Daisies

"Nobody understands us," moan the two Maries, a pair of madcap Czechoslovakian women who make Thelma and Louise look as conventional as June Cleaver. The two Maries know that the world is going bad, and cheerfully proclaim that they are "going bad as well," free-loading meals and wrecking banquets in this legendary 1966 film following their episodic misadventures that was denounced by 21 (!) government authorities, who protested that it represented "a road of our cultural life on which no honest worker, farmer, or intellectual would like to embark." In his book Film as Subversive Art, Amos Vogel called it "the most sensational film of the Czech film renaissance...a mad, stylish dadaist comedy...an orgy of spectacular visual delights, sensuous décor, and magnificent color experiments, making a philosophical statement in the guise of a grotesque farce." If that sounds like your idea of a good time (and, admittedly, it won't be the preferred flower in everyone's lapel), then Daisies is nothing but a good, albeit mind-blowing, time. Recommended. (K. Lee Benson