Yep, another movie I found far better than I expected by it’s name. I watched it when I was told it was a must see cult classic. Now, that may just be one persons view but if it isn’t then it’s a decent choice for one.
Fido - A movie about a suburban kid and his pet zombie
The City of Lost Children - A mad scientist kidnaps children so he can steal their dreams. It features a brain in a jar that suffers from headaches, a set of clones who argue about which is the original, a religious cult of blind men, and an evil master of a flea circus.
The Triplets of Belleville - A grandmother who has raised her son to be a bicycle racer must rescue him when he is kidnapped and forced to perform in a bizarre gambling operation. Her mission takes her to a strange land where she teams up with a trio of elderly stage performers. The movie features Bruno, a dog who exists only to eat and bark at trains.
Curdled, the trailer is a complete fail, The lead actress in this movie was wonderful to watch. She was the cab driver who picked up Butch after his fight in Pulp Fiction and was basically in character from Curdled.
Rat Race cracks me up, all the way through, every time. Let’s cult it.
Obscure trivia: you saw the hooker “Cindy” in the buff, in a brief cameo in a prior drama/comedy movie. She was blonde. Can you ID the movie without IMDb? (I did, and I was insufferably pleased with myself for the visual memory.)
I recently found out how they did the very odd color scheme in City of Lost Children - they put all the actors in whiteface, then color corrected them to normal tones, taking all the other colors way off on a skew. Cool.
Sure. Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub in a food-obsessed melancholy-but-great story? Watching them make the omelet and talk about the night before is a great scene; one of many.
Sure - Tampopo, Big Night, Eat Drink Man Woman, Babette’s Feast - lotta good food movies! And if you haven’t seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi, it’s a documentary but fits right in. It’s a bit culty - one of those movies where I mention it and the folks who’ve seen it just immediately go “ooooo - that’s a great documentary!”
I will sign up to join the Volunteers cult. This movie is just a lot of fun. Another great set of quotes:
Chung Mee: Opium is my business. The bridge mean more traffic. More traffic mean more money. More money mean more power.
Lawrence Bourne III: Yeah, well, before I commit any of that to memory, would there be anything in this for me?
Chung Mee: Speed is important in business. Time is money.
Lawrence Bourne III: You said opium was money.
Chung Mee: Money is Money.
Lawrence Bourne III: Well then, what is time again?
Considering the cast I was surprised to have never heard of it before seeing it on Netflix.
I have only had one other person be familiar with this movie when I mentioned it and in spite of the bad reviews and rating, those that watched it all had positive things to say about it.
While it is hard to argue against the negative reviews which point out the emphasis of style over substance and virtually no character development, I still found that watching this movies was an enjoyable experience
The following excerpt from one review might phrase it best
“Bunraku is not quite a good film, but it is surely a bad one worth watching for those who know what they are getting into.”
"In the late 1990s, somewhere in a California desert, a tire named Robert suddenly comes to life. At first, it learns how to stand upright and then how to roll. It comes across a plastic water bottle and, after hesitating, crushes it. It then comes across a scorpion and crushes it. It then comes across a glass beer bottle but is unable to crush it by rolling over it. It then starts to vibrate intensely and psychokinetically causes the bottle to fracture. It then induces a tin can and a rabbit to explode.
The tire then sees a woman (Roxane Mesquida) drive by and attempts to use its powers on her. However, it only succeeds in making her car stall. As the tire begins to roll towards her stalled car, a truck comes by and runs the tire over. This breaks the connection, allowing the woman’s car to start again and she continues on her way. The tire explodes a pied crow, then finds the man that had been driving the truck which ran him over and blows up his head."
The rest of the movie is just plain strange but in a good way.