Movie Blog: Trylon Gets Weird In October

The Trylon Microcinema in Minneapolis is letting things get a little weird in that tiny screening room during the month of October. Not only are they presenting a series of classics in surrealism, but they're also presenting some great new, befuddling work from filmmakers you may not be familiar with.

First up, their series "Like A Razor Across The Eye: Surrealism," which takes its title from a famous slice from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou (which is regrettably not part of the program).

Instead, the series looks at movies of a more recent vintage, all of which pushed (or at least nuzzled up against) the boundaries of cohesion and sense. They are:

Holy Mountain (1973, Alejandro Jodorowsky) -- Oct. 7-9
Viridiana (1961, Luis Buñuel) -- Oct. 14-16
A Zed & Two Noughts (1986, Peter Greenaway) -- Oct. 21-23
Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch) -- Oct. 28-30
Hausu (1977, Nobuhiko Obayashi) -- Oct. 31

Viridiana represents for Buñuel (who, let's face it, is a mandatory element in any program covering surrealism), and Trylon went for one of his standards. Nuns, malformed bums and blasphemy against the Catholic Church. It's like Buñuel's own "It's Still Rock 'N' Roll To Me."

Hausu played to packed houses last Halloween, as well. I can tell you for a fact that it's one of the most bizarre horror-comedy hybrids I've ever seen. The rest of the movies in the line-up all hew more closely to the horrifying end of the scale when it comes to representing the un-representable on the screen. Hausu, on the other hand, is positively giddy in its depiction of blood, mayhem and bananas.

You'll notice David Lynch, arguably the most widely-known film surrealist of all time, is in that line up. One of the two movies included in this month's "Premiere Tuesdays" lineup owes a small debt to Lynch's legacy. (In fact, it almost looks like it could've been filmed using the same obsolete cameras Lynch used for Inland Empire.) The Oregonian is Calvin Reeder's road trip -- with emphasis on the word "trip" -- that (somewhat like Godard's Weekend) journeys into the unknown after a bad car wreck. Here's the trailer:

The Oregonian plays Oct. 18 and Oct. 25.

The other film Trylon is premiering is Aurora, the latest from The Death of Mr. Lazarescu director Christi Puiu. The langorous, inverted murder mystery plays tonight and next week. Watch a preview for that film here.