Best movies like Meshes of the Afternoon

A woman and an engineered man are sent in a gigantic sentient starship to search space for a place to start a new life cycle. Raj decides to take a look around the ship. He comes across a gigantic robotic cleaner. Combat ensues.

Young Vincent Malloy dreams of being just like Vincent Price and loses himself in macabre daydreams that annoy his mother.

If you had a love-potion, who would you make fall madly in love with you? Timothy, prone to escaping his dismal high school reality through dazzling musical daydreams, gets to answer that question in a very real way. After his eccentric teacher casts him as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he stumbles upon a recipe hidden within the script to create the play's magical, purple love-pansy.

On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest.

Witch’s Cradle is an unfinished Maya Deren film made in the Guggenheim Gallery during a surrealist “Art of this Century” exhibit. It was assembled long after her death by staffers within the preservation department at Anthology Film Archives.

The low budget film starring the young Bruce Campbell that influenced the Evil Dead films.

A stand of birches. Sunlight brightens and dims, revealing more or less of the woods. A little grass is on the forest floor. Is there a shape in the shadows? Something green is out of focus. The light flashes, and the screen goes dark from time to time. We look up close at the bark of trees. Is the god of the forest to be seen?

Theresa, a haunted young woman spiraling in the wake of profound loss, is torn between her fractured emotional state and the reality-altering effects of a potent cannabinoid drug.

After the disappearance of her scientist father, three peculiar beings send Meg, her brother, and her friend to space in order to find him.

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.

Michael Snow narrates a series of Hollis Frampton's photographs (speaking as Frampton, in the first person)—as each picture catches fire on a hot plate.

This surreal cartoon follows Quasi, Anita and their pet robot Rollo to the Quackadero, a futuristic amusement park where thoughts, time, dreams and memories become playthings for the weird and wacky clientele.

A hilarious collection of animated television commercials that were rejected because of their creator's failing grip on sanity. 2001 Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Short Film.

A social event choreographed in the manner of a dance, illuminated by concepts drawn from Greek legend; one of filmmaker Maya Deren’s most intriguing works.

Two wanderers, a young man and a young woman, meet in the desert and decide to travel on together. The two travellers walk and hitch-hike their way down the road to their destination, the beach, becoming friends and lovers.

In this short film, a young man, a girl and a dog attempt to fly with wings more symbolic than practical.

A young man walks into a meticulously clean and sterile bathroom and proceeds to shave away hair, then skin, in an increasingly bloody and graphic bathroom scene. Many film critics have interpreted the young man's process of self-mutilation as a metaphor for the self-destructive involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War.

A gun blast, a flash of light, and a young woman awakens to the comfort of her own bed. Bonnie Clayton has it all, a great relationship, a challenging career, and the burden of a dream that grows more vivid and disturbing with each passing night. But when Bonnie is abducted by a sadistic stranger and his colorful entourage, she discovers that the key to her survival lies within the familiar realms of her recurring dream.

Looking for an escape from her recurring nightmares, 18-year-old Sarah submits to a university sleep study, but soon realizes she's become the conduit to a frightening new discovery.

Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.

A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.

In a fantasy world of opposing kingdoms, a 15-year old girl must find the fabled MirrorMask in order to save the kingdom and get home.

Fran likes to think about dying. It brings sensation to her quiet life. When she makes the new guy at work laugh, it leads to more: a date, a slice of pie, a conversation, a spark. The only thing standing in their way is Fran herself.

In a countryside town bordering on a magical land, a young man makes a promise to his beloved that he'll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm. His journey takes him into a world beyond his wildest dreams and reveals his true identity.

Walter Mitty, a daydreaming writer with an overprotective mother, likes to imagine that he is a hero who experiences fantastic adventures. His dream becomes reality when he accidentally meets a mysterious woman who hands him a little black book. According to her, it contains the locations of the Dutch crown jewels hidden since World War II. Soon, Mitty finds himself in the middle of a confusing conspiracy, where he has difficulty differentiating between fact and fiction.

A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.

A precocious girl, her nasty parents, two punk-rock losers and a weak-kneed salesman inadvertently become the guests of two ghoulish senior citizens in their dark, haunted mansion. The old couple makes and collects dolls that, when not sitting still like good little mannequins, creep around in the night, offing the guests one by one.

An awkward office drone becomes increasingly unhinged after a charismatic and confident look-alike takes a job at his workplace and seduces the woman he desires.

In an underground city in a dystopian future, the protagonist, whose name is "THX 1138 4EB", is shown running through passageways and enclosed spaces. It is soon discovered that THX is escaping his community. The government uses computers and cameras to track down THX and attempt to stop him; however, they fail. He escapes by breaking through a door and runs off into the sunset. The government sends their condolences to YYO 7117, THX's mate, claiming that THX has destroyed himself. Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138 4EB is a 1967 science fiction short film written and directed by George Lucas while he attended the University of Southern California's film school.

In a decaying castle surrounded by a dank, mirrored lake live the morbidly nervous Roderick Usher and his sickly twin sister, Madeline. Their tale is told and dimly comprehended by the unnamed narrator, a boyhood friend whom Roderick has summoned. When Madeline soon dies—or seems to die—they entomb her body. On a stormy night, "cracking and ripping" sounds and a "shriek" from below convince the panicky Roderick that "We have put her living into the tomb!" The shrouded, emaciated figure of Madeline appears at the door of Roderick's book-strewn study, falls upon him, "and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse."

It's early autumn and Dr. Headley eagerly demonstrates what seems to be a miraculous cure for tuberculosis. Not far from where he is working, the disease seems preparing to soon claim yet another life, a teenage girl named Winifred. Winifred's mother and little sister Trixie are devastated. When Trixie hears the family doctor say of Winifred that "when the last leaf falls, she will have passed away," she interprets the doctor's words literally. Thinking over what she has heard, she determines to do everything possible to save her sister.

A man attempts to evade observation by an all-seeing eye.

A compilation of images co-creator Frank Mouris had collected from magazines interwoven with two narrations, one giving a mostly linear autobiography and the other stating words having to do with the images, the story the first voice is relating, or neither.

A young girl lost in the loneliness and boredom of reality finds solace in an ill boy, whom she can visit in a surreal dream world that she drew in her school composition book.

In one of the first films to use computer animation, director Peter Foldès depicts one man’s descent into greed and gluttony.

Serene Velocity stares down the center of an empty institutional hallway while shifting the focal length of a stationary zoom lens, transforming the basement corridor into a nexus of visual and conceptual energy.

Maya Deren’s shortest, two-minute A Study in Choreography for Camera seems like an exercise piece to capture a dancer’s movement on celluloid, which later on developed into her masterpieces such as Ritual in Transfigured Time and Meditation on Violence.

Mickey has been reading Alice in Wonderland, and falls asleep. He finds himself on the other side of the mirror, where the furniture is alive. He eats a walnut, which makes him briefly larger, then small. He dances around a lot, ultimately doing a major number with a deck of cards. He dances with the queen, making the king jealous. He comes after Mickey with swords, and Mickey defends himself with a sewing needle. Mickey gets the upper hand, and the king calls for reinforcements. Mickey finds himself chased by several decks, which throw their spots at him. He turns on a fan and blows them away, back through the mirror, where his alarm is ringing.

A woman leaves for a quiet weekend in the country after losing her job and imploding her latest dysfunctional relationship. She rents a country house from an old-fashioned widower who’s struggling to hide his psychopathic tendencies. Soon, two generations collide with terrifying results.

Stormtroopers on Tattooine show us what life is like patrolling and law-upholding on the sandy planet. While being filmed for the hit Imperial TV show TROOPS, Stormtroopers from the infamous Black Sheep Squadron on patrol run into some very familiar characters.

Confusing realities surface in this paranoid film dealing with the fragile nature of a young woman recovering from rape and an apparent attempted suicide. In one reality, she is a killer destroyer of men. In another she is the new wife on a Jamaican honeymoon with her husband (William Baldwin), who is trying to help her recover. Which is real is the question as the story unfolds.

A shy caretaker believes that the father of her teenage charge is falling in love with her, unaware that she is actually the victim of the girl's prank.

A recent college graduate sets out to win back the girl of his dreams.

A mom and her 10-year-old son motor around the country as she makes ends meet by turning tricks until her car breaks down. She then temporarily takes up with a hardware store owner until she gets her own place. Then the kid's father shows up to try to take the two over.

A daydreaming businessman named Thelonius Pitt takes a vacation in the Redwood Forests of California. The morning after he arrives, he meets a beautiful, mysterious woman named Melanie. She happens to look just like the woman he keeps seeing in his dreams. Thelonius and Melanie meet each other on the shore of a nearby river late at night. Melanie's husband finds them, and attacks Thelonius. Melanie pulls out a pistol and fires 3 shots, knocking her husband's body into the icy river below. The nightmare has begun...

Harriet, Walter Craig's wife, is an upper-class woman obsessed with control, material possessions and social status whose behavior makes difficult her relationship with domestic service and family members.

Renowned Nashville horror host, Dr. Gangrene, and New England's Penny Dreadful must join forces to save Halloween. Science and sorcery combine in this All Hallows Eve spooky special.

Maggie falls in love with a very romantic and mysterious man, who makes Maggie's life a hell...

The aristocratic White Mice and the rustic Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak battle over the doll of their heart's desire.

This hand-painted, step-printed film begins with streaks of light and vibrantly colored forms. There appears, frame center, the tapered shape of a tower-- An imposing silhouette against the backdrop of the flaring sky.