Dark Passage, which started out in first-person perspective (for something like half an hour). Also, the star’s face wasn’t shown for the first hour of the movie, which was some concern to the owner of the studio, as he felt people wouldn’t go to the movie if they couldn’t look at the actor’s face. The star: Humphrey Bogart.
Toy Story doesn’t seem like a unique movie now because so many other movies have followed it. But when it came out back in 1995, making an entire feature movie with computer animation was revolutionary.
To Be Or Not To Be (1942), the Jack Benny, Carole Lombarde film directed by Ernst Lubitsch looks like just another screwball comedy to us, but when you remember that is was made before anyone knew how WWII would turn out, it’s very black, and black comedy was new then. It’s considered a great film now, but it got panned in 1942.
The Paramount *Alice in Wonderland *also got panned (and lost so much money, that it’s the reason MGM was hesitant to make The Wizard of Oz), but it’s quite surreal, and in a style that wouldn’t be revisited for decades. Again, it looks kind of ordinary if you have seen a lot of surrealist movies, like Brazil and 12 Monkeys, but you have to consider it in terms of 1933, when it was the first attempt to bring the feeling of surrealist paintings to life, and also the only “Alice” that was true to the darker aspects of Lewis Carroll’s mind until Tim Burton tried it.
A really bizarre movie that as far as I’m concerned, hasn’t been touched by any of the other films listed was a 1988 film called Tales from the Gimli Hospital.
In 1971, George Lucas made a full film out of his student film, THX 1138. It’s more style than substance, IMO, but it sounds like what you are asking for. So does the 1965* Alphaville*.
Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders films are highly stylized, and generally very good. So are the films of Jim Jarmusch, although the earlier the better. His full-length Stranger than Paradise (1984) is brilliant, but it’s brilliant in the way it tells a story of fairly ordinary people. If you are looking for things like The Matrix, Stranger than Paradise isn’t for you-- but if you are serious just looking for stylized films, regardless of plot, then check it out. I love this film.
If you like silent movies, but haven’t seen *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari *or Metropolis, you should. If you haven’t seen Metropolis in a long time, see the version Netflix is streaming, because a few years ago, an unknown print was discovered in Argentina that was in bad shape, but had lots of scenes that were not in any other extant print. The version on Netflix incorporates these new scenes, restored as much as was possible, so it’s the most complete print that has been available to the public since about 1932. Based on a script that still exists, it’s about 95% complete.
True, the technique had been used before but was generally limited to only a few scenes in each movie. As the article itself says:
The extent to which the actors and the animated characters interacted was unprecedented.
Wizard of Oz
I had a bit of a Digital Backlot binge a while back… Started with Immortel (which is a damn good movie, and varies enough from Bilal’s original comic to remain interesting), then followed up with Kiriya Kazuaki’s Casshern and Goemon. Goemon’s the better movie, but Casshern did the most with the digital backlot for the sake of visuals. Confusing as hell (mostly due to the translation being badly botched*), but absolutely gorgeous.
- 20 minutes were cut from the movie for the international release. In what was left large parts of the dialogue were left untranslated, or translated strangely, meaning key concepts never actually came across.
Aye Goemon is a cool flick. Kinda stupid stereotypical story, but cool visuals and a better-than-usual script give it a lot of loft.
If you like that kind of thing and are down with the DB, I highly recommend another film I mentioned, Bunraku.
Brick, in style and content was new
a drug dealer murder mystery noir moive set in high school…
Here’s an animated film with a unique style, made entirely on a single computer using a video game.
The Time Travellers
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
I’d forgotten about Brick. Cool take on a noir film.
I’ll mention Woody Allen’s Interiors from his Euro-derivative phase. In it, the sets and costumes gradually reflect the emotional decline of the characters.
Rashomon
Along the lines of “unique ideas which should have remained ideas,” I’ll say the style of 2008’s Speed Racer was quite interesting in a flashy, hypnagogic sense – at least for the first 15 to 20 minutes, after which I yanked out the DVD and sent it back to Netflix. (God, what an awful movie!)
I wanted to mention a few more, by some controversial directors, and some films that are controversial themselves for sex & violence content. I don’t want to derail the thread into a debate, so please, start a new thread if you want to talk about whether it’s OK to watch Roman Polanski films.
Anyway:
Zelig
The Tenant
Blue Velvet
Eraserhead
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
One somewhat off-the-wall suggestion: The Raid (also known as The Raid: Redemption).
It’s an action movie, which is a common enough genre. But the makers of this movie decided to strip it down of everything except the action. It’s 101 minutes long and I think there are less than two minutes of non-action scenes.
This has been much-copied, but it was extraordinary when is came out in 1950. Try to hold that in mind when you watch it-- and you should, if you haven’t. It’s a great film.
Herzog is one of my favorite directors. I’m in the middle of a personal Herzog film fest on NetFlix to see some of his more obscure films. His better-known films are strange enough, but some of the others are downright bizarre.
Even Dwarfs Started Small features an all-dwarf cast in a story of rebellion set on a desolate volcanic island.
In Heart of Glass, Herzog hypnotized almost all of the cast members so they act as if they are dreamwalking.
Every Man for Himself and God Against All and Stroszek feature Bruno S., an actor who grew up mostly in mental institutions, playing alienated characters. The end of Stroszek features an extended take of a dancing chicken in an arcade.
In The Wild Blue Yonder, Herzog combined footage taken below the ice in Antarctica with some of a space shuttle crew, and added scenes with Brad Dourif playing an alien, in order to put together a strange science fiction tale.
I think some of these films are more interesting as concepts than to actually watch, but they certainly are unique.
It isn’t unique exactly but the movie Far from Heaven was set in the 50s and filmed to look like it was made in the 50s but tackles more modern issues (Interracial relationships and homosexuality).
*Eraserhead *has already been mentioned, but I’ll add another one that kinda sorta is unique, in a similar but different way: Pi. Both make great use of intense black & white photography, but while the first one is deliberately painfully slow, the other is deliberately painfully frenetic.
Oh, also, Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy. Live action, but deliberately made to look like a newspaper cartoon by using nothing but primary colors.