2018 Year in Review: Part Five (The Final Part!)

The Zap Rowsdower Achievement in Bad Action Heroism Award

Charles B. Pierce is an easy winner here. It seems he made Boggy Creek II only to show off his talents as a potential action hero. And failed in spectacular ways.

Worst Ensemble Cast

Those three guys in 15:17 to Paris. What were you thinking, Clint?

The Tootie (Worst Performance by a Child Actor)

There are always plenty of these to choose from. This year, we saw Ray Dennis Steckler’s offspring Linda and Laura, equally bad in Blood Shack. They also are in The Thrill Killers but might be a little bit better.

There’s also Chris Kroesen, the little punk in Magic Christmas Tree who couldn’t open his eyes and hollered all his lines.

The winner is easily Connor Dean, however, as Butch the Bully in Cool Cat Saves the Kids. It’s almost a performance so legendarily bad that I want to name the award after him, but I really hate Tootie.

Best Villain

Neil Lawrie as Dr. C. Jolly in Crime Wave was awfully cool, but Rotimi Paul, as the terrifying Skeletor in The First Purge, wins this award.

Best Extra

There’s a kid going to town in his nose in the background of a shot in Blue Is the Warmest Color.
Another kid with an umbrella lunches at Alan Arkin in The In-Laws for no reason.
Yet another kid eating ice cream and wearing a terrible vest while sitting next to a jukebox was easy to notice in Alice in the Cities.
I also liked this street performer with an accordion and a gigantic bell hat in Wrong Move. There was a crazy guy screaming about how the characters are pigs and planes racing through heads in the same movie.

The winner is that little nose-picking fellow though. But only because I want to type “You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, and you should be able to pick a take that doesn’t have a kid in the background picking his nose.”

Best Cameos of the Year

Tim Heidecker in Brigsby Bear, a film-within-a-film that isn’t the main film-within-a-film called "Hockey High"
Brad Pitt in Deadpool 2
Paul Bartel in White Dog
William S. Burroughs in Drugstore Cowboy

Burroughs ordinarily would have this in the bag, but Alan Arkin, in his own Little Murders, was just too good to ignore!

Best Auxiliary Character of the Year

This guy:

Best Posters of the Year

Worst Poster

Best Film-within-a-Film

Tough category this year!

There are numerous little snippets in Crime Wave, some cute little things (including roller-skating camels) in The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, a play-within-a-movie in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, another play-within-a-movie in The Baby of Macon, the garden thing from Borgman, Jack’s narrated slide show of his “ballbusters” in Carnal Knowledge, and of course, The Other Side of the Wind.

The winner is Brigsby Bear, however, because as I mentioned before, the premiere of the movie-within-that-movie and those touching bad special effects made me cry.

Best Opening Shot

The Bothersome Man, with its grotesque smooching
SpaceDisco One, Packard’s cheapo sci-fi roller skating rink action
A Perfect Day, a shot of a bloated body at the bottom of a well
Mo’ Better Blues, the fetishizing of a trumpet
First Reformed, a very slow pan to a church
Hereditary, a long slow pan from a tree house to miniatures to a room in a dollhouse that becomes a real room
The Baby of Macon, a swinging old guy with a speech impediment and a huge hat

My favorite: Roma, an invitation into a dream

Best Closing Shot

Nostalghia, a zooming out with a reclining guy, a dog, and all this impossible snow
Call Me by Your Name, a shot from the perspective of a fireplace
The Bothersome Man, from within the luggage compartment of a bus after a character has been dropped off in the snow
Buzzard, an enigmatic final shot with some televisions
You Were Never Really Here or Private Life, shots that have similar settings
First Reformed, a swirling and a cut to black
The Three Colors trilogy, all three which show a character crying and smiling at the same time
Goodbye Uncle Tom, an angry black guy popping a beach ball
We the Animals, flight and a shadow
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, a boat
Roma, a nice bookend with the opening shot
45 Years, a woman

The winner is The Florida Project, an almost magically realistic one of a familiar location

Best Extended Shot

Maybe my favorite category.

Nostalghia, a who-knows-how-many-minutes shot of a dude carrying a candle across a spa
The Sacrifice, more Tarkovsky with an opening tracking shot that is so sneaky and meticulous
The Shop on Main Street, a guy hiding from a camera that keeps on finding him
The Baby of Macon, several but an auction scene and a rape sequence are highlights
Henry V, a post-battle sequence
Assassination Nation, a terrible movie with one great long tracking shot with fiends stalking girls in a house
Roma, that climactic beach scene

And I can’t really believe that the shot in Roma didn’t win this, but unfortunately for Alfonso Cuaron, I saw a few Tarkovsky movies this year. And the best extended shot is a scene with a house on fire in The Sacrifice. It might actually be the best thing I’ve ever seen.

My Favorite Shots of the Year

Crime Wave, a recurring image of a street light glowing to life
The Bothersome Man, the main character just standing up
Florida Project, many but that miraculous rainbow or that shot of Dafoe and his magical cigarette
A Night to Remember, a menacing rocking horse on the Titanic
Force Majeure, a character disappearing into a chilly mist
The Lock In, surveillance video footage of Justin the camera man screaming at a demon and running
The Sacrifice, a curtain blowing and light pouring into and out of a room occupied by a sleeping little man
Hereditary, many here, too, but that spider-mom in a background that got people going in the theater was fun
Double Life of Veronique, an upside-down landscape from a train
The Assassin, fog or cloud billowing up and engulfing characters on a hill
Red Desert, more fog absorbing characters
It Happened One Night, a fade to black except for a Claudette Colbert tear
For All Mankind, loads provided by our astronaut heroes
Idaho Transfer, an inexplicable rainbow
Carnal Knowledge, ice skater transition
Roma, with so many that it’s impossible to pick just one

Best Use of Narration

Coleman Francis in The Thrill Killers! Oh, it was such a pleasure hearing this Yucca Flats writer/director/narrator again. He’s a legend.

Most Narrators

Congratulations, Mudbound! You won something!

Best Use of Stock Footage

It has to be the 10 minutes of random rodeo footage that had to be added to Blood Shack in order for it to be long enough to be a feature film.

Most Cameramen Spotted

Garbanzo Gas, multiple times, mostly in hotel room mirrors

Best Continuity Error

Before the Rain 

Best Opening Credits

Game Night with a cascade of game pieces and production company logos
Cool Cat Saves the Kids with the titular character dancing and dancing and dancing
The Hawks and the Sparrows with credits that a woman sings for us
Young Adults, showing the inner workings of a cassette player and one of those colorful Maxell cassettes I used to use for my mixtapes when I was in middle school
Faces Places, with a cutesy animated opening
Deadpool 2, a meta Bondsy riff
American Animals
Who Is Harry Kellerman. . ., with a falling and dancing Dustin Hoffman

Best End Credits

Game Night again, this time with a detailed look at somebody’s intricate plans
Annihilation, like being inside a busted kaleidoscope

Favorite Title Card of the Year

“Any similarity between Hellzapoppin’ and a motion picture is purely coincidental.”

Most Surprising Shot of a Grown Man’s Ass

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? 

Best Breaking of the Fourth Wall

Deadpool is known for it, and Hellzapoppin’ did it 80-some years earlier. But this award goes to Cool Cat because when he broke the 4th wall, he also broke my fucking mind.

Best Movie with a Terrible Title

Let the Corpses Tan

Actually, typing that changed my mind. That title rules!

Best Tagline

“The United States Supreme Court has ruled that ‘Carnal Knowledge’ is not obscene. See it now.”

Random Favorite Moments That I’m Not Sure Fit Anywhere Else

Officer Ruda with an egg in D’Curse
The floating in The Fits
The part in Hurricane Heist where a character yells “Damn you!” at a tornado
The father crying in Force Majeure, apparently a scene based on a Youtube clip
The bell scene (and many, many others) in Andrei Rublev
The coronation scene in King of Hearts, likely because it involves a camel
The bit in The Brand New Testament when people find out when they’re going to die
The Miracle Worker fight where Anne tries to get Helen Keller to fold a napkin and eat her food with a fork
The big mushroom people payoff in Attack of the Mushroom People
The seance scene in Hereditary 
The final heist attempt in American Animals
Loads in the Mr. Rogers documentary. . .the kid in the wheelchair, the story from the black gay guy and the pool, the part where he persuades a cynical senator
The climactic musical death and life-flashing sequence in All That Jazz
A Benicio del Toro wet willie in Sicario
Musical composition in Blue, all out of focus with instruments added one at a time
The photo booth scene in Alice in the Cities where they both frown, one smiles, the other smiles, and then they both smile together
A train shot where Volger’s character is watching a woman on another train in Wrong Move
Carrey showing off the mask’s powers to Ben Stein in The Mask, the lone funny moment in that movie
The stop-animated sequence in Sorry to Bother You
The “congratulations” scene in My Left Foot
And two words for you to describe the best scene in Heat and possibly any movie: GREAT ASS!

Best Voice Acting

Maybe I’m giving Ice-T (the voice of the Cool Mule in Tommy and the Cool Mule) a boost because I was entertained by his Twitter conversations about never having a bagel, but he’s getting the edge here over whoever voiced the dog in Love on a Leash.

Best Television

“Finding Frances,” apparently the last episode of Nathan for You

Best Horror Movie

Hereditary

Best Musical

The Young Girls of Rochefort. Sorry, The Greatest Showman fans.

Best Animation

Isle of Dogs. Mind Game, Incredibles 2, and The Secret of Kells were also good ones. Wes Anderson wins!

Best Documentary

2018 was a good year for documentaries with films like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Tower, Free Solo, and Minding the Gap. My favorite was an oldie though, one I watched to try to fill in some gaps for one of the movie years I did--For All Mankind, with the Eno score and those fantastic shots. I loved that, and it might have ruined that First Man movie a little.

Best Silent Movie

After watching at least one silent movie a week last year, I dropped back into bad habits and didn’t see a lot this year. L’Inhumaine, which I’d been wanting to see for a while, was the best of them.

Worst Movie

Note: These are movies are not Manos-eligible movies, bad movies that I enjoyed watching. You know, the good-bad ones. These are the bad-bad ones.

With MoviePass, which unfortunately is not something that works for me anymore, I saw a lot of terrible movies in theaters. I hated Winchester, Fifty Shades Freed (ok, I kind of loved it, as well as Fifty Shades Darker), Death Wish, A Wrinkle in Time, The Hurricane Heist (which I also kind of enjoyed), Unsane, Action Point, Ready Player One, The Happytime Murders, and Assassination Nation. I also hated some old ones I watched--Queen of the Desert (sorry, Werner), Bad Moms (seriously--I watched this?), Maleficent. And then there was the bizarrely bad Bird Box, the recent Netflix release.

But this isn’t about the worst movies--it’s about the one worst movie. And that was Clint Eastwood’s embarrassing 15:17 to Paris.

Moments That Gave Me a bOner with a Capital-O (Favorite Nicolas Cage Moments of the Year)

Speaking German in The Trust when trying to buy a drill bit. I can only imagine that it’s perfect German
Actually saying a text abbreviation (“JK”)
Wheezing twice and complaining about how a sandwich recipe has been changed before immediately changing his mind and saying that he approves
“On three-3, 2, 1, 3!”
Reenacting a train crash at a breakfast table and ending with a giggle
A wonderfully-timed “Oh, oops!”
Saying “Can’t hear you” and putting his thumbs (not his fingers) in his ears
Ominous tickling
Watching pornography and sleeping on the job
A discussion of anal beads with the boyfriend of his daughter
That aforementioned “I was gonna grab the world by the balls” soliloquy
A “You, motherfuckers!” delivered as only Cage can deliver it as he tries to get to his kids in the basement
Counting to six but somehow missing four
Actually saying “You killed me!” to another character and meaning it literally
The sawzall pun
The assembling and then unassembling of a pool table, all with a dancing Nic Cage and a singing of “The Hokey Pokey”

And no, I haven’t seen Mandy yet.

Best One-and-Done Performance

Vik Rubenfeld, director of Alien Private Eye
Jason Wayne, Daniel in Blood Shack
Keith O’Brien, the best-worst of the maniacs (the one with the ax) in The Thrill Killers
Christopher Thies, the writer/director of Winterbeast
Tim R. Morgan, Sergeant Bill Whitman in Winterbeast. Bob Harlow and Mike Magri were also one-timers.
Ralph Lombardi, Raw Force

The winner is Klaus-Michael Gruber, Hans in The Lovers on the Bridge. As I wrote in my post, “If you’re going to only appear in one movie, I guess you’d want to make it a performance like this one.” He has one moment that is about as touching as anything I saw in a movie this year.

The Wiseau 

Best-worst work from a guy who wrote, directed, and acted in a movie. It’s named after Tommy Wiseau. Our nominees:

Ray Dennis Steckler (Cash Flagg) in The Thrill Killers, but at least he does his own stunts
Charles B. Pierce, Boggy Creek II
Alex Maisonette, D’Curse
Damian Lee, Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe
James Nguyen, Replica (though I can’t count this in good conscience because he only does cameos like Hitchcock)

Not a tough choice here because I watched Cool Cat Saves the Kids this year. Derek Savage wrote that, directed that, and acted in it as Daddy Derek. Congratulations on your Wiseau award, Mr. Savage!

The Torgo (Best-Worst Performance by an Actor)

Billy Blanks, the bad guy in King of the Kickboxers who either grunted or said all his lines really slowly
John Alexander, Scamma in Alien Private Eye (with an Igor voice that made me laugh every time I heard it)
Jason Wayne, Daniel in Blood Shack, scream-drawling his lines and perpetually carrying a shovel
Barney Barnett, a drunkard at a party who can’t even clap and watch dancers right in The Thrill Killers
Vietnam Ron, the cow in Garbanzo Gas
Charles “Foxy” Fox, Willie in The Corpse Grinders
Tommy Wiseau, Best F(r)iends
Trever Shirin, “Justin” in The Lock In
Ralph Lombardi, a Hitler-stached villain in Raw Force
Rick Camp or David Nguyen, the scientist and detective respectively in Replica

And in what might be a surprising upset, this one belongs to Trever Shirin. Way to go, "Justin"!

The Livingstone (just like the Torgo but for the ladies)

Ann Noble, the gravedigger’s wife (with her doll) in Corpse Grinders
Estelle Piper, Toasters in Chickens in the Shadows
Jana Camp, from Love on a Leash
Lana Dykstra, Replica
Sharon Kent, Indecent Desires

And this award belongs to Jana Camp!

Best Actor

Kyle Mooney, perfectly deadpan in Brigsby Bear
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Menace or My Left Foot
Timothee Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name
Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther or Fruitvale Station
Homayoun Ershadi, Taste of Cherry
Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here
Brady Jandreau, The Rider
Denis Lavant, The Lovers on the Bridge
Burl Ives, White Dog
Ron Silver, Reversal of Fortune
Jermey Irons, Reversal of Fortune
Jean-Louis Trintignant, Red
Michael Sugich, The Night God Screamed
Ben Dickey, Blaze
Charlie Sexton, Blaze
George C. Scott, The Hospital
Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
John Huston, The Other Side of the Wind
Kenneth Branagh, Henry V
John David Washington, BlacKkKlansman

Winner: Brady Jandreau! I guess. I mean, that performance in My Left Foot is one of the best ever. And I love Denis Lavant. I really have kind of given up with this whole thing at this point.

Best Actress

Brenda Fricker, My Left Foot
Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue Is the Warmest Color
Sally Hawkins, Paddington 2
Margot Robbie, I Tonya
Brooklyn Pierce, Florida Project
Rachel McAdams, Game Night
Cherize Theron, Young Adult or Tully
Jessie Buckley, Beast
Meredyth Herold, Singapore Sling
Shirley MacLaine, Postcards from the Edge
Juliette Binoche, Lovers on the Bridge or Blue
Toni Collette, Hereditary
Irene Jacobs, The Double Life of Veronique and Red
Ida Kaminska, The Shop on Main Street
Linda Fiorentino, The Last Seduction
Patricia Gozzi, Sundays and Cybele
Vanessa Redgrave, The Devils
Barbara Harris, Who Is Harry Kellerman. . .?
Carey Mulligan, Wildlife
Helena Howard, Madeline’s Madeline
Oliver Coleman, The Favourite
Yalitza Aparicio, Roma
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

I drew a name out of a hat and the winner is Vanessa Redgrave!

The Manos (Best-Worst Movie of the Year)

Bad Movie Club fizzled, and I didn’t watch too many bad movies on my own. There aren’t as many nominees for this prestigious award as usual. The best of the best-worst were the following:

Alien Private Eye
Blood Shack
D’Curse
The Corpse Grinders
Pieces
Replica
Raw Force
The Magic Christmas Tree


A top four would look like Cool Cat Saves the Kids, Winterbeast, The Lock In, and the winner. And the winner? The Manos this year goes to Love on a Leash. Woof!

My Favorite Movies I Saw This Year

I don't feel like doing this one. As a regular reader of my blog, you know which movies I really like.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Stay tuned to see if I keep this crap up at all. I know that it'll exist in some form, but there's no way I can do another year of reviews as long as I've done the last couple of years. I've been on Letterboxd the past year and enjoy that a little more than this, and people there seem to appreciate brevity. Maybe I'll write all my reviews in haiku form.

Have a happy and movie-filled 2019!