Not sure about the OP, but that is definitely the movie I was thinking of. Nice find. After I posted I started wondering if I was really thinking of a videogame, and now I know why. It’s both.
Check out the mad year-remembering skills on Ellis!
El Topo (The Mole), by Alejandro Jodorowsky, a phantasmagorical western, is one of the most unique films I’ve ever seen.
The Angry Red Planet, a cheapo SF film from 1959, managed to set itself apart by the weird visual style of Mars (which they refused to show in the trailers for the film). Basically, they solarized the print, then tinted it red, so everything on Mars looks appropriately weird, with bright spots where the shadows should be and such. It’s pretty effective in creating a truly “other world” quality for Mars.
The film also features a surprisingly good piece of good science reasoning in the way they eventually defeat the amoeboid creature at the end.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a film by Pedro Almodovar (and features Antonio Banderas when he was still working in Spain). It isn’t as “different” as other films on the list, but it is the only film I have ever seen that preserves the lighthearted wackiness of the Golden Age Hollywood screwball comedies, while maintaining modern sensibilities. It was actually made in the late 80s, but holds up really well. It has strong performances from all the actors, and definitely a feeling of originality. Plus, it’s straight-up darned good.
Nope, not mentioned yet. First one that came to mind was Run, Lola, Run
A palette of varying styles and all of them work. Great movie.
Not a total hijack, in that it’s tangentially relevant – just came across this exegesis of the visual comedy style of Edgar Wright films, which I’ll spoiler-box due to the presence of profanity in short clips:Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual ComedyIt has a pretty good rundown, with examples, of the ways to use visuals in new or interesting ways (as opposed to the same old clichés you always see). Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has been cited upthread.
No one has mentioned Tarkovsky yet? Master of the slow, continuous takes? Then I’ll nominate Stalker!
Other weird/unique ones:
Begotten. I have never actually managed to sit through the whole thing, but it is unique, for sure.
Kynodontas(Dogtooth). A very disturbing, although quite funny in a horrific way, film, about a family kept in isolation by the father of the family. Visually it’s stunning, and the director manages to make seemingly innocent scenes sickening in a way, I think in large part by his use of colours.
La Jetée. Beautiful short-movie about time-travel, by Chris Marker. All footage consists of still photo’s, with only the narrator actually being understandable, all other voices being mumbled whispers.
And finally, Dog Star Man, by Stan Brakhage. Don’t really know what to say about this, other than it being highly experimental.
Rotoscoping and trying to answer the meaning of life was pretty unique in Waking Life.
By the way, and not to hijack or anything, but I’m having a hard time remembering the name of an artist. He among other things made a lot of animated movies, drawn by hand using charcoal. The funny thing is, he drew many drawings on the same page without erasing them, or atleast not fully, so each frame had this very nice echo while the movie continued going forward. He also did this as moving installations, usually rotating.
Anyone have a clue?
Bladerunner for its visual style.
Are you sure it was charcoal? Because your description sounds similar to the sand animation done by Kseniya Simonova.
Yes! Thanks. I’ve been trying to remember that name for some time now. He got mentioned in a class I had on the topic of expanded cinema.
Another interesting movie is Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail. It’s interesting because it’s a partial talkie. There aren’t very many of those-- they happened because films were made during the transitional period of 1929-1931, and were either made in two versions, with some of the silent footage being used in the talking version, or the director deciding to make a talking film after starting out making a silent film, the latter is what happened with Blackmail.
There are several notable things: the silent footage has a score attached to it, which is unusual, because films weren’t scored for several years into the sound era; the script is simple, with lots of action even in the sound parts that has minimal dialogue; the actress who had been hired to play the lead was Czech, and spoke heavily accented English, so her part was dubbed by someone speaking into a microphone offstage during the actual shooting, but it is expertly done. Most interestingly, there are some “trick” sound parts, that show how clever Hitchcock was, that even the first time he used sound, he was already using it for effect. There is also one scene where it looks like the scene may have been shot as silent footage, and then slowed down somehow. I’m not sure how that could have been accomplished-- I think what happened is that Hitchcock just got the idea of having the actress move slowly, then speeding up the film from his experiments (ultimately unsuccessful) with slowing down his silent footage. It looks surreal-- it’s trying to recreate that feeling you get when something bad is happening, of a minute lasting an hour, and it works really well.
So, the unusual style of the film is at least partially accidental, but it’s still fascinating.
Hitchcock as a director had a very unself-conscious style. It’s there, but you are not quite aware of it, and all his films seems ordinary at first blush.
Anything by Jacques Tati. His visual humor and use of sound were different and very identifiable.
Dick Tracy starring Warren Beatty was designed to look like a comic strip, with big blocks of a few saturated colors. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this approach used in another movie.
A lot have already been covered, Pulp Fiction for mine was a total mind fuck. I had to watch it a second time to make sense of it. Similar to Sin City.
Second that. I can’t believe I didn’t think of Tati.
Also, a Japanese film called Tampopo. Be warned: you will get very hungry.
The Spirit (the more recent version, with Samuel Jackson as the villain), also did this.
Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible and Ivan the Terrible, Part 2 had an interesting style. The characters’ costumes and makeup were very realistic, but the sets and backdrops were very stylized.
My favorite Peter Greenaway movies, Prospero’s Books and The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover, have already been mentioned. Greenaway’s films always have an odd look. You might also try Drowning by Numbers, The Pillow Book, and The Draughtsman’s Contract.