I never thought I’d find myself saying this but… Harmony Korine’s new movie looks good. Like, really good.

And I hate Harmony Korine. I don’t mean as a person, since I’ve never met him. (Although if I believe what I read, I don’t think I’d want to meet him.) And while I admire his dedication to cinema as art, and his dedication to actual independent filmmaking, I think he goes to great lengths to be overly pretentious, without any real reason for doing so, other than to be “the weird guy.”

Some people, it seems, go to great lengths to be outcasts and weirdos. It doesn’t come naturally. It’s not their “personality.” It’s just their way of getting attention. (Don’t get me wrong: There are genuinely weird people out there who fall into those ways naturally. I’m not talking about them. They’re usually kind of awesome.) That, to me, is what Harmony Korine is, as a filmmaker.

Gummo is a film that’s weird for weird’s sake. It’s not weird in a David Lynch sense of the word because Lynch’s films which are, let’s face it, freaking WEIRD, actually tell a story and they’re very intelligent. Gummo is about retards killing cats and wrestling chairs. It’s stupid, and it has no redeeming values. I’d heard from several reliable sources that it was a movie that I’d enjoy (this was years ago) so when I saw it coming on IFC one night, I stayed up ’til 2 am to watch it (again, this was years ago, so Tivo wasn’t around). When it was over, I was apalled. I was literally angry. I was angry because the movie sucked when so many had recommended it and I was angry that I’d stayed up watching it when I could’ve been doing something more productive like sleeping.

Then, I borrowed Julien Donkey Boy from my friend DJ and while I didn’t hate it like I’d hated Gummo — at least this one had a plot — I still viewed it as overly pretentious and self-important. Harmony Korine seems to have the ego the size of Jupiter (notice the size of his name on the poster shown above) and the movie was further proof that in Korine’s world, he was the most prolific filmmaker of all time.

And now, I see the trailer for his new film, Mister Lonely, and I’m amazed. The movie looks weird still, but more of a quirky kind of way, in a pretty appealing kind of way. The plot of the film is pretty clever and the casting is hilarious (a Mexican, Diego Luna, is cast as Michael Jackson, and a Scot, Samantha Morton, is cast as Marilyn Monroe).

Maybe Korine has gotten his self-importance out of his system after a heroine and meth addiction nearly ended him. But whatever it was that happened, it seems that he might be making a different kind of film now: one that I can watch without wanting to hurly chairs through windows.

You can watch the trailer for Mister Lonely over at Apple.