Films You've Seen Recently and Don't Know WTF to think

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah it's fucking nuts (Possession I mean)... just at the end when he's riding the bike and everything is exploding and there is that guy with pink socks still in the mix somewhere and doppelgangers (as often with Zulawski) appearing all over the place and it's all so fucking intense.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Holy Motors is perhaps the strangest film I've seen. That or Begotten.
Trying to think what I'd answer to that question - Wax or The Discovery of Telveision Among The Bees would be up there, I like this review.
Amazing title for a movie, no? It's what made me get it in the first place, that and the promise of weird. They weren't lying. What the hell was that? Something about Mesopotamian bees, souls living inside weapons, the land of the dead in the Moon, Cain, the Trinity site, the tower of Babel, and a planet TV transmitting the dead of the future inside the Garden of Eden Cave which (the dead) are giant bees. There's also stuff about a Supranormal Film Society trying to capture the dead on film in the 1920's, the letter X, missiles turning into flying saucers, a beekeeper who is murdered by his own bees, and the cities of the dead.

It sounds like a big ball of spiritual-cum-metaphysical hogwash at first and well... it still sounds like a big ball of hogwash in the end, but somewhere along the way, if you resign yourself to the distinct possibility that there's no profound meaning to be gleaned and that if there is meaning it's flying way over your head, that racking your brain to connect pieces that don't really seem to fit together in any meaningful way and sound more like a science fiction mythological journey, if you can accept it as such and go with it, the movie can still be enjoyed both for the hallucinogenic trance it's prone to inflict if given enough room and the lyrical prose. Every now and then something beautiful comes along ("the graveyards where the new words are born") that doesn't make much sense but it's still beautiful.

It's all narrated by someone who sounds a lot like Nobody from DEAD MAN (and a lot of what he says sound like something a spaced-out Nobody of the future would say).

IMDb says it's a documentary but it's not. It reads more like the transcripts of some philosophizing drug fiend who dropped acid and walked around in the New Mexico desert and came back to write about it.

Here are some excerpts:

"our world was puny and finite in comparison with the world of the bees"

"one of the dead of the future arrived... it was grotesque with four brains on a single body."

"I lived in a mad tower above Trinity site, the day of my death the other dead came to visit me, and they said the bees would come to live there and the flying saucers so you will know that through the grace of God, the maker of people, his Son the saviour of the Christians and those bees who swarmed through the air that though you were dead you were born Zoltan Abbashid on July 11 1882. This was true."

"the first place you stop after you die is the pulsating place which is designed to be familiar for people who used to have bodies. I became a short poem in the language of Cain. I would get my new body after I killed."

"I followed my enemies through the bee television and arrived over Bashra, Southern Iraq, in the year 1991. Now I was going to kill. That was my job."

This played over a combination of grainy stock footage, footage of a guy walking around New Mexico in a beekeeper's suit, and dated video SFX.
 

catalog

Well-known member
its brilliant, i went to it see it quite young, like early 20s maybe, and the director was there. loads of people walked out. he just stood at the back, looking very serious. i shook his hand tho, i though tit was really good. but well fucked up
 

catalog

Well-known member
it's very simple, but levels. not sure i'd wanna watch it again tho. but i saw it in cinema, that helped. once you suspend your disbelief for the main ridiculousness, it's all plain sailing and very structurally sound.
 

muser

Well-known member
I saw a screening of a very low budget Japanese documentary about a failed musician suffering from severe depression, sitting on the floor with a smallish crowd (was invited there by some chick so thought it was kind of a date) . the documenter was his friend but was constantly telling him how useless and pathetic he was throughout and how he needed to give up trying to be a musician. He committed suicide in the end and the filmmaker filmed his corpse. He also ended up being there for discussion afterwards. Didn't know what to think but definitely didn't want to shake his hand.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
@martin very kindly lent me his copy of Martin many years ago.

I'd wanted to see it for ages because of the incredible Soft Cell track based on it:


The film did not disappoint...
 

luka

Well-known member
I hate 'weird' things and I don't watch films 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
I saw a screening of a very low budget Japanese documentary about a failed musician suffering from severe depression, sitting on the floor with a smallish crowd (was invited there by some chick so thought it was kind of a date) . the documenter was his friend but was constantly telling him how useless and pathetic he was throughout and how he needed to give up trying to be a musician. He committed suicide in the end and the filmmaker filmed his corpse. He also ended up being there for discussion afterwards. Didn't know what to think but definitely didn't want to shake his hand.
did people not get upset and stone the documenter to death?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I saw a screening of a very low budget Japanese documentary about a failed musician suffering from severe depression, sitting on the floor with a smallish crowd (was invited there by some chick so thought it was kind of a date) . the documenter was his friend but was constantly telling him how useless and pathetic he was throughout and how he needed to give up trying to be a musician. He committed suicide in the end and the filmmaker filmed his corpse. He also ended up being there for discussion afterwards. Didn't know what to think but definitely didn't want to shake his hand.
With friends like that.... there is another interesting Japanese documentary which that puts me in mind of called something like The Emperor's Amry Marches Naked and it's about this guy who was in ww2 (I think) and feels that they were left to die by superiors and someone films him going round to their houses and shouting at them and punching them.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I hate 'weird' things and I don't watch films 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

You love Japan though, so what about the weird Japanese films?
 
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