Odd Movie Suggestions

• About a Boy (A comedy about a boy who adopts a bachelor because he needs "a backup" should his mother die. Very interesting people in odd twists of fate and emotional survival in London. Very funny.)

• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (outrageous as a troupe of transvestites travels across the Outback giving shows to cattle stations etc)

• The Accidental Tourist (Compulsive travel writer has a hard time dealing with people until he finds Miss Right but doesn't know it.)

• Amelie[aka Le Fabuleux destin d'Amilie Poulain](A surreal French romantic comedy about a very shy girl that decides that by playing tricks and inserting herself into people's lives she can make a positive difference in the world. But can she find happiness for herself? It is very imaginative and a lot of fun. English subtitles, adult references.)

• Andromeda Strain (This is an old classic about a deadly disease arriving on Earth and the scientists sequestered in an underground lab trying to figure out how to cure it. The only clues are a crying baby and an old drunk. Book by Michael Crichton.)

• Being There (one of my favorites about a gardener who has never been outside of the grounds of the house he has lived in. Miraculous things happen to him and the people around him)

• Blade Runner (a dark scifi movie about an android hunter. Very very good.)

• The Brave Little Toaster (the bonding of household appliances in the wild. Animation of a set of appliances looking for their master. Kind of like "Incredible Journey" but for appliances.)

• Brazil (a very dark Monty Python)

• Bride and Prejudice(This is fabulous musical in the style of Bollywood. Lots of colorful characters, colorful costumes, great music and dancing and fun story based on Pride and Prejudice.)

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (This is the movie that was the origin of the TV series. See Pee Wee Herman as a vampire)

• Coca Cola Kid (gotta have a coke... anywhere)

• Cold Comfort Farm (a forward thinking young woman arrives at a farm in the 1920's and changes everything.)

• Doc Savage: Man of Bronze (extreme camp)

• Dr. Strangelove (how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)

• Duel (a salesman on a lonely desert highway finds himself the target of vengeful semitruck driver. We never see the truck driver but we see the truck as evil. This is road rage in the extreme. An early Steven Spielberg film worthy of Hitchcock.)

• Earth Girls are Easy (low budget alien arrival comedy. Don't expect a great movie and you won't be disappointed.)

• Easy A (At first it seemed like not a problem to admit under pressure from your high school friend that you slept with some guy but then the rumors start and the lies start and they seem like they are always to help someone out. But things get worse and worse. Funny with clever dialog. Note: adult themes)

• Edward Scissorhands (Frankenstein meets the burbs)

• Elizabethtown(A movie about family, death, and romance. A flight attendant and a failure feel like substitute people but their attraction for each other leads to their finding they really real after all.)

• Fargo (a plot becomes a murder plot becomes just bizarre)

• Flashdance (A forgotten movie that may have presaged music videos. In it a lady works days as a steel worker and nights as a dancer in a hard hat bar. Quirky.)

• Forbidden Planet (not such a weird movie and really marvelous for 1956. I think you should see it.)

• 5th Element (very imaginative, futuristic Bruce Willis movie, lots of explosions)

• Galaxy Quest (not a top notch movie but fun. The actors from a Star Trek like show are abducted by aliens to save their race. The aliens don't know that it was only a TV program.)

• Garden State(A guy has been on sedatives all his life finally gets off of them and warms up to the joys of life. Wonderful odd movie. Quietly funny.)

• Get Shorty (Odd movie about producing a movie. Violence and language.)

• Grand Canyon (A movie about the current of life in LA that takes a group of widely different people and situations like leaves in a fast flowing river. Thought provoking)

• Hard Candy (A young girl meets a photographer on the internet. A cat and mouse game ensues when she comes to believe he is a pedophile... but who is the cat and who is the mouse?)

• Heavy Metal (An animation of good vs evil. A lot violence and nudity, but good music)

• Hot Fuzz (Top cop in London is making everyone else look bad in the London Force so they shuffle him off to a tiny village in the country to get rid of him. The village is a perfect little village except for a few strange accidents... and then a few more... and the movie becomes something more like Sam Peckinpah meets Monty Python.)

• Iron Giant (An animated movie done in a 1950's comic book style. A touching story of a boy who befriends a giant robot designed as a weapon of war.)

• Koyaanisqatsi (must be seen on the big screen, a moralistic movie with only pictures and music. This is the director who made time lapse photography an idiom. The music is by Philip Glass.)

• Like Water for Chocolate (a very passionate movie about love of food and sibling rivalry)

• Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman is an Indian that has seen the tragic absurdity of the "conquest" of the American West)

• Little Shop of Horrors (man eating plant that can sing)

• Lonely are the Brave (A cowboy is out of place in the modern (late 1950s) world and gets in jail to help his friend break out. He finds that his friend has moved on like the rest of the world and left him behind. He escapes jail anyway and makes a run for the border. He is running from modern life as well as the law. Script is by Edward Abbey and has his "natural man" vs "modern man"/"modern life" theme. Although it isn't quit weird enough to make this list, Kirk Douglas' character is very different. Note: animals get hurt in this movie and it is has a slow 1950s pace.)

• Mars Attacks (fun and campy, mars invades, can nothing stop them?)

• Memento (A guy has lost his ability to make new memories and tries to live in the world by using notes, tattoos and pictures. His wife has been killed and he must find the killer. The movie is shot from the end of the movie to the beginning so you the viewer have the live in a world where you can't remember the last thing you did because they haven't shown you yet.)

• Murial's Wedding (the troubled and wild life of a misfit. You will never think of ABBA the same way)

• Mystery Alaska (almost didn't make this list because it isn't weird enough but it is quite nice. The hockey players of a small town in Alaska take on the New York Rangers (That's a hockey team, I am told :-) ).)

• Nightmare before Christmas (What if Christmas were like Halloween?)

• O Brother, where art thou (Fast talking guy from the south escapes from prison around 1910. Based on "The Odyssey" with a little "Moby Dick" thrown in, believe it or not.)

• Paper Heart (Not sure if this should be on the list. This is a very odd comedy about a film maker (Charlyne Yi) who doesn't believe in love who decides to go out and look for it and film the experience. She interviews people and meets a guy (actor Michael Cera) at a party and an odd but touching relationship begins)

• Perks of Being a Wallflower(A teenager suffering with the baggage of a traumatic childhood enters high school and forms relationships with a tight-knit clique of outcasts. A great coming of age movie with fabulous characters)

• Princess Bride (a fairy tale of a great love and bigger than life people)

• Pumpkin(a melodramatic-comedy about the queen of a sorority falling in love with a guy in the special Olympics and how that "ruins" her life. Very funny in an over the top/social commentary sort of way.)

• Risky Business (used to be unheard of movie has become more popular in recent years. Spoiled rich kid in the rich burbs becomes intangled with a prostitute. Balances between a coming of age story and the surreal and symbolic.)

• Rocky Horror Picture Show (Lips! Lips! Frankenstein is a transvestite from outer space. The classic.)

• Run Lola Run (What if I had only left this morning for work 1 second earlier? What if I had left 1 second later? How would it change my life or someone else's? German with subtitles seconds count as woman runs to save her boyfriend's life and she might not survive. It is all a matter of timing.)

• Rustler's Rhapsody (a movie that knows its a movie about a classic western hero and his sidekick. Must see.)

• Seven Percent Solution (Sherlock Holmes meets Freud... really.)

• Sita Sings the Blues (A wonderfully imaginative animated film that draws a parallel between the anguish of the director of the movie when she lost her boyfriend and the life of the mythic character Sita in the great Indian work "Ramayana". Believe it or not, it is a musical done using music from 1929 blues singer Annette Hanshaw.)

• Sleuth (when has a game of murder gone too far? This is essentially shot as a stage production.)

• Spirited Away (Fabulous use of color and light in this animated work. It is about a bathhouse/resort run by a witch for spirits and a human girl who gets stuck in this magical world when her parents are turned into pigs by the witch. *Extremely* imaginative.)

• Stranger than Fiction (An IRS auditor finds that he seems to be a character in someones novel. He can hear the author as she describes his life. It seems to predict the future. When he finds the author will kill him off in the novel he must hunt down the author and stop her. Funny and touching.)

• Sunshine Cleaning (The house cleaning business isn't doing well for this girl who didn't full fill her high school dreams. But there is a lot more money to be made in crime scene cleanup. So together with her sister and father they go into the business not really knowing what they are supposed to be doing. Cute comedy/drama.)

• Thelma and Louise (This movie gets kind of surreal about half way through. Great movie. This movie is reminiscent of "Lonely are the Brave" above. People get caught up in events that escalate out of control to a climatic ending that didn't have to be that way.)

• Time Bandits (fun, small kid and dwarfs run through time being chased by God. Definitely one of my favorites of all time. "Don't touch it! It's evil!")

• Toys (A story of the imaginary and wonderful Zevo Toy Company and the military industrial complex)

• The Usual Suspects (Very violent but a very very clever murder mystery. Overlooked for years.)

• V is for Vendetta (Is the vigilante a valorous visitation or a vaudevillian villain cast by the vicissitudes of fate?)

• Waitress(A waitress in a diner with a truly stupid husband tries to make a get-a-way from her life and yet she has trapped herself. A story with odd turns and a warm heart.)

• Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (There are people and there are toons. Who is killing off the toons? Why? )

• Whale Rider(Maori Girl in New Zealand grows up unable to be a powerful speaker for her people because, well, she is a girl. But destiny will not wait.)

• Wizards (An animation of good vs evil, a violent (elves being shot down with machine guns), NOT for young kids)

• Zardoz (Could even the perfect society be planned to fail for its own good? And where does "The Wizard of Oz" fit in all of this? Very violent. Low production values.)