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Author Topic: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?  (Read 16944 times)

MilesAhead

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The most amusing flick I've seen in awhile is District 9

Marrying the boss's daughter does have its perils.



ljbirns

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2010, 07:50 PM »
1964 : I and another guy were Assistant Manager Trainees.  I became an Assistant Manager.  He married the chairman of The Board's  daughter and became a VP

Ahh   the perils  .......
Lew

Deozaan

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2010, 09:02 PM »
Well, let's see:

Millions - Really odd how the kid sees "Saints" who don't seem very saintly to me. But really a heartwarming story.
K-PAX - The story of a psychologist and his patient who says he's from another planet called K-PAX. Is he really or is it a psychological disorder?
Martian Child - A story about a troubled orphan who says he's from Mars and the sci-fi author who adopts him. Another heartwarming story.
The Fountain - A story about the fountain of youth/tree of life. There are three time periods in this movie. The question I have is, what really happened? What parts are real and what parts are fantasy? I'm pretty sure the "past" is just a book she wrote. But is the futuristic stuff really the future of the main storyline (approx. present-day), or just weird trippy stuff added for visual effects/drama?
Speed Racer - I just saw this one a few weeks ago for the first time. It's a live action movie based on the old anime (back when anime was still known as Japanimation) series. This is a film where (if you're a deep thinker about movies, like me) you just have to let go and realize it's campy and cheesy on purpose as an homage and in satire of the cartoon. Very colorful, very wild and fun, with plenty of humor, racing action, and even a decent story. IMO, this is a group movie. That is, the more people watching it, the more fun it is to see.


nosh

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #3 on: July 14, 2010, 11:46 PM »
I loved District 9! Loved the grittiness and realism... not often seen in this genre.

I remember being blown away the first time I viewed The Usual Suspects, the last scene gave me goosebumps then.

Another movie that had a big impact on me... possibly the creepiest flick I've seen after The Exorcist (and it doesn't even fall into the horror genre) is David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.

Emma Morales

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2010, 04:02 AM »
The most amusing flick I've seen in awhile is District 9

Marrying the boss's daughter does have its perils.




Ou yeah, specially if daddy is some kind of capo di tutti capi :D

Btw, District 9 is great! Great photography, good acting and great special effects.
But somehow I expect that UFO, which fly over few galaxy, would be harder to destroy with simple normal rocket  :) 

Paul Keith

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2010, 10:46 AM »
Not sure I would call Speed Racer the movie a homage. It barely had the feel of the original and there was no car-fu.

A satire true. I would even go as far as call it a parody but homage... well I'm just pointing this out to show the complexity of saying odd or different.

Personally I think there are tons of movies people can consider odd but may not appeal and be considered crud or silly by majority of people.

Again, personally instead of a list - I would refer people to three directors: "classic" David Cronenberg, Takahashi Miike and Ed Wood.

These three guys in my opinion hold the mainstream sanity line for odd and different vs. approachable movies. That is, if you find the movies by these directors as "not odd" but "normal" then you're probably ready for the odd stuff like The Holy Moutain

That said many of these are still hit or miss. For example I couldn't sit through The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser by Werner Herzog no matter how revolutionary of a director he was and with that one movie I decided I wasn't going to like his other movies because of so much praise for that movie.

MilesAhead

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2010, 02:28 PM »
Another one that I can watch over and over is Shaolin Soccer

This flick got me hooked on Stephen Chow films. I think it's still his best work. Total genius.

edit: but you have to make sure you watch the 112 minute version.  There's a shorter version out there.  This version eviscerates the film by cutting out the entire funny sequence when Vicki Zhao Wei shows off her make-over. There are some other differences that change the whole gist of the film afa motivation and character development.  Looking on Net Flix it seems the one they have is the 87 minute crap version.

However I believe the good cut was used for the BluRay.

This film gets to me right from the intro with the homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey
(another of my all-time favorites.)

« Last Edit: July 15, 2010, 02:39 PM by MilesAhead »

MilesAhead

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #7 on: July 15, 2010, 02:42 PM »
The most amusing flick I've seen in awhile is District 9

Marrying the boss's daughter does have its perils.




Ou yeah, specially if daddy is some kind of capo di tutti capi :D

-Emma Morales (July 15, 2010, 04:02 AM)

'ayyyyyyyyy, sometimes ya' gadda' do whut ya' gadda' do!!



40hz

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #8 on: July 15, 2010, 06:53 PM »
In Bruges...

The Irish hit-men Ken and Ray are sent by the Londoner mobster Harry Waters to the medieval Belgium city of Bruges in Christmas after an awry job in a London church.

bruges_3.gif

It's got: murdered priests, contract killers, drugs, Dutch prostitutes, anarchist little people, skinheads, a movie crew, eye injuries, sexy girls, philosophical mobsters, Canadians - and the charming city of Bruges during Yuletide! What more could you possibly want?

Violent, twisted, brutal - yet hysterically funny and somehow oddly...endearing.

I'm generally not a fan of crime movies unless they're complex capers like The Score or Inside Man. But I really liked this film. I don't know how director Martin McDonagh managed to pull it off, but you come away from this picture liking every character in the story - with the possible exception of an obnoxious ticket taker and a couple of yuppie tourists.

This film is a contradiction in terms. It's a "feel good movie" about very bad things.



- and -



Once

once.jpg

A week in the life of an unnamed Dublin street busker (and vacuum repairman); and an unnamed Czech immigrant (and sometime pianist). One of the few truly intelligent and believable romance stories - with a very unique ending.

Like Chinatown, the full meaning of the film's title only becomes apparent at the end of the picture.

My GF ordered it on a lark from NetFlix, expecting it to be some lightweight indie "chick flick" we could watch when we weren't up for anything too thought-provoking or heavy.

To our surprise it turned out to be one of the better movies we've seen in the last year.  :Thmbsup:

« Last Edit: July 15, 2010, 07:13 PM by 40hz »

MilesAhead

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #9 on: July 15, 2010, 08:32 PM »
Men Who Stare At Goats

Since Starman I guess I get sucked into quirky [url=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000313/[/url]Jeff Bridges films.




Edvard

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #10 on: July 16, 2010, 01:50 AM »
The Prince of Pennsylvania.
This one and River's Edge are the only Keanu Reeves films I can stomach (well, ok, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure wedges in there somehow as well...) but this one keeps more in line with the topic.
Rupert Marshetta (Keanu Reeves) doesn't want to follow in his father's coal-mining footsteps so he and his lover Carla kidnap Rupert's father to gain access to the family money. The plan backfires when nobody in the family wants his father back. They find out that his father has already sold the land without the knowledge of his family. The police track Rupert and his father to the mine, where he had planned to blow up the portable toilet where he thinks his father has hidden the money.
I always chuckle at the scene where Rupert's father tries to get him to drink the coffee Rupert has previously drugged.

Gwen7

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #11 on: July 16, 2010, 06:56 PM »
The Big Lebowski

so much has been said about this movie that i'll only add two more words - watch it. :-))

MilesAhead

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #12 on: July 17, 2010, 01:23 AM »
The Prince of Pennsylvania.

...

Wow!! That's a strange one alright.  Seems like ever since Woodstock, focusing on the Port-O-San is, er, stock footage, for flicks.  Strange.  :)

MilesAhead

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #13 on: July 17, 2010, 01:35 AM »
Just about any film associated with this guy is weird:

http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Beat_Takeshi

Sonatine, Hana-bi and A Scene at the Sea are interesting.  And of course Battle Royale.. many others.

otieatkins

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #14 on: August 13, 2010, 10:42 PM »
It's kind of an oldie but will always remain one of my favorites. The flick is Harold and Maude.  Ruth Gordon was SO Ruth Gordon. I felt and believed every word she said. She showed that love really can exist for us oldies, and that love is so much more intricate than the youngsters would ever believe. A charming heartfelt classic and, no, it's not just a "Chick" flick - it's a sensitive loving "any" person flick.

Deozaan

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #15 on: August 14, 2010, 12:55 AM »
It's kind of an oldie but will always remain one of my favorites. The flick is Harold and Maude.  Ruth Gordon was SO Ruth Gordon. I felt and believed every word she said. She showed that love really can exist for us oldies, and that love is so much more intricate than the youngsters would ever believe. A charming heartfelt classic and, no, it's not just a "Chick" flick - it's a sensitive loving "any" person flick.

Oh yeah! I really liked Harold and Maude. It was my favorite movie for a while, some many years ago. Come to think of it, I was pretty young when I saw the movie and probably didn't understand most of the connotations. I just thought all the fake/attempted/failed suicide attempts were really strange and humorous, but then again I've always had a kind of morbid sense of humor.

(Harold sure is ugly these days!)
« Last Edit: August 14, 2010, 12:57 AM by Deozaan »

MilesAhead

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #16 on: August 14, 2010, 02:35 AM »
Another oddball flick I like very much is Valley of Flowers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0392883/

The special effects are low budget.  But the music is hypnotic. Very unusual flick. I don't even want to say anything about the plot. It's best to watch it free of preconceptions. Just lose yourself in the music.


Shades

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #17 on: August 14, 2010, 06:09 PM »
Lately I liked 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'. Another pearl on the crown of Terry Gilliam.

MilesAhead

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #18 on: August 14, 2010, 08:43 PM »
H&M was a funny flick. I remember when it came out everyone raved about it. I didn't get to see it until years later. The kid certainly knew how to put the kibosh on a blind date! :)

grapeshot

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #19 on: August 14, 2010, 09:08 PM »
A couple of movies that blew me away are The Fall and The Brothers Bloom.

The Fall is about a movie stunt man recuperating from a failed stunt, and a little girl, who's also in the hospital while healing from a broken arm.  She is ambulatory, he is bed ridden.  He starts telling her a story, and pretty soon we begin to see the story as it grows in her mind.  The movie shows us everything from the little girl's point of view while allowing us, with our adult perspective, to recognize the deeper things that are really going on.  The story grows in meaning and depth, until we realize that the fantasy and the real world events are intertwined.  The director traveled to the ends of the world to bring indelible images to the screen -- nothing here is done with CGI.  It is the most beautiful, eye-catching movie I've seen in a very long time.  Despite one of the main characters being a little girl, the story is for adults, and by the time the story ends you'll have examined themes of life and death.   I might add that don't let the deep themes fool you, it is also a very entertaining movie, with an especially colorful story-within-a-story.  

The Brothers Bloom is a story about two con men who have grown rich at their game, but now one of them has grown tired of the games and wants to leave.  So the other devises one last con, to fool a rich girl out of some money.  All goes well, until one of them falls for her.  Ah, but it turns out that this, too, was planned for.  The movie is full of interesting, quirky characters, charmingly offbeat locations (Prague, Montenegro, New Jersey), and is told with a dark, dry wit.  It's like a Wes Anderson movie, only deeper, and by the time the movie ends, you'll realize that it's been about love and loyalty all along.

For fans of dark humor, I can also recommend a few more choices:

In The Loop is a dark comedy about politics.  It's based on the British series The Thick Of It, and is told in a fast-paced faux documentary style, and you have to pay real close attention to figure out what's really going on.  The premise is that politics is all about spin and PR, and the story takes place as the US and the UK are about to drift into a war.  If the story resembles real life, I'm sure that it is on purpose.  The characters are all scheming for political advantage while simultaneously preening for the press. (Careful, there's a lot of foul language, which I found funny, but is not for the faint of heart.)  I liked this so much that I troubled myself to hunt up the British series, and watched it in complete fascination, not the least because of the artistic heights that the use of foul language reaches.

You Kill Me, starring Tea Leoni and Ben Kingsley, is a dryly funny movie about a Buffalo hitman who's sent by his family to the west coast to dry out.  He takes up work in a morgue, and meets a beautiful but sharp tongued woman.  IMO, the idea of making a living in Buffalo as a hitman, or going to the west coast to dry out and THEN getting a job in a morgue should give you an inkling of the type of movie this is.  (If you don't see the inherent humor in this sort of incongruity, you might want to give this movie a miss.  It's humor is very dry.)

If really dry and really dark comedies are what strikes your fancy, take a look at A Film With Me In It.  It's a black farce starring Dylan Moran (Black Books, Run Fat Boy Run, Shaun of the Dead) who's the best friend of a hapless actor played by Mark Doherty (no, I don't know what else he's been in, either) who cannot get a job.  The film has only six major characters, who enter and and then accidentally die with alarming frequency.  I know that doesn't sound funny, but yet it is. I don't like farces, or comedies that are this black, but this movie held my attention at the sheer nerve of creating a story this bleak, while so deeply funny.  (Er, I caught this on pay-per-view, and I see it's not out yet on DVD.  I see no ETA for it, either.  Sorry to get your hopes up.)

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. - Groucho Marx

Deozaan

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #20 on: August 15, 2010, 01:14 AM »
Another one I was reminded of by Harold and Maude is Benny & Joon, in which "A mentally ill young woman finds her love in an eccentric man who models himself after Buster Keaton."

Back when I first saw it, I thought they both were mentally ill, but I guess Sam is just eccentric.

MilesAhead

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Re: Flicks that struck you as odd or different in a good way?
« Reply #21 on: August 15, 2010, 01:34 AM »
Just about anything by Sabu is worth watching.  Postman Blues, Blessing Bell, Dangan Runner, Monday etc..

Postman Blues was the first one I saw.  I was hooked. :)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0848992/