One distinctive movie that has stuck with me for a long time after seeing it once is Crime Wave by John Paizs (not to be confused with the similarly-titled Sam Raimi movie). It’s about a guy in Winnipeg who wants to write “colour crime” stories, but he can only come up with beginnings and endings. Like a number of other movies mentioned here, fantasy and reality start to blur together in the end.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman with Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep was similar.
One of my top ten.
Mars Attacks! (1996) - The only live-action feature film I know of based on a set of trading cards that were not stickers. As such, it is totally - not “mostly” - unique.
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
Stanley Kramer produces a Dr. Seuss musical. You can’t take your eyes off the screen.
And, from the same guy that wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation. The only movie that’s about a screenwriter in the process of writing the movie he’s in, breaking all the rules he vows he’ll never break. Plus, it’s unique in that it’s the only movie, AFAIK, where the Oscar for screenwriting went to somebody who doesn’t exist. (Not counting screenwriters writing under an alias or pen name, of course.)
It also bears the distinction of being a musical in which the songs (or at least most of them) are the least interesting part of the film. The ballet sequences are brilliant though, especially the dungeon one.
According to imdb:
The budget for the entire film was around $7000. Most of the money was spent on film stock.
IIRC the two leads were about the same build, so they had two shirts for them, They’d just switch so they weren’t wearing the same one for scene after scene after scene.
I’d nominate “Quest for Fire” because it has no dialog, in a way. The caveman types talk to each other, but…
Special language forms were created by novelist Anthony Burgess, while patterns of movement and gesture were developed by anthropologist Desmond Morris.[3] The more advanced language of the Ivaka was largely that of the Cree/Inuit native people of northern Canada, which caused some amusement among those in this group who saw the film, since the words have little to do with the plot.[4]
So even if you understood the language, it wouldn’t help.
Which immediately made me recall the work of Caroline Leaf who painted on glass, pushing/removing paint one frame at a time. Beautifully done, and she told a sweet story, too, in The Street.
(So glad it’s on YouTube. The last time I saw it, in the '70s, I could only find it on 16mm film, so I had to borrow an old film projector to watch it.)
And Naqoyqatsi. And then there’s Baraka and Samsara. It’s kind of a genre now.
I’ll nominate Enter The Void:
I’ve seen many of the movies mentioned, and have seen a few mentioned that I haven’t seen before that I must see now. It’s really nice to know that I didn’t hallucinate Twice Upon a Time.
My nomination is Schizopolis.
Soderbergh kind of went all-out in every direction with that one. I still love it, especially the guitar music used in it (and I still haven’t found out who did those tracks). I have it on VHS, need to eventually buy a DVD of it.
They are both movies about making a movie, but otherwise they’re completely different.
In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, there are love stories between the main characters inside and outside the historical movie and the two reflect, contrast with, and compliment each other.
In Tristram Shandy, the events inside and outside the movie have no connection.
The complexities are far greater, with the inner movie jumping forward and backward in time; Steve Coogan playing both Tristram Shandy and his father, Walter Shandy; Tristram addressing the camera, talking to his younger self, etc.
Not to mention the incidents like Tristram as a young boy being circumcised by a falling window sash while peeing out the window (an actual incident from the book).
Outside the movie, besides rivalries between the actors, and Steve Coogan’s affair with a girl on the set, there’s also a dream sequence where Steve Coogan dreams of a non-existent scene in the movie.
Strangely enough, when you actually watch the movie it’s far less confusing than it sounds. It all hangs together and makes sense, and you’re never in any doubt about what’s happening and how it all fits together.
That’s the genius of it. Like the book itself, it seems ridiculous and chaotic, but the more you get into it, the more sense it makes, and the more you care about the characters.
Roger Ebert gave it his top rating:
A.O. Scott in the NYT also gave it a glowing review:
I haven’t seen either, so I can only comment that they’re both about filming a movie within a movie.
My first thought was The Lobster. I’m pretty sure my three-word review after viewing was “That was… Unique.”
Something which I only became aware of thanks to the Internet: the very weird Japan World Cup.
A series of DVDs which reportedly feature AI-generated horses (and other things) on which viewers place bets. Yes, these really exist.
Freaks: both mesmerizing and appalling. I don’t think there has ever been another film that starred real-life human oddities. Here’s the trailer:
I’ve long thought that this belonged on a double bill with Dr. T and the Women
I was working in our town’s oublic school one summer (painting classrooms) and they screened this film for free for the local kids. Three janitors stood in the back of the auditorium, watching in amazement. After three pudgy guys dressed in primary color suits did a weird musical number, one of them said to another “Can you believe guys get paid for this?”
Truly a Money for Nothing moment.
There is a season of American Horror Story that does.
Unless you count Gary Busey movies.
I was really into Garbage Pail cards when I was a kid but I didn’t even know they made a movie based on the property until 3-4 years ago. How could I have missed it?