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Weird Movies for Your Winter Watchlist (Part 1)
Hunting for treadmill-worthy movies through the winter months, one tends to get more open-minded once the mainstream options are exhausted. (And maybe I’m exaggerating only a little about the paucity of eligible mainstream choices.) Settling on a film depends a great deal on one’s mood and a bit on the photo accompanying the title. The description, however, can make or break the decision to hit “Play.” While vacationing in the Caribbean [could be beautiful scenery, but perhaps feature too many scantily clad ladies], Clara falls for Jeremy. [Hmm.] He’s tall, dark and handsome–and married! [Fun and hilarious! I’ll pass.]
But plenty of movies are difficult to gauge from the picture or description. I have to give some of these a chance, as this is how I’ve discovered wonderful works of art. Mysterious movies are like wild cards–or important congressional bills, where you play them to see what’s in them. Will I watch all the way through, shaking my head? Will I fall in love with the acting, the dialogue, the story, and the visuals, and recommend to friends? Or will I scramble to stop the film five minutes in and go wash my hands? I’ve viewed some real wild cards lately.
Baghdad Cafe turned out to be the strangest movie I’ve ever seen. I chose it because the name made me think of the foreign films I like to watch, and the description drew me in. The setting is a dreary desert cafe off Route 66, the plot seems character-driven, and the story jerks forward with sequences of scenes that remind me a great deal of a high school play. I could imagine the script saying something like, Cafe Interior. Expressionless employee is slowly cleaning the counter. Regular customer enters stage left, props his feet up on the table, and smiles.
Regular Customer: Coffee please.
And so on. The story opens with a round, stiff German fraulein who, escaping her own sad life circumstances, stumbles upon the cafe and its bored, angry characters. SPOILER:
Over time, she comes to seem sweet and even attractive, and of course, she makes a difference and brings crackling vitality to a dead establishment.
The movie is unconventional without trying too hard (perhaps its German producer was a little . . . well, weird), and even Roger Ebert says: “The charm of ‘Bagdad Cafe’ is that every character and every moment is unanticipated, obscurely motivated, of uncertain meaning and vibrating with life.” However, one scene sequence is simply a dusty old naughty trope involving an artist asking to paint the lady he admires. The long ending scene (SPOILER) is bizarre–all the employees sing and dance together, Broadway-like, for an admiring crowd. I grew attached to the main character, and some scenes and sound effects, like a desert sunset with the swish of a boomerang, are beautiful.
The theme song is plaintive—well-performed but like nails on a chalkboard, especially since it is repeated several times. Surprisingly, “Calling You” became popular in the late 80s and early 90s. The concept, too, was deemed worthy and was spun into a short-lived TV series with a cast of well-known characters, including Whoopi Goldberg.
I recommend the movie if you were in the same spot I was–you’ve run out of options and have the patience to view something unusual.
Published in Entertainment
The movie is unconventional without trying too hard (perhaps its German producer was a little . . . well, weird)
Who, Percy Adlon? Nah, I knew him. He wasn’t weird. He was okay.
BTW: He came from a famous family of hotel owners in Europe. Hotel Adlon is still Berlin’s finest place to stay.
Good post!
Wow, amazing that you knew him Gary. Thanks for sharing. Have you seen Baghdad Cafe?
We gave it its US premiere in 1988! At the American Film Institute film festival.
Well, I guess I have to be careful how I talk about movies and producers around here! ;-)
My coffee shop closed down around me while I was wrapping up this post, so editing was in order. I’m almost done working out the bugs for a smoother read.
There’s nothing like being approached by a polite, timid barista (who’d been pointedly mopping the floor around me a few minutes earlier) who says, “Did you know we’re closing in five minutes?”
Yes, I did know it. That’s why I’d been typing so furiously.
I’m unsure why it’s rated PG. It’s definitely a PG-13. Or did they not have that in-between rating yet? Kids wouldn’t even enjoy this.
One good source on movies: Sheila O’Malley.
Thank you. She has reviewed some movies I have never heard of. I lost interest in finding out about movies during COVID, as Calif was locked down. So I have 3 to 4 years of newer released movies to catch up on.
O’Malley has a good handle on films. Her being on Ebert dot com is recommendation enough.
A Few Suggestions:
3 Days of the Condor
A Matter of Life & Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Bang The Drum Slowly
Beauty & The Beast (Jean Cocteau)
Before the Rains (Merchant/Ivory)
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Breaker Morant (Bruce Beresford)
Breaking Away (Peter Yates)
Crimes & Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
Danton
Dead Calm
Diva
Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg)
Fahrenheit 451 (Francois Truffaut)
Gallipoli (Peter Weir)
Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris)
Gone to Earth (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Gregory’s Girl (Bill Forsythe)
Hamlet – w/Nicole Williamson, Anthony Hopkins
Holiday – Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn
Hope and Glory (John Boorman)
Howard’s End (Merchant / Ivory)
I Know Where I’m Going (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
I Married A Witch (Rene Claire)
Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring
La Notte di Cabira (Federico Fellini)
La Nuit de Varennes
Little Dorrit and Nobody’s Fault – Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi
Little Voice
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth)
Night and The City
Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)
Odd Man Out (Carroll Reed)
Orphée (Jean Cocteau)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
Roman Holiday (William Wyler)
Romeo & Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli)
Room At The Top
Room With A View (Merchant / Ivory)
Sabrina (Billy Wilder)
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock)
Sometimes a Great Notion (Paul Newman)
Sorcerer (William Friedkin)
Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Dresser
The Duellists (Ridley Scott)
The Emerald Forest (John Boorman)
The Fallen Idol
The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
The Innocents (Jack Clayton)
The Last Wave (dir. Peter Weir)
The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp
The Magician (Ingmar Bergman, w/Max Von Sydow)
The Mission (w/Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro)
The Oxbow Incident
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Red Shoes
The Remains of the Day
The Rocking Horse Winner
The Third Man
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, w/Max Von Sydow)
To Catch a Thief (Hitchcock, w/Cary Grant, Grace Kelly)
Tunes of Glory (w/Alec Guinness, John Mills)
Brian Watt, your list is exhaustive and notable, but those are all movies that need to be viewed, not merely seen. For a treadmill-worthy experience I would recommend to sawatdeeka a movie that I saw tonight for the first and only time, while attending to my wife in the neurology unit of our local medical center (she had two seizures on Christmas). Fifty First Dates, with the inevitably sappy Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. The dialogue and acting will not bring you in, but the scenery is nice and it is distracting. Funny to see a movie about an amnesic while on a neurology unit.
It’s a fantastic list, Brian, enough for years of R> posts! Any and every one of them is worthy of a good word.
I’m going to pick out Danton, nobody’s idea of cheer at holiday time, by Polish director Andrzej Wajda, one of the greatest of directors, certainly one of the very greatest of anti-Communist dissident filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick, no slouch when it came to perfectionism, pronounced it to be “almost beyond criticism”.
For sheer stupidity and an example of why not everyone should make a movie, I suggest Jurassic Shark.
It was so bad, the producer had the gall to make a sequel . . .
Here’s one — “Oblivion”, with Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. Not splashy or high paced, like other Cruise movies. I’ve seen much worse movies — we could NOT stomach “Raising Arizona”!
I’ve seen Fifty First Dates–yeah, a treadmill one, but I’m not sure I would have finished it. It’s entertaining, but that bottom shelf humor! (I have a family member who watches it and I think has the DVD.)
That is quite the list! I have a handful to write about. I don’t think there’s overlap with your list.
Yes, thank you for the recommendation.
I might have seen that one and liked it. Or I’m getting it mixed up with something else from around the same era.
A few suggestions…
“O”…this is the story of Othello, transposed into a modern high school. I though it was very, very good.
“Runaway Train”…two cons escape from a maximum-security prison and jump on a freight train. The engineer has a heart attack. Reviewed by Roger Ebert:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/runaway-train-1986
“The Wind Rises”…the beautifully-animated story of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of Japan’s Zero fighter. Some significant historical inaccuracies, but well worth watching.
“The Valley of Decision”…WSJ a couple of weeks ago briefly reviewed the Marcia Davenport book on which this film (starring Greer Garson and Gregory Peck) is based, but didn’t mention the movie. I reviewed both the book and the movie last year. With the increased US interest in manufacturing, this film should really get some promotion and be released on streaming.
I forgot to include:
Scotland, PA.
A comic retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set in and around a hamburger stand in Pennsylvania. If you’re familiar with the characters and the plot of Shakespeare’s play, then you’ll find this movie hilarious. It was available on Amazon Prime for a while…might still be…also appears to be available on YouTube.
Want a nice paranoid night? Try a couple of these bloodless but chilling thrillers:
It’s a tale of a lab-bred killer toxin that’s escaped! Wild, huh? I mean, who could make this stuff up?
Shadow on the Land was a spooky 1967 TV movie that was the pilot of a proposed weekly series about a group of rebels working within a fascist government of the United States. (The one copy on YT is lousy at first (VHS?) but gets better.)
Gary, I always thought Bug and Maharis were unfortunately underrated. The desert scenery and atomic-era sets are alone a reason to see this movie. And again, I can’t recommend John Ringo’s Darkness Rising post-apoc series enough, written pre-Covid. I will try to find Shadow.
Here’s a copy on the Internet Archives. I had a post about it three years ago.
For anyone who needs to cleanse their film palate of heavy duty action movies, here is a gentle lovely film about a guy who adopts an otter. The scenery alone is worth the watch.
“Billy and Molly”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkoNeESBH94
And here I thought you lacked the Happy Holidays touch, Gary!!
LOL, CarolJoy! Shadow on the Land is in fact set at Christmastime–even secret police headquarters has cheery decorations up for its office Christmas party–and the plot involves a deep state scheme to cause a power blackout on Christmas Eve that will justify a national crackdown on the resistance.
I saw Baghdad Cafe when it was first released – and really liked it. I’ve occasionally wondered if it would stand the test of time and your post says it clearly has. I liked the German character so much that I found another movie she was in: Rosalie Goes Shopping. Maybe not as good but quirky and enjoyable.
What did you like best about it, in addition to the main character?
I will have to watch it again! It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen it.