6 New Movies That Deserve Way More Attention

6

Kung Fury: A Swedish Action Movie About Hitler, Vikings, Dinosaurs, and Time Travel

When Hitler learns the secret of martial arts, Norse gods rise up from their fimbul slumber. Such is the premise of Kung Fury, which follows a time-traveling karate cop that teams up with a female Viking and Thor to take on the Third Reich using 1990s technology, a sentence that now exists in our reality.

Laser Unicorns

Laser Unicorns

Laser Unicorns

Laser Unicorns
But sure, Hollywood, "gritty" is way better.

We're not exactly sure how that madness will fill up the length of even a short film, but boy are we curious to find out. The film is shot entirely on a green screen -- the Swedish filmmakers raised $630,000 on Kickstarter a year ago to put toward dino-riding Vikings with submachine guns. And now -- for humanity's benefit -- the finished product is being released this month for free on YouTube for all to see.

Laser Unicorns
This is already better than the RoboCop remake ...

Laser Unicorns
... and Jurassic World.

5

Pound of Flesh: Jean-Claude Van Damme Wants His Kidney Back

The Muscles From Brussels arguably peaked in the late 1980s with Kickboxer -- a film with such a soul-debasing dance scene that it doubled as a voodoo death ritual. He then gave us Timecop, JCVD, and something like 3.2 Universal Soldiers. Well, it's 2015, and Van Damme's back, baby -- and this time he's ... uh, not doing so great.

eOne Entertainment
Just a friendly reminder that, yes, this can happen to you.

Oh no. That's not good. He should probably see a doctor right aw-

eOne Entertainment
FUCK HOSPITALS.

In the upcoming Pound of Flesh, the best medicine comes in torrential cascades of split kicks and choke-outs as the Damminator goes on a quest to take down the scumbags who stole his kidney.

Yes, that's totally what this movie is about: The trailer outlines the story of a former black-ops agent who wakes up in China sans the organ he was planning to donate to his dying niece. From there, the film descends into a glory-montage of spinning takedowns and violent car chases in a scramble to save the day before the clock runs out. And in this case "clock" really means "the spurting life juice that powers Jean-Claude Van Damme," who spends the film slowly losing blood as he pounds henchmen. It's basically the movie Crank without any sense of self-awareness and way more 55-year-old groin strain.

4

Crumbs: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic Fever Dream From Ethiopia

All sci-fi is surrealist to some degree -- even the stuff we don't consider so (just ask the nervous robot playing monster chess with a violent shaggy yodeller). The film Crumbs understands that and embraces it in an apocalyptic future setting.

Lanzadera Films / BiraBiro Films

Lanzadera Films / BiraBiro Films
Hands Across the Galaxy

Well ... we think that's what's happening. To be perfectly honest, we have no idea, and watching the trailer just makes the confusion worse -- as it appears to follow a humpbacked gentleman who keeps having his toys stolen by masked equine jockeys with access to outer space.

Lanzadera Films / BiraBiro Films
Let's trip out at the movies, let's trip out at the movies
Let's trip out at the movies, and have ourselves some shrooms.

According to the sorta helpful synopsis, the Spanish-Ethiopian co-production follows a superhero named Gagano who collects trash and finds himself on a "surreal epic journey" through a futuristic wasteland where a dormant and mysterious spaceship in the sky suddenly goes online. Oh, also, Santa is in the mix somewhere -- and he's pissed.

Lanzadera Films / BiraBiro Films
His new method of informing children they're on the naughty list is refreshingly direct.

Maybe he's mad at the group of "second-generation Nazis" that are featured as well.

Lanzadera Films / BiraBiro Films
N-A-Z-I-S-M-O-U-S-E

All of these things are merely obstacles our hero must overcome to find out that the world "isn't quite what he thought it was." Which, in this case, actually sounds like really good news.

3

Cooties: Elijah Wood Fighting Children

Now that they've got their own sponsored TV show and a multimillion-dollar film series -- it's pretty safe to say that Romero's original indie vision of zombies as an allegory for commercialism is all but dead, buried, and then reanimated so it can appear in a Subway commercial. So, where do we go from here? Is there any way to take the essence of the original genre and apply it to today? Preferably in a way that brutally murders a bunch of children?

Cooties has you covered -- as it takes the mindless zombie concept and aptly applies it to school children. From there it sprinkles in Elijah Wood, Jack McBrayer (Kenneth from 30 Rock), and Rainn Wilson as the romantic rival/P.E. coach in an epidemic spawned after a little girl accidentally eats a contaminated cafeteria chicken nugget, forcing the teaching staff into hiding.

Lionsgate Films
As opposed to all the perfectly healthy nuggets that grace all our other cafeterias.

From there, it's a story of face-eating and child-brain dissection as the staff tries to figure out what's wrong with the student body. It's the kind of comedy-horror that rivals Zombieland, and yet, despite positive reviews, it has been delayed until an unspecified date later this year -- when it will release with an entirely different ending than it had at its Sundance premiere, hopefully one where even more children die than before.

And speaking of child murder ...

2

Turbo Kid: Mad Max, but Teenagers

Hands down, one of the best films of 2015 will probably be the new Mad Max flick, which is a two-hour-long car chase. But if we had to pick a close second premise, it would be to take all the campy horror and hulking mask-crazies and make a Muppet Babies version, which is exactly what Turbo Kid is.

Epic Pictures
Alas, poor Nanny.

Imagine -- if you will -- the futuristic and acid-rain-tormented hellscape that is (as stated in the trailer) 1997. Here, the water supply is controlled by an evil emperor played by Michael "You Love Me Because of Paul Verhoeven" Ironside filling in for Malcolm McDowell from Tank Girl. Now it's up to the titular hero and his bike-riding, disproportionately happy-go-lucky companion Apple to save the day.

Epic Pictures
Chris and Gwyneth only have themselves to blame.

We're not going to sugarcoat this: Turbo Kid is only for certain audiences. Specifically -- it's for awesome audiences, as Ironside recently explained in an interview where he compares the film to Repo Man. Tonally speaking, Turbo Kid goes out of its way to combine PG-rated character moments with Faces of Death gore scenes -- all done with the nostalgic touch of practical effects. At the end of the day, all we really have to do is show you the following two GIFs for you to either walk away or fall in love at first sight:

Epic Pictures

Epic Pictures
How Mega Man 2 should've ended.

1

Listen to Me Marlon: A Documentary About Marlon Brando, Narrated by Marlon Brando

While we've certainly touched on a lot of overt, often deliberate weirdness on this list -- none of it holds a candle to Listen to Me Marlon, a Marlon Brando biopic that manages to tribute one of history's most justifiably egomaniacal human beings with the only fitting narrator: Marlon Brando.

You're confused, so we'll explain.

Back in the 1940s, Mr. Brando, being the fucking mad hatter that he is, started to create private recordings in which he literally just narrated and discussed his life, career, and family ... for 300 hours' worth of tape stored in a bunker outside his house, along with copious notes. From his son's murder conviction and daughter's suicide to his changing ideas on what it means to be an actor -- the tapes explore every facet the probably-blasted artist could spit out. And now, one director named Stevan Riley was nice enough to compile it over a narrative documentary featuring home movies and public appearances by the famously elusive star.

Here's a clip where he recounts wrapping Mutiny on the Bounty by spending his time partying on a small tribal island like some bizarro gag ending to Apocalypse Now.

Showtime
"The hula ... the hula ..."

Because let's face it: All the dino-riding, organ-stealing, post-apocalyptic surrealist child-murdering in the world can't stack up to the hammered memoirs of a man who cobbled together one of the most iconic characters of all time with cotton balls and a stray cat.

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Be sure to check out more upcoming weirdo movies that deserve more hype here and here.