Brigsby Bear!
“What’s that?”
“It’s Brigsby.”
If you saw this movie when I told you to, you’d be laughing right now.
Somebody buy me one of those!
Best Pants
Matt Dillon’s in Drugstore Cowboy
Best Shoes
The bad guy with those skull boots in The Equalizer might have won this in another year, but did you see Tommy Wiseau’s shoes in Best F(r)iends?
No picture of the shoes, but there's Wiseau again.
Best Hat
The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians takes this over Eric Roberts’ hat complete with a gigantic pink feather in The Coca-Cola Kid or the policeman’s hat with flashing lights in Kin-Dza-Dza.
Best Bears
Also The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians
Actually, now that I think about it, there are better bears coming up. Forget about this one.
Best Hair
I love the mermaids’ hair in the Czech Little Mermaid, Billy Bob Thornton’s hair in One False Move, and Microbe’s hair cut in Microbe and Gasoline, but this award belongs to Michael Cera for his hair in Lemon. Congratulations, Michael Cera. I know you’re a reader. I appreciate that, and I appreciate your hair.
Best Costume
Alien Private Eye
Best Accessory
Alien Private Eye almost wins this one, too, because of those alien ears. As anybody of the three or four people who have seen that movie might recall, the clipping of those ears would make everybody on his home planet think you’re an asshole when you return.
Jake, our hero of King of the Kingboxers, showed up in Thailand with a fanny pack. That’s how you can identify a man as a true hero.
The kid’s leather jacket in Microbe and Gasoline was great, and so were Lando’s capes in Solo.
Tessa Thompson’s various earrings in Sorry to Bother You were great, and Tommy Wiseau wore a knight helmet at one point in Best F(r)iends.
But Toni Erdmann wins this award for the father’s fake teeth.
Best Wardrobe Changes
Andy Warhol was actually in Winterbeast (no, not really) and wins this award. I never figured out that character’s name.
Best Masks
Easily the servants at the inhuman woman’s mansion in L’Inhumaine.
Best Wigs
The Favourite
Best Potential Band Names
The Practicality of Tridents
Groin Goulash
Incombustible Fakirs
Nipple Confusion (this is actually a real band name for a fake band in Young Adult)
Wookiee Ummph
Helen Keller Money Shots
Beaucoup Goops
Flammable Hipsters
Movies That Made Me Cry
Brigsby Bear
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (the trailer actually did more than the movie)
Red
Eighth Grade
Blindspotting
Blackkklansman
Worst Thing I Did All Year
Killed Milos Forman. It was an accident.
My Biggest Laughs of the Year
That aforementioned t-shirt in Brigsby Bear
The fake trailer after Manborg for Bio-Cop, a slimy guy who just wants to die
When Prince gets hit by a truck in Love on a Leash
The part in Christopher Robin where the titular character says, “I’m sorry but I have to go back to work now” after being caught at the cottage where the rest of his family is staying
The “hatch to hatch” part in The Meg
Worst Theater Experience
When I saw You Were Never Really Here, a guy in front of me chewed his popcorn very loudly, needed to have his wife explain the movie to him throughout it, and farted audibly at one point.
A close second might be The Favourite, a packed theater with people who felt the need to laugh obnoxiously so that everybody knew they got the jokes.
Best Theater Experience
Hereditary because people were really into it.
Most Disappointing Omission of the Year
No Buzz Aldrin moon defecation in First Man.
Best Ideas I Had This Year
Second Man, First Number Two
A Vanilla Ice biopic with Daniel Day-Lewis
A movie about a house inhabited by ghosts of people who were killed by roller skates
A Paul Rudd ___ Almighty movie based on the Biblical story of Onan
Movies based on the dinosaur erotica that can be purchased through Amazon
Most Disturbing Thing That I Learned
There’s a second Bart the Bear? What the hell?
Other Things That I Learned
Tobey Maguire is a total dick.
Earth is actually the 4th planet from the sun.
Van Gogh chopped off his ear for a dude, not a prostitute.
Orson Welles never sneezed, and he got very angry when there were no Fudgsicles.
The “How Did I Not Already Know That?” Award for Something I Figured Out Long After I Should Have Already Known It
The origin of Cameron and Mitchell’s names on Modern Family. It’s got to be an homage to the actor Cameron Mitchell, right?
Great Movie Quotes, Part 2
Before we get to the musical categories, let's take a break and look at some more of my favorite movie quotes of the year!
"If you follow the carrot, it will turn into the chariot."
"The law of gravity is bullshit. If I say I float, then I float."
"But being unhappy is a great sin too."
"Stop pretending that trumpet is your penis. It's a rental."
"She goes down for a pat on the head and a fistful of peanuts."
"Holy smoke and gun powder!"
"In the beginning was the word. Why is that, Papa?"
"When the motor acts up, I used to spank it."
"But dammit, where is the headcheese?"
"I bet you will, you fine looking kitty cat, you."
"The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed."
"Sheesh, Igor, I think he chewed your ear off."
"We cannot have intercourse where we eat oatmeal."
"I am the earth mother, and you are all flops. I disgust me."
"The most beautiful journeys are taken through the window."
"The butter is life-affirming butter."
"Only a fool would eat my legs over Mo Farah's."
"It's a familiar dance, Monkey Nipples."
"Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana."
"If his grandmother tasted like this, I'd have a nibble."
"Only the godamnedness ugliest barber I've ever seen!"
"Baby, you are gonna miss that plane."
"Still there. Still there. Still there. Gone."
"I'm actually married to Barbara Mandrell in my mind. Can you understand that?"
"Do I have a kid or a fucking ukulele?"
I'm imagining his penis helping him pick out his socks. What does that look like?"
A lovely song that Madeline sings by a fountain in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. I don’t know what it’s called.
There’s a brief of a song by the Beatlers in Brigsby Bear, a fake band that sounds a little like what you’d expect to hear if the Shaggs and Beatles were involved in a car accident and somehow merged their talents.
Ron Haydock has a nice musical moment in Blood Shack when he sings a song about The Chooper.
There’s a great use of Whitney Houston in Toni Erdmann, a moment that manages to be both silly and poignant at the same time.
“Taste the Biscuit,” a song from the musical mockumentary Chickens in the Shadows.
There’s a riff on a Moldy Peaches’ song in Guatemalan Handshake. It’s sung by Will Oldman and some gal.
I also liked the “A Woman without a Man” song in Fellini’s City of Women and “The Ballad of J.R. Bob” from Arise! The SubGenius Video.
Really, I thought the “Cool Cat Likes to Rock ‘n’ Roll” song was a shoe-in to win this award despite being followed by a rap song that is likely the worst song I’ve heard in a movie this year.
But Robyn Hitchcock wrote a song for Juliet, Naked, so that has to win. “Sunday Never Comes” really is a pretty little number, even when performed by Ethan Hawke. Below is the Hitchcock demo which, obviously, I'm going to prefer over the Hawke version.
Most Surprising Song Choice of the Year
A Rod Rogers song in The Trust, a Nicolas Cage movie I watched on his birthday.
Favorite Musical Moments
I didn’t love The Greatest Showman, but I did like the fun glass-and-bottle choreography between Barnum and Zac Ephrom and a quirky bartender in this tavern persuasion scene, a smaller musical scene in a musical with a lot of more grandiose moments.
The Czech Little Mermaid movie has a nice little musical moment with shells and swaying.
Nicolas Cage, in that movie I just mentioned up there, gets a chance to scat, inspired by the name Bobo, a gun-dealer’s name. I just like to think that Cage does these things spontaneously.
Kin-Dza-Dza has a fun moment with “Mama, Mama, What Shall I do?,” a song complete with bad fiddling and bad dancing.
Another fun moment is Hugh Grant’s musical production during the closing credits of Paddington 2.
Everybody Wants Some!! has a pair of rap songs bookending it--a “Rapper’s Delight” sing-a-long during a car ride and an end credits scene where the characters are rapping about themselves.
Donovan’s “Yellow Is the Colour” song is used poignantly in Tower during an interrupting love story, and when that banjo comes in? Damn! That’s something!
Also poignant--a song the late Harry Dean Stanton sings at a Mexican birthday party in Lucky. Lovely stuff.
Dancing to Neil Young in A Quiet Place, Ethel Firecracker singing “Dead Old Lady” at her own funeral and accompanying herself on organ with her dog sitting next to her, Joaquin Phoenix and a dead man holding hands and singing “I’ve Never Been to Me” in You Were Never Really Here. All nice.
How about one of the dog’s many improvisational ditties in Love on a Leash?
Or Coogan and Brydon doing “Spanish Flea” in the car during Trip to Spain and then, of course, arguing about it?
Celine’s song in Before Sunset. Ah, man, he’s going to miss his plane.
“Every bloke should drink McCoke,” a jingle that includes a squeezebox, tambourine, banjo, and stick with bottle caps. There’s also a rock group with a didgeridoo in that movie.
Rick Moranis, in The Last Polka, does a mean cover of “Touch Me,” that Doors song. The movie also has a tuba solo which rocked as much as you’d think it would.
Any number of tracks from Louie Bluie could fit here, but I was especially fond of the moment when he played the mandolin behind his head.
Agnes Varda singing along with “Ring My Bell” in Faces Places was nice.
I loved the moment in The Lovers on the Bridge where the cello score suddenly becomes diegetic.
The refugee song--and the people’s reactions to it--in Kaurismaki’s The Other Side of Hope.
Faye Wong’s character being introduced in abbreviated snippets of “California Dreaming” in Chungking Express is memorable.
One touching one was the gig in Hearts Beat Loud, but I also liked the less-touching-but-still-awesome Nick Offerman cover of Ween’s “Ocean Man” from that movie.
The singing of “We’ll Meet Again Some Sunny Day” in the courtroom of The Hit, the “Man on the Flying Trapeze” sing-a-long in It Happened One Night, the whisper-singing along with the Partridge Family in Crooklyn, Tony Eye also in Crooklyn doing “It’s Not Unusual” while rocking those bottle-lens glasses and that keyboard.
“I’m a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas, and You Ought to See Me Do My Stuff” from the more-touching-that-it-should-be-allowed-to-be feature-length episode “Finding Frances” from Nathan for You.
Percussive everyday things in Eden and After? Ethan Hawke’s “Waterloo Sunset”? Neil Armstrong, a man who was not the first to poop in the moon, tossing a cassette tape to Buzz Aldrin on the rocket?
In Blaze, there’s this terrific moment where Townes Van Zandt (Charlie Sexton) performs a song bathed in this yellow light. In the same movie, there’s a touching moment where the titular character helps Townes through a performance.
Chopin for a black audience in a bar in Green Book is a nice moment in that movie I’m not sure I really liked.
“Jump Now” with steel drums or the “Ricky Ticky Song” in a plane in Who Is Harry Kellerman. . .
How about Devo and Neil Young ripping shit up with a stunning rendition of “Hey Hey My My (Into the Black)” in Human Highway?
And I just loved the improvised rap song from Sorry to Bother You which contains a word I’d better not type. I'm not sure if Boots Riley's intentions were to get that stuck in my head every time I think about the movie or not.
Best Score
I liked Duke Ellington’s score for Anatomy of a Murder. Michael Giacchino has been on a roll, and his Incredibles 2 score is maybe the best thing about that movie. The mostly-percussive Thoroughbreds score is probably the best thing about that movie, too. I liked Paco de Lucia’s flamenco noodlings in The Hit and the Aidje Tafial and Alloy Orchestra score that was in the version of L’Inhumaine that I watched. Hiroshi Baba’s psychedelic funk in Wolf Guy, Bruce Langhorne’s great work in The Hired Hand, and Caroline Shaw’s score for Madeline’s Madeline are all really great. And I liked the music in Let the Corpses Tan a lot, but I imagine a lot of that was reappropriated. And Apostle, though it might just be because it’s still fresh, has a fascinating score. That’s by Fajar Yusekemal and Aria Prayogi.
However, when I heard Johnny Greenwood’s score for Phantom Thread early in the year, I knew nothing was going to beat that and didn’t bother paying much attention to anything else.
Worst Score
If a movie has no score at all--like Love on a Leash--can I count that?
The winner is Mr. Bill’s score for Mom and Dad. His stupid name probably didn’t help him here.
Most Important Thing I Learned about Music from a Movie This Year
Dance music is evil--from A Star Is Born.
The Lanthimos (My New Name for the Best Dance Scene of the year)
Yorgos Lanthimos always provides a great dance scene in his movies and doesn’t disappoint with a wonderfully anachronistic dance in The Favourite. That has to win because the award was just named after him.
Other nominees? Hold on because there are a lot of them.
The guy with a ponytail dancing his ass off in Guy and Madeline during a scene in a restaurant with these alternating shots of him and the main character playing a trumpet
An enthusiastic skinhead dance (with Gregg Turkington) in Terminal USA
A cow dance in Garbanzo Gas
A clownish and acrobatic rooftop dance in The Fairy
An underwater dance by Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel, also in The Fairy
The “I was smitten with her suppleness” scene in the wonderful Happy End
The dance scenes juxtaposed in Final Cut, especially the shot of Chaplin dancing to disco music
Watching Royalty Hightower punching her way through her first dance in The Fits
The big “coming out” fantasy in Simon’s head in Love, Simon, a fun little surprising dance number
The dance scene at the end of Sugarbaby
A severed hand dance in a dream in The Brand New Testament
The completely disturbing interpretative dance scene in Winterbeast, a scene with a creepy, scratchy record and a guy in a mask and a shrunken head and references to something or somebody being “under my skin”
The Lovers on the Bridge on the bridge, a chaotic dance sequence with fireworks and improbable soundtrack shifts
Gene Kelly and Francoise Dorleac in the ultra-romantic scene where they finally connect in The Young Girls of Rochefort
The demon dance with girlfriend in Jacob’s Ladder
The dance scene for the producers in All That Jazz where they gradually get more sexualized
Simon Callow’s sweet dance moves in Four Weddings and a Funeral
The climactic dance at the party in 45 Years
The Mask has two--Cuban Pete and Jim Carrey’s “Let’s rock this joint!” dance number with Cameron Diaz
Connie and Tito in the supermarket in Crooklyn
Church dancers--Michael Vigalante-esque--in Leave No Trace
I don’t even know that the Lanthimos one deserves The Lanthimos Award this year, but it just seems like the right thing to do. I'd really like to give this to The Lovers on the Bridge instead. Nobody gives a crap about any of this anyway!
Best Use of a Metronome
Daguerreotypes, the Agnes Varda movie, has one. So does del Toro’s Cronos. And there’s one in Shirkers, in the film-within-the-film. But the winner of this coveted award goes to Bad Times at the El Royale and its use of a metronome in a really great extended shot.
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