The Weirdest Movies Of 2021

"Aline," released throughout Europe, Canada, Israel, and Japan in 2021 before making its way to the United States in 2022, could have been a traditional biopic, but several decisions it makes throws it straight into the realm of the bizarre. For one thing, though this movie is based on the life of Céline Dion and uses all of her hit songs (albeit sung by someone else), it doesn't use her name. Instead, its titular character, named "Aline Dieu," just happens to have the exact same life as Céline Dion. The singer's family does not approve of the movie, though Dion herself has yet to comment (via Montreal Gazette).

That's all weird enough in and of itself. But the thing that's really baffled audiences is the fact that director Valérie Lemercier plays Aline at every age — even as a 5-year-old! Lemercier is a comedian, so this might all be one big joke, but those who've seen the film often describe it as an oddly serious experience, despite its bizarre qualities. The Daily Beast even called it "a Will Ferrell movie without the jokes."

The winner of the Golden Bear at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival, Radu Jude's "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" easily wins the race for best movie title of 2021. It's explained in the first five minutes of the film, when a graphic sex tape made by Romanian school teacher Emi (Katia Pascariu) and her husband is revealed. Emi's husband posts the recording online, and before long, it's everywhere. This leads to both bad luck and considerable looniness when Emi's identity is discovered.

After this shocking opening, the film's first act slows down considerably. We follow Emi around town as she prepares for a parent-teacher meeting, called on account of the scandal. The second act dispenses with narrative entirely in favor of an irony-heavy "dictionary of terms." The third act centers around the meeting, which becomes a series of wildly un-PC arguments, exposing the dark side of Romanian society. The film's ending is multiple choice, presenting three possible outcomes to the story. The third option is a joke so unexpected and hilarious, it elevates the entire movie.

"Neon Genesis Evangelion" has been one of the most beloved yet controversial anime productions around since the original TV series premiered in 1995. Any expectations that the "Rebuild of Evangelion" movies were going to be a more commercial retelling of the story were shattered when the third film, 2012's "Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo," went all in on the franchise's infamous confusion and depression. Then, after years of delays, "Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time" was finally released in 2021. It serves as a conclusion not just to the "Rebuild" series, but to the entire "Evangelion" franchise.

Filled with overwhelming action, fourth wall-breaking meta-commentary, and unexplained mythological mysteries, "Thrice Upon a Time" shares much of the abstraction and strangeness of the TV series' ending and 1997's "End of Evangelion" movie. Yet it manages to coalesce into an even more satisfying narrative conclusion than either of its predecessors. The series' young heroes, who pilot giant robots of mysterious origin, face the apocalypse in this installment, as they have before — but the way to absolution is a new one. No American blockbuster even comes close to being this artsy, but "Thrice Upon a Time" made big money at the Japanese box office and became a major success on Amazon Prime Video.

Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 horror-comedy "House" is one of the all-time classics of weird cinema, yet the rest of his filmography is hard to find outside of Japan. Fortunately, the late director's final feature film, "Labyrinth of Cinema," received an official American release in 2021, initially streaming on MUBI and later released in theaters and on Blu-ray via Crescendo House.

Running nearly three hours long, "Labyrinth of Cinema" packs in seemingly every last thing Obayashi wished to say through his art. Framed by a narrator aboard a fish-filled spaceship, the majority of the film follows three teenagers watching a war movie marathon at a closing theater. Soon enough, they jump into the various films they're watching. There are lots of comedic digressions and cheesy special effects, but also many serious messages about propaganda. Furthermore, the film's final hour offers some downright heartbreaking recollections of the bombing of Hiroshima. The opening narration states that the director "made this film for world peace." That earnest idealism holds strong throughout this unusual epic.

"Memoria," the latest experimental art film from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is likely to remain the hardest film on this list for North American moviegoers to see. While the streaming service MUBI has licensed it in a handful of countries (and awards voters have received screeners), Neon's American release strategy is forgoing any streaming or commercial home video release. Instead, "Memoria" will play in one theater at a time for a brief engagement, before it moves on to the next location. Slowly, it will tour the whole country.

While some movie fans are doubtlessly frustrated with this unorthodox theatrical rollout, there is some logic to Neon's handling of "Memoria." Weerasethakul is known for making slow and strange films, but the story of "Memoria" is even harder to sell than his previous works — it's basically just about Tilda Swinton hearing loud sounds and traveling through the jungles of Colombia. The sound-focused nature of the film benefits heavily from the theater experience, as opposed to screenings via TV or computer.

"Pig," the most critically acclaimed film of Nicolas Cage's acting career, surprised audiences with how relatively not weird it is. Sure, the first act looks like "John Wick" with a pig and features a truly strange sequence involving a fight club for chefs — but after that, it settles into being a realistic drama about grief and empathy, led by an unusually subdued Cage performance. It's still a quirky film, with all its tonal shifts, but those looking for truly gonzo Cage a la "Mandy" or "Color Out of Space" won't find that sort of weirdness in "Pig."

However, they will find it in "Prisoners of the Ghostland," the first English-language film from prolific Japanese director Sion Sono. Based on the script, Cage described it as "the wildest movie I've ever made." The finished product, in which Cage plays a bank robber in post-apocalyptic Samurai Town forced to fight ghosts after having bombs strapped to various body parts, lives up to the hype. Don't go in expecting anything to make sense, though you'll assuredly enjoy the East-meets-West art design.

In 2021, Warner Bros. released not one, but two sequels to decades-old blockbuster movies ... that happen to be about Warner Bros. demanding sequels to decades-old blockbuster movies. Both of these meta-sequels take place primarily in virtual reality, and they both borrow a surprising number of plot points from Steven Spielberg's Peter Pan movie, "Hook." The two films in question are "The Matrix Resurrections" and "Space Jam: A New Legacy," and they're as bizarre as they are headline-making.

Which of these two movies is the weirder one depends on what sort of weirdness you're focusing on. "The Matrix Resurrections" is weird the way an ambitious and intellectual artist's passion project is weird. Lana Wachowski returns to her famously mind-bending franchise with a deeply personal story that is, in part, about the pressures of trying to write a sequel. In contrast, "Space Jam: A New Legacy" is weird in the way a computer algorithm gets weird. Its shameless corporate product placement results in such strange spectacle as seeing the droogs from "A Clockwork Orange" show up in a children's film, and Bugs Bunny literally dying.