CHAT What is your favorite “strange” film?

Dennis Olson

Chief Curmudgeon
_______________
So here I am, another night of Vicodin-inspired insomnia. I’m spinning through movies I might watch, and ran across a truly “strange” film: “In Time.” The synopsis is below. It inspired me to start this thread for fellow insomniacs.

What is your favorite strange / bizarre film? Tell us why you like it, and please provide a brief synopsis.

Thanks!


In a future where time is money and the wealthy can live forever, Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is a poor man who rarely has more than a day's worth of life on his time clock. When he saves Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) from time thieves, Will receives the gift of a century. However, such a large transaction attracts the attention of the authorities, and when Will is falsely accused of murder, he must go on the run, taking the daughter (Amanda Seyfried) of an incredibly wealthy man with him.



Welcome to a world where time has become the ultimate currency. You stop aging at 25, but there's a catch: you're genetically-engineered to live only one more year, unless you can buy your way out of it. The rich "earn" decades at a time (remaining at age 25), becoming essentially immortal, while the rest beg, borrow or steal enough hours to make it through the day. When a man from the wrong side of the tracks is falsely accused of murder, he is forced to go on the run with a beautiful hostage. Living minute to minute, the duo's love becomes a powerful tool in their war against the system.
 

Roger Thornhill

Some irascible old curmudgeon
I like almost any offbeat film which departs from formula Hollywood tripe. Older ones like Five Easy Pieces, to newer ones like Only Lovers Left Alive. Consistent favorites are most anything by director Jim Jarmusch; his early stuff like Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law got me hooked. Of all of his I probably like Mystery Train the best. Great cinematography, clever script, and wonderful performances portraying truly offbeat characters.

From wikipedia:
"The film consists of three stories that take place on the same night in downtown Memphis. The three stories are linked together by the Arcade Hotel, a run-down flophouse presided over by a night clerk and a bellboy, where the principal characters in each story spend a part of the night. Every room in the hotel lacks a television (as is noted in each story) but is adorned with a portrait of Elvis Presley.

The first story, "Far from Yokohama", features Mitsuko and Jun, a teenage couple from Yokohama making a pilgrimage to Memphis during a trip across America. Mitsuko is obsessed with Elvis, and has put together a scrapbook detailing her belief that the singer has a mystical connection to other cultural figures ranging from Madonna to the Buddha to the Statue of Liberty. The story follows the couple as they travel from the train station, through downtown Memphis and a tour of Sun Records, to the Arcade hotel, before they eventually depart to board the train again.

The second story, "A Ghost", is about an Italian widow, Luisa, who is stranded in Memphis while escorting her husband's coffin back to Italy. Luisa shares a room at the hotel with Dee Dee, a young woman who has just left her British boyfriend (Johnny from the final story) and plans to leave the city in the morning. Luisa is kept awake by Dee Dee's constant talking. After Dee Dee finally goes to sleep, Luisa is visited by an apparition of Elvis Presley.

The final story, "Lost in Space", introduces Johnny. Upset after losing his job and his girlfriend, Johnny – called Elvis, much to his chagrin – drunkenly brandishes a gun in a bar before leaving with his friend Will Robinson and his ex-girlfriend's brother, Charlie, who believes Johnny to be his brother-in-law. They stop at a liquor store, which Johnny robs, shooting its clerk in the process. Fearing the consequences, Johnny, Will and Charlie retire to the hotel to hide out for the night; there, they all become increasingly intoxicated. Charlie realizes that Will shares the same name as the character Will Robinson from the television show Lost in Space, which Johnny has never heard of. Charlie and Johnny proceed to tell him about the show, and Will comments that the title describes how he feels then with Charlie and Johnny: lost in space. The next morning, Charlie discovers that Johnny is not really his brother-in-law, which angers him because of what they have been through. Johnny attempts to shoot himself, and while struggling to prevent him, Charlie is accidentally shot in the leg. Leaving the hotel, the three rush to escape a police car that is not even looking for them. The closing credits show the train, the airport and final views of the characters from the first two stories."
 

Buick Electra

TB2K Girls with Guns
The strangest films I liked - at the time b/c I was into twisted movies then, but not anymore, were:

Boxing Helena - The movie follows a surgeon whose growing obsession with a woman leads him to hold her captive in his home after she suffers a car accident and to amputate her limbs, one-at-a-time to keep her captive so all that's left is her head and her big mouth (which got her in trouble to begin with).

Blue Velvet - A David Lynch film....need I say more? I really liked anything Dennis Hopper was in because it was guaranteed to be twisted and this one didn't disappoint. A man returns to his home town after being away and discovers a severed human ear in a field. Not satisfied with the police's pace, he and the police detective's daughter carry out their own investigation. The object of his investigation turns out to be a beautiful and mysterious woman involved with a violent and perversely evil man.

Eraser Head - Another David Lynch film. I liked that it was black and white, (really enjoy B&W films), When I got done watching it, I had no idea what the heck I watched and I felt I had wasted 2 hours of my time. It was like a twisted, OVERTLY sexual nightmare in a post-apocalyptic time. Set in an industrial town in which giant machines are constantly working, spewing smoke, and making noise that is inescapable, Henry Spencer lives in a building that, like all the others, appears to be abandoned. The lights flicker on and off, he has bowls of water in his dresser drawers, and for his only diversion he watches and listens to the Lady in the Radiator sing about finding happiness in heaven. Henry has a girlfriend, Mary X, who has frequent spastic fits. Mary gives birth to Henry's child, a frightening looking mutant, which leads to the injection of all sorts of sexual imagery into the depressive and chaotic mix.

Currently, the BEST strangest movie (because of the eerie but stunning special effects) is the 1946 French Beauty and the Beast (English sub-titled). It is truly a WORK OF ART!! "Before Disney's 1991 film and long before the Beast started signing autographs in Orlando, Jean Cocteau filmed "Beauty and the Beast" in 1946, in France. It is one of the most magical of all films. Before the days of computer effects and modern creature makeup, here is a fantasy alive with trick shots and astonishing effects, giving us a Beast who is lonely like a man and misunderstood like an animal. Cocteau, a poet and surrealist, was not making a "children's film" but was adapting a classic French tale that he felt had a special message after the suffering of World War II: Anyone who has an unhappy childhood may grow up to be a Beast.

The Beast's dwelling is one of the strangest ever put on film--Xanadu crossed with Dali. Its entrance hall is lined with candelabra held by living human arms that extend from the walls. The statues are alive, and their eyes follow the progress of the characters (are they captives of the Beast, imprisoned by spells?). The gates and doors open themselves."
Beauty and the Beast movie review (1946) | Roger Ebert
 
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Squib

Veteran Member
IDK, strange is such a subjective word…but…

Dark City
The Fountain
Pandorum
Moon
Time Bandits
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
The Wicker Man - is a "fun" horror movie with a lot of good music in the original. In the 1980s, TV channels turned it into real horror by taking out almost all of the music (most of which was actual, traditional, but very bawdy Scottish and English folk songs). The movie is scary, but most of the serious horror is off-screen (just the way I like it). Even the ending, while powerful, has the action stopped before it gets gruesome. The audience (seeing it for the first time) may be shocked but not gory or sickening by the way, so many modern movies insist on doing it. The audience knows what is happening and that's enough.

It sticks very close to the book (honestly, I am not sure which came first). While the religious aspects are exaggerated (as they will be in the much more recent but similar film set in Sweden - Midsoomer), the writer did their research. While the story is fantasy, it works because it is just close enough to some of the ancient practices to touch some archetypical nerves.

In the full version (not often shown anymore), there is a bit more background on the Scottish Mainland policeman who is sent to a remote Island (SummerIsle) to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. I prefer the full version (and the book) because while the Sargent comes off as somewhat legalistic (well, he's a cop) and very religious, he isn't a total jerk.

I don't like Midsommer nearly as much and it isn't because it is horror using my branch of Paganism. It is simply because of the graphic gore they insisted on using. Other than that, the two films are somewhat alike, although Midsommer doesn't have nearly as much music, it has a bit but not much. This is sad because I suspect the first film helped inspire the modern one, and Sweden has lots of haunting, creepy, folk music too.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
"Until The End of the World" (1991) - this was just over or just under three hours, but when I saw it in a theater not one person got up during the movie to pee or get snacks or whatnot

As for "In Time," I thought of it as "Bonnie and Clyde" for a new age. Bella Heathcote as the mom was enough to give me serious anxieties about incest!
 

dstraito

TB Fanatic
The Big Blue - movie about free diving

The Big Blue
The Big Blue is a 1988 film in the French Cinéma du look visual style, made by French director Luc Besson. It is a heavily fictionalized and dramatized story of the friendship and sporting rivalry between two leading contemporary champion free divers in the 20th century: Jacques Mayol and Enzo Maiorca, and Mayol's fictionalized relationship with his girlfriend Johana Baker. The film became one of France's most commercially successful films. French President Jacques Chirac referred to the film in describing Mayol, after his death in 2001, as an enduring symbol for the "Big Blue" generation. The story was heavily adapted for cinema. In real life, Mayol lived from 1927 to 2001 and Maiorca retired from diving to politics in the 1980s. Both set no-limits category deep diving records below 100 metres, and Mayol was indeed involved in scientific research into human aquatic potential, but neither reached 400 feet as portrayed in the film, and they were not direct competitors

 

TKO

Veteran Member
Primer. Low budget time travel movie but won tons of awards...
Two engineers, Aaron and Abe, supplement their day jobs with entrepreneurial tech projects, working out of Aaron's garage. During one such research effort, involving electromagnetic reduction of objects' weight, the two men accidentally discover an 'A-to-B' causal loop side-effect: objects left in the weight-reducing field exhibit temporal anomalies, proceeding normally (from time 'A,' when the field was activated, to time 'B,' when the field is powered off), then backwards (from 'B' back to 'A') in a continuously repeating sequence, such that objects can leave the field in the present, or at some previous point. Abe and Aaron repeat Abe's six-hour experiment multiple times over multiple days, making profitable same-day stock trades armed with foreknowledge of the market's performance. The duo's divergent personalities – Abe cautious and controlling, Aaron impulsive and meddlesome – put subtle strain on their collaboration and friendship. Additionally, the time travel is taxing on Abe and Aaron's bodies; effectively their days become 36 hours long when including the extra time afforded by the box. As the film progresses, the two men begin to notice alarming side effects of time travel which take the form of earbleeds. Later, they notice their handwriting progressively worsening.(wikipedia)

The Boys from Brazil. Nazi hunter sci fi movie.
1978 science fiction thriller film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. It stars Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, and features James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, Anne Meara, Denholm Elliott, and Steve Guttenberg in supporting roles. The film is a British-American co-production and is based on the 1976 novel of the same title by Ira Levin. It was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Ezra Lieberman, an aging Nazi hunter, learns of a secret organization of Third Reich war criminals and neo-Nazis holding clandestine meetings in Paraguay. Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Auschwitz doctor, is part of the organization. He leads a mysterious project to assassinate ninety-four aging, low-level, male civil servants in different countries throughout the world. Upon investigating several suspicious deaths of civil servants, Lieberman is amazed to find that the adopted sons of the dead men, now teenagers, share an uncanny resemblance, including blue eyes and black hair. It transpires that, using samples of Adolf Hitler's DNA.(wikipedia)
 

PghPanther

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Perhaps the strangest most disturbing film I've ever seen.........yet no real sex, little if any violence and foul language....

"The Rain People" - a very early Francis Ford Coppla movie (Steve Speilberg worked as an aid on the film).......staring a very young Shirley Knight, James Caan and Robert Duvall..

see for yourself.........

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prM45OuIOQM



Also the movie "Corn Dog Man".......................................starts out funny as hell and then ...........well watch it so I don't spoil it.
 

1911user

Veteran Member
Stalker 1979 by Andrei Tarkovsky

A Soviet science fiction film about strange happenings at a sealed off area reminiscent of Chernobyl. A stalker is one who guides people into the highly restricted zone.
 
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Blacknarwhal

Let's Go Brandon!
UHF with Weird Al . There was something unsettling about that movie.

WAB

Twinkie weiner sandwiches? Oh yeah. That's crazy.

Oh, you mean like teaching poodles how to fly!

And for my money, the absolute weirdest movie I ever saw was "Crazy Lips." It's a Japanese apocalypse movie.

Crazy Lips is a Japanese comedy horror film directed by Hirohisa Sasaki from 2000. It follows a young woman who, after her brother is accused of decapitating four schoolgirls, goes to a psychic in an effort to prove his innocence, only to find things spiraling out of control.

...and believe me, they spiral out of control. Man do they EVER.
 

PghPanther

Has No Life - Lives on TB
UHF with Weird Al . There was something unsettling about that movie.

WAB

UHF??.................I wouldn't watch that......since I don't believe in flying saucers.

(psst...that a Firesign Threater comedy record reference........hehe)
 

Loretta Van Riet

Trying to hang out with the cool kids.
Sci-Fi thriller- Ex Machina. Made in 2014. Did win one academy award.

Caleb, a 26 year old programmer at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence.

Scary good!
 
Sci-Fi thriller- Ex Machina. Made in 2014. Did win one academy award.

Caleb, a 26 year old programmer at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence.

Scary good!
Saw that a couple of weeks ago. Excellent.
 

Marthanoir

TB Fanatic
So here I am, another night of Vicodin-inspired insomnia. I’m spinning through movies I might watch, and ran across a truly “strange” film: “In Time.” The synopsis is below. It inspired me to start this thread for fellow insomniacs.

What is your favorite strange / bizarre film? Tell us why you like it, and please provide a brief synopsis.

Thanks!


In a future where time is money and the wealthy can live forever, Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is a poor man who rarely has more than a day's worth of life on his time clock. When he saves Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) from time thieves, Will receives the gift of a century. However, such a large transaction attracts the attention of the authorities, and when Will is falsely accused of murder, he must go on the run, taking the daughter (Amanda Seyfried) of an incredibly wealthy man with him.



Welcome to a world where time has become the ultimate currency. You stop aging at 25, but there's a catch: you're genetically-engineered to live only one more year, unless you can buy your way out of it. The rich "earn" decades at a time (remaining at age 25), becoming essentially immortal, while the rest beg, borrow or steal enough hours to make it through the day. When a man from the wrong side of the tracks is falsely accused of murder, he is forced to go on the run with a beautiful hostage. Living minute to minute, the duo's love becomes a powerful tool in their war against the system.

watched "In Time" again the other night for the umpteenth time,
 

Dennis Olson

Chief Curmudgeon
_______________
Pleasantville is a really nice soft comedy. I really liked it. Dark City is one that,mwhile I enjoyed it, you have to be in need of a REALLY dark film to appreciate it. It’s beyond bizarre. Never warmed up to Ex Machina.
 

Marthanoir

TB Fanatic
Strange Days - Former policeman Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) has moved into a more lucrative trade: the illegal sale of virtual reality-like recordings that allow users to experience the emotions and past experiences of others. While the bootlegs typically contain tawdry incidents, Nero is shocked when he receives one showing a murder. He enlists a friend, bodyguard Mace (Angela Bassett), to help find the killer -- and the two soon stumble upon a vast conspiracy involving the police force Nero once worked for.
 

Dennis Olson

Chief Curmudgeon
_______________
In the same genre as Strange Days, the film “Brainstorm.” Scientists can record people’s brainwaves and others can play them back and relive the experiences. Louise’s Fletcher plays one of the scientists. She has a heart condition, and one night while working alone, she has a massive heart attack. she manages to put on the headset and press record as she’s dying. The tape when played back shows the entrance to the afterlife. Truly bizarre.
 

Mtsilverback

Veteran Member
Altered Carbon, Swap into another body and time and space is no longer a barrier.

River World, what happens when you die?
 
watched "In Time" again the other night for the umpteenth time,
Watched it twice. Bizarre. Like the “arm wrestling”. Whoever’s arm is on top is draining off opponent’s clock and adding to his own. You hit zero, you die.
His foxy “25 year old mother” a true MILF, died an untimely death (groan) when she didn’t have bus fare and couldn’t meet him in time to borrow some time. Was literally feet away from him when she clocked out (sorry, had to do it)
 
What kind of genetic engineering leads to being born with a digital clock embedded in your forearm?
Can you spell mRNA, children?
I knew you could.
 

Marthanoir

TB Fanatic
Watched it twice. Bizarre. Like the “arm wrestling”. Whoever’s arm is on top is draining off opponent’s clock and adding to his own. You hit zero, you die.
His foxy “25 year old mother” a true MILF, died an untimely death (groan) when she didn’t have bus fare and couldn’t meet him in time to borrow some time. Was literally feet away from him when she clocked out (sorry, had to do it)

Foxy :D

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