Terminal USA

1993 dysfunctional family comedy

Rating: no rating

Plot: A Japanese-American family deals with everyday drama.

Like a more frenetic John Waters' movie, Jon Moritsugu's Terminal USA is just under and hour, just about the most amount of time that somebody can handle something like this. It's got its share of funny moments, and Moritsugu, seemingly parodying either something or several somethings, uses dopey music, intentionally bad acting, dialogue that seems like 80's comedy on acid, and exaggerated sound effects about as well as they can be used. My favorite sound effect? A cute little DOINNG while one of the brothers is enjoying skinhead pornography. That freak in the back bedroom's also got a great masturbation scene, a sequence that involves a rocking horse.

Because that's the kind of movie Terminal USA is--the kind where the act of pleasuring yourself is symbolized with the vigorous movements of a rocking horse. It's also the kind of movie with lines like these:

"I don't want to go to college. It's a load of crap straight out the doggy's ass."
"So you've experienced the joy and ecstasy of the natural configuration of a man and woman?"
"You know, you really sizzled my wiener last night. It was a real wiener roast."
"Did he finger your buds?"
"Confucius say, hospitals are for pussies."
"Sugar snatch snackaroos."

Ok, I'm not typing out anymore of those. There's just no point, my oinky-doinky silly friends.

My favorite character was the goggled pizza delivery man. And my favorite scene was probably the one where a pair of skinheads danced. They danced with great energy, my friends!

I don't know why I'm telling you all this.

I might check out other things by Jon Moritsugu. I like how all of these different individual family concerns all came together into one giant magically chaotic mess during the narrative's climax. But since this is so much like a John Waters' movie, I'm going to refuse to rate it.

Speaking of my brother who isn't speaking to me--this movie starts with the Birthday Party's "Sonny's Burning." I only mention him because this is probably the kind of movie he'd like more than me. He's a sugar snatch snackaroo!

I was just scanning the cast list for this and noticed that Gregg Turkington was in it somewhere. I missed him! He must have been one of the skinheads.

The Commuter

2018 action thriller

Rating: 11/20

Plot: An former-cop-turned-insurance-salesman is having a bad day when Vera Farmiga gives him an offer he can't refuse--to find somebody on his commute who doesn't belong and collect a cool 100,000 smackaroos. He probably should have just read his Steinbeck instead.

The kind of thriller that grows more preposterous as it continues down the tracks, The Commuter could have been called Murder on the Incoherent Express. That seemed a little bit funnier in my head. This really is largely incoherent though, and when it's not incoherent, it's predictable. There's nothing new here, and it's not like the old is even done particularly well. Liam Neeson is starting to get a little too old to growl out lines about his family, minor action sequences and one gigantic explosive action sequence are too ludicrous to buy, and the twists and turns in the narrative work about as well as a commuter train making 90 degree turns. Close-quartered train fisticuffs nearly work, but the dizzying editing distracts and makes you wish you could just stare at a motionless Vera Farmiga instead.

Spotted on a wall at the station--a poster for Paddington 2, the movie I probably should have seen instead of this one.

Seriously, watch this movie and then try to convince me that it makes any sense at all. If you can, I'll leave 25 dollars and 30 cents in an envelope hidden in a restroom for you.

Nostalghia

1983 candle commercial

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A Russian poet makes a new friend in Italy and struggles with keeping his candle lit.

No idea what this movie's actually about, but it sure is pretty. Lovely extended scenes, great Tarkovskyian landscapes, time and time and time. Paced like a dead man's brain queef, stuffed with enigmatic symbols, effortlessly bouncing between dream and flashback and everyday listlessness.

The climactic scene--and this is probably a spoiler--is an intense action sequence featuring the main character trying to walk a lighted candle from one side of a drained spa to another. It's around ten minutes of unbroken dreary metaphor. Is that life--trying to carry a lighted candle from one side of a pool to the other? If not, should it be?

The first shot in this is beautiful, and I got to wake my wife up by saying "Slug bug" and slugging her. I had no choice because rules are rules. The fog is impossible, rolling in as quickly as the plot develops. The final shot, fittingly another of those extended shots where the camera zooms out on a character and a dog for the amount of time that it needs to, is almost beautiful enough to stop your heart. Everything in between? Well, all that is stunningly beautiful, too, from a mother prayer ending in an eruption of birds, to a floating feather, to a glimpse of an angel, to an opening door revealing a Eugenia smiling in slow motion, to a crazy man's rain-filled home, to a boob, to a landscape constructed in a room that bleeds into the landscape seen through the open window, to a fog-drenched spa with a quartet of gossipers, to awe-inspiring architecture, to an insane man devouring bread in front of a mirror, to a shocking scene of self-immolation that is apparently mocked by a doppelganger. Tarkovsky paints like a poet and makes movie scenes like a God. This surprises you with just how beautiful a shot from a movie can be, and then it surprises you again by showing you something even better.

Nostalghia is as impenetrable (at least to this slightly-dumb viewer) as it is beautiful. Perhaps the title gives away that this is intensely personal, but Tarkovsky's got that gift of taking all these memories--real or cinematically manufactured, and making them the memories of his audience. The mystery is thick, but the emotions are acutely felt. It's a movie you carry in your soul.

A special call-out to Domiziana Giordano's left breast.

Darkest Hour

2017 historical drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Winston Churchill becomes the prime minister as England wrestles with capitulation or fighting back as Hitler attempts to take over the world.

This blogger is too classy to start fat-shaming famous people, but man, Gary Oldman has really let himself go.

This and Dunkirk make a great companion pieces as they're two different sides of the same historical coin. Nolan's picture has battlefield action and dog-fights, but this drama is just as action-packed with words replacing bullets and typewriters replacing bombers. This really is about the role of language in conflict, and least when it's not pulling up Winston's shirt and blowing raspberries on his bulbous tummy. Frenzied rhetoric, actors playing characters in states of turmoil spitting lines at each other in darkened and/or subterranean rooms, ideologies clash like sharpened swords. Words boom like tanks.

With words and the power of them being so important to Darkest Hour, the screenplay has no choice but to be good. And Anthony McCarten, the guy behind The Theory of Everything, does a great job with what could have easily ended up a stuffy historical snoozefest. Apparently, Churchill had a sense of humor, and along with his resolve and leadership, that's what really stands out about the guy. There's drama throughout this as decisions are made that would determine whether or not England would survive have to be made, but there's just the right amount of humor peppered throughout as well. Along with a little bit of style (Joe Wright sure loves his overhead shots, doesn't he?), this is never boring.

Lots of credit has to go to Gary Oldman and his prosthetics and fat suit for creating a very human Churchill. This performance moves beyond the superficialities of a historical impression to really help an audience 70-some years later understand the internal struggles of this figure. I don't really know anything about Winston Churchill, other than about how sexy the guy was. Oldman and company do a terrific job making him into a man who steps up as a hero rather than making him a hero who just happens to find himself in a movie. Character nuances, a big cigar budget, an impossible amount of make-up, lots of mumbling and sputtering, both gesticulations and the lack of gesticulations. It's a performance that locks Oldman in as one of this generation's finest actors. 

The Post

2017 historical drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The Washington Post tries to decide what to do with a bunch of top-secret files that prove the government had lied to the people about the Vietnam War.

This is almost exactly what you'd expect it to be, but despite this having star power, being directed by Spielberg, and being relevant to the current administration and their efforts to undermine the freedom of the press, that's not actually a good thing. The movie plays things very, very safe, and the paint-by-numbers approach spells things out for the audience as if nobody involved with The Post wanted the audience to figure anything out for themselves or come to their own conclusions.

This is one of those movies that is so overwritten. You get the sense that screenwriters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer wanted to out-Sorkin Aaron Sorkin, stopping after each line of dialogue and saying, "Now THAT is a well-written line!" and then vigorously patting themselves on the back. What makes it worse is that both Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks really squeeze the life out of these lines, each delivery itself seemingly trying to win its own award. I'm not sure if the acting is actually good or not, but what I do know is that it was impossible for me to watch this and see it as anything but acting. The lines these two spat at each other and the others felt like lead blocks being squeezed out of a sponge, and although individual moments might have seemed almost meaningful, almost nothing at all sticks. It's got the stink of Hollywood all over it, a glaze that likely makes it much more thrilling than how any of this actually went down, but it winds up being a little boring.

The context of our world of fake news and attacks on the 1st Amendment by a guy who 35% of the country still inexplicably supports makes this movie relevant. However, it's a movie that knows how relevant it is. It's self-important and not nearly as edgy as it probably thinks it is, like the guy who never shuts up at a meeting showing up one day in a leather jacket that he can't stop talking about. A lot of the time, a line would be delivered or a character would make a reference, and I could have sworn that everybody on screen turned toward the audience in the theater, breaking the fourth wall in order to wink ostentatiously and say, "You get what we're doing here, right? Does any of this seem familiar to you guys?"

It was nice to see Bob Odenkirk and David Cross together again, like a Mr. Show reunion. It wasn't nearly as funny though.

By far, my favorite part of this movie was watching the papers being printed. That was some cool machinery.

I reconsidered my original rating and bumped this up a point, really for no reason.

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

2009 romantic musical

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A jazz trumpeter and his ex-girlfriend try to move on with their lives after a break-up.

After loving both Whiplash and La La Land, I figured I'd check out this first feature from Damien Chazelle that he made while he was still in school. Don't expect anything close to the fully-formed musical extravaganza of the big colorful musical or the jazz-fueled, tension-packed drama of Whiplash here, but what you do see is the potential of Chazelle. And it's fascinating. It's a strange movie anyway, one that doesn't quite seem sure about what it wants to be. It's like a mash-up of John Cassavetes or some other intense independent black and white filmmaker and big movie musical. It's got artistic close-ups, and it's got freakin' tap-dancing. Throughout, you can tell that the director has a deep love for music and the instruments that make it, shooting a trumpet like it's a naked woman and a jazz band like he's a voyeur at an orgy of gods and goddesses.

Stand-out scenes foreshadow Chazelle's later work. The first is a lovely scene of speechless flirting on a subway. It's sensual, filmed like an action scene, and has no music or chatter at all. Impressively-edited close-ups and very subtle body language. There are a pair of big tap dance numbers, one in a restaurant for no reason other than as an excuse to have a big tap dance number. It's very nice, the camera work so simple but very creative. There's also an all-female number in another restaurant, but I was confused because they didn't appear to be wearing shoes capable of making a tapping sound. I was suspicious and really paid attention to the sound, and there were times when I couldn't tell whether the taps matched the taps. Were they dubbed taps? If so, what the hell, Chazelle? I enjoyed the songs, especially one performed by Madeline as she walks around a fountain. I don't know what the song was called, but it a gorgeous, always slightly-shifting melody hooked me.

Not a lot happens here in the story, and the characters are pretty flat. But the clash of traditional 40's movie musical extravaganza and the cheaply-made minimalism of 70's independent movie makes this a very interesting debut feature. Check it out if you enjoy Chazelle's other work at all.

Crime Wave

1985 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A little girl becomes fascinated by a "color crime movie" maker who moves into a room above her parents' garage. She befriends him and tries to help him work through writer's block.

John Paizs has only made one other feature film--something called Top of the Food Chain that came out 14 years after this one. This quirky, slightly-surreal dark absurdist comedy shows a director with a unique voice and potential that needed to be developed.

This is an unusual little, reminiscent of a less artistic David Lynch. Not that there isn't any style with Paizs' work. But when the style is recreating the tone of 50s/60s informational filmstrips with fervent narration provided by a little girl named Eva Kovacs. If I had to name this genre, I'd call it filmstrip noir as it's got some almost cartoonish homages to noir. Steven Penny, the "color crime movie" screenwriter who I don't believe utters a single line in this story, can only write beginnings and endings to his stories. There are loads of creative ideas in this as numerous examples of these--with recurring bad actors and parallel imagery--are shown. These are humorously clever movies-within-movies that add some unpredictability to the whole thing.

A recurring image of a streetlight coming to life is beautiful, but where it winds up is even more beautiful.

McDonald's and Kodak product placement, an optical illusion that really didn't work (at least for me) despite the harmonica accompaniment, and the bouncy repeated musical theme all contribute to the weird tone. Weirdest--and maybe most Lynchian--of all is a villain who pops in the final third of the movie. He's played by Neil Lawrie. He's wacky but great, but Lawrie's unfortunately only in two other movies. One of them is a Guy Maddin movie though.

Sophie's Place

1986 avant-garde animation

Rating: 14/20

Plot: I don't think there is one.

The name Lawrence Jordan intrigued me when I stumbled upon a cartoon called Circus Savage that clocked in at 643 minutes. I thought I'd tackle something a little shorter before taking on that "stream-of-conscious" epic. Sophia is a reference to an "embodiment of spiritual wisdom," but I'm not sure what this thing is about. 77 minutes of this narrative-free animation--hand-painted cut-up stuff that sometimes looks like the type of animation used in Monty Python and is frequently very beautiful--was a lot to take, and I ended up watching this in installments. I couldn't make much sense of it and felt better when reading that Jordan apparently doesn't know what any of the symbols mean either. He calls this an "alchemical autobiography," and that doesn't sound pretentious at all.

I can't tell you what's going on there.

Living in Oblivion

1995 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: An independent director tries to make the film of his dreams.

That's a clever plot synopsis, but you'd have to see this Tom DiCillo film in order to understand why. Or maybe just keep reading because I'll spoil it for you and tell you.

Here's the spoiler--this film is a triptych of behind-the-scenes independent film-making stories, and two of those are the dreams of Steve Buscemi's director character and his lead actress and muse played by Catherine Keener. I have a crush on both of those people anyway, and my brother (who isn't speaking to me) and I are big fans of the only other DiCillo film I've seen--Johnny Suede. I'm not sure why I didn't bother looking for DiCillo's other movies. This was the follow-up to Johnny Suede and is apparently inspired by the process of making that movie.

I usually enjoy movies about making movies. This is a consistently clever and entertaining look at the plethora of things that can go wrong during the process of making a film. From technology issues and the ineptitude of the crew to personal drama, cast dynamics, and angry dwarfs, this is never boring, and that's despite a lot of the dialogue or action in the individual thirds being exactly the same. It's continually surprising, keeping it fun. The sequences, directly from the subconscious, are as believable as nightmares, sometimes bordering on the absurd, but they give the audience a peek behind the curtain as these characters struggle to film a simple movie scene.

Catherine Keener is fantastic, especially in the nuances she adds to these lines that she's required to deliver over and over again. Part of it might just be to keep her from being completely bored, but it really opens up the character quite a bit, too. Not the character that her character is playing--the character whom Cahterine Keener is playing. Her nipples also make an appearance. Buscemi's nipples are unfortunately nowhere to be seen, but he's also just as good as you'd expect him to be, always right on that edge of a nervous breakdown. And nothing personifies a nervous breakdown or minor existential crisis like Buscemi's eyeballs. Peter Dinklage, wearing a sexy turquoise (or powder blue?) top hat, is also in the third segment of this. It's his first role, and it might have been this role that typecast him as an angry little person, never quite shaking off lines like "One of these days I'm gonna punch somebody in the balls!" Or maybe that's just the intensity of his forehead.

A sweet and jazzy vibes-and-oboe score by Jim Farmer gives this a coolness that could have been lost with name-checks of Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

I'm going to have to see more Tom DiCillo movies. Anybody seen any of these? Delirious? I think I might have seen that one actually. Box of Moonlight? The Real Blonde? Double Whammy? At least two of those look promising.

Bad Movie Club: The King of the Kickboxers

1990 action movie

Bad Movie Rating: 3/5 (Josh: 4/5; Johnny: 4/5)

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A freewheeling undercover cop, one who would surely never tell anybody that he's working undercover, gets a chance to avenge the death of his older brother when he's sent to Thailand on an assignment. He also gets laid and meets a new friend who owns a monkey.

I'm not shitting you when I tell you that the monkey was the best actor in the film. It's a film inhabited by a lot of bad actors. The lead is played by Loren Avedon. He can kick and punch and hang upside-down from trees and sport a mean mullet, but he can't act much at all. The writer of this thing didn't help him out a lot, giving him a lot of lines that make him into this unlikable idiot who you really don't want to root for. Even worse is the main villain--the "boss" if this was a video game--played by Billy Blanks. He spends most of his scenes grunting, and when he does get lines, he delivers them slowly, like very deliberate speech is the kind of thing that can make a person sound extra tough. I'm not sure he needed to say anything at all since we get to see him kill the protagonist's brother very early and a few minutes later get to watch him kill a guy with a crowbar to the neck. Blanks can trade kicks and punches, too, and the scenes with him beating people up aren't bad little action scenes. The final scene with Blanks and Avedon is something that you could even say is thrilling. It's impossibly fast-paced, filled with dangerous stunts and never really looking like it's choreographed. Who knows? Maybe they were really just going at it. And this is the second time we Bad Movie Clubbers have seen Keith Cooke, the guy who played the reclusive kickboxing master who reluctantly decides to train Avedon by fracturing his skull with gigantic swinging logs like he's protecting Endor from the Empire or something or by suspending him upside from tree branches or by making him bust up gourds with his knees. Cooke was also in Mortal Kombat: Annihiliation, and I assume he wasn't very good at acting in that either.

Though this wouldn't be bad to throw on if you're just looking for a dumb action movie, nobody will accuse it of originality. You've got cliched characters (a cocky protagonist who's got a lot to learn, a gruff police chief, a love interest, a Yoda/Miyagi hybrid looking for some redemption) and a tired revenge-heavy plot that you've seen before. I mean, I'm not sure if "You killed my brother!" is actually spoken in the movie or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was. It really feels like it's a remake of another movie from the action-packed 80s or like the director took an outline of another movie written out on a napkin at a strip joint and made his own movie from it.

Our observations:

--An efficient use of one K for two on the title screen
--Not much actual kickboxing, so if you're going into this because you love the sport, you should probably find something else.
--How the hell can a guy's facial bones or skull exist when getting Ewokked between two swinging logs like that?
--It's easy to root for the logs in this movie.
--The director's friend had a flamboyant collection of shirts that made me a little envious.
--The main character seems to think everybody else is named Jackson. Ok, we exaggerated that a bit.
--Every time a knife came out, we knew we were getting some ridiculous swishing sound effects.
--A guy gets a space heater to the face, and that other guy got the crowbar to the neck. Most of the other violence involved kicking.
--The hero rocks a fanny pack when he first gets to Thailand. It doesn't matter how well you kick. That might disqualify you as an action superstar.
--"I must wash for you." If you're planning on having sex with somebody against their will while in Thailand, don't fall for that one.
--You never do get to find out what the sound of one hand clapping is from this movie. You're going to have to meditate on that one on your own.
--The lovely sound of the pan flute (or a synthesized version of one) finds its way into the end credits. So if that's something that might potentially bother you, you might want to shut this off right after the gigantic explosion.

Raw

2016 coming-of-age horror film

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A girl starts vet school a vegetarian, but after she tastes some meet, she winds up having uncontrollable cannibalistic impulses.

This one's a little frustrating because it just doesn't all add up. It leaves far more questions than it answers. If you take it as the protagonists transition into college life, it almost makes sense as a strange and very dark look at how awkward that can be--dealing with sexuality, experimenting with drugs, making new friends and fitting in. But then there's all this stuff with the sister and her family's background, and I just couldn't put all the pieces together. A handful of references to bulimia made it seem like that was important, too. 

Lots of this might be hard to watch for some people. I mean, most movies about cannibalism probably have certain scenes that would be difficult to watch. This one's got bucketfuls of blood, a really disgusting scene involving hair that more closely resembled ribbons from a clown's pocket, a shot of a character with her arm halfway up a cow, animal autopsies, a Brazilian wax job that results in an unexpected injury, and an old guy showing off his dentures. It seems like director Julia Ducournau is more interested in shocking the viewer more than in having any sort of clear message or telling a story that makes sense.

Throw this one in the "almost interesting" files.

Blue Is the Warmest Color

2013 romantic drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A young girl becomes smitten by an older girl with blue hair.

Even though this is critically acclaimed, I put off watching this because it's so long. If I knew that half of the three-hour running time was going to be taken up with fiery lesbian sex scenes, I probably would have watched it a lot earlier. Maybe even twice.

This film's praised for its realism, and it definitely has that. Director Abdellatif Kechiche reportedly ended up with over 800 hours of footage after filming was completed. Some scenes had an absurd amount of takes, including the scene where the two central characters first met which took a hundred takes. Kechiche was apparently so unpleasant to work with that both lead actresses say they'll never work with him again. Half of me wonders if the amount of footage got so out of hand because the guy just couldn't stop filming Adele Exarchopoulos's rear end or wanted hours of scenes with Exarchopoulos and future Bond girl Lea Seydoux getting it on for his spank bank. But you can't question that he did get that realism he was looking for. Exarchopoulos is in every single scene, and more often than not, she's shown in close-ups. So is Seydoux for that matter. It makes the whole thing intensely personal, almost like you're part of the air and about to be breathed into these characters' nostrils at any moment instead of just a guy watching this without pants in his house. You could argue that some of the scenes in this go on for too long, but you'd also then be forced to argue that some moments in your life probably go on for too long as well.

Surprisingly, I was really able to connect with this French girl in this coming-of-age genre. It's probably because we get to know her and her relationship and her rear end so intimately. In the closing credits, this was called a part (or chapter?) 1 and 2, maybe leading you to believe there would be future episodes in Adele's romantic escapades. That doesn't seem very likely unfortunately.

Oh, and kudos to the kid who's going to town in his nose during one scene. 800 hours of footage, Kechiche, and you have to use the one where the kid is vigorously picking his nose?

There was also a Louise Brooks spotting in this.

Lots of blue in this wasn't surprising at all. There's also a lot of food, including close-ups of people eating spaghetti in three different scenes, that made me wonder whether there was food symbolism here.

Lemon

2017 comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: When a struggling actor's blind girlfriend decides to leave him, he tries to find a way to put his life back together.

This is more of an anti-comedy like what you'd expect from Quentin Dupieux, the sort of comedy that isn't written to make you laugh as much as it's written to make you really uncomfortable. This deals with sexuality, bodily functions, and race in ways that wouldn't be a problem at all if there was a point to it all, but I'm not totally sure there's a point to it all.

This was directed by Janicza Bravo and co-written by Bravo and the lead actor (and her husband) Brett Gelman. It might be sneakily self-referential as the latter half of the movie does deal with a relationship between a white guy and a black woman, and it really does seem to want to say something. I'm just not sure what that is. The narrative is jumpy, and although no director really has to explain the narrative structure of a movie, something that would be like explaining why a joke is funny, I really wanted somebody to explain why this story was told the way it was. I started wondering if a lot of these scenes could have been deleted from this already short movie without any loss, and then I decided that almost all of them could have.

It's not a complete waste of time. There are some humorous moments. Gelman's purposely flat performance is pretty good though his character is about as unlikable as a character can be. There's an awkward family musical moment when they sing exuberantly about matzo balls. The movie opens with the main character peeing himself and ends (well, near the end) with him nearly crapping his pants.

By the end, I was left looking for things that I liked about this movie in order for it not to be a complete waste of my time. And there was just one thing--Michael Cera's hair.

Michael Cera's hair is a force!

Kin-Dza-Dza

1986 Russian sci-fi comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Two Russian guys meet an alien trying to get coordinates to his planet, and after not believing him and pushing a button on the little device he's holding, find themselves on a desert planet. They enlist the help of a couple guys who may not be all that trustworthy.

"If a society doesn't have color differentiation of pants, it has no purpose!"

Highly-recommended Russian sci-fi absurdism, like a mash-up of Waiting for Godot and Mad Max. You never really know where this little adventure is going, mostly because it actually doesn't go anywhere. Filled with non-sequiturs, red herrings, and pointless gags and bits of absurdist dialogue, Kin-Dza-Dza also takes some jabs at capitalism and the West's tendencies to create hierarchies of human beings. It's exceptionally witty for being something that is so nonsensical.

Great performances with everybody taking this whole thing completely seriously, a fun exercise in linguistics until the producers of this thing got bored and went with telepathy instead, and creative visuals constructed from next-to-nothing or maybe some junkyard finds keep this thing effervescent and rewarding. I loved the spaceship, kind of resembling a giant metallic bucket, and there's a great shot of a city that consists of a few metal structures and a half-buried ferris wheel that I really liked.

There's even an actress credited as "A Fat Woman Settled Under the Ferris Wheel," something I'd hate to put on a resume.

Throw in some cute songs and dances and this quiet unpredictability, and you've got a Russian comedy from the tail-end of the Cold War that is funnier than you'd ever expect and never boring. It's great stuff!

Nicolas Cage Birthday Celebration: The Trust

2016 heist movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A corrupt cop and his mustache recruits a younger cop to help him break into a discovered vault.

"It's kind of wacky," says Cage's character at one point, wiggling his fingers while pointing at his own head. This movie is kind of wacky, an effort to blend the heist genre with some dark comedy and suspense. It winds up being not wacky enough, not comedic enough, and not suspenseful enough to completely work.

This is the directorial debut of the Brewer brothers, Alex and Benjamin, and it's an interesting one from a pair who might someday find a distinctive voice. This borrows a lot from a genre that has plenty to borrow from, throws a pinch of Coen in the pot, and struggles to maneuver through some twists and turns and lead to a satisfyingly coherent denouement.

Aside from the birthday boy, who I'll write about in a bit, this also has the always-likable Elijah Wood and Jerry Lewis. Well, at least Jerry Lewis for about a minute and thirty-seven seconds. I'm not sure why Jerry Lewis needed to play Nicolas Cage's dad because nothing to do with that character or their relationship has anything to do with the story or its themes. This movie opens with Wood in a sex scene where he looks bored out of his mind and is fixated on a mole. For the first third of the film, I was fooled into thinking he would be the wacky character. But no, Wood was more of a foil.

Cage was subdued for the most part although the character is quirky enough to let that Nic we all know and love shine through. Our introduction to him has him splashing too much aftershave or cologne on himself. From there, we see him doing both honest ("This is a very interesting ashtray.") and dishonest work. The character doesn't really grow all that much, more because of the script than the performance. There were times when it seemed like the lines were written for a cheesy motivational speaker instead of a cop turning into a criminal. In fact, I'd love to have recordings of these to play whenever I'm not feeling motivated:

"Stay positive, dude." (with a lowered voice...and I love when Cage uses words like "dude")
"That's the spirit! You are a badass!"
"You're a positive thinker, and I respect you. And I fucking dig you."
"Whoo! Give it the goods!"

Additionally, he eats a lemon with Tabasco for no good reason, countdowns spectacularly in a way I might have to steal ("On 3. 3, 2, 1, 3!"), starts scatting after being amused at a gun seller's name (Bobo), looks extremely cool carrying towels and even spilling a tray of hamburgers, does this silly punching dance thing to impress some co-workers, makes a joke and then tells Wood that "JK," and makes a drill pun that he laughs hysterically at. And there's one scene where he puts white stuff on his nose that left me baffled. I didn't know if it was lotion or glue because it was never addressed. So odd.

My favorite Nic Cage moment in The Trust? It's a tie between these two:

--While eating a sandwich, he wheezes twice, starts to complain about how the restaurant has changed the recipe, and then suddenly announces that he approves.
--He speaks German, I assume poorly.

The Brewers did some interesting things with music here. It starts and ends with some string-heavy faux-funk music, but there was also a random country song that accompanied some of Cage's character's shenanigans, a lovely folk song by a female vocalist I couldn't identify ("Cricket" by Collie Ryan), and some classical stuff. There was also a song featuring the vocal stylings of Rod Rogers (one of the pseudonyms of song-poem guy Rodd Keith) that put a smile on my face. If you don't know that guy's work, look him up. I'm not in the business of helping you be lazy.

Molly's Game

2017 biopic

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Based on the memoir by Molly Bloom about how she built up a lucrative business running a high-stakes poker game with celebrities and rich guys and then found herself in a little bit of trouble.

Molly's a fascinating character. She's heavily flawed, like most humans, but her integrity, her perseverance, and her fortitude are inspiring. This is a fascinating story, and with a writer like Sorkin--who's also directing his first feature film, it becomes an even more intense drama. You've got a heroine, and you've got some bad guys, but what makes this most interesting are all the characters in that grayish in-between. This is filled with anecdotes, characters who kind of come and go and color Molly Bloom's story.

By now, you know what to expect with Sorkin writing the words these characters say. The dialogue's as snappy as you'd predict it would be, more words-per-minute than any other writer I can think of. The screenplay is self-referential and almost always so smart. Lines bite and words sizzle, and when it's all put together and spat out by these characters, sometimes when they're even talking over each other, it's almost like a new form of poetry. Sorkin writes dialogue that has action, conversations like car chases.

The non-linear storytelling at times makes it seem like Sorkin's a bit too ambitious. He juggles three time periods, and it sometimes didn't make sense to me why certain moments in the movies past, more distant past, or present were arranged like they were. There are also a few moments that, while still entertaining in almost a gossipy way, felt a little redundant or superfluous. And there's one really clumsy moment where a character shows up in a random place and meets another character that was just implausible and a little dumb. Granted, that's actually how things might have happened, but it seemed really silly to me. At first, I thought this thing had ventured into magical realism or something. You'll know what I'm talking about if you see this movie.

Michael Cera is in this, ostensibly playing a composite character of famous actors who frequented Molly's game--Affleck, Dicaprio, Damon. After doing a bit of reading, it seems he's based most on Tobey Maguire. And while I like Michael Cera quite a bit, Tobey Maguire is apparently a real prick. I tweeted him to let him know that, but he hasn't been active on Twitter since 2013 and probably won't reply.

I'm not the biggest Jessica Chastain fan even though I think she's very attractive--usually the only thing this unquestionably superficial man looks for in an actress. I thought she was really good here. She has this ability to seem both completely confident and completely fragile at the same time. I could have maybe done with a little less of her narration, but I guess I just have to accept that when watching a filmed version of somebody's memoir. Isris Elba is good as her beleaguered attorney, and I thought Kevin Costner and Chris O'Dowd were great as Molly's father and a jittery drunk player respectively. Oh, and Bill Camp played one of the more fascinating side characters in one of the more depressing side plots, and he does it so well that I almost believed that part of the movie was a documentary.

I like poker, but this isn't a poker movie like The Cincinnati Kid or Rounders. It's more like a movie with some poker in it. It's probably exactly what most people would expect it to be, and if that sounds like your bag, this is something you'll probably enjoy.

Dave Made a Maze

2017 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: When his girlfriend's a way, a guy named Dave makes a cardboard maze in the living room and ends up getting lost in it. His friends have to go in to retrieve him, and it turns out to be a lot bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.

This Gondry-esque bit of whimsy is not without its problems, but it gets bonus points for being unique. Unique and also frequently mesmerizing. I mean, once they characters enter that maze, this thing really picks up. A keyboard room, a giant head vomiting tissue paper, living origami, decapitation with yarn blood, cute little puppets, insect things, a great optical illusion room, characters randomly turning black and white, a giant intimidating cardboard vagina. The inside of this maze burbles with creative spunk, and each of the myriad of rooms the viewer gets the pleasure of venturing into with these characters look like individual labors of love, so artistically put together with all these bits of cardboard. It's a sight to behold, friends!

I think the above shows my favorite room in the maze, but there really is so much to see. It's endlessly surprising and full of creativity. And that's important because of what that maze represents. I won't share that secret though.

Some of these characters were annoying. Acting was bad, the humor was inconsistent, and this silliness where a character is trying to film a documentary got really annoying. But Dave Made a Maze overcomes its imperfections and is consistently astonishing, whimsically challenging, and very nearly touching in its look at a relationship. It's a very interesting directorial debut from Bill Waterson.

Manborg

2011 sci-fi action comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: After a demon army takes over the world, a cyborg soldier leads a pack of resistance fighters.

The best part of this film might be at the very end--a trailer for a fake (I think) movie called Bio-Cop. That was funny.

I'm fairly impressed with what director Steven Kostanski and his team were able to do with such a limited budget, apparently a thousand dollars. There are a lot of visually interesting, even if they were also kind of ugly and/or gruesome, moments throughout this thing. This is one of those green-screen films, and it falls somewhere closer to the Amazing Bulk side of the spectrum rather than the Sin City or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow side, but there are some gory effects and an arguably cool vibe created here. There were some nifty stop-animated creations, too. I mean, look at this bitchin' thing!

It's always a little too noisy, but I did kind of like overall look of this.

Unfortunately, there are characters, a story, and dialogue. Kostanski, probably knowing that he wouldn't get away with making a serious action movie, has about a 50/50 ratio of comedy and action, and the comedy just doesn't work nearly as well. There's an intentional 80's vibe here, and things just get way too campy as a kung-fu character named #1 Man has a dubbed voice that doesn't match his lips, characters throw out silly one-liners, and Manborg gesticulates in ridiculous ways. There's also a character who looks like Billy Idol. All the characters actually got on my nerves a little bit.

I was excited to see a little person, and so was another person who says, "I've got to go pet that little guy." Unfortunately, I realized after the first shot that he was a fake little person. Played by an apparently relative of the director, he was just made to look like he was a little person with the magic of special effects. That's disappointing!

At one point, a character says, "You're bonkers, Manborg." And Manborg is, indeed, pretty bonkers. There's a bit of fun in chunks if you have a high tolerance for this sort of thing though.

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (aka The Deadly Weapon)

1958 adventure

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An inventor is kidnapped and whisked off to an island by a guy (the "last and most diabolical of the buccaneers") who wants to use him to create a weapon that will help him take over the world.

Faithful readers, I have a new favorite director--Karel Zeman. As you might recall (you don't), he was the Czech director who made The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, a movie that I just loved. Like that surrealist fantasy masterpiece, this one combines life action and a bunch of different forms of animation to create something that is definitely unique. It recalls the animation style of Monty Python with a whole lot of Georges Melies mixed in, and it's just wonderful. Steampunkish castle laboratories, roller-skating camels in a cute film-within-a-film, an inky octopus, a reconnaissance ship with flippers, great shots filled with underwater life, a terrifying shipwreck montage, the inner-workings of a submarine. There's just so much to see in this thing, so much creativity and whimsy. The opening screen boasted that this was in "Mysti-mation, a new cinematic technique." I don't know what that means, but I love it, and I love Karel Zeman, my new favorite director.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to with watching a bunch of Czech films this year--the posters. Look at these!

Seriously, I can't rave about this guy enough. See this and the Baron Munchausen one and thank me later.

The Hitman's Bodyguard

2017 action comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A disgraced bodyguard has to protect a key witness, an assassin he's had some trouble with in the past.

This finally falls apart in the last fifteen minutes or so after threatening to fall apart for the first hour and a half or so. I kept expecting it to fall to pieces way before that, but it was a pleasant action-comedy surprise, mostly because both the action and comedy works well.

One of the actors named Ryan (the one who cracks wise perpetually) and Samuel L. Jackson have great rapport. Reynolds brings his sarcastic charm and Jackson gets to say "motherfucker" a lot and be way cooler than anybody you'll ever meet in real life. Jackson's first "motherfucker" comes at the 13-minute mark. I was going to keep track of the number of "motherfuckers" in this movie, but I lost count at around six and gave up. Reynolds, at one point, complains that Jackson's character "singlehandedly ruined the word motherfucker" at one point. These two bounce off each other very well, and Jackson, who has been in a lot of movies lately, finally looks to be having fun with a character again. The battle between fastidiousness and impulsivity might sound like a cliche on paper, but it's lively and manages to be refreshing with the way these actors create these characters.

There are other famous faces here, too. Selma Hayek plays Jackson's wife. She gets some an action sequence or two of her own--one in a flashback where she takes care of business to Lionel Richie's "Hello," one of those ironic song choices that also might seem like a bit of a cliche in these types of movies. But when Jackson says, "When she severed this guy's carotid artery with a beer bottle, I knew," it all just makes sense. The always-intimidating Joaquim de Almeida is also in this. And there's Gary Oldman who really demonstrated some range in 2017 by playing Winston Churchill and this very mean Russian baddie. It's the kind of fun, slightly-hammy performance that makes Oldman so cool.

There are a lot of very famous people in this who are just there to die violent deaths. This is, after all, an action movie. And the action works just as well as the comedy. There are a couple of well-choreographed--if a bit dizzying--car chases, one with a boat, a motorcycle, some cars, and a Wilhelm Scream. Lots of stylish shoot-'em-up scenes including some cool split-screen action at the beginning to show Reynolds doing his thing.

This overcomes a dependence on cliches and doesn't have a single dull moment. It's ludicrous movie fun, but if you're in the mood for this sort of thing, you could definitely do a lot worse.

Brigsby Bear

2017 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy who was kidnapped as a baby and knows nothing of the outside world except for a cheaply-produced sci-fi television series about a heroic bear is rescued and reunited with his parents. He finds out that Brigsby Bear doesn't exist in that outside world. So it turns out he knows nothing of the outside world. He tries to adapt to his new surroundings, introduces some new friends to Brigsby and his adventures, and then decides to make his own film to finish the story.

A very impressive feature-length comedy debut from Dave McCary, a Saturday Night Live writer/director. There are probably comedic moments in this that shouldn't work at all, but they do, mostly because of the subtle performance of Kyle Mooney as the protagonist. His very serious plight, the type that doesn't exactly seem ripe for comedy, is used for comedy, mostly to create all these stranger-in-a-strange-land scenarios. Mooney somehow manages to seem like both the straight man and whatever-the-opposite-of-a-straight-man is, hilariously oblivious to things like dogs and sex. Deadpan delivery, some perfect reactions that thankfully never go over the top, and some quality comedic writing make this character work. And you really end up liking Mooney's character, James. Granted, it's not too hard to root for a poor guy who is in the situation this character is in, but he's just got this likability that makes you wish you could spend a lot more time with the character. And you're happy when things go well for him.

You know what else makes this movie work? It's that there's not a villain in the story. I know that probably doesn't sound like it makes a lot of sense since Mark Hamill and Jane Adams (the Mitchums, by the way, in what might be a nod to another movie) kidnapped a baby. But watch this thing. You'll understand what I'm talking about. And you'll see how the other characters treat each other, and, if you're like me, you'll think it's refreshing.

These people involved with comedy troupe The Lonely Island are continuing to surprise me. I got nothing from the music of theirs that I heard, but Hot Rod, their first film attempt, was shockingly not awful, and they really floored me with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. They didn't write and direct this one, but they did produce it and have proven to be a force to be reckoned with.

This has a good cast, too. Other than Mooney, you've got Mark Hamill who even gets to show off a little of his voice talents, Greg Kinnear, and Claire Dane bringing their famous faces. The rest of the ensemble cast is terrific at never overplaying the situations at the heart of this story.

I laughed at this more than I normally do at comedy films. A cameo from one of my favorite funny people--Tim Heidecker--in a film-within-the-film, a shirt, the Beatlers, and some genuinely hilarious lines ("There was one where he met a wizard under a waterfall and learned multiplication," says a perfectly deadpan Greg Kinnear) all helped keep a smile on my face throughout this thing. And I even teared up a bit at the end. It was because all of the characters were just so nice to each other. The world needs to be more like this movie, minus the kidnapping of babies.

The Little Mermaid

1976 fairy tale

Rating: 15/20

Plot: It's The Little Mermaid.

Though the budget's too small to even attempt to give these mer-people any tails, Czech director Karel Kachryna and his design team make up for it with some dazzling hair. Just look at that little mermaid's hair on the poster up there. Even a baby had that same kind of blueish hair that looks like what might be on top of Helena Bonham Carter's head when she wakes up. Along with very simple costumes--like, very simple--Kachryna successfully makes these mermaids and mermen completely alien with nothing more than twelve dollars and a trip to the forest floor with a trash bag.

A lot of the cheapo effects in this production worked really well, giving it this otherworldly vibe. I really like how it creates the sense of being underwater without involving any water at all. You can tell me that movie magic is created with computers, but to me, that's real movie magic right there. There's some cool shots of falling debris from shipwrecks, lots of gathered trinkets (swords, etc.) from said ships sticking out of the ground, and an interesting use of mirrors at one point.

I did get distracted wondering about the practicality of tridents. They also seem snobbish. Try walking around with a trident for a day and tell me that you're not uncomfortable because you're worried that people will think you think you're better than everybody else.

Film yourself and put it on Youtube. We'll call it the Trident Challenge.

Oh, lord. Beach chicken!

Ok, I've become distracted thinking about something that distracted me. Another effect that Kachryna utilizes here that I think is underrated is reverse motion. It's used here for some fire in the witch's pad and, upside-downly, when the little mermaid springs from the ocean.

I want to mention the music in this. At times, it reminded me of hungover carnival music. There was also a great band--probably called The Practicality of Tridents--that brought cheer with nothing more than some shells and swaying.

Parents, your kids can watch this version of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. It's actually probably more appropriate than the Disney cartoon. Set them up for an ending that is more like The Lure than the animated movie though.

The Greatest Showman

2017 musical biopic

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Phineas Taylor Barnum sings his way to the top of the entertainment industry with the help of some human curiosities and a gullible society. 

There are loads of moments that make this big movie musical worthy of seeing on the big screen. Some are little details--ludicrously-swinging sheets on a rooftop--while others are extravagant musical numbers featuring his collection of "freaks" and trapeze artists. There are unrestrained splashes of color, ingenious uses of light and camera movements, some really cool mid-song transitions from space to space or time to time, and some creative choreography. There's a grand opening, one that features stomping and dizzying camera swirls. My favorite number might have been a scene in a tavern where Barnum is trying to persuade that kid from High School Musical to work with him. Most viewers would likely keep their eyes on the two stars, but I was more intrigued with the movements of the bartender in that one.

There weren't many visual flaws with The Greatest Showman other than some weird CGI animals--looking at you, lions--and some other weirdness that I'll mention below.

A musical is probably only as strong as its songs, and unfortunately, I didn't like them very much. I liked the message behind a lot of the songs, but the songs themselves sounded a little too much like poppy Disneyfied tripe instead of anything that could have lasting appeal. They're performed well enough. I suppose. Of course, I watched La La Land and thought the singing in that was good and have been told about how wrong I was, so what do I know? After the first three or four songs, I feared that all of the songs would pretty much sound the same. As the credits rolled, I couldn't decide whether this had multiple songs in it or just one single song stretched into 105 minutes. And as I type this a few days later, I can't really remember any of the songs. That's probably not a good thing.

Part of the appeal for me was the same appeal for Americans visiting Barnum's museum in the middle of the 19th Century--to see me some freaks! There's a bearded lady, unfortunately not played by an actual bearded lady, and Keala Settle has a couple knock-out performance moments. There's a fake tall guy, a fake dog boy, and a bunch of others who all kind of blend together--a little like the songs--into one giant gelatinous character called the Freaks. They're not developed and never seem real, not much more important than those CGI lions. I know they're not the story here--after all, they didn't get their nickname in the title of the film--but it still seems like they should have felt a little more important to the story than they did.

Of course, one thing that drew me to the theater was that I knew there'd be a little person in this. And there is--4'2" Sam Humphrey, a little guy with a surprising voice. He's good as General Tom Thumb except for a couple things. First, they kept him out of the shot for many of the big song and dance numbers. Additionally, there were some times when I believe they CGI'd the little guy. Shots of Thumb on horses never looked real, and there were some other times I could have sworn they gave him CGI legs or something. It was a little odd.

There are also some storytelling concerns. This doesn't paint a picture of a P.T. Barnum with no flaws at all. Jackman's Barnum is very human. You root for him early on, get really disappointed in him as he makes some questionable decisions, and then like to see him happy at the end of the movie. The problem is that his Barnum doesn't feel very historically accurate. This movie sort of paints him with colors that are a bit too heroic, shallowly heroic. The movie as a whole starts to feel as shallow as its characterization by the second half when the conflicts really start rolling in. Once that happens, it sort of feels like highlights and lowlights of Barnum's life that all happen in a period of a couple weeks. It's too rapid, and it's too superficial, even for a Hollywood musical.

Jackman does a fine job. He's his typically likable self. He knows what to do with a top hat and a cane, and that seems to be about 60% of the character in this. The ubiquitous Michelle Williams plays his wife. She's fine, and so is Zac Efron. I imagine they do their own singing and dancing in this, unless they're given CGI-legs like I know they gave Sam Humphrey at times. Rebecca Ferguson, who plays the greatest singer in the world Jenny Lind, actually doesn't do her own singing in this. That just doesn't sit right with me.

The spectacle of this makes it worth seeing on the big screen, but the movie's irritants really keep it from being any sort of contemporary classic musical.

2017 Year in Review: Last Part

Best Use of a Metronome in a Movie

I don’t think I saw a single metronome in a movie in 2017, another reason why this year might have been the worst one ever.

Best Western

Bone Tomahawk

Best Animated Movie

I liked Kubo and the Two Strings, Moana, My Life as a Zucchini, Perfect Blue, and Hugo the Hippo. I even almost liked Boss Baby. My favorite animated movie of the year was Coco though.

Movie That I Watched But Apparently Forgot to Write About

Cars 3. And no, I didn’t accidentally leave it off the list above.

Best Documentary

Finding Vivian Maier
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
Life, Animated
Gimme Danger
One More Time with Feeling
Gleason
Amanda Knox
Into the Inferno
Magnus
David Lynch: The Art Life
The Cardboard Bernini
Jim and Andy

I liked all of those, but the best documentary I saw this year was probably I Am Not Your Negro.

Unintentional Poster Synchronicity? 

Best Musical

I loved La La Land and The Lure (the only Polish mermaid horror musical I’ve ever seen), but De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise wins this one!

Best Silent Movie

I’m not sure how many silent movies I watched this year as some of my enormously popular Silent Saturdays were used to watch shorts collections instead of full-length feature films. Here are the best I saw this year though:

Downhill, He Who Gets Slapped, Dante’s Inferno, The Oyster Princess, Master of the House, A Dog’s Life, 3 Bad Men, The Phantom of the Opera, The Black Pirate, The Lost World, The Penalty, Peter Pan, When the Clouds Roll By, The Doll, Menilmontant, and Flesh and the Devil are all silent movies that I would recommend.

The Top Ten:

Diary of a Lost Girl
The Parson’s Widow
From Morn to Midnight
Michael
The Big Parade
The Wind
A Man There Was
Wings
The Seashell and the Clergyman

The best silent movie I saw this year was Fritz Lang’s Destiny.

Best Silent Movie That I’m Not Sure Counts

The mesmerizing and hypnotic and insanely beautiful Decasia

Best One-and-Done Performance

This is for the performance or director who I really liked in something I saw this year who did nothing else at all.

We start in 1911 with Pier Delle Vigne who played Count Ugolino in Dante’s Inferno and decided that flailing limbs was the way to go.

It’s impossible to believe that Kindergarten Ninja was Dwight Clark’s only role.

And the work of Hernesto Mc. Kimnoro as a cemetery custodian named Harvey in Ghosthouse was really remarkable.

And how about Adele Lamont for her work in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die?

Andrew Jordan’s Things was his lone directorial credit, probably for reasons that can be understood if you watch that movie.

It’s the same with Bill Feigenbaum, the guy responsible for Hugo the Hippo, although that movie’s pretty good!

The winner has to be John Parker though. He directed Dementia, a really cool little movie, and then nothing else at all.

Obviously, it's just an excuse to get another Angelo Rossitto picture in this. 

Best Voice Performance

As much as I loved Jermaine Clement’s menacingly glam clam in Moana and Paul Lynde’s villain in Hugo the Hippo, this has to go to Taika Waititi as the rock man in Thor: Ragnarok. So imperfectly perfect!

The “Tootie” (Most Annoying Performance by a Child Actor) 

There’s Victor DiMattia in Cool As Ice who, as Tommy, gets to say wonderfully written lines like “As soon as you’re dong making sex?” And there’s “Sonny” from Fun in Balloon Land who gives an all-time lousy child performance. I’m sure he’s still undergoing psychological trouble because of what he had to endure during the shooting of this movie and needs something positive in his life, so I’m giving him The Tootie.

Tell me I'm wrong about the psychological issues!

And speaking of psychological issues...

The Best Nicolas Cage Moment

He gets to engage in a little real-life Fruit Ninja action (“Hey!”), has a whiny freakout when engaged in conversation with “God,” answers a “reason for your visit” question at an airport with a hearty “Taking care of business!” and a snorty laugh, rides a camel, rides a donkey, puffs on a joint, sports a fez, laughs at Osama bin Laden, dances, gets to wear a ponytail, and uses “I fantasized about you and went through boxes of Kleenex” as a pick-up line in Army of One. He also gets some great lines in that movie:

“You got to talk to the meat!”
“Does the Bearded One go to Denny’s?”
“If these aren’t the best chicken wings you’ve ever tasted, then I’m not the Donkey King!”
“They don’t call me the psychic wizard for nothing!”
“This ain’t my first rodeo, hombre!”

My favorite moment from that movie might be when he gets high and tells a kid on a coin-operated horse to “Ride it, cowboy” before kicking a pinball machine and walking around laughing at things for five minutes. Because apparently that’s what taking drugs is like.

In Pay the Ghost, we get to watch him run, sometimes dressed as a cowboy.

And in Dog Eat Dog, he gets to become unglued with Willem Dafoe, saying things like “I’ll get us a real good gig. Take your tits off!” with a weird nipple-extracting hand gesture and engaging in a shirtless mustard and ketchup fight with his co-star. And he has a very nice mini-Cage freak-out after almost getting hit by a car.

The Wiseau

Faithful readers know this is the award given to the man or woman who didn’t think just writing a bad movie or directing a bad movie or acting poorly in a bad movie was enough and unwisely took on all three jobs. The nominees:

Previous winner James Nguyen for Julie and Jack, though his “acting” is only a Hitchcockian cameo

David Prior in Deadliest Prey, though he also only provides a cameo

And Adam Minarovich who is responsible for Ankle Biters, a movie I didn’t really like that much

I just did a search, and I can’t find where James Nguyen ever won this award. That’s a travesty, and the only way to fix it is to give it to him this year. Congratulations, James Nguyen! I hope you Googled yourself and saw this.

The Torgo (Best Bad Performance by a Male)

I want to start by recognizing the work of the one guy who seemingly does all of the balloon creature voices in Fun in Balloon Land. I’m unable to find his name or verify that he did indeed to all the voice work for that.

Cranston Komuro and others rock in Samurai Cop 2, but they’re all overshadowed by the force that is Tommy Wiseau. Joe Estevez also really overdoes it as a police chief in that one.

Randal Malone playing the evil Kantlove in The Amazing Bulk. Or maybe Terence Lording who plays the dad in the same movie.

Bruce Kimball plays two roles, both not very well, in The Mighty Gorga.

You have to love the work of Mimmo Crao (and that hair) as the yeti in Giant of the 20th Century. Those facial expressions! 

Troy Patterson is so great as Drunk Captain Tony in Bloodlust! But he’s overshadowed by Bill Coontz playing a crazy wailing guy in the same movie, even more impressive as he stands out with no actual lines.

Anthony La Penna, the assistant in The Brain That Wouldn't Die, gives an amazing performance.

Alex Nicol is terrifically bad as a gardener in The Screaming Skull.

Jason Kulas brings the perfect amount of ineptitude to the perfectly inept After Last Season.

Keefe L. Turner. My God, what a performance that is in Tales from the Quadead Zone! Those laughs! That monologue!

Vanilla Ice holds his own (penis) in Cool As Ice, proving that he had no business being in a movie.

Deadliest Prey gets a great bad performance by David Campbell.

Both John Slavik and Bruce Glover are fun to watch in Die Hard Dracula.

Things benefits (or suffers) from three embarrassing performances--Barry J. Gillis, Bruce Roach, and especially Jan W. Pachul.

Julie and Jack has Lee Borne, as Bill the rival salesman, and Will Springhorn, as the protagonist’s sex-obsessed BFF.

Thomas Doherty completely annoys as Captain Hook’s offspring in Descendants 2.

And Juan Chapa as Hector Machete and the great George Chung (previous winner, I believe) both are wonderful in Kindergarten Ninja.

This is always a tough one to pick for me. But when Tommy Wiseau’s in the running, I’m not sure how you can go with anybody else. This is turning out to be a huge year for Tommy, and he can add his second Torgo award to his 2017 accomplishments.

The Livingstone (The Best Bad Performance by a Female)

Well, Fun in Balloon Land has a Livingstone nominee, too, with an anonymous narrator who pointless describes a parade.

Megan Timothy, just so good in The Mighty Gorga.

There’s the aforementioned (in the one-and-done category) Adele Lamont from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.

Peggy McClellan is wonderfully bad in After Last Season.

Previous winner Shirley L. Jones only made two movies, and it’s hard to argue with both of those performances being Livingstone worthy.

Dody Goodman plays a pretty mean Mae in Cool As Ice.

Suki-Rose Simaki is great in Deadliest Prey. True that.

And then Hilary Swank pops in near the end of Logan Lucky and gives one of the worst performances from a big-name actress that I’ve seen in a long time.

But come on, people. You really think anybody but Shirley L. Jones is winning this? Her work in Tales from the Quadead Zone is just spectacularly awful. This award should actually be named after her.

Best Actor

It’s hard to get excited about this award after going through the Torgo and Livingstone awards. It’s like the Oscars showing best make-up after the best picture award or something. Nobody really cares. Here are the male performances I really thought were great this year anyway.

Bob Balaban, Altered States
Rod Steiger, The Illustrated Man
Lon Chaney, He Who Gets Slapped
Bernhard Goetzke, “Death” in Destiny
Michael St. Michaels, The Greasy Strangler
Alex Hibbert, the kid in Moonlight
James McAvoy, Split (though I didn’t like that movie as much as some)
John C. Reilly, Dr. Steve Brule in Kong: Skull Island
Yeong-su Oh in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring
Ben Mendelsohn, Mississippi Grind
Daniel Fripan, the “kid” in Der Bunker
Robert Gustafsson, under tons of make-up in The 100 Year Old Man. . .
Tom Hardy in Legend. Or maybe Tom Hardy in Legend.
Barry Keoghan, The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Fabrice Luchini, Slack Bay
Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri

The winner of the best actor award? Michael St. Michaels, of course!

Best Actress

No Scarlet Johansson this year, so the field is wide open!

Mira Sorvino, Mighty Aphrodite
Meryl Streep, hilarious in Florence Foster Jenkins
Magda Vasaryova, Marketa Lazarova
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk about Kevin
Mathilde Nielsen, Mads in Master of the House
Susan Hampshire, 5 different roles in Malpertuis
Ossi Oswalda, a doll in The Doll
Natalie Portman, I guess, in Jackie
Emma Stone, La La Land
Louise Brooks, Diary of a Lost Girl
Hildur Carlberg, The Parson’s Wife
Pamela Flores, Endless Poetry
Kerry Dustin, dual roles in Die Hard Dracula
Isabelle Adjani, Possession
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri
Juliete Binoche, Slack Bay
Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water

Wow! This is a really tough one! Before I started typing these, I figured it was Sally Hawkins’ award for sure because I loved her so much in that. But Pamela Flores is so good, too! I’m going to have to go with Isabelle Adjani’s work in Possession for this one though. And it’s not just because she gets a sex scene with an octopus.

Most Unpleasant Movie I Saw This Year

Why did I subject myself to the following: Suicide Squad, Yeti: A Love Story, Nine Lives, Last Ounce of Courage, Antibirth, Collateral Beauty, Murder of a Cat, Godzilla: Final Wars, Okja, The Wave, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Happy Death Day, The Belko Experiment, Daddy’s Home, either Descendants movie, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, The Number 23, or The House? I hated all of those!

One stands head and shoulders and frizzy hair above all of the rest, however, and that is Trolls. I’m pretty sure I’d rather be stabbed in the eyes than have to sit through that one again. The Little Panda Fighter might be a close second. In fact, since that’s such a blatant rip-off of another movie, that one should probably win. No glitter out the anus in that one though.

The Manos

Of course, I really do enjoy watching a good bad movie as much as I enjoy watch a great movie. Bad Movie Club is on its last legs, but I still watched a lot of contenders for this, one of the most prestigious shane-movies awards.

Fun in Balloon Land
The Amazing Bulk
The Mighty Gorga
Giant of the 20th Century
The Killer Shrews
Bloodlust! 
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
After Last Season
Tales from the Quadead Zone
Kindergarten Ninja
Cool As Ice
Things
Ghosthouse
Julie and Jack
I Believe in Santa Claus
Superargo and the Faceless Giants

There can only be one winner of the Manos though, so I’m going to pick three. There’s just no way to choose between The Amazing Bulk, After Last Season, and Tales from the Quadead Zone. They’re three movies that broke the rules for what a movie has to be, so it seems appropriate to just break this Manos award into three and give them each a piece.

You can complain in the comments below if you’d like.

Best Movies of the Year

These aren’t in any real order, but here are the movies I saw in 2017 that I liked best. These saved me from the insanity of this truly dreadful year. Note: I am not mentioning those silent movies again though some would have definitely been on this list.

Kontroll
The Greasy Strangler
The Handmaiden
Sing Street
In the Loop
Paterson
Dementia, Daughter of Horror
Endless Poetry
The Hourglass Sanatorium
Decasia
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. . .and Spring
The Tenant
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Before Sunrise
Phantom of the Paradise
Dunkirk
mother!
Possession
The Fantastic Baron Munchausen
John Wick: Chapter 2
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Lady Bird
Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri
The Shape of Water
Coco
Embrace of the Serpent

And the best movie I saw in 2017? It’s also the longest--Satantango. This is the third time in ten years of doing this blog that a Bela Tarr movie has been my favorite.

My Goal for 2018

More movies from Czechoslovakia