The American Astronaut (2011)

The American Astronaut defies categorization, a kind of independent noir science-fiction Western musical art film about sex, rock 'n' roll and Nevada. Shot for what appears to be about $15, the black-and-white movie is so low-rent that it makes use of paintings to depict space travel and cuts to a montage of still images to advance the narrative.

Yet the film contains some striking high-contrast imagery, moments of loopy surreal humor, catchy rock production numbers—all by McAbee and Bobby Lurie's band, the Billy Nayer Show—and a peculiar plot that's literally so out-of-this world that audiences won't know what they're looking at.

American Astronaut is the culmination of McAbee's San-Francisco-based performance act, corralling his interests in music, performance art, acting, animation and filmmaking into one spaced-out enterprise. At times, it has the feel of David Lynch's Eraserhead; at other times, a Westernized Rocky Horror. But mostly, it's its own thing, and most of the time, that isn't bad.

McAbee is like a skid-row Hugh Jackman, and the interior of his spaceship is furnished like, well, a furnished room: peeling wallpaper, antique sconces, a brass bed and a control panel that looks like Flash Gordon's, only older. Unlike the cantina at Mos Eisley, the Ceres Crossroads is populated by outer-space rejects so foul you can practically smell their dirty undershirts—and the stand-up act there would give Charles Manson the creeps.

Jupiter, by contrast, is an abandoned movie theater in Queens, lit like 1984, with ranks of zombified mineworkers attending a spotlit Fuehrer. Their entertainment? A young boy, dressed like an Art Deco Thor, prancing to a mystifying rock song about being the only man on Jupiter to see a woman's breast.

A space station is a barn with a wizened alien. And Venus is a Victorian tea party on the banks of a wintry lake, populated by aging Southern belles fluttering their fans. Characters often break into song to advance the story—most oddly, two middle-aged men marching in a men's room while the hero takes a dump.

Weird and mesmerizing when it's not amateurishly self-indulgent, American Astronaut is unlike any other genre film—or any other film—you're likely to see this year, so if you have 10 bucks and an hour and half, it beats reruns. (Patrick: From Scifi.com film reviews)

Blueberry: Reinventing the "Baguetti Western"

The 2004 French film “Blueberry” (released in the United States as “Renegade”) is a meditative tale of a weary lawman, Mike Blueberry (played by Vincent Cassel), who is struggling to maintain peace in a lawless town inhabited by villains and scoundrels. The film, vaguely based on the Moebius French comic series under the same name, is a visual tableau of hackneyed western imagery fused with psychedelic sequences.

Despite its tiresome pacing and obvious weak points in the narrative, the film’s director, Jan Kounen, received accolades for his experimental approach to the American western genre. Far from a popular film, audiences and critics tore apart the work, criticizing its exaggerated cinematography, largely inaccurate/stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans, clichéd thematic focus of “revenge and honor,” and of course, the inclusion of that giant flying lizard-demon…thing. Though deeply flawed in these regards, the film is acclaimed as a sensory piece, more of an “Acid Western” so to speak.

In the film’s climactic final sequence, the “good” and “bad guys” face-off in a most unexpected manner, not by shooting it out or warring for the good, but by instead laying in a cave and tripping out of their minds on a Peruvian drug called ayahuasca. This nine-minute psychedelic montage of intense visions and swirling patterns overlays Blueberry’s traumatic memories, effectively deconstructs the film’s vague narrative and reveals the disgraceful secret history of our “hero.” The sequence is at times jarring, overwhelming, and even boring. However, it exposes the true nature of the work: it is about images and ideas, senses and feelings that are raw and unrefined, the solitude and silent tortures of the repressed inner self and the deconstruction of identity. The seemingly trite and listless film transforms to deliver something shocking but intangible, haunting and beautiful.

It’s hard to predict if “Blueberry” will become a cult film such as Jodorowsky’s “El Topo," "Holy Mountain,"and Bird’s “Ravenous,” or if it will slip through culture's memory. As for now, it remains exceedingly obscure.