That's right. I still do this.
Well, I broke my personal record for the amount of movies I watched this year. Though I have a global pandemic to partially blame, I’m still a little too embarrassed to say just how many I watched. So I won’t. Message me privately, and I might tell you.
I believe I saw four movies in the theater this year. They were all Best Picture nominees because some theater nearby was showing those for just five bucks each. The last movie I saw in a theater was Ford v Ferrari. It was pretty good!
As you might know, I use a 20-point scale when rating movies. Ford v Ferrari was a 15/20, for example. Pretty good! I did give it a bonus point for the use of the song “Pork Salad Annie,” however. This year, there were four 20’s (all repeats), and I didn’t have a single movie with a 1/20. I didn’t rate anything a 19/20 either. There was a tie for my most frequent rating between 15/20 and 16/20.
The average rating this year was a 14.04, just underneath last year’s record of 14.1. Fewer Bad Movie Clubs and an emphasis on movies on the “They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?” list of the greatest films ever made probably helped that average.
Only 50.8% of the movies I watched this year were American. 58.5% were in English. 10% of the movies I watched came from France.
None of these numbers are official.
Ok, that’s boring. Let’s get moving with some awards!
The Billy Curtis Award
As always, we start with my award for the best performance by a little person. The competition’s always fierce with this one! This year’s nominees:
Leigh Gill played a little fellow in Joker. However, he’s really only there so that jokes can be made about little people because that’s the kind of movie Joker is. Gill was “Bobono” in Game of Thrones. That means nothing to me, but it might mean something to you.
Previously-nominated (and former Razzie winner, believe it or not) Billy Barty played an ornery baby in Gold Diggers of 1933 at the age of 8, a little older than ornery-baby age. He’s used in a couple great gags in that movie. I also saw him as a beleaguered Bible salesman in 1978’s Foul Play.
Wilson Salazar gives a great little person performance as “The Messenger'' in Monos. Thus far, this is his lone performance.
Tiny Kennedy delivers a delightfully enthusiastic little performance, mostly cheering on a cat fight at The 7 Seas in Mr. No Legs. Note: I’m not sure this is the little person actor’s name; however, his name is “Tiny,” so I’m taking a chance.
There’s a little guy with a mohawk in Pastoral: To Die in the Country. He works in a circus and inflates his wife. It’s a good one, but I can’t find his name, and you just can’t win the Billy Curtis Award without a name. The same goes for the actor who played “Eddy,” the little circus sidekick in Lola Montes or the barker with a megaphone in La Strada.
"Hermine's Midgets" perform a lot of amazing little-person acrobatics in The Court Jester. Billy Curtis himself is in that movie. If I had an little person ensemble award, they would win that.
Mihaly “Michu” Meszaros, another former nominee, has a very brief role in Coonskin as a referee. He’s best known, of course, as the guy in the Alf costume or as Andy in Big Top Pee Wee.
Bow-legged Hugo in Bunuel’s Nazarin is played by Jesus Fernandez. He’s great.
David Marotta is best known as the alien in a series of Italian Kodak commercials, but I saw him as The Ugnaut in Phenomena.
And Sammy Brooks finishes off this list of Billy Curtis nominees with his small part as a little suitor in Harold Lloyd’s “The Marathon.”
The winner of this year’s Billy Curtis Award: It's your year, Billy Barty! Congratulations!
Best Nicolas Cage Moment of the Year
Color Out of Space, Primal, and A Score to Settle were the only Nicolas Cage movies I saw, at least while conscious. I dream Nicolas Cage movies all the time, but I never remember them. Between Worlds was a repeat, so I won’t include it here. The best Nicolas Cage moments, all which will likely be completely meaningless to anybody reading this who hasn’t seen the movies (but can be easily imagined):
“Beef! Beeeeeeef!” (end of A Score to Settle)
“They won’t be calling you ‘dragon’ anymore.” Blam! Genital shot!
Killing a guy while chomping on a carrot for absolutely no reason
“Chasing Rainbows” song in A Score to Settle (he learned to play piano for this role)
“Bitches, leave!”
Throwing out an “egghead,” an “eggface,” and an “eggcelent” pun while a bellhop is Googling nursing homes in a magical 30 seconds
Milking an alpaca and immediately drinking the milk (“Gentle with the. . .uh. . .boobs.”)
Singing operatically while driving his wife home from the hospital
A shower scene--”Ahh! Ahh!” as a jelly creature grabs his hand
Accent struggles in Color Out of Space
Calling his car a “cocksucker” several times during a mini-freakout
A full-fledged freakout when he doesn’t like how his “peaches” taste (“Slam dunk!”)
The Tootie (Worst Child Acting)
The youngest kid in Islands in the Stream, John Whitely in Moonfleet, the Beaver himself (Jerry Mathers) in The Trouble with Harry, and the annoyingly screechy Naomi Casey Fields’ in W.C. Fields’ “The Golf Specialist” are all really bad, but The Tootie goes to Mario del Vicchio, the star of A Karate Christmas Miracle.
Favorite Quotes of the Year
"I'll always taste the salt of your body in the sweat of mine."
"I've had seven children with her, and I've never seen her navel."
"There is no shortage of ugliness in the world. If man closed his eyes to it, there would be even more."
"It's like falling off a bicycle. . .into a vagina."
"We are never sad enough for the world to be better."
"I'll make 'em laugh at you starving to death, honey. It'll be the funniest thing you ever did."
"We are all as God made us, and others, much worse."
"It's hard when a woman leaves a man with nothing but memories and a muff."
"Tame your stick!"
"I think it's extraordinarily unfair for a woman to age."
"Why don't you just put pasta up her pussy?"
"Sometimes you have to go back in order to go front."
"That's cool about the frozen yogurt machine. Everybody I know dies."
"Did Jesus build walls?"
"This whole country runs on epidemics."
"Cruelty abounds in this planet."
"We must look a little closer. And when we do, we see that the doughnut hole has a hole in its center. It is not a doughnut hole, but a smaller doughnut with its own hole, and our doughnut is not holed at all."
"Maybe freedom begins with remorse."
"We all have a trash can deep within."
"What part of Mommy's body makes Daddy frown?"
"Yes, there's toilet humor, but there's also toilet sadness, toilet tragedy, toilet triumph!”
"I hate men with little white hands."
"That's right, honey, you have attacked an innocent dwarf."
"I can't shit upwards."
"You can't choose hepatitis. It chooses you."
"The mind controls the pants, mate!"
"Rats don't dream, and what can you do to protect yourself against your dreams?"
"In the circus, everyone's got a watch."
"Hey, lady, you can't throw oranges on an escalator."
"Poetry deranges you, father."
"And now, my dear friend, go jack off among the roses."
"Every time you have an erection, it makes the papers."
"Everyone who drinks is not a poet. Maybe some of us drink because we're not poets."
"I never wanted to use macramé to kill."
"He who cares not for art cares not for life."
"He looks like an old umbrella. He must be a lousy lover."
"You are the gay heroes who will repulse the enemy when you are called upon to do so."
"There's moisture. Some of it isn't sweat."
"Prince Charmings today snort cocaine and do the mambo."
"And that's how you get dead."
"Sweetie, since the beginning of time, there has never been a case of one gargoyle attacking."
"I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry."
"You'd get lost in the woods and die. And they'd find a rat skeleton inside your pelvic bone where your vagina was."
"I say it's a horny demon."
"When I die, I want a separate tombstone for my balls."
"The greatest threat to any marriage is chess."
"Half the rock and roll industry's finance by dentists."
"The world belongs to those with teeth."
"The penis astonishes me. It can give pain or pleasure. It can give life and now it can give death."
"Can a person fit inside a cow's ass?" (This was followed with the answer “Cows go in barns.”)
Best Scores
The Naked Island (Hikaru Hayashi)
Ad Astra (Max Richter)
Dry Summer (Ahmet Yamacı and Manos Hadjidakis)
Monos (previous winner Mica Levi)
The Green Fog (Jacob Garchik with Kronos Quartet)
Pastoral: To Die in the Country (J.A. Seazer)
Juliet of the Spirits (Nino Rota)
La Antena (Leo Sujatovich)
Best Belly Dancing Scene
A chubby Mushka in Barefoot in the Park is a good one, but French Cancan wins this for a scene with Gabin’s first love interest.
Best Theme Song
“Cannibal” (Don Powell and Ennio Morricone for Year of the Cannibals)
Best Scene with a Metronome
The Two Popes only teases one, and so does Autumn Sonata. Metronome teases!
The easy winner is from Fellini's Orchestra Rehearsal. First, you’ve got a woman doing an impersonation of a metronome which might be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Second, there’s a giant metronome brought in to replace a conductor during a chaotic climax. Giant metronome!
Best Sound Effect
Slurping in Tampopo
Best Use of Sound
Sound of Metal, a 2020 release about a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing (on Amazon Prime)
Best Dance Sequence
The end of Jojo Rabbit is really sweet.
Anna Karina dances to Haydn in Le Petit Soldat.
Denis Lavant writhes and flops around to “Rhythm of the Night” at the end of Beau Travail. That might be a spoiler. Sorry about that. Maybe you should have tried to watch every movie I saw this year instead of being lazy and doing whatever it was you were doing all year.
Audrey Hepburn shows off some moves in a smoke-drenched Parisian beatnik club in Funny Face.
A whore and a kid share a dance in front of headlights in Pixote.
La Notte has a terrific and scandalous dance scene in a nightclub with a woman and a glass of wine, and I haven’t stopped thinking about that one since I saw it.
And there’s a mad tapdance-on-a-table sequence in I Knew Her Well.
Those are some great nominees! But the award goes to Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon from Lost in Paris. And if I see them dancing in a scene next year, they’ll probably win next year, too.
Best Musical Moment
“You Are So Beautiful” moment in Honeyland when the “character” gets a radio to work
A leper singing a song and doing a little dance in The House Is Black
That aforementioned Nicolas Cage “Chasing Rainbows” scene in A Score to Settle
A song sung by soldiers in the woods in 1917, a little beauty amidst a whole lot of dead bodies
Jack the Monkey bursting into song in Lynch’s “What Did Jack Do?”
“Dancing Queen” in The Two Popes (or when Hopkins’ pope plays piano for Pryce’s pope)
A scene in Little Women when the youngest little woman plays piano while the guy who lost his daughter listens to her
Adam Driver providing background vocals for that spaceman song in Inside Llewyn Davis (likely mentioned in a previous year but worth mentioning again)
Watching Steve Young enjoy his new finds in Bathtubs Over Broadway
The only good part of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood--the very end
George Dzundza’s piano recital in The Deer Hunter
Mother/daughter dueling Chopin preludes in Autumn Sonata
Twin musical moments in Portrait of a Lady on Fire--first on a harpsichord and then at the very end (also--a spontaneous Stereolab cover around the fire)
The composer character wandering off in the sewer while playing his ocarina in Kanal
Laurie Anderson’s dog’s keyboard stylings in Heart of a Dog
The monk playing the titular instrument for his guys behind barbed wire in The Burmese Harp
A sing-a-long in Lovers Rock
Neil Breen and Kathy Corpus (both Facebook friends of mine, by the way) in Pass Thru stumbling upon a beaten-up piano and play with it a little after Corpus’s character says she always wanted to learn (“It’s never too late,” Breen tells her. “Music’s magical, universal! It’s timeless.”)
The climactic musical number in Soul
The winner: Have you ever seen an accordion battle? It’s just like a rap battle except with accordions. Watch The Wind Journeys to see one. It’s a movie that makes 8 Mile look like a movie that doesn’t even have accordions!
Movies That I Heard Beethoven’s 7th Symphony In (the song that will be playing when I die if my psychic knows what she’s talking about)
Just one this year--Renaldo and Clara
My Best Ideas of the Year
A Toucan Sam origin story (horror movie)
A board game based on The Great Escape
A Buster Keaton Pac-Man adaptation
Godzilla vs. Christ the Redeemer
A Frederick Wiseman documentary on Central Perk, the hangout of the friends on Friends
A movie where all of John Turturro’s characters run into each other
Best Band Names I Got from Movies This Year
My Famous Genuflection (emo band)
Between Salemecs and Gibberish
Papier-Mache Sasquatch Firecracker Penis
Kilt Parkour
The Berry Razzers
Ominous Whooshing
Mona Lisa Nipple
E-I-E-I-Onanism
Giuliani money Shot
Something Random That Made Me Happy This Year
Neil Breen got his hands on a drone!
Biggest Movie Question of the Year
Why do so many movies I saw this year have characters walking into the ocean to kill themselves?
Claims That I Made This Year
That I made “The Text of Light” before Stan Brakhage at my grandmother’s house as a small child but didn’t have a camera
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is a Snoke (from the recent Star Wars sequels) origin story
Best Title of the Year
Dirty Ho
Worst Title of the Year
Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
Movies That Made Me Cry or Nearly Cry
Honeyland (that musical moment I mentioned earlier or the hair-dye scene [“Everybody likes to look nice--even me.”])
1917 (the “You must be insane” sequence with the combination of the big music, the spectacle, the craft, and the balls of that main character)
Little Women
If Beale Street Could Talk (again!)
The Taste of Tea (a scene with flip books)
Soul (because it’s a Pixar movie)
Onward (I don’t remember actually, but it’s also a Pixar movie)
Dick Johnson Is Dead (on Netflix if you’d like to watch this documentary about a filmmaker and her father who she is losing to dementia)
Heart of a Dog, Laurie Anderson’s movie that is about more than her dog
1 comment:
I just rewatched 1917 the other day, and I’m gobsmacked that Mendes didn’t win best director that year...such a captivating movie.
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