ART WEIRD
This little section is 90% of my motivation for the entire website. These are movies I happen to think are particularly cool, audacious, intelligent, meticulously crafted, or aesthetically subversive, powerful enough to provoke thought and (above all) entertaining enough to watch a dozen times. Extra points are given for going over-the-top. This section will grow slowly, because I don't want to force anything in here that doesn't belong... just every now and then when I'm adding a film I think, "Damn, this is a genuinely great movie!"

Chris (aesthetic dictator of Atomic Cinema)

Belle De Jour (DVD) • 1968
Buena Vista DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
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Highly recommended. Absolutely first rate French art / sleaze from Luis Bunuel capturing Deneuve at the height of her beauty. Neurotic young bride Severine loves her boy-scout perfect doctor husband, so much so that she recoils from his tou... (See full description)

Criss Cross (DVD) • 1949
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
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Among the very greatest films noir; belongs on a short list alongside movies like ASPHALT JUNGLE, OUT OF THE PAST, DOUBLE INDEMNITY AND DIRECTOR Robert Siodmak's other great noirs, PHANTOM LADY and THE KILLERS. Love-struck loser Burt Lan... (See full description)

Recommended. I winced when I first heard someone was remaking George Romero's horror masterpiece DAWN OF THE DEAD. Much to my surprise, however, this remake is also a masterpiece. On the basic horror thriller level it is relentlessly exci... (See full description)

Dogville (DVD) • 2003
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
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Truly unique. I consider this a great film, but I don't have much company. I have never seen a film critically savaged like DOGVILLE. For some reason this movie was UNIVERSALLY condemned as "anti-American." WTF? A work of art may be "anti-A... (See full description)

Foreign Correspondent (DVD) • 1940
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
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One of Alfred Hitchcock's most free-wheeling, fun movies. Anticipates the structure and tone of NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Johnny Jones is an action reporter on a New York newspaper. The editor appoints him European correspondent because he is f... (See full description)

Happiness (DVD) • 1998
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
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Todd Solondz (STORYTELLING, WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE) is a brilliant unsentimental artist, and his tragi-comic gaze takes in almost the entirety of modern life here in this sweeping study of desire and loneliness. In perfectly post-modern f... (See full description)

Killing, The (DVD) • 1956
MGM DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
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Kubrick's first major movie, and among his best. A lower budget derivative of John Houston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (a fine film itself) that's actually somewhat better. Hardboiled author/genius Jim Thompson provided the riveting dialogue deliv... (See full description)

Kiss Me Deadly (Restored Version) (DVD) • 1955
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
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One of my favorite movies (like desert-island-disc favorite), and TOUCH OF EVIL's only competition as most subversive late-noir film. Beautifully photographed and composed. Aldrich viewed Mickey Spillane's hard-boiled detective hero Mike H... (See full description)

Manchurian Candidate (DVD) • 1962
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
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The definitive paranoid political movie and widely considered John Franenheimer's best film. The brainwashing scenes are among the most brilliant, inventive sequences in the history of of film. John Frankenhe... (See full description)

Right Stuff, The (2 DVD Special Edition) • 1983
DVD / Region 1 (USA) (2 DVD set)
 
 $26.39 Add to Cart
Kaufman is one of the great directors nobody talks about. His first film won the Cannes equivalent of "best new artist" in 1965, then he didn't get to direct anything worthwhile for twelve years. He made some gritty westerns and wrote THE O... (See full description)

Right Stuff, The (Single Disc DVD) • 1983
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
 $14.89 Add to Cart
(The film itself is the same here as in the more expensive two-disc edition, but without the second disc of featurettes, comentaries, etc.) Kaufman is one of the great directors nobody talks about. His first film won the Cannes equivalent o... (See full description)

Safe (DVD) • 1995
DVD / Region 1 (USA).
 
 $38.39 Add to Cart
Written and directed by Todd Haynes (VELVET GOLDMINE, FAR FROM HEAVEN) I respect SAFE as a work of art as much as any film I've ever seen; one of a handful of apolitical (and perhaps amoral) movies like THE RAPTURE or HAPPINESS that offer r... (See full description)

Shadow Of A Doubt (1943) (DVD) • 1943
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
 $19.39 Add to Cart
I'm a directors guy but I have to admit that screenwriting is under-rated. Almost all of Hitchcock's movies are wonderful in their way, but the stand-outs tend to have the sharpest screenplays. Playwright Thornton Wilder's words combined wi... (See full description)

Welcome To The Dollhouse (DVD) • 1996
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
 $23.39 Add to Cart
There's more honesty in this stunning black comedy than in a dozen documentaries. Hilarious and brutally unsentimental look at an unattractive 7th grader as she struggles to cope with un-attentive parents, snobbish classmates, a smart older... (See full description)

Year Of Living Dangerously (DVD) • 1983
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 
 $10.39 Add to Cart
rguably Peter Weir's best film, which is really saying something. Mel Gibson plays Guy, an Australian reporter assigned to Jakarta, Indonesia, during the summer of 1965, struggles to uncover the dangerous truth about the toppling governme... (See full description)