Shaye and Kiki: Fun Bubble

2004 compilation

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Shaye Saint John and her charred doll Kiki have a series of mundane and repetitive adventures.

This is a compilation of about thirty short films featuring the titular characters. Here's the character's background: Shaye was a model who was involved in a car accident that disfigured her, so she had to replace a lot of her parts with mannequin parts. Or something like that. Shaye is the creation of performance artist Eric Fournier, now sadly deceased. These shorts definitely fall in the not-for-everybody camp and are alternately hilarious and horrifying. It's a maddening hyperkinetic dada art assault on at least two of your senses. The repetition alone is enough to drive some people batty, but the cheap computer effects, daffy minutia, and often terrifying imagery are what would make things unbearable. In fact, if I ever get the opportunity to prop somebody's eyes open and forcefeed their brain things like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, this is now on the list. I'm not sure if this stuff was created to say anything about society or not. Shaye is shallow enough to match a lot of cultural phenomena in our reality-show culture though, so there might be some lunatic fringe satire going on here. I laughed and probably had a nightmare or two that I don't remember, so I'm considering this thing a success. I mean, there's a scene where Shaye is in a washroom and the creepy doll keeps banging on the window. It's the stuff of nightmares, a scene easily more horrifying than I've seen in any horror movie. And then you get a repetitive scene where Shaye is trying to get a present indoors in the hilarious "Bake, Shake, Explode" which makes me laugh just thinking about it. And Shirley Temple 2000! made me laugh out loud. If you like gams, ever wished that the movie Mannequin was created under the influence of LSD, and like to feel really really uncomfortable when watching movies, this might be for you. Hypnotizing weirdness! One gripe: Grammar problems! Missing apostrophes annoyed me.

9

2009 animated movie

Rating: 13/20 (Mark: 16/20)

Plot: A miniature burlap man wakes up and goes outside. He meets another burlap man, and they're attacked by a robot kitty. The second burlap man, appropriately named 2, is captured. The first burlap man, the title character, finds some other burlap men and talks one of them into journeying to some smoke stacks to find 2. They find some other burlap men and one burlap woman, and then 9 puts a bottle cap into a machine and chaos ensues.

Well, I really liked the nightmarish, apocalyptic imagery in this, the dilapidated structures, the tattered backgrounds, all the dismal grays. The setting sets a tone here, and the animation is really beautiful. I also like the antagonist, a menacing giant insect-like machine and all of its wild creations. The creativity involved in creating this little world is astonishing. I don't, however, care for how the little burlap people move around. And worse, they don't have enough individual personality to make them real characters. They're all inventive, one of them is sort of a bastard, one of them is a tough guy/bully type, one of them is a warrior. But they lack depth that would have made me give a damn when one of them was threatened or when some of them perish. The flat voice work, with the exception of Crispin Glover (America's greatest actor), also didn't help. I really didn't understand this movie. As my brother said, the geography doesn't make sense at all. These burlap people were created and then didn't move more than a hundred yards before 9 finds them, and then they're all of a sudden zipping around this little world? It doesn't make sense. Neither did the majority of the rest of this. Souls? Satanic rituals? Soul-sucking robots? Burlap ghosts? Magical bottle caps? Still, the experience is worth watching. It's easy to get lost in this weird little world and wonderful to watch the explosion of creativity on the screen. I just wish it made more sense.

Jackass Number Two

2006 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Morons pull pranks and perform stunts, mostly to entertain themselves, it seems.

You know you're in good shape when somebody says, "We have rectal bleeding," within the first ten minutes of the movie. Several chapters involving horse semen, malfunctioning rockets, launched shopping carts, fecal matter, the exposed testicles of the elderly, beer enemas, puking, bull attacks, flying wee men, pubic beards, and death-defying moments later, I had laughed quite a few times and even laughed until tears came once. I should probably feel a little guilty for liking this as much as I did, but I refuse. The mayhem is faster, funnier, and more dangerous than the stuff they did in the first movie (or on the television show, of course), and the beginning scene and ending musical number that bookend the body of this are really well executed. That closing musical number even pays tribute to Hollywood musicals and even Buster Keaton. I was reminded of Keaton quite a bit while watching Jackass Number Two actually. No, I've not yet found the movie in which Keaton's ass or testicles are displayed. With a lot of the stunts, you get exactly what you think you'll get (bike with a rocket being shot into a lake) but there are a lot of set-ups that take the stunt one unexpected step further, giving the audience a second unanticipated punchline. Does all of it work? No. Some of this is hard to watch and not really all that entertaining. But when this hits, it's home run after home run. Brilliant stuff! My favorite scene? Likely the extended terrorist bit near the end.

By the way, watching this made me realize what Tillie's Punctured Romance from 1914 was missing. If the kicking in Tillie's Puncture Romance would have been in the groin instead of directed at the backside, I think it would be considered one of the most influential and uproariously funny comedies of the early 20th century.

Schizopolis

1996 dada practical joke

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Fletcher Munson's a bored guy. He's bored with his marriage, and he's bored with his job as a speechwriter for a quasi-religious organization called Eventualism. That corporation might have a mole, a spy, or both a mole and a spy. Meanwhile, Munson's relationship with his wife deteriorates to the point where she begins to take steps to leave him for a dentist who looks exactly like him.

You've got to love a movie that doesn't need any excuse whatsoever to have a crazed exterminator named Elmo Oxygen who runs around town seducing housewives until he's offered a more exciting movie role and leaves the movie. Or maybe you won't love it. I don't think Steven Soderbergh really gives a shit. I've seen this one thrice now, and although nothing new is really garnered from subsequent viewings, it does help to know that this is the type of movie that you really shouldn't try to "get" and instead just let the thing crawl on top of you and wiggle around in a semi-violent and arguably inappropriate way. It is entertaining, and you will laugh. Or maybe you won't, but Soderbergh won't give a shit about that either. I do really love what this movie has to say about communication and relationships; it toys with language in an interesting way. For a movie allegedly shot without a script and largely improvised, the three distinct parts (showing the speechwriter, dentist, and wife's point of views) come together so well, overlapping in ways that are surprisingly meaningful. This is about as close as you can get to a Pee Wee's Big Adventure for adults, and the world would benefit from having more movies made similarly to this. Or maybe not. Soderbergh wouldn't care.

Alphaville, a Strange Case of Lemmy Caution

1965 science fiction noir

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Private eye Lemmy Caution, posing as a newspaper photographer, is sent from the Outlands to Alphaville, a planet (I think) that has forbidden free expression and emotion, to assassinate its computerized dictator, Alpha-60.

I believe Alphaville is much-maligned, but it grows on me with each viewing. For one, I love that this movie had an alternate title of Dick Tracy on Mars and a working title of Tarzan vs. IBM. There's a nifty clash of pop culture, B-movie trash, reckless philosophizing, and pretentious highbrow art going on here. There's also such a blatant refusal on Godard's part to make anything even close to commercial or appealing. Tackily and flamboyantly low budget (the characters are in cars but I think we're supposed to believe they are space crafts of some kind) and with action sequences that are laughably ridiculous, this still manages to work as visual poem about the battle between imagination and logic as well as, I think, a critique on formulaic art. There's some deft camerawork and some really cool touches (the poolside death sentences, the toad-like voice of the computer, the allusions to cartoon characters and other pop icons), and Eddie Constantine is perfect as the ultra-cool protagonist or, more accurately, a parody of ultra-cool protagonists. And Anna Karina is in this which is automatically worth a bonus point or two. It's an avant-fart from Godard, silent but deadly, and this feller's a smeller.

Mister Lonely

2007 Harmony Korine film

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A lonely Michael Jackson impersonator living in France meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who lives on an island with a bunch of other celebrity impersonators. Her husband is Charlie Chaplin and daughter is Shirley Temple. Also occupying the island are the Three Stooges, Sammy Davis Jr. Abraham Lincoln, James Dean, a Pope, Madonna, Queen Elizabeth, Buckwheat, and Little Red Riding Hood. Michael Jackson decides to live with them, and they work together to put on a fantastic stage show. Meanwhile, a priest in South America teaches his nuns to fly.

Well, it's Harmony Korine's best movie yet. His work is still just a little unhinged, a little uneven, a little too silly. There are large chunks of this movie and single shots that are really brilliant. It's sprinkled with great, unforgettable imagery that is either bizarrely poignant or poignantly bizarre. Korine's either got a good eye or is developing one (I can't remember Julien Donkey-Boy that well and have intentionally forgotten the dismally awful Gummo), and there are a lot of Herzogian moments in Mister Lonely. Werner himself plays the priest (he was also in Donkey-Boy, Korine and he apparently have a mutual respect for each other). There's something about watching Buckwheat giving the Pope a bath or the Three Stooges shooting sheep that is endlessly entertaining. And most of the scenes with the nuns are really beautiful. But just like Gummo, this sort of has that weird for the sake of weird thing that makes it seem more masturbatory than artistic. If I could figure out what it all adds up to, I think I'd like it a lot more, but I'm not really convinced it even adds up to anything at all. Lots to like--the raw originality, the odd beauty, some great music--but it's just not enough. Channel it, Harmony!

Yellow Submarine

1968 animated musical

Rating: 14/20 (Abbey: 20/20; Dylan: 2/20)

Plot: Pepperland is overrun by Blue Meanies, and it's up to Captain Fred to find help. He travels via title vehicle and gets the Beatles to help out. After many psychedelic adventures, they find their way back to Pepperland to fight off the Blue Meanies and their minions in the only way they know how--rock 'n' roll!

Dylan: "This is the worst movie ever made."

This is nowhere close to perfect, but it's always entertaining. This is stuffed with ideas, and sometimes the animation can't catch up with the sheer amount of them. There's so much going on on-screen at the same time that your eyes also have trouble keeping up. I guess this lends a bit of rewatchability to it, but it's also headache inducing. There are moments of sublimity, however. I love the "Eleanor Rigby" sequence. I really like the "Sea of Monsters" sequence, too. The biggest problem is that it needs to be 20 minutes shorter. There's a big fight at the end, the Beatles sing "All You Need Is Love" and get rid of the giant blue glove, and the movie's at a logical stopping place. But then it goes on for another 20 minutes with a couple of lesser songs. Most of the songs actually seem forced into the story of the movie, but individually, they mostly work pretty well as music videos. The main Blue Meanie, by the way, has to be the most flamboyantly gay character in movie history.

I had to trick Abbey into watching this instead of Beauty and the Beast or Spy Kids by getting out my Yellow Submarine action figures.

Begotten

1990 film school project that probably got a low grade

Rating: 4/20

Plot: A masked individual hacks away at him/herself with a straight razor and finally dies. A woman emerges from beneath the corpse and wanders aimlessly while fondling her breasts. Suddenly, she's pregnant. She wanders some more but outside in a bleak and barren landscape. Then, in an uplifting twist, a twitching guy (her son?) is attacked by cannibals. In the end (spoiler alert!), giant burlap-clad people make pudding.

This disturbing little avant-garde nonsense is definitely one of those "either you like it or you're normal" type movies. There's not another movie that looks like this one out there, but that honestly just makes me feel a lot better about "out there" than anything else. I will give credit to the man who plays "twitching guy" because there's some quality convulsing that goes on for about half of this film's length. Let's see Tom Hanks pull that off! Recommended for anybody who likes to watch grainy disturbing image after grainy disturbing image with some ambient music and minimalistic sound effects including birds chirping, scraping, farts, thunder, crickets, slurping, dripping, gurgling, more crickets, dragging, and rubbing. I never thought I'd say this, but there are so many grainy disturbing images in this that I got a little sick of them and don't even know if I can call myself a fan of grainy disturbing images anymore. The same thing happened with me and Will Ferrell actually. Seriously, if you watch five minutes of Begotten (which, if my little review has inspired you to, you can see online), you've really seen it all. While watching this, I couldn't help but wonder if the director's main purpose was to make a movie that is more difficult to watch than footage from the Holocaust. This is apparently one of those "cult films," but these cult members probably need to drink the Kool-aid as soon as possible. To Elias Merhige's credit, at least he hasn't made a sequel.

Synecdoche, New York

2008 film experience

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 3/20)

Plot: Theater director Caden Cotard is struggling with his work and almost every aspect of his life. After a successful production of Death of a Salesman and the awarding of a grant, he decides it's time to make something more creative and personal. He has a city constructed in a large warehouse and casts hundreds of actors to act out the minutia of the lives of him and the people. Gradually, he falls to pieces.

This is either one of my new favorite movies or a big ol' piece of crapola. I just can't decide. I laughed out several times, and I nearly cried more than a few. Hoffman's performance is heart-shattering, and his transformation from a middle-aged theater director to an old decrepit man is remarkable. This really works well as a character study of a disturbed (diseased?) man struggling with his mortality, every single choice he's made in his life, and a universe that he's unable to control. It's about as quirky as movies get, and it's definitely not easy. In fact, I plan to see it again very soon (possible this weekend) to try to figure out just what I saw the first time. There are so many fine details submerged in the chaos that I know I missed a lot. It's a riddle, but unlike other movie riddles I couldn't solve, I'm not sure I need answers to enjoy it. Actually, this seems more like the type of movie you don't really watch and understand as much as you interact with it, let it bounce around your head. This head-scratcher isn't for everybody (see Jen's rating which, I'll admit, quite possibly could be more accurate than mine), but you should watch it anyway. It's a movie I thought of all day (when I wasn't doing my job--playing chess on a computer at school), and that's usually a sign that I just watched something good.

Zardoz

1974 science fiction thing

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Sometime in the distant future, the people of earth have been divided into two separate societies--savages in red diapers and silk-clad immortals. An exterminator named Zed sneaks into the mouth of the savage's god (Zardoz) and. . . nevermind. This is all pretty stupid.

This movie starts with a giant stone head proclaiming, "The gun is good. The penis is evil." Then, it vomits guns as a bunch of guys with bad facial hair and red diapers run around retrieving them. Then, Sean Connery (a scantily-clad one) winds up inside the head where he points a pistol at naked people in giant ziploc bags. After that, the movie gets really weird. Then, it manages to get weirder. Zardoz has the feel of the brilliant The Holy Mountain, but there is one key difference--it sucks. Sean Connery looks as baffled as I felt as he runs around in his little leather pants and silly hair and giant boots. His appearance in this movie makes me wonder if he lost a bet or something. There's some really nifty imagery in this movie that saves it from being a complete waste of my time. I especially liked when Sean Connery's character winds up in a psychedelic house of mirrors. But this thing seemed endless, completely inept, wonderfully vacuous, and really really silly. Lots of "What the hell?" going on here. I haven't looked this up or anything, but I bet this movie broke a record for actors asking, "You want me to do what?" during the production.

Sans Soleil

1983 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A woman reads from letters sent to her from a globetrotter. He meditates on time, space, and memory. Pretentiously.

Rich stuff here, really thick with ideas and visuals. This feels a lot like Herzog's Encounters or Fata Morgana, bizarro travelogues that showcase earth as alien territory. Here, there are mystical locales in Africa and Japan, bookcased by volcanic tragedy in Iceland. There's also an excursion to the streets of San Francisco and a mini-essay on Hitchcock's ideas about memory as seen in Vertigo. Kitty temples, zombie dancers called baby martians, pope exhibits, sex museums, sleeping passengers on boats, animal masks, blood gushing from giraffes, Pacman, the striking of streets to scare away moles, Japanese horror, wartime terror. It's the alien strange juxtaposed with the mundane. Combined with the voiceover ramblings and the synthesizer bleeps and bloops, the experience is really bizarre, almost surreal, but beautifully unique. The whole thing is poetic and rambling and almost overwhelmingly difficult, but it has a way of washing over you, sucking you in, and sticking with you. I watched this in installments, a lot of segments multiple times, and random bits keep creeping into my conscious thoughts. The experience is a dense and dreamy one, and I'm sure multiple viewings would unravel some of the mysteries. I plan on revisiting this one soon; however, it's that sort of film that most people would have problems getting through once.

Underground

1995 Emir Kusturica joint

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The story of Yugoslavia from the beginnings of World War II to the Cold War to the time when there's ain't no Yugoslavia no more. Marko and Blacky are underground weapons manufacturers, literally working subterraneanly. They also happen to be in love with the same actress. After the end of WWII, Marko fails to tell the inhabitants of his underground city that the war has ended, keeping them working hard on making guns and a tank while being completely cut off from the rest of the world.

I've had this movie on loan from the library (vhs) for over a year. The original due date was February 8, 2008. That's got to be a personal record. Like Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat, this teeters on the edge of insanity and chaos, madcap and unhinged and unlike anything else out there. The social commentary is about as bleak as it can get (although the ending at least appears hopeful), but the surreal situations and slapstick lighten the load a lot. In fact, at almost three hours, this carnivalesque film is about as exciting as movies can get. I loved the off-kilter characters, and there's something that can be said for a movie that creates a guy like Marko who is doing some really evil things and still somehow manages to be hysterically funny. My favorite thing about the movie is maybe the soundtrack. It's hyperkinetic gypsy music but it's played by a band that just follows around the characters and relentlessly plays, most excitedly at the beginning while they follow Marko and Blacky's fleeing coach and during a wedding when they're crammed atop a wildly spinning pedestal. There's a density, and like a lot of movies that I wind up really really liking, I don't believe I've even scratched the surface after a first viewing. My complete lack of knowledge about Eastern European history probably doesn't help. Underground is powerful and entertaining stuff.

Brazil

1985 Utopian fantasy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Society is deadened, feelings seemingly forbidden by law. Blueish-collar worker Sam juggles a relationship with his mother that sickens him, a job that is exactly as dead-end as he would like it to be, and his fantasies involving a woman he's only barely made eye contact with. Meanwhile, metallic gods bring the hammer down, and bureaucrats read from pamphlets as thick as bricks.

The problems with this one are that it requires more viewings than most people are probably willing to invest, that there is probably just too much movie here and it'll likely leave some viewers drowning in it all, and that some of it seems a little dated. But the rest of it--the acting, oddball characters, absolutely incredible sets and more incredible visual appeal, the noirish complex plot, the music--is explosively imaginative. I can't imagine how some of this was pulled off without computer animation. The movie stays fun and funny while all the time being oppressively depressing and sharply satirical. It seems weird to me that there was a time when Terry Gilliam was one of my favorite directors but that I didn't really care for this movie all that much.

Plymptoons

1991 animated shorts

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Compilation of shorts by animator Bill Plympton.

I've always liked the idea of Bill Plympton much more than the actual product although I did used to enjoy the MTV shorts they used to show in between these things they used to show called music videos. When these are short enough (his audience would have to be somebody with a very short attention span) and burbling with that crazy dark creative energy he's known for, these really work as entertaining little tidbits. "Your face" is pretty brilliant. I also liked the onslaught of 10-or-so second snippets near the end of the collection, and the "How to Quit Smoking" piece was cute. Unfortunately for this collection, there's a lot of stuff that nobody but Bill Plympton's mother would really want to see. She'd keep some of this in a box in the attic with all his old report cards and elementary art work. I really sort of wish there were times during my most mundane days when somebody would tap me on the shoulder and I'd turn around and the shoulder tapper would have a television sitting on his head and on the television would be a Bill Plympton short and I'd watch it and laugh and then thank the shoulder tapper and then walk away. I'm not sure if watching all of these at once (or in two installments) is recommended.

Myra Breckinridge

1970 crapfest

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Myron becomes Myra following a sex change operation. He/she travels to Hollywood to claim his/her part of the estate of Buck Loner, an old Western entertainer turned movie bigwig operating his own acting school. Then, all kinds of shocking things happen.

There are actually some positives here. Raquel Welch. Film critic Rex Reed screaming, "Where are my tits?" The plundering from other films. But the movie is so sloppy with such unfocused direction, that this just becomes boring and difficult to watch. A pony with too many tricks isn't any better than a one-trick pony, I guess. I kept wanting to give bonus points for effort on this one, but it never really succeeds on any level. It attempts shock early and often and then more often. The attempted satire of Hollywood falls flat and seems pretty vacuous. Mae West was probably very proud of her work in this one, especially considering that every scene she is in seems gratuitous. And by the way--blink and you'll miss the midget.

The Beautiful Washing Machine

2004 drama

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A lonely guy who recently ended a relationship buys a sexy secondhand washing machine. Initially, the machine doesn't work right. He discovers the problem--the washing machine has a soul. It's a soul that he begins to exploit, first in the privacy of his home and later as a prostitute. Then the movie gets really boring and I lose track of what is going on.

Dullsville. I suppose under the right circumstances I might have liked this more, but it was so slow-moving. And aimless. Movies that move slowly don't typically bother me, but when something is moving slowly toward nowhere, there's a problem. This is a movie I'll forget that I watched in two months.

The Magic Christian

1969 movie from 1969

Rating: 12/20

Plot: An eccentric multi-gazillionaire named Guy Grand befriends and eventually adopts a homeless guy of indeterminate age. Together, they mischief make, exploring just how much people will do for money.

Another misleading poster considering Raquel Welch and her whip are on screen for less than a minute. That was in a part of the movie where it almost seemed like they knew they weren't going to get a high enough shane-movies rating and decided to up the ante. "Let's throw some random midgets in there! How about a guy in a gorilla suit? I know! Raquel Welch cracking a whip near over fifty topless women!" The movie's a mess, and I'm not sure what purpose Ringo Starr plays. It's a pointless character. The satire works occasionally and there are a lot of humorous moments, but the stream-of-consciousness approach and the dated look only go so far. This is definitely a product of its time although it is also at times strangely similar to Freddy Got Fingered. Why is it that I always want to like Peter Sellers more than I end up liking him?

Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Quay Brothers

Animated shorts from '84-'03

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Animated realizations of the nightmares of Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam.

These macabre, surreal miniature epics creep and crawl through the shadows of Joe the Plumber's dank subconscious. Busted puppets are employed to dust off bric-a-brac and twitching baubles, uncovering perversity, fears, obsessions, and things Joe the Plumber will never ever understand. Moody musics (Stockhausen the most known name; some guy named Lech Jankowski does the music for 2/3 of the shorts though) accompany grotesqueries. Strings waver, eggs vibrate, antiquated instruments flutter, and feathers dance. The Quays are brilliant with set design, mostly artistically-designed miniatures in black and white, but the camera work is stunning as it maneuvers delicately through secret places, loses focus, becomes engulfed in shadows, etc. Less comedic (more uneasy) than Svankmajer, seemingly an influence since one of these pieces is named after him, these surreal shorts are abstract spectacles, the works of visionary auteurs. My favorites: "Street of Crocodiles" and "Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies" but also, for sentimental reasons, the videos for rock-and-rollers His Name Is Alive which was my introduction to the Quay world. Recommended for Eraserhead fans.

People my age may recognize this MTV-commissioned short:

The Quay Brothers are likely Youtubable. Check it.

High Plains Drifter

1973 weird western

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A mysterious stranger rides into tiny Lago, a town with a checkered past of shadows and whip cracks. He kills a couple three roughies, rapes a woman, and agrees to help the townspeople by protecting them from three guys just released from prison who may have a reason to come and shoot up the place. But it comes at a price--anything the stranger wants. So he makes the midget the sheriff/mayor and paints the entire town red. Hell arrives.

Strange western. With Eastwood in his "Man with no Name" role and little person Billy Curtis, there's almost too much tough guy in this one. The plot is simple enough, but there are layers and a lot, I think, that is open to interpretation. (I have my own theories involving Angels of Death and purgatory.) My favorite tidbit about this is that Eastwood wrote to John Wayne about potentially working with him following the release of this movie. John Wayne apparently hated the violence in High Plains Drifter so much that he wrote a pretty nasty letter back saying he had no desire to work with him. Odd, because the violence doesn't seem especially graphic when compared to earlier Leone or Peckinpah movies. And it may just be my sick mind, but I thought this movie was more comedic than it was violent. I wonder if Wayne would have worked with Billy Curtis. Man, that would have been something.

Faust

1994 Svankmajer flick

Rating: 17/20

Plot: See Marlow, Christopher.

This version of the Faust story is a lot funnier than 1920-something silent Murnau version. It's even, arguably, more visually imaginative and fantastically stylized. Arguably. Svankmajer's mix of live action, marionettes (sometimes sans strings), and stop animation creates an off-kilter universe of twitching cobwebs, junk-drawer chicken bones, and closet ash and shadows. And a dude has sex with a seven-foot tall wooden puppet. I know what folks'll say. Folks'll complain that this is too much of an onslaught of the random, too much of that weird-for-the-sake-of-weird type stuff. But I disagree completely and think that this grows with multiple viewings. Surrealist funk that hits you right in the loins! This isn't my favorite Svankmajer movie, but it is my brother's and is probably one of the easier ones to locate.