Movies That Are Unlike Anything You’ve Seen Before The movies listed below are singular, whether experimental documentaries, visionary works of animation, or labyrinthine epics. Each is unforgettable, and a reminder of cinema’s potential to flout narrative convention, subvert visual traditions, and find new ways to express timeless themes.
THE ACT OF KILLING (2012, DIRECTED BY JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER) This documentary focuses on Anwar Congo, an Indonesian gangster believed to have presided over the deaths of thousands during the country’s horrifying anti-Communist purge in the 1960s. But within the film itself are more films—bizarre and mesmerizing ones as the director encouraged Congo and friends to make their own mini movies about their experiences. It’s emotional, a surreal and often horrifying cinematic journey, interrogating unimaginable subjects never attempted in a documentary before. Stream on DocPlay or borrow library DVD
CAMERAPERSON (2016, DIRECTED BY KIRSTEN JOHNSON) A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home: these scenes and others are woven into a tapestry of footage captured over the twenty-five-year career of cinematographer Kirsten Johnson. It’s a work that combines documentary, autobiography, and ethical inquiry, a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world. Stream on DocPlay or borrow library DVD
DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991, DIRECTED BY JULIE DASH) The first feature film by an African American woman to be distributed in the United States, it portrays a multi- generational South Carolina Gullah family preparing to migrate north in 1902. While it delves into the clashes between Nana Peazant, the elderly matriarch preserving a rich and distinct tradition and her descendants’ urge to move to big, far-off cities., it works best as a representation of a broader culture, examining the terrible history of slavery from the perspectives of the families and people who were transformed by it. Stream on Kanopy
DOGTOOTH (2009, DIRECTED BY YORGOS LANTHIMOS) Breakout film by the Greek director who created Oscar-nominated cult hits such as The Lobster and The Favourite is the surreal tale of a microcosmic fascist dystopia: One family has kept their children confined to their home for their entire lives, teaching them that the outside world is filled with monsters. Lanthimos’s unique sense of world building and flat, emotionless dialogue style are an ideal fit for an odd environment where the now-adult children are growing restless in their hermetic existence. Stream on Kanopy or borrow library DVD
ENEMY (2013, DIRECTED BY DENIS VILLENEUVE) The premise is a recurrent one in cinema— an identical twin who exists without any explanation. Jake Gyllenhaal is a detached college professor who sees a movie starring an actor who looks just like him, is an underrated gem of the genre, a creepy, Freudian nightmare drama. Released before Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune made Villeneuve’s name, it is like them a grounded fantasy work that injects humour and dread into an otherwise-intimate human drama. Stream on Kanopy and Netflix
HAPPY FEET TWO (2011, DIRECTED BY GEORGE MILLER) Miller (of Mad Max fame) had the freedom to do all kinds of sweeping camerawork impossible in real life but his Happy Feet ended up cutesy and unoriginal. Not so his largely unheralded but eminently watchable sequel, a mournful tale of Antarctica’s crumbling environment and the ecological unity needed to beat back the coming apocalypse. There are still penguins but also a guru puffin, an ideologically intractable walrus, and a pair of krill (Matt Damon and Brad Pitt) that break free in search of a new life together. Stream on Netflix and Stan
HOLY MOTORS (2012, DIRECTED BY LEOS CARAX) Seeing Holy Motors is a reminder how boundless the medium still is, more than a century after its inception. The plot, such as it is, can’t be summarized. Suffice it to say it follows a man (Denis Lavant) as he drives around Paris performing various roles, slipping into different lives and skins, causing chaos, singing songs, bouncing from violent showdowns to romantic interludes. Only one thing is guaranteed: that the movie is one you’ll mull long after viewing. Stream on Kanopy and SBS OnDemand
LEVIATHAN (2012, DIRECTED BY LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR AND VERENA PARAVEL) Not the 2012 Andrey Zvyagintsev film (which is definitely worth watching) but a documentary set aboard a fishing boat navigating the treacherous waters of the New England coast, the very waters that inspired Moby Dick. The directors used GoPro cameras and scattered many more around the ship, encouraging workers to film themselves and their experiences. The resulting montage is wordless, sometimes punishing, and often hypnotic, offering glimpses of starkly haunting and unexpected beauty amid the brutal monotony. Stream on Kanopy
THE LIMEY (1999, DIRECTED BY STEVEN SODERBERGH) Soderbergh originally presented this lean crime drama in a straightforward manner, but quickly realized something was wrong when testing the first cut. He restructured it as a memory play of sorts, folding in flashbacks and layering dialogue from past or future scenes onto those playing out on-screen. It’s a revenge story told as a cubist art film, powered by Terence Stamp’s incredible lead performance, with the addition of footage of a young Stamp taken from the 1967 film Poor Cow. Rent only from Google Play and Apple ($4.99)
MADELINE’S MADELINE (2018, DIRECTED BY JOSEPHINE DECKER) So many films delving into the process of creating art can come off as myopic or self-involved but Decker’s film is impressive in the way it shows how making something can feel invigorating and addictive but also draining. The relationship between drama teacher Evangeline (Molly Parker) and her young student Madeline (Helena Howard) is initially empowering and eventually vampiric. The viewer is thrust into the dizzying highs and lows of Madeline’s lived experience, and the characters’ power struggle leads to an explosive climax that remains one of the best ever movie endings. Stream on Kanopy, SBS ON Demand and Prime Video
MORVERN CALLAR (2002, DIRECTED BY LYNNE RAMSAY) An acidly funny yet mordantly sad drama based on Alan Warner’s novel. Or a black comedy? A fantasy adventure? An extended drug trip? It indulges almost every genre, following Morvern, its eponymous heroine, as she finds her partner dead from a suicide, chops up his body, buries it on a mountain, and embarks on an adventure to Spain to escape her mundane life in Scotland. Viewers are plunged into an alien perspective, and Morvern’s point of view is rattling and bracing, powered by one of the best movie soundtracks of all time. Stream on Prime Video
ORLANDO (1992, DIRECTED BY SALLY POTTER) Potter succeeded in adapting Virginia Woolf’s challenging novel to film by ruthlessly excising any part that wouldn’t fit into this lean, propulsive, giddily surreal cinematic version. Tilda Swinton is perfect as the Elizabethan lord who finds himself transformed twice—first he’s made immortal, then he turns into a woman who travels the world and lives an exhilarating, bizarre series of lives. The film is remarkable with costuming and production design well above its limited budget. For all its strangeness, it’s piquant and bewitchingly sad. Stream on SBS ON Demand or borrow library DVD
RAT FILM (2016, DIRECTED BY THEO ANTHONY) It’s a journalistic work doubling as a dreamy collage, a story of a city that incorporates tragedy, comedy, and grim legacy. After a late-night encounter with a rodent stuck in his trash can, Anthony finds himself exploring Baltimore’s history of rat infestations, tying into housing segregation, redlining, urban neglect, and long-lasting systemic racism. Incorporating the perspectives of city officials, community activists, and neighbours, a nonfiction project becomes a portrait of his city, full of both praise and regret. Stream on Kanopy
RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN (2015, DIRECTED BY HONG SANG-SOO) Nobody makes movies like this Korean filmmaker. Each of his works is characterized by stripped-down visuals and naturalistic dialogue. This is one of Hong’s most quietly idiosyncratic efforts, a romantic comedy that follows an art- house film director (Jung Jae-young) as he visits a new city, meets a woman, and strikes up a conversation with her. Things play out badly between the two. But then the film stops, resets, and tells the same story again with a different conclusion. There’s no explanation, no supernatural intervention as Hong invites you to treat every interaction with care and fascination, and to see how the littlest moments can tip reality in unexpected directions. Stream on Kanopy
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (2010, DIRECTED BY EDGAR WRIGHT) This comic-book adaptation is a masterpiece of post-adolescent folly. Wright invents whole new visual palettes that make every set piece a dizzying blur of neon streaks, pixelated graphics, and dramatic music to reflect Scott Pilgrim’s reduction of every human conflict in his life down into a simplistic video game, a cartoon battle he can fight in lieu of having actual, mature conversations. Wright’s use of CGI technology to illustrate the inner workings of his protagonist is outstanding. Stream on Foxtel now, Binge and Netflix
THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA (2013, DIRECTED BY ISAO TAKAHATA) Both the most expensive Japanese film ever made and Isao Takahata’s final masterpiece, it took eight years to produce because of the immense delicacy of its watercolour animation. The sheer cost and amount of time devoted to it results in a film looks like an old painting come to life, at once intricate and coarse, beautiful when the characters are still and chaotic when they’re in motion. The quiet devastation of the film’s fairy-tale story, based on a centuries-old folk tale, is as profound as the visuals. Stream on Netflix or borrow library DVD
A TOUCH OF SIN (2013, DIRECTED BY JIA ZHANGKE) Jia Zhangke’s films focus on contemporary China, on parts of the country not familiar to most foreign viewers. He’s made gangster movies, historical dramas, and even future-set science fiction. This film combines all his influences, telling four disconnected stories which he turns into mini genre movies. His real-life narratives feel like soaring adventures or gritty tragedies, honouring the truths he’s trying to depict while making them larger than life. Stream on SBS ON Demand and Kanopy
UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010, DIRECTED BY APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL) This bewitching Thai film, the most profound of all Weerasethakul’s work, became the first from its nation to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Uncle Boonmee is dying of a failing kidney, and in his last days he communes with relatives, some already dead, discussing the karmic implications of the life he’s led. Incorporating a different style for each of its six sections, from stiff and classical to documentary to weird, dreamy art cinema, the story is difficult to pin down, told in an ever-shifting format that rewards countless re-viewings. Stream on Stan or borrow library DVD
ZAMA (2017, DIRECTED BY LUCRECIA MARTEL) This colonial satire, bumbling comedy, graphic horror movie, and challenging demonstration of art-house poeticism is adapted from Antonio di Benedetto’s existential novel of the same name. It follows a foolish Spanish nobleman stranded in remote Argentina and desperately trying to climb the social ladder whose sense of self-importance transforms into something more bloodthirsty as he’s barred from more important assignments. The preening hero is the ultimate empty suit, his bumbling misadventures swerving into tragedy to provide a nightmarish and strange mood piece. Stream on Prime Video or borrow library DVD