films that do "quirky" right

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alright, so i saw napoleon dynamite for the first time last night and it was pretty much crap. the whole movie is basically just a series of lame quirks lousily strung together (oh wow, that girl has ONE PIGTAIL! wtf is a LIGER?! and the total nerd who chats with "hot babes" online! etc. etc.); the whole movie just seemed like one long inside joke that stopped being funny after about five minutes.

and so, prompted by what someone (forget who) said on the thread about the state of american indie film right now, combined with how disappointed i was with garden state (DIE NATALIE PORTMAN DIE) and my fear of seeing i heart huckabees, are there any really great films, very recently or not so recently, that are honestly more than the sum of their idiosyncrasies? what i mean is, (indie) films that for the most part give off the air of being "quirky" but which actually get at something bigger and/or are really entertaining/funny besides? also, when did this type of film become so popular in the first place (i.e. what are the prototypes for films like napoleon dynamite, huckabees, et al)? what say ye, ILF?

― joseph (joseph), Friday, 29 October 2004 18:54 (twenty-one years ago)

I think the whole quirky "hip cinema" movement of late was started by the two guys who can actually do it right--Wes Anderson & Todd Solondz.

I haven't seen Napolean Dynamite but it definitely looks like "Welcome to the Dollhouse" meets "Rushmore". "i heart huckabees" looks like a complete Wes Anderson ripoff.

I'm disappointed to hear that "Garden State" was bad. I heard it was funny, but the trailer made it seem like "Lost In Translation Pt. 2".

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Friday, 29 October 2004 19:09 (twenty-one years ago)

parts of garden state are funny. the ending is a total wreck and i think he points up the "lookit me i'm alienated" thing way too much, though. it's better than napoleon dynamite by a mile, although that's not really a good comparison to make. and some found natalie portman cute; i wanted to smash her face in with a brick after awhile.

i'd also like to nominate schizopolis as a great quirky film. actually, i'm tempted to call it a masterpiece.

― joseph (joseph), Friday, 29 October 2004 19:52 (twenty-one years ago)

I found Napoleon Dynamite sort of entertaining, and at moments, very funny, but ultimately empty and unsatisfying, and VERY forced. I agree with the Wes Anderson/Todd Solondz suggestion, but I wonder if there are any earlier progenitors of this style.

― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 30 October 2004 04:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I haven't seen the films mentioned in the original post yet, but based on the Anderson/Solondz reference, I would say Love Serenade, an Australian film from the early 90s, is a forerunner of the style. Quirky characters and increasingly odd plot development, but entertaining and charming right up to the end.

Also, I don't remember it in great detail, but how about Sweetie by Jane Campion?

― Dr Benway (dr benway), Saturday, 30 October 2004 16:52 (twenty-one years ago)

"I agree with the Wes Anderson/Todd Solondz suggestion, but I wonder if there are any earlier progenitors of this style."

Well, there's Woody Allen of course, the father of neurotic, quirky modern cinema. Further back, you probably have to look to Jerry Lewis, even further, to slapstick comedians like the Marx brothers, Buster Keaton, Chaplin, etc.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Monday, 1 November 2004 16:59 (twenty-one years ago)

'the graduate', 'brewster mcleod', 'mash', 'catch 22', 'sullivan's travels'

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Monday, 1 November 2004 19:56 (twenty-one years ago)

the world according to garp, rushmore, blues brothers, flirting with disaster, amateur, dog day afternoon, fisher king, paris, texas, short cuts, caddyshack, pulp fiction, dr. strangelove, slaughterhouse 5, blue velvet, mystery train, american beauty, spinal tap, to name a few.

― j.m. lockery (j.m. lockery), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 00:07 (twenty-one years ago)

"fisher king"

anything by Terry Gilliam, for that matter. And how about Monty Python films?

Dr. Strangelove was a good addition.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 03:42 (twenty-one years ago)

wes anderson's a one-trick wonder ... rushmore had a point, but hte the rest of his films are arabesque adornment on a hollow center: william morris wrapping a cardboard box.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Friday, 5 November 2004 07:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I think the warmth and development of his characters make Wes Anderson's films worth watching. He has a great deadpan comedic sense as well.

I appreciate his films more on an entertainment level than an artistic level. They're good films if you don't expect anything more from them.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Friday, 5 November 2004 19:10 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, I'll definately meet you on the second part of that. They're extremely well-made pictures, if a little obviously so.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Saturday, 6 November 2004 00:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Napoleon Dynamite was hilarious. I think that character is one of the best realized and most inventive of the comedy genre.

― PVC (peeveecee), Monday, 8 November 2004 02:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I liked the character, but there was too much going on in the movie. I didn't particularly care for Uncle Rico, for example, and I could have done with a lot less of the older brother. The whole movie was just to much slam-bang silliness crammed into too short a space.

― Hurting (Hurting), Monday, 8 November 2004 05:01 (twenty-one years ago)

>"i heart huckabees" looks like a complete Wes Anderson ripoff.

Well, I don't know what it "looks" like, but that's silly. David O. Russell has his own sensibility, though it has more in common with Charlie Kaufman-scripted films than Anderson's. And two-thirds of IHH is golden.

The mid-to-late '60s, as the counterculture ascended, found Hollywood trying to market iconoclastic "quirky" comedies in particular: A Thousand Clowns, The President's Analyst, A Fine Madness, Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now, even bigger films like Dr Strangelove, The Loved One and The Graduate. (Hell, there are blatant Graduate allusions in Rushmore.)

You're not saying Keaton and the Marx films were neurotic?! Anything but.

Napoleon Dynamite was a vacuous Rorschach movie. Anyone laughing regularly at it must play the "Langley Schools" CD daily.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 November 2004 20:19 (twenty-one years ago)

"Dummy" was much better at points than Garden State, which I did like very much.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 9 November 2004 20:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Seriously, did anyone thing this...

looked any good?!

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 10 November 2004 15:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Fucking hell.

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/fox_searchlight/garden_state/zach_braff/zach_braff3.jpg

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 10 November 2004 15:45 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm surprised Todd Solondz hasn't been discussed further. Maybe it's because he's more in the "disturbingly quirky" category (Tim Burton & David Lynch could also be included in this).

What about Caveh Zahedi or Jim Jarmusch?

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Wednesday, 10 November 2004 18:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Re Jim Jarmusch, what about Aki Kaurismaki? JJ acknowledges the debt.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 11 November 2004 16:36 (twenty-one years ago)

sideways - it's not overtly quirky, but it's not transparent and has a slew of memorable moments. i loved it.

and as far as american indie filmmaking goes, alexander payne's name should be brought up far more often

― metfigga (metfigga), Friday, 12 November 2004 21:44 (twenty-one years ago)

i think payne's name WILL be brought up more often now. but you're totally right - and "citizen ruth" is one of the most hilariously overlooked movies of recent years (ok, sort of recent).

why the fuck is it so impossible to see most aki kaurismaki movies?

― a spectator bird (a spectator bird), Friday, 12 November 2004 21:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh good grief I saw the trailer for 'Garden State' tonight and it looke bad. I was halfway through watching it when I realised that it must be the film that everyone was saying was the awful new 'let's get on this quirky bandwagon' film that everyone was talking about. That without remembering any of the cast members. Man, it looked bad.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I also saw the trailer for 'I Heart Huckabees' but that still looked great and David O. Russell hasn't let me down yet.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:50 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't really think 'Sideways' is at all quirky. 'Quirk' is a function of story more than direction; it's window-dressing, it's unnecessary contrivance used in place of dramatic tension; it's the gratuitious application of William Morris wallpaper on a Hemingway plot. A sequence 's (or, for that matter, entire film's) tonal coloration of wry, dry, straightfaced humor (Sideways, e.g.,) doesn't a quirky movie make.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 03:19 (twenty-one years ago)

i still laugh a lot at wayne's world.

― gino, Tuesday, 30 November 2004 02:03 (twenty-one years ago)

it shoulda been called garth's world.

― Remy Snush (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 04:17 (twenty-one years ago)

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