Not another one of those conventional Netflix & Chill movie lists, I am here not to disappoint but introduce you to mind bending movies that will blow your brains out. OK, I’m a firm believer of going to watch a movie blindly or with little knowledge of the plot, expectations tends to ruin the surprise for my liking. I’m keeping the plot as brief as possible with no spoilers cause I got you. Let’s just get to it.
1. Paprika
This is anime madness, I tell you.
This highly trippy animation movie tour the subconscious dream state; bizarre nocturnal visions and worst nightmares. Paprika dives into one weird dream world after another, as Paprika blurs the line between conscious and subconscious settings when a DC Mini prototypes that allows people to enter other people’s dream is stolen; this conspiracy starts to combine everyone’s dream till people around the DC Mini project begin to lose their goddamn minds. Inception was inspired by this movie prior to 4 years after Paprika’s release. The animation is groundbreaking beyond imagination, when it first premiered it receive a 5 minutes standing ovation.
2. Enter the Void
Care to join me on this psychedelic trip?
Many of you might have heard of this, for those who haven’t, the movie is quite a sitting if you’re planning to emerge into. Enter the Void is a three hour visual exploration of drugs from cocaine to ecstasy to LSD, you name it. Once you manage to get past 5 minutes epilepsy credit intro without getting a seizure, you will enjoy the flow of POV cinematography through the eyes of Oscar, an American drug dealer orphan lives in Japan off his inheritance, who he later reunite with his sister. The psychedelic thriller is endless on vivid hallucination and flashbacks of his demented childhood. It’s also deep in philosophical realm discussing incarnation; life after death. Oh, and long ass explicit scenes in between. Fun fact: I noticed the vision of Tokyo in the movie is never seen in daytime, which I believe emphasise on the bright colourful neon lights; the essence of what Tokyo city represents.
3. Waking Life
Confucius say…
“Waking life” follows a nameless young man engaging insightful philosophical discussions. He floats from one scene to another and indulge in various people’s theories on exploration of past and current trends of philosophy – death and reality, free will, physics, the paradox, dreams, alienation, life lessons and society. At first, he doesn’t realise he’s lucid dreaming. As confused as he is, don’t let the conceptually dense philosophy overwhelm you or hurt your brain. The movie’s animation is painted in brush stroke technique which shifting motion perspectives and sightline that never remain in place. You’ll find yourself contemplating life in this state of the art, eccentric and aesthetic pleasing movie.
4. Pink Floyd: The Wall
The dark side of sex, drugs and rock and roll.
When I was around 8 years old or so, I randomly found my dad’s Pink Floyd’s the Wall movie DVD (shoutout to dad) and holy shit, it is one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music. “The Wall” made an album movie featuring the soundtracks of the album The Wall that released in 1979. “The Wall” traces the life of the fictional protagonist, Pink Floyd, alienated and slowly losing his mind through a swirl of flashbacks from his isolated childhood and chemical-induced hallucinations leading to self destruction. Metaphorically, The Wall tells the story of Pink and his desire to destroy “the Wall”. The film is little on dialogue, letting the soundtrack speak for itself and bombarded with surreal animated sequences. “The Wall” is highly metaphorical complimenting the symbolic imagery of disturbing surrealism. A dark film with a good dose of violence and gore.
5. Kung Fury
GG liao.
Ok, ya’ll gotta be prepared for the absurdity of it all cause it’s funny as shit. Heads will roll. This 30 minutes short film sets in 1985, Kung Fu cop in Miami hacks back into time to kill Kung Fuhrer Hitler. This over the top arcade game-style packed adventure paying homage to 80’s martial arts and police action films. Loaded with non-stop insane special effects feature fights against arcade robots, dinosaurs, vikings, norse gods, nazis and mutants. This budget movie was funded mainly through a Kickstarter campaign, that also supposedly has it’s own video game adaption; Kung Fury: Street Rage.
