The Holy Mountain/La Montaña Sagrada (1973) - Jodorowsky's wild, surrealist masterpiece

♥♥♥♥♥♥

 

Mystic symbolism and expansive imagination underlines this celestially figurative poster for Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain

A Jesus-looking character gathers a team with nine other incredible characters to head for a holy mountain!

 

The Holy Mountain is written, co-produced, co-starring, directed, co-edited and co-composed by Chilean master filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (Fando and Lis/Fando y Lis (1968)), whose 3rd feature it is. Jodorowsky also participated in creating the set and costume designs for the film. The title is a literal translation of the original Spanish title.

It is a mad and fascinating film, which it feels impossible to take one's eyes off of, even though it is a demanding watch. It may be the most psychedelic feature film ever made, featuring lots that one may take offense at, but which is nevertheless unarguably a visionary work of art with a width production-wise that is wholly striking and simply wild. 

The common narrative thread may seem elusive during the course of the film, SPOILER but in the end its final message is fairly clear: through anti-materialist and other types of realizations we can liberate ourselves from a hunt after holy mountains and simply live and love as humans.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 750k $

Box office: Unknown

= Uncertain

[The Holy Mountain premiered in May (Cannes Film Festival, out of competition) and runs 114 minutes. The Beatles manager Allen Klein reportedly helped executive produce the film, with John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-financing it. Jodorowsky made central members of the cast prepare for three months prior to shooting with exercises in Zen, Sufi and yoga, studies and, for a month prior to filming, communal living in Jodorowsky's home. He and his wife reportedly spent a week without sleep, directed by a Japanese Zen master, prior to shooting. LSD and psychotropic mushrooms were ingested before and during production. Shooting took place in Mexico, including in Mexico City. The film has made more than 104k $ on recent re-issues, but details concerning its original release are regrettably buried deep. It had midnight screenings on the weekends for 16 months at one New York art cinema. It is hard to know whether it collected any substantial gross from its seemingly few original release markets. Jodorowsky returned with Tusk (1980). The Holy Mountain is fresh at 85 % with a 7.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Holy Mountain?

Holy Motors (2012) - The imagination runs wild in Carax's surrealistic drama

♥♥♥♥♥

 

High praise and an evocative night scene captures the imagination on this poster for Leos Carax's Holy Motors

Monsieur X works out of a limousine, which drives around Paris, to nine different meetings, he is to have. And in each meeting he plays a new character.

 

Holy Motors is written and directed by great French filmmaker Leos Carax (Boy Meets Girl (1984)).

A strange and eccentric story, which has fun teasing and playing with us as audiences in different ways, (for instance by leading us to believe that meetings may be over when they're not), Holy Motors appeals strongly to the imagination. It works basically as a fun, infantile fantasy over what a working day full of meetings could actually consist of; or more seriously, if you will, as a reflection over how life consists of meetings and memories, which can seem obscure in hindsight, and of a constructed self-identity, which is in reality fluid and an abstract thing that is altered through our various meetings.

Holy Motors is also quite funny and filled with lots of striking ideas, a pair of excellent musical numbers, - including an elegantly filmed sequence with Kylie Minogue (Swinging Safari (2018)) singing Who Were We? (by Carax, Neil Hannon and Andrew Skeet) and her own biggest hit as a pop singer Can't Get Your Out of My Head, - a sequence that is reminiscent of Catherine Deneuve in Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg/Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964). Minogue both acts and sings fabulously. Denis Lavant (Gagarine (2020)) is wholly invested as the fascinating, wiry protagonist, and the film's hair and makeup department have worked wonders here. 

Holy Motors is a playful and artistic work of splendor.

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 4 mil. $

Box office: 4.2 mil. $ - some uncertainty

= Huge flop (returned 1.05 times its cost)

[Holy Motors premiered 23 May (Cannes Film Festival, in main competition) and runs 116 minutes. Carax preceding film was Pola X (1999), and he had attempted to find funding for a big English-language film for 5 years prior to Holy Motors, which came about as an alternate construction instead of the big foreign film, which he did not find funding for. 14 companies and support bodies cooperated in its financing and production. Shooting took place from September - November 2011 in France, including in Paris. The film opened #62 to an 18k $ first weekend in 2 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #44 and in 29 theaters (different weekends), grossing 641k $ (15.3 % of the total gross, the film's 2nd biggest market). The film's Box Office Mojo and The-numbers.com pages differ, with the latter listing an erroneous 1.7 mil. $ gross from Denmark, which likely should have been listed as from France, most likely the film's biggest market (40.5 %). The 3rd biggest market was the UK with 373k $ (8.9 %). The film lost the Palme D'Or to Michael Haneke's Amour. It was nominated for 9 César awards, among many other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Carax returned with Gradiva (2014, short) and theatrically with Annette (2021). Lavant returned in L'Étoile de Jour (2012); Edith Scob (Wicked Game (2016, TV movie)) in 5 shorts and one voice performance before her theatrical physical return in Les Yeux Jauned des Crocodiles (2014). Holy Motors is certified fresh at 92 % with am 8.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Holy Motors?

The Science of Sleep/La Science des Rêves (2006) - Good ideas buried in taxing whimsy, off romance

♥♥

+ Most Overrated Movie of the Year

A deliciously made, evocative, dreamscape-depicting poster for Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep

Stéphane gets a job at an office that makes calenders, and he falls in love with his neighbor, who refuses his advances and is very troublesome.

The Science of Sleep is written and directed by great French filmmaker Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)), based on a bedtime story written by 10 year-old Sam Mounier.
Gael García Bernal (Babel (2006)) acts about as childishly as an actor can here, playing a character with a hard-to-believe, silly job across from Charlotte Gainsbourg (Nuremberg (2000, miniseries)), who is unattractive as the inexplicable object of his enamorment in this highly eccentric, goofy film.
The Science of Sleep has a few funny moments and ideas that it wins on for me. But overall it is a fairly taxing experience, because it is just too much, an accumulated feeling of too much overwhelms me when watching it. It awakens my private Franco-phobia, which beats red with much higher alarm at a cutesy whimsical French romance film like Amélie (2001). But The Science of Sleep is similarly unbearable for me.

Related posts:

Michel Gondry: Be Kind Rewind (2008) - Black and Def gleefully remake videos in Gondry's unsound script 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 6 mil. $
Box office: 15 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 2.5 times its cost)
[The Science of Sleep premiered 11 February (Berlin International Film Festival) and runs 106 minutes. Shooting took place in France, including Paris. The film opened #25 to a 347k $ first weekend in 14 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #15 and in 243 theaters (different weeks) and grossed 4.6 mil. $ (30.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 3.7 mil. $ (24.7 %) and the UK with 1.2 mil. $ (8 %). The film won a European Film award. Gondry returned with 8 short and video projects before his next theatrical engagement with Be Kind Rewind (2008). Bernal returned in Soy tu Fan (2006, ministeries) and theatrically in Babel (2006); Gainsbourg in Golden Door/Nuovomondo (2006). The Science of Sleep is fresh at 70 % with a 6.62/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Science of Sleep?

Farewell to the Ark/さらば箱舟 (Saraba hakobune) (1984) - The next to last film from Japanese surrealist Terayama

♥♥♥

A mysterious, beach-set, surrealist poster for Shûji Terayama's Farewell to the Ark

All the clocks of an entire village are buried. A relationship between two cousins is plagued by the chastity belt forced upon her by her father, along with taunts from the villagers and accusations of impotence, - which lead to homicide. The couple attempt to flee. SPOILER But they invariably return to where they came from, the man loses his mind and is killed.

Farewell to the Ark is written by Rio Kishida (The Boxer/Bokusâ (1977)) and co-writer/director Shûji Terayama (Pastoral Hide and Seek/Den-en ni shisu (1974)) as a loose adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Marquez (Of Love and Other Demons (1994)). The film has visually amusing and distinguished qualities; the hole in the ground, the green goddess sequences, the escape and the ending. As well as occasionally poetic observations.
- But overall the magical allegory of Farewell to the Ark is too ambiguous too relay much else than that modernism stinks. Another problem is that this very theatrical, circus-like film drags out.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertain
[Farewell to the Ark premiered 8 September (Japan) and runs 127 minutes. Details about its making and release are not immediately found. Terayama passed away before its release. It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. Terayama had one last film to his name, which also came out in 1984: Our Age Comes Riding on a Circus Elephant/Jidai wa sakasu no zo ni notte' 84. 285 IMDb-users have given Farewell to the Ark a 7.3/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Farewell to the Ark?

How to Get Rid of the Others/Hvordan Vi Slipper Af med De Andre (2007) - A generally awful Danish surreal comedy turkey

♥

A hit list of society's unwanted, a helicopter carrying a disabled person in a harness and two well-known Danish actors line up on this game poster for Anders Rønnow Klarlund's How to Get Rid of the Others

A new military law has taken effect in the kingdom of Denmark, which demands that citizens who are mainly an expense for the country and don't contribute beneficially at all are executed.

How to Get Rid of the Others is written by the also co-starring Rasmus Botoft (The Gift/Gaven (2008)) and co-writer/director Anders Rønnow Klarlund (Strings (2004)).
What little amount of fun there is to be had with this surreal satirical comedy, - which comes from veteran actors Søren Pilmark (The Last King/Birkebeinerne (2016)) and Tommy Kenter (Skibet i Skilteskoven (1992), TV-series) and the grotesque content, - pales in the context of a fatal combination of the dialog and script in general, acting (apart from the two mentioned actors) and photography - all of very poor quality. Klarlund perhaps tries to compensate by making the film very loud, full of screaming and yelling, but it helps naught: This very expletive-heavy concoction fails miserably.
The point to a big African element in the plot, - along with possibly other points which the obtuse creator duo had envisioned, - are lost in a case of a simply botched job here. How to Get Rid of the Others is a strange morass.

Related post:

2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unclear, - perhaps 7.3 mil. DKK, (7,300 DKK is reported on IMDb, which must be a mistake and likely should have been 7,300,000 DKK), or approximately 1.15 mil. $
Box office: Unknown - but seemingly only around 1.2 mil. DKK, or approximately 0.19 mil. $
= Uncertain - but likely a box office disaster (seemingly returned approximately 0.16 times the cost)
[How to Get Rid of the Others premiered 26 January (Denmark) and runs 94 minutes. It was shot in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, Denmark. It sold 13,855 tickets in its production country Denmark, which only makes up a gross of around 1.2 mil. DKK. It was released in 5 other markets, 3 of which were only at festivals. No information on its performance there is available. It was nominated for 2 Robert awards (Denmark's Oscar). Klarlund returned with The Secret Society of Fine Arts (2012), an experimental still-photo-based film, which is the filmmaker's last to date. Pilmark returned in The Taste of Hair/De Kaldte Os Frisører (2007, short), Mr. Poxycat & Co. (2007, TV-series) and theatrically in The Early Years: Erik Nietzsche Part 1/De Unge År: Erik Nietzsche Sagaen Del 1 (2007). 980 IMDb users have given How to Get Rid of the Others a 6.0/10 average rating.]

What do you think of How to Get Rid of the Others?

Escape from Tomorrow (2013) - Randy Moore's wild, confused, surreal Disney trip

♥♥♥

+ Best Low-Budget Movie of the Year

An iconic Mickey Mouse hand drenched in blood invite audiences to Randy Moore's Escape from Tomorrow

A severely dysfunctional nuclear family are on family holiday to Disney World in Florida. The man of the family gets fired from his job over the phone, just before their very strange 'adventure' in the park is about to begin ...

Escape from Tomorrow is the very strange B/W debut of writer-director Randy Moore. It shows in a nightmarish fashion a middle-aged family man's winding up in a cul-de-sac in his own family in a surreal Disney theme park. Whether each audience member recognizes this or sympathizes with him in any way is highly individually determined.
The four main parts are extremely well-cast: Jack Dalton (Tiny Warriors (2014), short) and Katelynn Rodriguez (I Am Death (2013)) as the children and especially Elena Schuber (American Horror Story (2011), TV-series) and Roy Abramsohn (Jurassic School (2017)) are outstanding as the parent couple, who truly showcase a failed marriage for audiences of Escape from Tomorrow.
The film lives on a dynamic that often results in laughter, because it is well-observed and edgy, and on its nightmarishly unreal horror element. The surreal elements in Disney World are cultivated as a modern nightmare, and for someone who is fascinated by theme parks (as me), this is alluring and impressively achieved. Regrettably the plot suffers under too many too dissimilar elements (a cat flu, a witch, an alternate reality, to name some of them.) The film also vacillates between downright beautifully captured sequences (cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham (Suburban Gothic (2014)), some with spooky effects, and others that look amateurishly poor: SPOILER The green screen scenes and the witch scene in the hotel room made me wonder if it was technically bad on purpose?
The first approximately 50 minutes of Escape from Tomorrow are really good and highly 
unusual.

Related posts:

2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

Watch a trailer for the movie here

Cost: 0.65 mil. $
Box office: 171k $ (North America only)
= Uncertainty (but looks like a mega-flop)
[Escape from Tomorrow premiered 18 January (Sundance) and runs 90 minutes. Moore's father would often take him to Disney World after divorcing his mother. Father and son later stopped talking. Moore would himself as a father take his own family to Disneyland in LA and relive strange father memories, as well as getting disturbed input from his nurse wife, who formerly lived in the Soviet Union. He put together the film's financing through an inheritance from his grandparents. Filming took place in Disney World Florida and in Disneyland LA without Disney's knowledge with simple Canon 5OS cameras. The production had the script only on their phones and rehearsed and prepared elsewhere and kept takes to a minimum so as not to alert park employees as to their project. Shooting involved taking the same rides for hours, but the parks did not notice what was going on. Moore took the footage with him to South Korea for post production, keeping the secret from some friends in order for Disney not to find out. Sundance accepted the film for screening but did not publicize that it was about Disney. Audiences, critics and the filmmakers speculated and feared the giant company's reaction to the film, but Disney - probably choosing the wisest course, - ignored Escape from Tomorrow and let it fizz out by itself, which it did. It opened #44 in 30 theaters to a 63k $ first weekend in North America, where it only declined from then, and no other markets have grosses public. It played at a few European festivals and in Japan. Moore does not have another project public, - perhaps he is shooting it in secret right now? - but Film Excess would be curious to see his next cinematic expression. Escape from Tomorrow is rotten at 56 % with a 6.1 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Escape from Tomorrow?

Eraserhead (1977) - Lynch's extraordinary, unconquerably strange and surreal debut

♥♥♥♥

Jack Nance (Voodoo (1995)), with his characteristic crazy hairdo from the film, adorn the poster for David Lynch's Eraserhead

Henry walks around an industrial, very noisy neighborhood, where he seems to have fathered something ... nonhuman.

Eraserhead is the very abstract and strange feature debut from Montanan master writer-director David Lynch (Blue Velvet (1986)), who also acted as producer, editor and co-composer on it. It has a Luis Buñuel-reminiscent dinner scene and nightmarish scenes one after the other. - Eraserhead is generally a film like none other.
It elevates unpleasantness into high style but remains a cold acquaintance; chilling but not very emotionally stirring, probably because it is so outlandish. - Lynch already overcame this inhibition in his following film, period-set biopic The Elephant Man (1980).
Eraserhead is technically astonishingly well-made; both its images, sound design and effects are incredible. Eraserhead is extraordinary.

Related posts:

David Lynch: Blue Velvet (1986) or, The Strange World 

Dune (1984) - Lynch heads to space, with an (unsurprisingly) strange result

Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

The Elephant Man (1980) - Lynch's deeply moving second feature

Watch a clip of the 'lady in the radiator' from the film here

Cost: Reportedly 10-20k $
Box office: Reportedly 7 mil. $ (only USA)
= Mega-hit
[Eraserhead premiered 19 March (Filmex Festival, USA) and runs 88 minutes. Lynch was inspired by stories of Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol and the Bible as well as personal experiences of his own surrounding the birth of his daughter Jennifer with severely clubbed feet and living in a bad part of Philadelphia with his family. AFI's financing of the tiny-budgeted film was controversial, with the institute's dean threatening to quit if Lynch was not supported in his efforts. They erroneously assumed that his 21-page script would result in a short film. Instead, shooting of Eraserhead in LA, including at AFI's Center for Advanced Film Studies, lasted from May 1972 - October 1976, an extremely long and highly unusual principal photography, which was fraught with financial issues and an artist filmmaker involved in every detail of production. The film was seen by just 25 people on its opening night. It kept playing as a midnight feature in a few theaters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York for years, which got its gross up to the very impressive 7 mil. $. It further snailed its way out to theatrical releases in foreign countries over the course of the following three decades. Critically derided at its initial release, the film has since been hailed by many and been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry of the US in 2004. Stanley Kubrick told Lynch that Eraserhead was his favorite film around the shooting of Lynch's second film, The Elephant Man (1980), and it inspired Kubrick's masterpiece The Shining (1980) as well as countless other films and filmmakers since. Eraserhead is certified fresh at 91 % with an 8.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Eraserhead?

The Element of Crime/Forbrydelsens Element (1984) - Von Trier's ultra-strange debut

♥♥♥

An interesting, weird poster for Lars Von Trier's The Element of Crime

QUICK REVIEW:

A police detective returns to Europe after 13 years in Cairo to investigate a bestial serial killer case. His search, however, turns into an obsessive examination of the suspect Harry Gray.

The Element of Crime is the feature debut of Danish master co-writer-director Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves (1996)), written with Niels Vørsel (Europa (1991), co-writer).
The film marks a fascinating and unique highlight for artistic freedom and determination to experiment within Danish film and is visually stunningly beautiful. The plot is too intangible to ever produce any kind of real suspense, and that seems to me the film's loss. - It is pretentious, to some degree, and super-airy. But also artistic, poetic, with magical, fascinating sequences - SPOILER full of dead animals, - and with a final shot of a lemur, also completely unique. It opens up the Europe-trilogy's main theme of a diseased continent in disintegration, following the destruction of 'the great' wars.
The Element of Crime is, due to its deeply committed strangeness, especially a film for cinephiles and Von Trier fans.

Related reviews:

Lars Von Trier:  Nymphomaniac (2013) short version, vol. 1 & vol. 2, or, Lars Von Trier's Suck It Melancholia (2011) - Von Trier's heightened reality doomsday reflections 
Antichrist (2009) - Von Trier's cabin-in-the-woods psycho-horror 
The Boss of It All/Direktøren for det Hele (2006) - Von Trier's hilarious absurd comedy 
Dear Wendy (2005) - Vinterberg and Von Trier's unpopular, gun-themed megaflop (writer)
Dogville (2003) - Von Trier's implacable, truly unique drama  
Top 10: The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date   
Dancer in the Dark (2000) or, Selma the Immigrant  

Watch a clip of the film with audio from Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass for some reason applied to it here, (the best Youtube can offer presently)

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown (probably a big to huge flop)
[The Element of Crime was released May 14 (Denmark) and runs 103 minutes. It is the first of Von Trier's Europa trilogy, which deals with idealists of different kinds and also comprises Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991). The sepia-like tone of the film comes from its being filmed almost entirely in sodium light. The film is heavily inspired by the films and style of Russian master filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. 37,743 paid admission to see the film in its native Denmark, which should be regarded as pretty impressive for a debut film as weird as The Element of Crime. The film was released in at least 7 countries up until 1990. - Without financial numbers released, it is impossible to say if it turned profitable, although it looks like a big to huge flop. The film won both the Danish Robert and Bodil awards for Best Danish Film of the Year as well as the Technical Grand Prize in Cannes and several other awards. The Element of Crime is fresh at 77 % with a 6.3 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Element of Crime?