the extreme driving community, whose sex life is built around the planning of intentional car accidents. Gradually, he frees himself from the dramatic interpretation of his own and someone else’s death and stereotypical ideas about pleasure: meetings with regular fetishists are generally incompatible with safety rules.
“The Lobster”, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015
Soon, those who are not ready to find a soul mate and form a socially approved union with her/him will be exiled to a 45-day spa vacation in one of the expensive hotels. There you can make new acquaintances, try to start all over again, or choose an animal of your choice and, at your peril and risk, reincarnate into it after 45 days.
Someone chooses to become a lobster, someone dreams of ending their life as a deer. A confused divorced David ‒ soft, slightly depressed, and a little sentimental ‒ checks in at the sanatorium, seemingly ready to search for the second half. But the mechanical conditions of detention and coexistence will force him to hide and look for a mate among gigantic provincial trade centers, forest thickets with anarchists, and desert cities where nothing happens.
The Greek director Yorgos Lantimos, who has seen enough of Buñuel and the best dystopias in life, is shooting a parable about loneliness, which will not be considered the norm in any bright future.
“Cemetery of Splendor” (“Rak ti Khon Kaen”), dir. Apichatpong Weerasetakun, 2015
A meditative Thai film about slumbering soldiers taking part in an invisible war. Lame Jen, an elderly and passionate woman, works as a nurse in the mysterious hospital of the sleeping military.
The hospital is located in a small town on the banks of the Mekong, where dozens of soldiers recuperate under colorful artificial lighting in beds with cocoon-like mosquito nets. One of the soldiers, Itt, interests Jen more than the others ‒ she takes particular care of him, conducts conversations with him when he suddenly wakes up, reads books to him while sleeping, and makes sure that he wakes up refreshed.
The soldiers of the hospital are rumored to be participants in the war of the ancient kings: they donate their strength to the old wars and military conflicts, supplying them with vitality.
“Nocturama”, dir. Bertrand Bonello, 2016
“Paris is a Holiday” is the funniest localization of the title for Bonello’s latest film, about youthful turmoil before global injustice, capitalism, and the senseless desire to possess.
Nocturama has been compared to Robert Bresson’s penultimate film “Perhaps the Devil” in which angry teenagers take control of a sluggish majority. Several very young Parisians with typical problems of adolescence agree to implement a multi-stage plan ‒ to organize a complex and simultaneous terrorist attack in several places.
They communicate with each other on disposable phones, confuse tracks, wander in transport and on the streets, and do not fully believe whether their plans are possible. They find themselves in the mall, intending to wait out the hysteria: they have expensive and affordable shops, mannequins, and well-known logos at their disposal ‒ spending the night in the mall seems more natural to them than going to their home.
“House” (“Hausu”), dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977
One of the main Japanese mainstream films of the 20th century, a must-see for anyone crazy about the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, the filmography of Dario Argento, and the mercilessly naive B movie.
The director filmed “Home” based on a nightmarish story invented by his seven-year-old daughter, although he first wanted to come up with a local version of the low-budget but intimidating Jaws.
In “House”, a high school student learns that dad is going to marry a second time ‒ and runs out of town with six girlfriends to her aunt, mom’s sister, for support and a perfect vacation. Each girlfriend with a telling name plans a vacation outside the city until it turns out that the gnarled house and the gray-haired aunt have their plans for new inhabitants ‒ including broken mirrors, night hallucinations, and creepy transformations of a beloved cat.
“After the Darkness, Light” (“Post Tenebras Lux”), dir. Carlos Reygadas, 2012
Reygadas’ wandering, fuzzy, and the highly lyrical film is his most personal work to date, strongly reminiscent of the late Terrence Malick.
Reygadas tells the story of a wealthy Mexican family living in a remote home in nature, where the husband loves his wife and two small children, but from time to time he frenziedly beat the dog and tries to build relationships with the workers of his wealthy estate.
Days and months pass, family gatherings and birthdays pass ‒ one night a red drawn devil enters the main character’s bedroom with incomprehensible purposes, and a harmonious narrative rolls into tartar. “After Darkness, Light” is not well described through plot moves ‒ it is a movie that bears more similarities to painting and meditation than to keywords that exhaust genres and plots.
“Goodbye speech” (“Adieu au Langage”), dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 2014
Jean-Luc Godard’s last full-length film about the crisis of communication and the desire to chat and argue. Created digitally with contrasting shots of nature, sharp editing, and uncomfortable approximations, Farewell to Speech is a melodrama about not a very happy married couple. They spend days and nights together, most often in a lake house, exchanging quotes from philosophers and newspapers, chatting on favorite topics of intellectuals since 1968 ‒ from postcolonialism to capitalist empires.
Cleverness has long replaced direct communication with them, read wisdom ‒ their remarks. Godard’s trick is not only that at 84 he receives awards for innovation at the Cannes Film Festival, but that few other than he can play so gracefully with words, editing, and the narcissism of human nature. And especially with our desire to seem, not to be.
“Mister Lonely”, dir. Harmony Corinne, 2007
The not-so-successful Parisian impersonator makes money on the streets by dancing the moonwalk of Michael Jackson: his performance consists of a set of memorized numbers imitating the distant original.
While performing at a nursing home, Michael meets Marilyn Monroe, a naive, curvy blonde who invites him to a remote Scottish corner where only impersonators live. Among Charlie Chaplin and Abraham Lincoln, Madonna, the Pope, and a herd of domestic sheep, Michael will learn the rules of survival for a closed community preparing to meet the rest of the world.
“New York, New York” (“Synecdoche, New York”), dir. Charlie Kaufman, 2008
Charlie Kaufman’s sad and wounding drama about the creative crisis and the futility of all that exists is the depressing answer “8 ½”, where the idea of an ideal play grows into an endless artificial city.
Theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Cayden ‒ he has never got bad roles, but this one is probably the best ‒ decides to stage something completely new to deal with the devastation. He is neurotic and narcissistic, ambitious and vulnerable, attentive and oppressive ‒ he comes up with a new play, for which he is going to build an impressive set.
The project stretches indefinitely: the former Kayden did not think about the obstacles that the current one faced, and crooks and loved ones will multiply, reincarnate and gain strengths and weaknesses from each other.
