“So, you watch about 2 movies a year?” you might be asking. Pretty much. But fortunately, I’ve got a Netflix account, so I have a chance to check out movies that I wouldn’t normally think to watch.

As it happens, I’m trekking over to a friend’s later today to watch Hamlet 2, a film I’m pretty sure I’ll like, and it’s prompting me to think of some other offbeat movies that I’ve enjoyed. Here are five, in no particular order, that I think are worth watching.

If the cover to the director's cut doesn't clue you in, this is a very unusual movie.

Donnie Darko is probably the most serious movie on this list, and I’ll be the first to admit that if you watch this film knowing what you’re going to get, you’ll walk away disappointed. So, I won’t touch on the storyline too much, since part of the fun of this film is asking yourself what’s actually happening.

But here’s the setup. Donnie is a high school student who has a weird experience one night – he sleepwalks outside and meets a strange man in a bunny suit who tells him that the world is going to end 28 days. While Donnie is out, an engine from an airplane crashes into his bedroom. Had he been there, he would have been killed by it.

What follows is a strange series of events as Donnie is asked by Frank to commit some criminal acts around town. These actions cause some peculiar truths to come to light, and Frank assures Donnie that they won’t get caught. Donnie is even more confused when Frank mentions the idea of time travel — something that seems very out of place in this story, but which plays a major role in the film’s premise and conclusion.

I’d recommend this film to anyone who likes a movie that requires a little bit of thought to fully grasp. It’s also one of those movies that’s fun to discuss after you’ve seen it, since many of the themes are subtle and hard to discern your first time through. While Donnie Darko might look like a horror film, it’s really a sci-fi film at heart. It’s just a style of sci-fi that you don’t see often in cinema, since it doesn’t have space ships, laser guns or menacing aliens.

(Check out Donnie Darko on Amazon.com by clicking here)

The Coen brothers are always good for an unusual film...

Raising Arizona is an early film by the Coen brothers (The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, and many others) that’s more than a little strange. The premise of the film is that a petty criminal named “H.I.” keeps going in and out of jail so often that he falls in love with Ed, the woman who takes his mug shots. H.I. soon marries her, and they move into a trailer in the desert, but their marriage is tainted by the fact that they can’t have children, despite the fact that Ed really wants a baby. At the same time, a furniture salesman gets some media coverage as his wife gives birth to quintuplets. H.I. and Ed decide that the parents wouldn’t miss one child, and concoct a crazy scheme to kidnap one of the children and raise it as their own. The rest of the film centers around the hunt for the kidnapped child, and H.I. and Ed’s midadventures along the way.

As you might expect from a Coen brothers film, Raising Arizona is a peculiar mixture of culture, humor and drama that features some decent performances from an oddball cast. Nicholas Cage actually acts capably in this film, and Holly Hunter plays Ed with a intense fervor. John Goodman shows up as one of H.I.’s old criminal buddies, and he plays a large role in the latter half of the movie. There are certainly some bizarre comedic moments in the film (particularly when H.I. and Ed are trying to pick out which baby they’re going to steal), but overall, the movie works well and is worth watching on a night when you’re ready for something a little different.

(Check out Raising Arizona on Amazon.com by clicking here.)

If I have to explain the appeal of this movie to you, you wouldn't understand...

Bubba Ho-tep is a really peculiar film where Bruce Campbell stars as an elderly Elvis Presley who’s found his way into a nursing home because of a cancerous growth on his male member. Whether he’s really Elvis or not is debatable, but the character explains that at the height of his career, he secretly switched places with an impersonator and that the impersonator was the one who died. Elvis, in the meantime, has been touring the country secretly, keeping a low profile, which explains why so many people believe they’ve seen him.

In the nursing home, Elvis meets a man who claims to be JFK, which is odd, since the gentleman is black. When Elvis mentions this fact, JFK nods and says, “I know! They dyed me.”

But this revelation is nothing compared to the fact that folks around the home are dying, having their souls sucked out through their backsides by an ancient Egyptian mummy named Bubba Ho-tep, who’s feeding on the old folks to keep himself alive, but out of the awareness of the authorities. So, Elvis and JFK prepare themselves for a showdown, and equip themselves to take out Bubba Ho-tep once and for all.

If you can’t understand why the movie is awesome from this synopsis, let me add one more thing: Bruce Campbell is brilliant as Elvis. But I’ll also caution you that this film is not a comedy, nor is it as madcap as Army of Darkness. It’s just a peculiar little film that is unlike anything else you’ll ever watch… and definitely perfect for an offbeat evening.

(Check out Bubba Ho-tep on Amazon.com by clicking here.)

A sword and an axe... what a combination!

Six-String Samurai is a real oddity, because it’s one of those movies that defies any sort of logic. In an alternate apocalyptic history, Las Vegas has been ruled by the King of Rock’n'roll until Elvis suddenly dies, leaving a spot for another warrior/musician to take his place. Buddy, a wandering samurai who looks suspiciously like Buddy Holly with a guitar and a katana strapped to his back, makes his way towards the city, but has to fight Soviet cosmonauts, a family of cannibals, and even Death himself along the way.

Apparently, the theme of this film is not so different from that of Don McLean’s song, “American Pie,” since it’s something of an allegory for the death of rock’n'roll at the hands of heavy metal. I personally didn’t feel this film was very deep, but I guess its subtleties were lost on me. Still, it’s a unique movie that’s definitely worth watching, if for nothing else than the action sequences, which are a nice pre-Matrix homage to Hong Kong action films. (That’s partially because the lead actor, Jeffrey Falcon, was in a bunch of Hong Kong films.)

(Check out Six-String Samurai on Amazon.com by clicking here.)

All right, so, "WTF is this?" actually IS the correct response. Now be quiet, eat your popcorn and watch the movie.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is a film that is so out there that it’s gained true cult status. The premise of the film is that a rock star / physicist / comic book hero / neurosurgeon / samurai named Buckaroo Banzai drives an experimental car through a rift that crosses through several dimensions. He winds up bringing back a strange alien pod that doesn’t have much bearing on the story until later, but in the meantime, Buckaroo and his band of scientists and rockstars known as the “Hong Kong Cavaliers” deal with some other matters, including a company called “Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems,” which it turns out is run by a race of alien repitiles called “Red Lectroids” who all have the first name, “John.”

It’s about halfway through the movie that you find out you’ve been dumped into the middle of a story, and that events that occurred in 1938 (50 years before the movie takes place) have important repercussions on Banzai’s adventure. And things get even weirder from there. I’d summarize it for you, but I think this is just one of those films you have to see to fully appreciate its peculiar brand of insanity.

I’m not sure what the people who were making this movie were thinking. It’s caught somewhere between being too hip and too camp, set in a universe that has an enormous amount of attention to detail for no real good reason, and starring some well-known actors (Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum) who appear to be in on a joke that the audience is never told. The fact that the movie’s title credits boast a sequel that never actually happened tells you something about how overly ambitious this film was.

And yet… there’s something about the film that makes a gem, even if it’s a largely flawed one. It’s well worth watching in the spirit of having fun (and with some spirits, even more so!), but it’s certainly one of those films you walk away from wondering, “what the heck did I just watch?”

(Check out The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension on Amazon.com by clicking here.)