(Accidently hit post instead of hiding the preview, wasn’t confident I could edit in time). It is pretty good and a favorite. Not as much of a favorite as Cha no Aji/The Taste of Tea by the same director (with many of the same actors) but it has the advantage of being fully viewable for free on Youtube:
Unique for its awfulness: 200 Motels, an amateurish, self-indulgent waste of time and film. This despite the fact (my opinion) that it contains Frank Zappa’s best rock/classical fusion music.
The first thing that jumps to mind is the 2004 film Primer. It’s a low-budget sci-fi that is simultaneously painstaking and understated. It’s starts with some smart guys in a garage realizing they have stumbled across the secret to time travel. It feels like watching Steve Jobs or Bill Gates in their old days, on the brink of greatness but not there yet. The setting is so spare and realistic, you feel like you’re just hanging out in a room with these guys. And these guys, they take this great discovery and screw it all to hell. What’s unique about the film is that it does zero handholding. Half of the events are implied rather than seen. It’s confusing as hell on first watch, but there are elaborate graphs and diagrams on the internet that lay out just how complex and intentional it all is. Weird movie, but worth a watch.
The discussion over how one should or should not use the word “unique” ends immediately and should never have started. The intent of the OP is very clear. Please stay on topic.
RickJay
Moderator
I was going to say Koyaanisqatsi but then remembered there was the similar Powaqqatsi. Aren’t all unique films bad by definition? If it was good, it would inspire similar films and no longer be unique.
As these films are unique in different ways, I am unable to rank them to establish one that is “most unique”:
The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) – Polish-made period piece with stories-within-stories structure.
Horrors of Malformed Men (1969) – Not a cheesy Japanese horror film, but a dreamlike drama about an extremely dysfunctional family whose patriarch is determined to build a refuge for the malformed people he creates.
F for Fake (1973) – Orson Welles ruminates on forgers and frauds in a personal essay that is neither altogether a documentary or fiction.
Marquis (1989) – Actors in minimally expressive animal suits play out Bastille-based story centering on the Marquis, a dog with an independently-minded talking penis.
The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993) – An hour of strangeness and mindboggling stop motion in story of title baby taken to secret lab full of weird creatures, escaping and then returning to destroy it.
Mars Attacks! (1996) – Only feature film I know of based on a set of gum cards.
A Scanner Darkly (2006) – Weirdly rotoscoped P.K. Dick story about “Substance D” abusers and a drug agent assigned to bust them.
The Lure (2015) – Polish horror with musical interludes chronicles attempts by two mermaids to assimilate on the surface.
Most Guy Maddin films.
Many Karel Zeman films, including all of those he made in Mystimation.
So many unique titles. I’ll give you your Wax
and your Holy Motors
There have been two movies I remember renting on VHS from Blockbuster…watching…and saying to myself “WTF?” And returning. But couldn’t get out of my mind and went back a day or so later and rented again just to satisfy that weird itch that had grown into somewhat of a fixation on what I had seen.
Those two movies were The Pillow Book and The Heroic Trio.
But as far as “most unique” goes…nothing comes close to House (1977). No, not the American '80’s movie–the Japanese bizarro schoolgirl horror flick.
I’m not sure what I was expecting when I first put in the DVD–certainly not…THAT. The first 20 minutes or so I kept saying to myself “What the fuck am I watching?” I thought I might have gotten the wrong DVD b/c it was progressing like some sort of weird teen girl Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood field trip movie. But then—holy hell. It has to be seen to be believed. Truly one of the most whacked out movies I’ve ever seen. And now one of my all-time favorites.
Trading cards vs. sticker trading cards: are they close enough to be the same? Ostensibly, yes, but it does seem like they are designed to have different functions. Collectors might say they are not the same.
Still, I’m willing to amend my post:
Mars Attacks! (1996) - Only feature film I know of based on a set of trading cards that were not stickers.
+1 for Koyaanisqatsi.
And Eraserhead probably the most confrontingly different ‘proper’ movie, with actors and such.
Plus an honorable mention for Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
“Powaqqatsi” is nowhere near as good as “Koyaanisqatsi”; the latter is absolutely brilliant BUT you have to be able to watch it from start to finish without a break to really appreciate it. There’s a followup called “Nagoyqatsi” but I have not seen it.
I have also seen “Pink Flamingos”, “Eraserhead”, etc. but one of the most bizarre films I’ve ever seen was this one. Its plot can be summed up this way: Disintegration.
That’s almost exactly the same thing that I was going to post.
I will be more specific:
Even Dwarfs Started Small.
Plenty of surreal and weird movies have been posted…
…which shows that ‘surreal and weird’ ≠ ‘unique’.
I don’t know how “unique” it is but The Arrival of Wang has always stuck with me because of the ending. I agree with some of the critics that it would have been better as a short film and seems padded out to feature length, but the twist at the very end is well done.
How about Russian Ark ? 96-minute sequence shot. That can’t be all that common.
It may be unique, but it seems pointless to me.
Does shooting it in one 96 min take make it a better movie?
Would it still be worth watching if it wasn’t shot in one take, or is that its only claim to fame?
Why go to all that trouble for a meaningless technical feat, if it doesn’t add anything to the movie?
[Moderating]
Everyone in this thread knows what the phrase “most unique”, as used by the OP, means, and the debate over that is becoming a hijack. I’m declaring it off-limits. Stick to the topic.
Yes. Or, Strozek. I live in Wisconsin, but after seeing that, I live in Herzog’s Wisconsin — a different place altogether…and yet, it’s closer to reality than the one I “inhabit”… if that makes any sense…