Ak-cher-lee, one character speaks in modern English (but isn’t understood by anyone else).
:). I’m only sad because there isn’t an obvious word to replace it…I guess “one-of-a-kind” will do.
So was the dog, for that matter.
If you liked that one, try the sequel, Manderlay, also by vonTrier.
In 1933, after leaving Dogville, while traveling with her father (Willem Dafoe) and his gangsters to the southern U.S. , Grace Margaret Mulligan (Bryce Dallas Howard) sees a slave ready to be punished on a property called Manderlay.
“Sult”
(if anyone knows a movie like this, I’d appreciate it)
I’m going to nominate Swiss Army Man. A young man is marooned on a small island until one day in despair he decides to commit suicide. Just as he’s hanging himself, a drowned corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) washes up on shore. It starts to fart, propelling itself around in the water. The guy gets on top of it and rides it like a jet ski to land. They take refuge in a cave, where he learns that the corpse can be used for all kinds of things, like providing drinkable water. Eventually, although still dead, the corpse learns how to speak, and his companion teaches him about life. And then it gets really weird.
lol @ “And then it gets really weird”
Weirder than a corpse learning to speak? Is this a favorite of yours? Is it a dialogue movie? “My Dinner With Andre” style?
There is nothing more unique than The Lobster. I work in post. Nothing is more original or more disgusting. I rate this film in one of my top ten favorite films of all time.
Napoleon vu par Abel Gance - 1927 - A 5 hour experience that requires a great hall, three projectors and a symphony orchestra. It was produced at the San Francisco Opera House in the 80’s and has been done in the US a few times since. Definitely unique.
Windjammer - 1958 - Louis de Rochemont lll - Three camera Cinemiracle production with a monster sound system. Starts with a B&W image of a ship on the ocean and, once you are sucked in, the sound system slowly comes up with the wind in the rigging and the screen expands hugely to put you on board Christian Radich under full sail. A unique experience.
Berlin - Walter Ruttman - 1927 - A silent film that is unique by time, place and structure. It is a montage of scenes (1927 Berlin) shown without comment. The experience is mined by the viewer. The material is just daily life in Berlin. It’s interesting how common were Landaulette bodied cars. A style almost unknown today. Lot’s of trains and horses.
Triumph of the Will - 1935 - Leni Riefenstahl - Documentary of the Nazi Party rally in Nuremburg 1934. A unique view of raw history told without narration.
I once brought Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes home from the library. The DVD is very much not a tale for children; I was totally unprepared for the softcore porn in the middle!
I’ll bite.
I’ve seen it. It’s strange, no doubt, but from your experience what is so special about it?
You’ve seen some other movie where people get changed into animals if they’re not in a relationship?
There may be some other movies that are as bizarre, but not anything like the same way. In that sense it’s certainly unique.
You don’t really need all that to see it – although I would’ve liked to have seen it that way. I saw it in an art movie house. The score was recorded on the film, and when they got to the “widescreen” part, the image bled off onto the walls of the cinema. Definitely not a peak experience. But, in fairness, that widescreen part is only a few minutes long, out of the entire film.
Pihu (2016), made in India, is a tremendously unique movie. It follows two year old Pihu, who must fend for herself, alone in her home with her mother unconscious and unresponsive. Though the child is very bright and resourceful, you realize how dangerous a home setting is for an unsupervised 2 year old. The director and filmmakers deserve credit for an amazing job. How they got the child to do, say and react to everything to create this film is quite amazing, as is the young child herself.
That reminds me of The Florida Project, though the kids there are about 6.
The movie is shot from the point of view of a bright kid whose single mother is unemployed / a strip club dancer / a prostitute, living precariously in a Florida motel.
It’s an exceptionally good movie, but hard to watch.
Often shot from the point of view of the young children who roam the properties and nearby streets with either no adult supervision, or “supervision” so incompetent they might be better off on their own, “The Florida Project” does a masterful job of exploring a world rarely explored in movies: the almost completely dream-free lives of poverty-class millennials (many of them parents) who barely get by on part-time, hourly wage jobs and/or misdemeanor-level moneymaking schemes.
In a remarkable performance free of self-conscious, child-actor mannerisms, Brooklynn Prince plays Moonee, a girl of about 6 who is bright and filled with energy and sometimes adorable and cheerful — but also manipulative and dishonest and a little mean-spirited and temperamental.
It’s film that’ll make you wince at times, and you’ll most likely not want to see twice, but seeing it once is an experience you’ll not soon forget.
True Napoleon and Windjammer aren’t much on a small screen but they are indeed unique (one of a kind) in their original context.
I’ve seen other movies and TV shows about a dystopian society that enforces a silly arbitrary rule.
I agree that The Lobster is certainly a distinctive example of that genre.
I’ve seen it too. It had no overt sexual content, but did you notice that all the electronics were contemporary to when the movie was made, and all the hair and clothing styles were from the 1980s?
More disgusting than A Serbian Film?
I love, love, love this movie, but it was pretty ordinary for the films I used to project when I was in college, and worked at an art house. Really great film, though.
Another great film, and if we could say “most unique,” to mean “outstanding, even among unique films,” or something, it would definitely be in the running. One of the few films I watched every single time I showed it.
Another very good film-- not one I saw as a projectionist, just a film I saw one weekend at a rerun house in the city when I lived in New York. Like Insignificance, great art house fare, but in that realm, not really special.
Here is my own nomination:
Unique in several ways, and also bizarre beyond description, which may be what the OP was going for with the term “most unique” (maybe; I’m not a mind-reader), is a film I had to watch a couple of times just to understand: Tales from the Gimli Hospital. Link is to its Wikipedia page, because it has a fairly good plot summary, and no, it’s not kidding.
When you read it, bear this mind: there are three things going on stylistically. The scenes in the frame story; the scenes in the hospital (which doesn’t look like a hospital-- it looks more like a chicken coop scaled up for humans); and the outdoor scenes with the same characters in the hospital story, are all different.
Imagine the frame story filmed by Tod Browning a la Freaks; the hospital scenes filmed like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; and the outdoor scenes as Spike Lee doing a send-up of Toho films (in B&W, of course). All special effects are as conceived by Ray Harryhausen, but filmed on Ed Wood’s budget.
I worked in that art house for a good six years-- my senior year of high school, three years of college (not the year I spent in DC), and again when I was in town to take care of my aunt; and even after I stopped having regular nights, I still filled in whenever I could, until I got the job with the school system, and had to be up too early in the morning. And I was a movie buff long before that, not to mention one who lived in New York. I have seen a LOT of movies. I even had a job reviewing them for a while ($25 per review). It was a local publication that came out once a month, and folded in two years, but still.
Seen a LOT of movies.
I have seen many unique movies. Right now, I am watching The Atomic Cafe. Maybe you don’t consider it a movie since it is a documentary without much comment. Amazing and powerful nonetheless.