Serenity
Here are the weirdest movie present moment of 2019 . The preceding twelve months have been a moderately spectacular one for cinema , withbox office records being brokenright and depart and acclaimed films pushing boundaries in exciting new ways . Whether you were a comic Holy Writ movie buff , a fan of foreign language films , or just in need of a sturdy adult dramatic play , there was plenty to keep you sate in 2019 .
Amid the highlights , there were some truly bonkers film minute . Think of the panorama that made you do a dual - take or the laggard that sent the entire internet into a frenzy of disarray . Even in major blockbusters , there were mint of points where familiar stories and subject take wildly unexpected turns .
Sometimes , uncanny is good , and then there are times where you ca n’t help but recall about what on worldly concern the studio apartment was thinking when they committed to such decisions . To observe the best of the freaky , here are the absolute strangest minute from2019 ’s movies .
Everything in Serenity
The year kick off with a film so inexplicably bonkers that critics encouraged people to go see it blind just to feel the chaos for themselves . Sadly for Aviron Pictures , the so - bad - it’s - good followup did nothing to bolster the box office ofSerenity , which barely quarrel past $ 14 million on a $ 25 million budget . Rest assured , however , because this picture is guaranteed to be a midnight movie madness favorite for old age to total . Serenityopens with Matthew McConaughey work a sportfishing boat skipper obsessed with catching a jumbo yellowfin tuna named Justice . His ex-husband - married woman ( dally by Anne Hathaway ) appears and offers him $ 10 million to bolt down her raw abusive married man .
So far , it ’s classic picture show noir in terminus of its chronicle , and then all of a sudden it fail off the rails . It is soon break that Dill is a eccentric in a video recording game designed by his material - life son as a means to cope with his begetter ’s demise in Iraq and his female parent ’s violent marriage . It ’s easy the twist of the year , one that M. Night Shyamalan could only have dreamed of . The motion-picture show itself is genuinely entertaining , albeit not in the elbow room the film - makers probably wanted . If nothing else , Serenitywas a entirely unique experience that deserves your tending after a few beer .
The Sex Box in High Life
Iconic French film director Claire Denis made her English - lyric withHigh Life , a barren science - fabrication dramatic play that lot with weighty publication regarding repentance , consent , and whether or not humanity deserves to exist . A deeply contemplative and often deeply frustrative film , High Lifewas a welcome monitor of what sci - fi on film could be outdoors of the more tumid franchise fare . It ’s also a deeply seamy moving picture , and the moment that most exemplifies that is the F**k Box . This all - black equipment exists to encourage the captive on plank the ship to masturbate so that the maniacal scientist Dr. Dibs can conduct her generative experiments . In the scene where we see Dibs ( played by Juliette Binoche ) use the loge , sex has never seemed bleaker or more clinical , drive homeHigh Life ’s stem of separating sex from humanity . It makes sense in context but when you first watch over it , you ’re simply bowled over by the strangeness of watching beloved Oscar - gain actress Juliette Binoche get herself off on a giant sinister dildo .
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Death by Art in Velvet Buzzsaw
Dan Gilroy ’s satiric horrorVelvet Buzzsawflew under the radar after dropping on Netflix at the beginning of February this twelvemonth , but there was a lot to appreciate in this balls - to - the - wall spectacle of art and expiry . An supporting players of art - Earth specialiser and hangers - on become taken up with the cache of paintings discovered in the house of a dead man named Vetril Dease . As the market goes into a fury over this new discovered master key , it slowly becomes clear that Dease ’s bequest is far more sinister than mere painting , and soon hoi polloi start dying through especially unique way . Toni Collette is kill by losing her arm in a mess in a orbicular sculpture . Jake Gyllenhaal find his neck crack by a golem hobo . Zawe Ashton ’s body becomes consumed by dissolve house painting until she is absorbed into the walls . Rene Russo ’s end comes good manners of her own tattoo . It ’s not a brilliant movie but you should watchVelvet Buzzsawjust for artistic death .
Let’s Get Ready For Dumbo!
Disney movies do n’t incline to go weird so much these day , especially when it comes to their extremely expensive alive - action remakes of animated classics . These are films designed to not err far , if at all , from their source material , all in the name of making a good wager that ’s guaranteed to make bank at the box office . Of the three remakesDisneyreleased to theaters in 2019,Dumbowas the only existent unsuccessful person , both critically and financially , having only grossed around $ 353 million , barely doubling its budget . Tim Burton ’s reimagining tried to update the tarradiddle for modern audiences , adding a mistaken subplot involving a Walt Disney - esque amusement mogul and radical of the downsides of selling out to massive conglomerates that could n’t help but feel dry given which company had just purchase Fox for $ 71 billion .
It made sense that Burton and Disney would want to change some ofDumbo ’s more problematic elements , especially the jive - talking crows , but their substitute was utterly ridiculous . rather of arrest the crow ’ song , audiences got Michael Buffer , the MC best cognize for his work on boxing and wrestling friction match , to cry out , " permit ’s get quick for Dumbo ! " The second was an obvious play on his trademarked catchphrase " Let ’s get ready to grumble " ( so yes , Disney did have to pay to use that line ) that made no damn sense and only proved to be a distraction from the rest of the movie . It almost made you miss the crows .
Everything in The Fanatic
Did you bang that Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit fame directed a movie this year and that it starred John Travolta ? That in and of itself is enough to warrantThe Fanatic ’s place here , but it does get even stranger . Travolta act as Moose , an autistic super - buff of action star Hunter Dunbar , played by Devon Sawa . When Dunbar rejects him after he necessitate for an autograph , Moose breaks into his household and tie him up . Everything inThe Fanaticis a series of choice that must have made sense during production but come across as bafflingly misguided in the finished Cartesian product . Travolta is certainly committed in his carrying into action but his tics and clichés as an autistic homo border on offensive . It ’s a profoundly mean movie that does n’t seem to understand how basic human emotion work . The Fanaticis the sort of moving picture you expect to see as a takeoff of bad picture on The Onion and it surely wo n’t be long before it look on an episode of the podcastHow Did This Get Made ? Italso holds the distinct honor of being the first Travolta film to get zero mavin fromRogerEbert.com , which is no mean exploit give the histrion ’s presence inBattlefield EarthandGotti .
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The Joker Dances. A Lot
When Todd Phillips and Warner Bros. herald that they be after to release a Joker extraction story with a hard - universal gas constant paygrade that would invoke more to Oscar voters than the typical DC fan , there were certain thing that we could easily expect would be part of the picture : Lots of violence , a bleaker tone , a report more stock-still in realism . However , it seems secure to say that few of us could have prognosticate just how much ofJoker ’s two - hour run meter is taken up with dancing . For a lot of Joker , Joaquin Phoenix ’s award - acquire performance is defined by moments of unusual animalism that morph into interpretative dance , set to Hildur Guðnadóttir ’s thrilling violoncello - focused score . It ’s a testament to Phoenix ’s skills that such here and now zoom rather than fall bland ( a terpsichore critic forThe New York Timeseven complimented his work . ) Still , there are sure things that you just do n’t expect in comic Quran movies , even those that pride themselves on “ not being like other mirthful Christian Bible movie ” , andthe Jokerdancing is one of them .
Meryl’s Brownface in The Laundromat
Of the two Netflix movies director Steven Soderbergh released in 2019,The Laundromatwas supposed to be the one with swelled Oscar hopes . It speedily flounder once critics actually saw it , with the satirical dramedy ’s attack to do for the Panama Papers malicious gossip whatThe Big Shortdid for the financial securities industry collapse fail severely . The Laundromattried to combine mistily phantasmagoric violation with hard - hitting economic truths , but that only lead to baffling view such as the moment where Meryl Streep ’s character mask herself as a Panamanian woman . Wearing a big fake nose with drear hair and big sunglasses , as well as a clearly saturnine tint to her skin , Streep expect like a racist caricature of a Central American cleaning woman , utter with a laughably unfit effort at a Panamanian accent . At best , the moment is a ill-conceived endeavour to add to the movie ’s heightened tone . At worst , it ’s hugely offensive and startlingly out - of - date for a 2019 movie . It ’s probably for the best that this film sank without a tincture .
Robert Pattinson’s French Accent in The King
David Michod ’s take on Shakespeare ’s Henry diddle , The Kinghas its moments of inventiveness and appeal , but overall it ’s a rather lifeless affair that does n’t capture the political or magnetic force of the tangible - life or Shakespearean re - imagining of these historical figures . There is one promising smirch , however , in the form of Robert Pattinson playing the Dauphin . Here is a advisedly ridiculous character , a spoiled fop of a human being whose mania would be laughable if he were n’t so dangerous , and Pattinson intelligibly had a ball playing him . Nothing could have prepared viewers forPattinson ’s French accent , which is somewhere between Inspector Clouseau and the chef fromThe Little Mermaid . It ’s as over - the - top as you’re able to suppose and almost discombobulating to discover , given how deep self - serious so much ofThe Kingis . It makes you hope he wreak those accent chops toThe Batman .
bear on : Where Was Serenity ( 2019 ) Filmed : All Locations
Mermaid Sex in The Lighthouse
As evidenced by the previous entries in this list , Robert Pattinson may have had the uncanny year in film . How do you top all the weird sex clobber inHigh Lifeand that hysterical Gallic speech pattern inThe King ? You doThe Lighthouse , Robert Eggers ’s staggering follow - up toThe Witch . Overall , The Lighthouseis a much stranger and more hallucinogenic effort thanThe Witch , with Eggers intermix together Herman Melville with Greek mythology , a touch of Lovecraft , and a whole circle of farting . Willem Dafoe ’s stern - trumpeting is a particular joy , but in condition of gossamer oddness , the crown minute ofThe Lighthousehas to go to Pattinson getting it on with a aphrodisiacal mermaid . In a moment that may or may not be a pipe dream , a deeply pent - up Pattinson masturbates while thinking of a beached mermaid find on the bare island he is sting on with Dafoe . He notices that the mermaid conveniently has a very large frontal vagina , like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting , and the brace get it on .
Cats. Just… Cats
Most people have n’t seenCatsyet , so a comprehensive critical discernment of the flick can not be afford yet , but from the moment this project was announced , there was no way it would n’t be one of 2019 ’s weird movies . The very conception of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber decide to turn a collection of T.S. Eliot poems into a dance - tailor musical was odd enough in 1981 , long before it became one of the most democratic West End and Broadway depict of all meter . conform that show into a moving picture was always going to elicit a series of interrogative sentence from audience , and the trailers alone institutionalize the internet into a fury . Nobody could decide which part was foreign : Was it the “ digital pelt technology ” , the strange consistence proportions of these true cat - people , the snatch - grip cast of major stars that included James Corden and Taylor Swift , or the endless questions over the plate of this world , which made the computerized axial tomography seem as if they were either six inches or six metre marvellous . Say what you want aboutCats – and the internet definitely did – but it certainly does n’t wait like any other movie from 2019 , for better or forged .
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