2017 Year in Review: Part Five

Best Stunt

A guy’s dive from a subway, apparently not done with any kind of special effects at all, in Kontroll.

Douglas Fairbanks’ ceiling dance in When the Clouds Roll By


Tati’s bike stunts

Any number of stunts in The Fate of the Furious although they all sort of cancel each other out

Tati wins! I would love to see a CGI-Tati in the next installment of the Fast and Furious movies, by the way. That would be amazing!


Best Action Scene

Wiseau vs. Samurai Cop
A chase through the city in The Amazing Bulk 
A stripper fight in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
The longest chase sequence ever with an invisible killer and a bunch of chairs and crates in somebody’s garage in After Last Season


The ridiculous race scene that opens up The Fate of the Furious
Superargo killing people with his car, maybe the most poorly-edited scene I saw this year
Watching the clergyman run in The Seashell and the Clergyman


Many sequences in The Raid 2--the scene in the jail’s muddy yard or the one-on-one fight in the kitchen with The Assassin or the lady with hammers on the subway
The scene with Keanu Reeves killing people in a museum in John Wick 2


And I feel like I have to mention Star Wars somewhere in this year-in-review. I liked Luke’s big scene on the salt planet, but the little Star Wars fan inside me really enjoyed that Rey and Kylo against those red guys in Snoke’s throne room. That was pretty badass.

Some of these seem to be nominated ironically. I think After Last Season has to win this one.

Worst Special Effect

CGI blood spurts in Samurai Cop 2
A CGI fall in Nine Lives that combines bad special effects with questionable physics
The Greasy Strangler finale with exploding firecracker heads
1911’s Dante’s Inferno with a giant picking up poets that turn into figurines--silly but probably forgivable since the film is 106 years old
An exploding laptop in Purge: Election Year
Can I put that action scene that just won in After Last Season here? Minimalistic trippiness!
Weird yellow souls (I think?) drifting around in Tales from the Quadead Zone


Stop-animated people falling in Q
An Asian guy getting smacked by a car in Geostorm
Will Ferrell driving a motorcycle through his house in Daddy’s Home

The winner? The entirety of The Amazing Bulk. You have to see it to believe it.


Something That Might Be Annoying My Faithful Readers

That I can't seem to figure out if the movie is called Tales OF the Quadead Zone or Tales FROM the Quadead Zone and am too lazy to look it up.

Best Cinematic Magic Trick

I’ve seen hundreds of Melies early 20th Century magic tricks this year, but none of them tops Ridley Scott’s magic where he made Kevin Spacey completely disappear from a movie in about a month. I’m still amazed by that.


Worst Fight Scene

Little people engaged in fisticuffs in Ankle Biters, only because it’s not nearly as cool as it might sound.

Honorable mention: Gorga vs. a dinosaur

An Extremely Sad Realization That I Had in a Movie Theater

I’m only a few past decisions and unlucky breaks away from being that adult male I saw watching My Little Pony: The Movie by himself

Best Mirror Scene

The Phantom of the Paradise has a stunning mirror suicide. Dementia, or Daughter of Horror has a great mirror scene. Endless Poetry has a clown/angel asking why he exists and then having his mirrored image answering. “Monty” Montgomery in It (the silent one, not the Stephen King one) checking himself out in a mirror and saying (with the help of an intertitle) “Old Fruit! You still got it!” An exploding mirror death in Ghosthouse. Willem Dafoe mirror distortion trippiness in Dog Eat Dog.

I’m going with the silent movie for this one! Congrats, William Austin, on a great mirror scene!


Best Fart Scene

This is my second-favorite category that I do for this thing, possibly because I have the mentality of a 9 year old.

“I have something to tell you.” RIP! (The Greasy Strangler, which might just be leading the way in nominations this year)
Bill Murray ends Osmosis Jones with a fart
Malicious Kevin shart in We Need to Talk about Kevin
Sing’s rhino fart...I think it was a rhino. Regardless, it wasn’t funny.
Clown farts in Endless Poetry (Maybe this movie leads in nominations actually)
A fart transplant between Galifianakis and Wiig in Masterminds
The fart sound effects in La Grande Bouffe

The winner? It has to be a scene in Pieles (Skins) where a girl with an anus for a mouth farts out birthday candles. I mean, how could that not win? (Note: I've decided not to use a picture for this one.)

Something Else That Makes Me Seem Really Immature

That I couldn’t stop giggling at Okja’s ass while watching that terrible movie


Best Scene Featuring Poop

A struggle to drop twin deuces at a neighbor’s house in Cheap Thrills, a scene which actually depressed me quite a bit
A very large lady in Pieles (Skins, another movie that seems to be near the top in nominations) shitting out some “eyeballs”
A Montezuma pool gag in Masterminds
Or a guy pooping himself to death in La Grande Bouffe

I can’t pick a winner. And I’ve grown incredibly depressed. Why am I doing this?

Best Vehicle

I know that The Fate of the Furious had a fucking submarine, but this award has to go to the “tank” in Killer Shrews. Any vehicle you have to move via the duck walk has to be awesome.


My Favorite Scene in Any Movie I Saw This Year

An animated sequence in Wool 100%

Another Favorite Scene

The violent and absurd and darkly-humorous climax of The Killing of a Sacred Deer

My Least Favorite Scene in Any Movie I Saw This Year

Gerald’s Game where she gets her hand out of the handcuff

Best Walk

Fabrice Luchini in Slack Bay


Most Overhyped Movie of the Year

Wonder Woman


Best Movie Art

Another one that I don’t feel like I took good notes for.

I liked Richard Jenkins’ character’s art in The Shape of Water. I also liked some dog portraits in Paterson. The winner is a Picasso-esque portrait in From Morn to Midnight though.

You know what would have improved this part of my year-in-review? Pictures!

Best Make-Up

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

Who cares about any of this crap? What the heck am I doing?

Best Use of Color

The Love Witch, Coco, The Neon Demon, Wonder Wheel, and Pieles (Skins) can tie for this one. It’s not like anybody is reading this anyway.

Two Fears

That I may have killed Dick Van Dyke


That my blog could be taken away from me because I can’t keep Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling straight.


Favorite Band Name I Got from Watching a Movie This Year

Organ Grinder Monkey Mischief

Best Hair

That yeti in Giant of the 20th Century really did have a beautiful head of hair, and I know I’ve mentioned this twice now which probably means it needs to be included in that list of things that would annoy my wife.


I also like Hilarius (Victor Jensen) the doll maker’s hair in The Doll.


But the winner is Pamela Flores’ striking red hair in Endless Poetry.


Best Facial Hair

Eric Campbell, with that eyebrow and facial hair combination he sports in many of Chaplin’s movies, could win a lifetime achievement award in this category. But I have to give this to different silent movie facial hair--the longest beard ever on this secondhand shop guy in From Morn to Midnight. All the way to his knees!

Best Use of New Legs

Lon Chaney in The Penalty

Favorite Character

There are characters with larger roles in movies that I really loved this year: Beef, played by Gerrit Graham, in Phantom of the Paradise; Sheriff Ticker, a guy who loses three body parts in The Reflecting Skin, and Philip Dore/Dorr’s Aldo the magician in Night of the Kickfighters. But this award is for much smaller roles, characters who are barely in movies at all but manage to leave indelible marks.

There was Tentacle Boy, suckling in Yeti: A Love Story
A female cop with a Betty Boop voice in Applesauce
That girl obsessed with getting a candy bar in Purge: Election Year
A crazy guy played by Bill Coontz who I loved in Bloodlust! 
The wacky teenager in Last Ounce of Courage who claimed she got a medal of honor once
A distracting ballerina who twirls for no good reason in Phantom of the Opera
A pervy guy in Diary of a Lost Girl (as opposed to the pervy guy watching the movie)


The little Hitler in Endless Poetry
Pepe the hitchhiker in Ghosthouse


And this guy doing these amazing finger motions in an elevator in A Safe Place
Joselito Rescober, the maitres de in Samurai Cop who sadly couldn’t be in the sequel because of his death
Amber Lynn’s cameo as a newscaster in Things seems worth mentioning here
And even Tommy Wiseau pops up in The Disaster Artist (but did I see him?)

But I watched Assault of the Killer Bimbos this year, and there’s only one character who can win this award--the restaurant patron who says, “Oh, no! A bimbo with a gun!” I’d actually love to name this award after him, but after 2 ½ minutes of extensive research turned up no information on who played this guy and uttered that immortal line, I gave up.

Another Character I Need to Mention

Steve Brule was totally in that new King Kong movie. And that is awesome.


The Ubiquitous Actor Award 

Peter Sarsgaard! He was in every third movie I saw this year!

(Note: This doesn't look to be true. It seems he was in two movies I saw this year.)

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