Rhapsodies

Well this week it was a pair of really really weird films and I’m  not completely sure which won in the contest for the most strange. .

At first glance the first of the two, Rubber, directed by Quentin Dupieux,  seems to be the winner of the two after all it’s a horror movie about an animate old tire with psychokinetic powers it uses to wreak havoc with. If that’s not enough it is extremely meta with characters appearing to break the fourth wall only to have it revealed that they are talking to group of spectators who are watching the proceedings with binoculars… Then things get weird.

The whole thing get’s extremely meta with one of the characters saying things don’t have to make sense in movies… The rest of the movie seems to go out of it’s way to prove that point.

Somehow Rubin and Ed starring Crispin Glover and Howard Hesseman ,written and directed by Trent Harris manages to have just as much psychedelic strangeness. It tells the story of Rubin a strange, possibly autistic, recluse who kidnaps the perennial looser Ed, who is just trying to get Rubin to go to the pyramid scheme seminar he’s working for, to help him find the perfect place to bury his frozen cat. They end up lost in the Utah dessert where they both discover themselves after a fashion and how to deal with their inner demons (or in Ed’s case his tyrannical ex wife) after a fashion)
All in all both of these films are bizarre but interesting treats that reward you if you are in the right kind of mood..