The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Surrealism began as an artistic movement in the 1920s. Here painters like Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Rene Magritte and not long after writers and filmmakers sought to challenge traditional naturalism by the use of a series of non-sequitur juxtapositions.
The idea was initially to allow the subconscious free reign and break away from realism. Surrealism specialises in non-logical connections, juxtaposition of objects and images that do not match, where symbolism is often made literal, or the absurd and nonsensical are allowed free reign. On film, surrealism will often break with traditional narrative or treat the ridiculous with deadpan seriousness.
Surrealism began on film with early works during the 1920s from Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel. There has been no real movement for surrealist cinema as such, more a case of individual works and directors who specialise in it. Noted surrealist directors include Robert Altman, Quentin Dupieux, Jean-Luc Godard, Michel Gondry, Peter Greenaway, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Charles Kaufman, David Lynch, Guy Maddin, Takashi Miike, Bill Plympton, The Quay Brothers and Jan Svankmajer.
This wouldn’t be a Terry Gilliam if it wasn’t cursed by bad luck – the death of star Heath Ledger. It’s the most Gilliam-esque film in some years where Gilliam and his designers leap off into deliriously madcap surrealism
A film based on the album by Finnish symphonic metal group Nightwish that takes place inside the allegorical mental terrain of a dying rock star. This collapses into the over-inflated amateur symbolism of a music video
A fascinatingly enigmatic work from Robert Altman, an artily experimental film in which the identities of five people together at a countryside cottage begin to shift and blur
Charlie Kaufman’s mind-bending, head-scratcher about road trips, weird dinner conversations and shifting identity blurrings as what we assume become increasingly more surreal as the film goes on
Another of Bill Pympton’s unique animated films, all stylised artwork and surreal juxtapositions. This is a dialogueless film about a mean-spirited man who suddenly gains a set of angel wings
An almost unclassifiably strange film about fandom for a weird 1990s tv show, this seems to be heading for David Lynch territory and becomes an allegory for trans identity
A quite indescribable animated film from the great Bill Pympton, this largely consists of a series of bizarre and surreal, often outrageous, transformations and juxtapositions
A World War II comedy from Richard Lester that heads into a wild absurdism, a film that is both brilliant and numbingly noisy. Most did not get the surreal blacker-than-black tone and the film was not a success
One of the works of the celebrated Ingmar Bergman with Max Von Sydow as an artist tormented by insomnia who starts to slip into disturbing hallucinations where he (and we) can not be certain what is being seen is real
A key work in the cult of Alejandro Jodorowsky in which he plays a character called The Alchemist who guides a group on a mystical awakening. Surreal, challenging and mind-expanding
Genuinely mind-screwing effort from Leos Carax. Imagine a version of Cosmopolis as hijacked by Alejandro Jodorowsky – a series of surreal vignettes that arrives at a major “huh?” ending
Completely madcap film from Takashi Miike, a black comedy about a family who run a guesthouse where the guests keep dying. This comes replete with musical numbers and Claymation sequences
An Acid Western was a Western made with a psychedelic trippiness. Directed by Robert Downey Jr’s father, this is a surreal work about a Christ-like visitor in a zoot suit who turns up in a Western town
The modern cinematic madman Takashi Miike makes a uniquely original work that starts out like a Yazkuza film, before taking a turn into the completely surreal and arriving at an admirably twisted ending
One of the lesser films made by the director of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene. Wiene employs the same stark angular sets and exaggerated shadows in the tale of a predatory femme fatale
An anthology of short anime pieces from five different directors. Episodes range from traditional anime and Cyberpunk to mind-expanding surrealism
György Pálfi, the Hungarian director of the wonderfully twisted Taxidermia, returns with a series of Buñuel-esque vignettes that sometimes hit a darkly absurdist note
A reality-bending film somewhat influenced by Pi about a withdrawn man who receives a mystery clock that may be able to bend time and space
Guy Maddin has perfected a blend of silent movie stylistics and hilariously surreal melodrama. This is a Guy Maddin film on acid, a sumptuously madcap fantasia of visuals wound around a tapestry of tall tales
From Lech Majewski, the Polish director of The Mill and the Cross, comes this supposed modern version of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Alas, the film never amounts to anything more than a series of almost entirely plotless surrealist visions
In attempting to capture the surreal, paranoiac drug haze of Hunter S. Thompson’s counter-culture classic, Terry Gilliam’s adaptation becomes a rambling, self-indulgent mess of tripped-out visions that go on and on
Czech animator Jan Svankmajer offers up his wonderfully bizarre part-live-action, part-Claymation interpretation of the classic story of Faust and his pact with The Devil
A film that received great acclaim at awards season. Anthony Hopkins is a dementia-ridden senior and we experience his state of mind subjectively in a constantly shifting sense of what is real
The first film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, more like a student film that seems a rehearsal for the surrealistic and outrageous imagery of El Topo, although no less uniquely Jodorowsky-esque for all that
Early Peter Greenaway film where in typically eccentric fashion he tells a series of absurd stories about survivors of a mysterious event who names all begin with Fall who have begun to mutate and develop an obsession with birds
An acclaimed surrealistic film from Luis Buñuel in which a group of people attend an upper-class dinner party but then find themselves inexplicably unable to leave the room
Enigmatic adaptation of a Japanese videogame where the protagonist is trapped inside a railway platform tunnel and must walk through the same corridor that repeats itself with minute variations to find the exit
Woody Allen makes a musical. It is Allen in a much lighter mood than he was in the early 1990s and the film comes with some appealingly eccentric and often downright surreal touches
This has the novelty of being shot guerilla-style at Disneyland and Disney World without permission. Nothing prepares you for the amazingly dark work you get, a surreal hallucinatory drift through the park’s underbelly
The first film from David Lynch, a surrealist work that is one the cult films of all-time. A masterpiece of mood that swims in an atmosphere of dream and Freudian symbolism of cryptically inscrutable meaning
An autobiographical film from music video and film director Phil Joanou, this comes with a number of surreal fantastical touches
Denis Villeneuve slips into a very Cronenbergian vein to deliver a film about Jake Gyllenhaal and a mysterious doppelganger. A fascinatingly oblique and cryptic work, just as long as one does not require that it comes with any easy explanations
At the age of 87, Alejandro Jodorowsky makes second of his autobiographical films following The Dance of Reality. In Jodorowsky’s hands, the story of his adolescence is turned into a gaudy and gloriously surreal mardi gras
Full-length film made by the French electronic music duo Daft Punk based around the robot guises the band adopts. Resembles an extended student film and feels exactly like an SF version of The Brown Bunny
The original The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is a classic of silent German Expressionist cinema; this loose remake feels like Eraserhead reconceived with absurd Day-Glo disco decor
Long and baffling German surrealist film that makes much reference to German silent cinema. Lots of avant garde set ups without any real point
French actress-director Marina de Van makes a film about a woman who finds her identity being occluded by someone else’s life. de Van creates a superbly paranoid sense of dis-ease that compares favourably to Polanski’s The Tenant
Eccentric French fairytale filled with appealingly absurdist and surreal touches and with visuals that remind of the extravagance of a Barbarella. Charming and visually engaging
An Academy Award winning film from the great iconoclast Luis Buñuel, a series of surreal vignettes as a group of friends set out to dinner but always end up being prevented in strange ways
Another of the strange surreal deadpan films from Quentin Dupieux about a man who buys a deerskin jacket that then speaks and urges him to eliminate everybody else who is wearing a jacket
A weird and twisted film about a failed artist who develops a relationship with a hole in a wall. Imagine something that falls between Barton Fink and the Radiator Girl sequences from Eraserhead
Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive was a Yakuza film with a gonzo ending. In this sequel, Miike brings back the same two actors and makes it ALL gonzo
An off-the-wall film with a unique premise about an apartment where every time somebody is killed another copy of them emerges out of a hole in the wall
Incomprehensible surrealism from director Raul Ruiz about a doctor sent to investigate a village where miracles occur with commonplace regularity
The first film in 24 years from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surreal journey through his own childhood. Gone is Jodorowsky, the mad prophet of El Topo, replaced by a warm, wryly self-reflexive Jodorowsky looking back in on his own life
Another of the surreal films from Guy Maddin, involving incest, strange love triangles and transplanted hands, all shot of which has been shot as a silent movie
Peer Greeaway’s finest film, an elegant, surrealistic satire on fine dining with Michael Gambon as the mob boss owner of a restaurant with Helen Mirren as his unfaithful wife
Cult Czech stop-motion animator, Jan Svankmajer makes an eccentrically surreal live-action film that focuses on a variety of different people who have strange fetishes
Surrealist film from Raul Ruiz that proves a tedious, drawn-out ramble through disconnected images and non-sequiturs
More of an abstract art short than a film. Dialogueless, almost plotless, this concerns the lone human in a city inhabited by inscrutable beings that amuse themselves by rearranging matter
Famous surrealist short film made as a collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, full of the shock juxtapositions and symbolism you associate with either
The films of Bill Plympton have gained a cult following for their absurdist humour and surreal animation. This is Plympton’s take on relationships, a wild fantasia of imagery and transmogrifications that is a world away from Disney/Pixar offerings
A very strange surrealist film about the strange characters that populate a rundown hotel. Includes reincarnation, alien bug people and John Malkovich as a psychiatrist with red hair in a bow
The dreamscape film was given extraordinary life by Tarsem Singh in his directorial debut who transforms a fairly ordinary script with visuals and costuming that is out of this world
Vastly over-praised French New Wave film that is a ghost story of sorts. Three hours plus of tediously protracted happenings that don’t seem to be about anything at all
Baffling and pretentious Canadian-made surrealist film with Scheherazade (from Arabian Nights) in a psychiatric asylum making up stories all derived from tabloid headlines
The first film from Peter Weir, a deadpan black comedy in which a man comes around from a car crash to find himself in a small town that subsists by creating car crashes
The third film from Guy Maddin film. This feels like a parody/homage to German Expressionism all filmed on deliberately unreal sets and purple dialogue played with an hilarious deadpan
A remake of the silent German Expressionist classic that replicates the unique look and sets. Interesting, although it now emerges more like a film noir with artistic pretensions than the avant garde work the original was
Classic film that was groundbreaking for its designs – all distorted and angular sets, exaggerated shadows – that became defined as German Expressionism and its tale of a sinister hypnotist
The first film from the great Alan Parker, a 1920s gangster film but where the entire show is played out with kids, which include a young Jodie Foster. Regarded as a classic by many, this is a one-gimmick film dependent on kids (not) being able to play a complex range of adult emotions
Another of Guy Maddin’s silent movie pastiches, all shot in a deadpan style throwing together a hilariously convoluted madcap plot involving child detectives, mad scientists and spy capers
Indie film that channels a Lost Highway vibe in which Douglas Smith searches for a missing girlfriend Jena Malone and then wakes up in an entirely different life where he cannot be certain which life is real and which a dream
A cryptically surreal Dutch film that comes with hilariously black deadpan effect as we watch a homeless man inveigle his way into a household and take over before starting to eliminate people.
Early film from Jean Cocteau that consists of a progression of surreal situations. Dreamy and occasionally interesting
Louis Malle’s one and only venture into the French New Wave – a baffling work set around social collapse as a young girl wanders a farmhouse encountering unicorns, talking animals and various surreal happenings
The penultimate screen role of Peter Sellers, a sublimely deadpan satire in which he plays a gardener with the blank innocence of a child whose simple-minded utterances are taken as words of great profundity
Hilariously eccentric Spike Jonze-Charlie Kaufman collaboration in which John Cusack finds an office building that has a portal that takes someone through into actor John Malkovich’s head. The wacky spins that the script places on the idea are ingenious
The first film from E. Elias Merhige, subsequent director of Shadow of the Vampire. An unfathomably strange film in the Eraserhead vein about gods disemboweling themselves, rebirthing and being beset upon by nomads.
Ari Aster’s third film had many audiences scratching their heads. It follows Joaquin Phoenix on an allegorical journey that becomes a dark comedy and an entirely surreal Freudian nightmare
A fascinatingly enigmatic and beautifully made film where Sienna Guillory becomes concerned when her daughter is mysteriously affected by something that causes her to stop eating
Pål Sletaune is a Norwegian director who deserves more attention for his reality-bending surrealism. Here mother Noomi Rapace moves into new apartment where ghostly screams come through the baby monitor and she soon finds that she cannot be sure what is real
Peter Greenaway film about a woman claiming her baby is divinely conceived. As fascinating for Greenaway’s constant visual games as for the film’s brutal taboo-defying impact
Adaptation of the classic J.G. Ballard novel that deals with the surreal blurring and breakdown between media, architecture, celebrity and the protagonist’s disturbed state of mind
Film about asylum inmates that goes for a gonzo approach but becomes an unwatchable mix of student artistic pretensions played out at a level of shrill caricature
This English-language debut from Emir Kusturica should have been a hit going by its cast that includes a young Johnny Depp romancing a 50+ Faye Dunaway, but is a plotless piece of improv of occasional surreal interludes
The second film from Guy Maddin, which comes with all of his familiar homages to German Expressionism and silent cinema, wrapped up in a surrealist plot of hilarious melodrama and side-splittingly deadpan dialogue
As a follow-up to Holy Motors, Leos Carax returns with of all things a musical. As might be expected of Carax, this is a wildly surrealistic film, not the least of which is one of the characters is a singing puppet
One of the earliest works of anime director Mamoru Oshii, later famous for Ghost in the Shell. This is a plotless, almost dialogueless work about a young girl journeying across a strange planet that is more surrealism than SF
A recently rediscovered work that was sold as a lost George Romero film. Romero was hired to make a film about the plight of the elderly and creates a surreal allegorical work set around an amusement park
Genre-bending film that mixes B movie space opera cliches with rock’n’roll and a David Lynch-ian sense of surrealism. Interesting but the film left me scratching my head trying to get a handle on it
Surrealistic cinematic joke from French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard that mashes up film noir and SF where hard-boiled detective travels to another planet represented by contemporary Paris
A live-action film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that conducts a passable run through of Lewis Carroll with the supporting characters populated by an all-star British cast
Obscure animated children’s movie adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that commits the sin of modernising and Americanizing Alice
A fairly reasonable tv mini-series adaptation of Lewis Carroll – a version that excels in terms of design and in using The Jim Henson Workshop to bring the Wonderland creatures to life
Disney’s animated adaptation is usually hated by Lewis Carroll purists for its free and easy treatment of the story but for everyone else comes with a splendidly demented visual absurdism
A work of bizarre genius from stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer. A surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland that is more Eraserhead than Lewis Carroll, filled with Svankmajer’s bizarre Claymation creatures
This collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali is not much more than a plotless series of surrealistic images, which are frequently calculated to outrage
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes