2012 Year in Review! (Part One)

I'm breaking this into parts this year because it's too long. Here goes:

For the first time in 5 years, I fell short of the 365 movie goal. Not even my 50 movies in December for the second year in a row were enough to catch me up. I also had 50 in July and a nice 38 in April after giving myself a little more free time with my horrific accident. Unfortunately, life got busy August through October when I watched a combined 36 movies.

I did see a lot of good movies though. The average rating this year was 13.4, up .4 from last year. August was the highest-rated month at 16.1, but with only 8 movies, that doesn’t mean much. September’s 14.8 and June’s 14.6 were the next highs while October was the low at 10.7. Happy birthday to me. I gave 55 movies a 14/20 and only a single movie (the Manos winner for 2012) a 1/20. It was the first time 16/20 wasn’t my most popular rating for a year.

One interesting statistic: I watched 26 movies where a character urinates prominently, and about 1/3 of those featured one character urinating on another character. You can go through the year and verify this for me if you want.

Saddest statistic: I now have more years that I’ve done this blog (5) than readers (4 ½).

And here are my shane-movies awards for 2012:

The Billy Curtis Award (Most Outstanding Performance by a Little Person): The field’s limited, but the competition’s tough this year! Billy Curtis himself showed up in The Wizard of Oz (somewhere) and very briefly and almost perversely in Eating Raoul. Skip Martin tumbled his way into my heart and caught a guy in a gorilla suit on fire in The Masque of the Red Death, and former Billy Curtis winner Peter Dinklage was terrific in The Station Agent and the not-so-good Pete Smalls Is Dead. And Joseph Barry is unforgettable in Johnny Suede as a little cowboy who uses a wire to look up Catherine Keener’s skirt. His work is Johnny Suede is terrific, but it’s trumped this year by the work of Harry Earles. Hans with his little temper tantrums in Freaks and a member of the Lollipop Guild? Tough to beat. Congratulations, little fella!

Best Weapon: What could possible top the penis gun in Tokyo Gore Police? Lefty scissors in Moonrise Kingdom!

Most Memorable Performance by a Wrestler: Roddy Piper was surprisingly good in They Live while Amy Weber’s terrible performance was buried beneath a metric ton of other terrible performances in the terrible Transmorphers. This is all Hulk Hogan vs. Hulk Hogan though, and although his small part in Rocky III is so impossibly stupid that it’s impossible to forget, his work as the titular Santa in Santa with Muscles is almost too bad to be true.

Best Wrestling-Related Movie Moment: Terry Kinney watches wrestling on television in Fly Away Home.

Best Penis: A tie! Schwarzenegger’s little Terminator and Robin Williams’ impressive member in World’s Greatest Dad.

Most Touching Moment in Movie History: It’s gotta be when Evel Knieval heals an orphan in Viva Knievel! “You’re the reason I’m walkin’, Evel. You’re the reason I’m walkin’!”

Biggest Personal Disappointment: I saw David and Keith Carradine’s nipples in Deathsport and Thieves Like Us and was positive I’d be able to complete the impressive Carradine Nipple Trifecta with Robert. It was not to be.

Best Puppet: Mel Gibson had a beaver, Her Master’s Voice was a documentary that featured a scene with a ventriloquist dummy swimming, Audrey II hilariously killed everybody, and that bird in The Giant Claw was about the best thing I’ve ever seen. I also saw a couple movies with Muppets, and although you might think it’s impossible to pick a “best” puppet from one of those, that would only be because you have not seen hip-hop Fozzie with his “Wakka Wakka.” The Swedish Chef with his “little friend” reference is a very close second.

Reader Comment That I Want to Remind Everybody About: Matt said, “If Project Nim doesn’t win an Oscar, I will burn down the Motion Picture Academy.” Just have to make sure that’s not forgotten.

Movies I Saw That Had Will Ferrell in Them: 3

My Favorite Movie Quotes of the Year: (Feel free to guess the movie if you want!)

“Die, you dinosaur dick!”

“Put all hope out of your mind. And masturbate as little as possible.”
“Blame is for God and small children.” (same movie as the above quote)
“Start the Whoopie machine!”
“Whoa! I hear a mountain lion!”
“I am an expert on tits—tits and peanut butter!”
“Narcotics will make you blow all to hell.”
“Ok, we all know these [standardized] tests are gay.”
“Where is pancakes house?”
“You polluted bitch hound!”
“When you put your heart and genitals into something, it always ends up personal.”
“I’m just wondering what to do with your corpses.”
“Gentle? This is a God-damned rape scene and you want me to be gentle?”
“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!”
“How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders?”
“Does daddy monkey have hard bones, too?”
“Do I look like an ickyologist to you? Big ol’ bugs—bugs as big as a peanut butter and banana sandwich. What do I care? I got a growth on my pecker.”
“Sometimes God just turns his back on his people and breaks wind, and the stench clouds the globe. I am the high-voltage man!”
“It’s Screaming Jay Hawkins and he’s a wild man, so bug off.”
“What’s that—horse? Fiendish! I won’t eat it.”
“There’s no way that you came from my loins. Soon as I get home, first thing I’m going to do is punch your mama in the mouth.”
“Give me a call whenever you want to cut off my head. I can always crawl around without it.”
“We’ll make Rock Ridge think it’s a chicken that got caught in a tractor’s nuts.” (The great Slim Pickens!)
“A clock with no hands is my kind of thing.”
“Now you’ve gone too far! Goddamn heads bouncing off of cars while families are singing ‘Found a Peanut’!”
“First, I have to wash this guy’s asshole off my face.”
“Your butt is wider than your mouth.”
“Jim got kicked in the head by a horse in February. He went around killing horses for a while. Then, he ate the insides of a clock and died.” (William S. Burroughs)
“You ever fight a dinosaur, kid? They can cause a variety of damage.”
“I didn’t mean that you literally had to chew his buttocks off. I meant it metaphorically.”
“The most beautiful failure is the pursuit of individuality.”
“But it is pointless!” “That’s my point.”
“You always giggle falsely. You don’t have a decent giggle in you.”
“If you stand with your intestines in your hand, will you know what to do?”

Best Conversation I Had about Movies All Year:

Me: Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein—greatest performance in movie history.

Jen: Gene Wilder? What happened to his career?
Me: He had cancer.
Jen: That’s not funny.

Thing That Still Needs to Catch On: A 10/20 rating being referred to as a “Goonie”—Barry’s idea.

Best Masturbation Scene: Yes, this is still an award. Daryl Sabara in World’s Greatest Dad, probably because he was one of the Spy Kids. Gainsbourg’s great work in Antichrist. My brother’s favorite in The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence. Mr. Cohen gets the award this year for his masturbation scene in The Dictator, one that manages to incorporate Forrest Gump in a way that still makes me giggle.

Stay tuned for Part Two!

Simon Says

2006 crapfest

Rating: 4/20

Plot: Some college kids go camping in a remote location and are terrorized by two Crispin Glovers armed with pickaxes.

That's right, Crispin Glover fans. You get to double your pleasure with this one. And his dad, former Torgo award winner Bruce Glover, is in this, too. He stinks it up in a limited role, but not as much as his children, twins played by actual twins Chad and Chris Cunningham. It's got to be the worst acting by twins ever which isn't right because they're playing young versions of the greatest actor of all time. And speaking of Crispin, just imagine this for a moment: Crispin Glover playing a mentally-challenged character and his twin, both with accents that convince you they're both supposed to be mentally-challenged. Sometimes, especially when he's called a retard or crazy, he gets mad. His character stomps on a dog and then exclaims, "Puppy sleepy!" He delivers some of the worst puns you'll ever hear--"How about a hand sandwich?!"--and gets lines like "I like this game. Make you special present for my dream. Everybody want to play this game. Oh, I like this game" that make you wonder if it was all written that badly or if Glover was just butchering his lines and everybody went along with it because he was the only famous person in the movie. Oh, wait a second. On some covers of the dvd of this movie, it has Blake Lively's name right up there. This was before she was famous for whatever she's famous for, and she's really only in this movie for about 3 1/2 minutes. Still she's Blake Lively, somebody I've heard of! There are three other Livelys in this movie, too (possibly a Lively record) so one can only assume that somebody in the Lively family produced this.  But back to Crispin because he carries this kids-in-the-woods-with-a-killer cliche on his shoulders and turns it into a comic masterpiece. In fact, a conversation one of his characters has that ends with him yelling, "Sorry! I'm just a little tense here!" might be the most comical thing I've seen all year. Or maybe it's his prayer--"Oh, God. [Moaning] [More Moaning] Let's eat." Or his explanation of "the devil's cry." Or maybe the line "Now that's what I call a fatty!" which I can't believe hasn't become an Internet meme. Aside from Glover's decision to make this an uproarious comedy, this movie is a complete disaster. The dialogue's inane ("How a one-armed man counts his chain" might be the most pointless thing I've ever seen), the story and its characters have all the cliches that The Cabin in the Woods poked fun at, and the special effects are awful. There are flying pickaxes, an effect that not only looked completely stupid but didn't make any sense at all. That's almost topped a little later on by some fire effects. There's plenty of gruesome violence if that gets you off. And I was really confused with the twin thing. You ever watch a movie where there seems to be a twist, but you catch on so quickly that you wonder if there was even supposed to be a twist? That's kind of what happened there. I lost track of what was going on with the pair of twin Glovers, and at one point, I convinced myself there was a twist within a twist within another twist.

A well-timed Wilhelm scream makes me wonder if this whole thing is nothing but a joke. I wouldn't put it past William Dear, the director of Harry and the Hendersons.

Hatfields and McCoys

2012 mini-series

Rating: none

Plot: Following the Civil War, the titular families living on opposite sides of the border between West Virginia and Kentucky talk trash and shoot at each other for a couple few decades.

This birthday gift from my father isn't a real movie, but if I'm going to spend nearly five hours staring at a screen, I need to count it as one. Also, I want my three readers who didn't watch this with me to know how good it is. The acting is terrific from top to bottom although there are so many characters that all look like people from the border between West Virginia and Kentucky, two of the states America can really be proud of, and my wife and I initially had a difficult time keeping track of them. Costner and Paxton are especially great, but all the participants do a great job to add flavor to the time and place. I loved the family feud trash talk. They should have settled this feud by lining everybody up to trade insults with a few impartial judges later determining which side had the best insults. I don't know if these people actually spoke like this to each other or not, but I'm going to pretend it's completely accurate because it makes history more fun. I also don't have any knowledge at all about this historical feud, but if this was accurate at all--Wikipedia told my father that it was--then it's really informative and paints this wild picture of how this second Civil War almost started. Wild, wild stuff, the type of story that could get kids more interested in history. You really grow to hate a few of these characters--Berenger's Uncle Vance, Ronan Vibert's despicable lawyer Perry Cline, the mean "Bad" Frank played by Andrew Howard--and have trouble finding any redeeming qualities in most of the others. But they're all characters you love to spend time with, even if it's nearly five hours of time. My favorite character was in the series only briefly--a posse hopeful who can shoot a rat's ass at forty yards and who tried to join both sides of the Civil War but couldn't because his genitals were askew. Really cool stuff and definitely something your father should think about buying you for your birthday.

The Masque of the Red Death

1964 Poe movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A mean prince parties pretty freakin' hard while keeping people safe from the plague.

Ah, Vincent Price. It's been far too long, old friend. This is one of 7 or 8 Corman-directed Poe adaptations. This actually combines a couple--the short story that shares the same title and the more obscure "Hop-Frog" which has the alternate title of "The Eight Chained Ourangoutangs"--which allowed Corman to not only have Vincent Price using words like "Garrote them" or "One of [the daggers] is impregnated with a poison that kills in. . .five seconds" like no other actor can but also include a little person and Patrick Magee in a gorilla suit. The little person is played by Skip Martin who gets a chance to do some gymnastics and dance with Esmeralda, a character who is supposed to be another dwarf but who I think was a child dubbed with a grown woman's voice. Magee, when not in the gorilla suit, gets to speak to women about the "anatomy of terror" which is really close to the pick-up line I used when I met my wife. Of course, nobody can compete with the great Vincent Price even though he has difficulty saying "squirrels" correctly. His Prince Prospero character's got a nice pad with colorful rooms, a variety of animal heads on the wall, more interesting decor, a pendulum on a clock that moves way too slowly. Prospero makes his friends act like animals, a scene that ends with one lady in a yellow dress really getting into things with some gnarly flapping. There are also great party games like the aforementioned poison dagger game which inspires one couple--maybe the woman in the yellow dress and her date--to start voraciously making out upon. Like these other Corman productions, there's some nice period style, from the atmospheric opener to a nifty parade of plagues at the end. Speaking of that opener, I don't think cinematographers shoot through tree branches enough anymore. Samurai movies and old horror movies both feature shots through tree branches. There's also one of those obligatory trippy hallucination sequences all veiled in blue mist with Hazel Court's silent screams and an erotic bird attack. Bonus awesome moment: guy in the dungeon who goes "Waaaa!" Cool little period horror movie here, one that will definitely appeal to fans of Satan or plagues.

Fubar: Balls to the Wall

2010 comedy sequel

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Headbangers Terry and Dean, a couple of long-haired dudes who are apparently in another movie, travel north to get jobs laying oil pipeline. The job and Terry's new love interest put a strain on their friendship.

I knew nothing about this going in and wasn't even aware that I was watching a sequel. All I knew is that the characters, though complete imbeciles, are lovable losers and really funny. This has a very improvised feel that I like, and the humor came fast and furiously. It's funny enough times to almost be hilarious even though the whole thing does feel a little half-assed at various times. Still, I immediately sought out the first Fubar movie because I needed another fix of these two, and that's maybe the most ringing endorsement.

Samurai Cop

1989 action movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: The titular cop and his sidekick battle organized crime in Los Angeles.

Matt Hannon plays that titular cop and is pretty dreadful as an actor but not too bad as an action hero. He's no worse than an Arnold or a Stallone really although he doesn't have that special whatever that either of them have. Still, it's strange to me that he wasn't in a single movie after this one and only had other straight-to-video release. Jannis Farley, who plays his love interest Jennifer, also had no other movies after this one, and I would have figured that her posterior alone would have gotten her more work. The bad guy is played by Robert Z'Dar whose had plenty of work including the sequels to Hell Comes to Frogtown and Beastmaster, Tango and Cash, and that awesome Soultaker movie with Joe Estevez. So with a cast like this, how could it possibly miss? Well, it was apparently written by an individual with some mental problems. Amir Shervan wrote and directed it. And Amir Shervan might have written this without first hearing other human beings speak to one another. Most of these are likely worse in context, spoken from the mouths of people who can't act very well:

"I will bring his head, and I will place it on your piano." (This is right after the gang leader guy said, "I want you to bring me his head and place it on my piano.")
"I can relieve you of this gift, this black gift." (This is a reference to the castration of Samurai Cop's black sidekick.)
"You lost. . .you lost face." (Spoken by the protagonist after he beats a guy up. No, it doesn't make more sense in context.)
"Hey, wait a minute. I want to talk to you." (This isn't a bad line on its own, but it's the exact thing spoken by four extras in a row during an escape from a hospital.)
"I feel like somebody stuck a big club up my ass. And it hurts. We have to figure out a way to get it out of there." (This is the police captain. He's got a few gems as almost nothing he says makes sense.)
"Oh, shoot!" (Right after the cops run over a guy they just shot. What?)
"Shoot! Shoot him!" (Said repeatedly during a car chase scene. Then, a "Yeah! You got him!" Spoken like a true sidekick.)

This sexy bit of dialogue:

Girl cop: Ok, Joe. Just keep it up.
Cop: Oh, it's always up. You just keep it warm.
Girl cop: It's warm and ready.
(Then, later--following the car and helicopter chase they're involved in during the above exchange) Girl cop: I'll be home later.
Cop: I may stop by, so (pause--tongue click) keep it warm."

And then there's this conversation between a sex-crazed Samurai Cop and a nurse who is only in the movie to have this conversation:

Nurse: Do you like what you see?
Cop: I love what I see.
Nurse: Would you like to touch what you see?
Cop: Yes, yes, I would.
Nurse: Would you like to go out with me?
Cop: Umm. Yes, I would.
Nurse: Would you like to fuck me?
Cop: Bingo.
Nurse: Well, then let's see what you got. (Checks groin area) Doesn't interest me. Nothing there.
Cop: Nothing there? Just exactly what would interest you--something the size of a jumbo jet?
Nurse: Have you been circumcised?
Cop: Yeah, I have. Why?
Nurse: Your doctor must have cut a large portion off.
Cop: No, he was a good doctor.
Nurse: Good doctors make mistakes, too. That's why they have insurance.
Cop: Hey, don't worry. I got enough. It's big.
Nurse: I want bigger.

And that's it.

And then there's some great dialogue with dubbed (I think) voices that are pretty much unintelligible, like gangsters just growling at each other. And two conversations about how black the Samurai Cop's sidekick's ass is. The greatness of the dialogue is nearly surpassed by the greatness of the action sequences in this bad boy. During a car chase where the film was speeded-up but still seems to involve vehicles that never top 30 miles per hour, a van drives into a pile of dirt and naturally explodes before the driver runs out on fire while the cops panic and yell about how he's burning and how they need to do something. Then, it cuts directly to the first of a few awkward sex scenes. Another great action scene involves the cop throwing a samurai sword (really the only time he uses that weapon, I think) and chops a guy's arm off. The black sidekick's response? "Damn!" There's some kung-fu fighting with some strangely echoing utterances that would likely embarrass Bruce Lee, and a final shoot-out that makes up the final redundant 30 minutes of this thing that feature some of the best (and by that, I mean the worst) death scenes I've ever seen. Oh, and at one point, you can hear an audible gun click. It's all wildly entertaining and really funny if you're looking for a movie bad enough to make you laugh.

Special mention goes to Joselito Rescober who showcases some of the best acting I've ever seen as a waiter.

Bowling for Columbine

2002 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Michael Moore pisses off gun nuts.

I had one person, one of those guys who doesn't really understand the Constitution or especially the 2nd Amendment, tell me that Michael Moore says in this movie that people should have their guns taken away. I have seen this twice, and I must have missed that part both times. Michael Moore isn't always fair and he is guilty of using propaganda techniques to sell his ideas, but there's really no point in this movie where the filmmaker points a definitive finger. That might be the documentary's fault actually. Moore raises questions about violence in America, specifically gun violence, but doesn't really answer them. This is very well researched, and there's a wealth of information about our gun laws, tragedies like Columbine, violence in the U.S. compared to other countries (some with nearly identical laws), America's bloody history, and often insane reaction to violent acts. Conservatives who hate Michael Moore will find lots to hate here because there's lots of Michael Moore in this. And they'll kneejerk, saying that Michael Moore is telling everybody that we should do this or that we should do that, but I just don't see it here. As I said, he's exploring this issue that really needed to be explored 10 years ago in the wake of Columbine and, sadly, needs explored just as much today in the wake of Newtown. The most important thing to learn from all this is that there isn't a simple answer to the problem but that there is very definitely a problem. Like all Moore's documentaries, this is presented in a way that makes it all as humorous and as entertaining as it is tragic or troublesome. Scenes where Moore gets himself a gun at a bank or attempts discussion with Dick Clark (a pointless scene, one example of where this meanders a little more than it should) or Charlton Heston are typical of the director. There are also conversations with Terry Nichols' brother John Nichols, one that also manages to be both chilling and humorous as he refers to Timothy McVeigh as a "nice guy" and says he isn't familiar with Gandhi; shock rocker Marilyn Manson who makes a lot more sense than he should; and Matt Stone, odd to me since I just saw a Michael Moore marionette explode in Team America: World Police. Oh, and few clips of scantily-clad women holding machine guns which, as anti-machine-gun as I am can still appreciate as a warm-blooded American male. Most chilling to me: the 911 calls over the security camera footage of Columbine and Charlton Heston speech footage juxtaposed with a father of one of the victims of that tragedy. This is an important movie, just as important as it was 10 years ago, and I suspect that people who have negative things to say about it ("Michael Moore wants to take our guns away!" or "This movie is filled with lies!") haven't even seen it.

"Take the Skinheads Bowling" is one of my favorite songs ever, by the way. There's a cover of it here over the credits. It's Teenage Fanclub though I prefer the original Camper van Beethoven version.

I would also like to point out that Michael Moore, according to Michael Moore on Twitter, has not made a dime from this movie. I'm not sure if that's important or not.

The Libertine

 1968 sexy Italian movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A widow discovers that her late husband had an apartment rented solely for extracurricular shenanigans and decides to use it to explore her own sexuality.

I'm now a big fan of Catherine Spaak and her versatile hair. She's really good here though there's not nearly as much nudity as you'd expect from this. Or maybe from these other posters:

I really need to check out more Catherine Spaak movies though. This isn't really a funny movie at all. It's cute, more than a little dated. It's got a little bit of style but looks cheaply produced. There is a really cute little song that runs throughout the movie. Aside from Spaak's nice performance, a guy named Renzo Montagnani is really good as Fabrizio. I'm not sure what the message for women is here, probably because I'm not a woman living in the late-60s, but I'm sure there's some kind of feminist idea here. Or maybe not since a male wrote the original story, a male wrote the screenplay, and a male directed the thing.

This has nothing to do with the Johnny Depp movie, by the way.

Transmorphers

2007 Transformers rip-off

Rating: 3/20

Plot: People vs. robots, in the future.

The Asylum is a production company that attempts to capitalize on current movie blockbusters by putting out their own really low-budget, direct-to-dvd movies. There's a Sherlock Holmes one on the old blog somewhere, and although it nearly bored me to tears, I decided to watch this one anyway. I thought there might be some unintentional comedy. But no, director Leigh Scott and his cast of terrible actors only succeeded in giving me something really dull and incomprehensible. The nicest thing I can say about this movie is that the robots look a lot better than the birds in Birdemic: Shock and Terror. And that's surprising since it seems the entire budget for this movie was blown on strobe lights. It's really an ugly movie though. Leigh Scott did discover split screen about halfway through the production and uses it for no reason at all, but everything's so murky. I've seen video games that look a lot better than this. I'm really glad the survivors of this alien robot war are all good looking though. Otherwise, I don't think anybody would have a reason to watch this at all. I'd probably want to watch the movie with my eyes closed. Well, the dialogue's also pretty terrible ("I got a bogey on my ass! I can't shake him!") so I'd probably want to watch with my ears closed as well. The acting is universally bad. Sarah Hall plays Blair, and initially, I thought she was about as awful as things get, but the rest of the acting is so bad that it was impossible for me to have any of them stand out. Although I will say that Michael Tower, the guy who plays a nerdish doctor, makes a pretty good effort to stand out. He's playing the stammering-nerdy-doctor-amidst-alpha-males stereotype like a pro though. There are times when he finishes a line and then looks around like he's expecting somebody to yell "Cut!" and make him do it all over again. Oh, and there's a woman named Amy Weber in this who I could have sworn is related to Elizabeth Berkley. She's not related, but her first acting gig was in the "Screech's Spaghetti Sauce" episode of Saved by the Bell. And she was a professional wrestler. Ok, that's enough time spent with this movie. I can't believe I watched the whole thing. I might be done with The Asylum after this and probably should have been before.

And Now the Screaming Starts!

1973 horror movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Newlyweds are traumatized by a curse involving a ghost and a severed hand.

Why the hell don't I have a Patrick Magee tag for this blog? He plays a doctor here. Love that guy. Peter Cushing is also in this. I don't really have much use for these creepy period horror movies aside from the architecture and the wonderful cleavage. This has some nice artwork--portraits that sometimes have ghostly eyeless figures popping out of them. There's also some sideboob, severed hand strangulation, gyrating paintings, and some maddening zither. Seriously, if you're one of the oddballs who doesn't like the zither action in The Third Man, the score for this will likely annoy. There's also this great scene where a guy shows off his hands, a scene that was stretched comically. This isn't a terrible movie, but it's not one that is going to be all that memorable unless cheap-looking severed hands does it for you.

This movie is one of the rare ones with a title that both has punctuation and makes a complete sentence although starting a sentence with a coordinating conjunction would most like make the screaming start in most English classes.

Amelie

2001 romantic comedy

Rating: 19/20 (Jen: 17/20)

Plot: An awkward, introspective waitress in Paris decides to become a good-deed doer, and after she gets the hang of that, she decides to help herself.

This little feel-good movie of the century seems impossible to not love. It's refreshing, like lemonade washing over you without any of the stickiness. Amelie is as cute as a peach, and Tautou just nails this quirky and lovable character. The direction is as flamboyant as you'd expect and want from something Jean-Pierre Jeunet had anything to do with, and although the surface of this story is as simple as it can possible be, its diversions are so much fun. This is definitely a case where the "Where the characters go" doesn't matter nearly as much as "How the characters get there," the latter keeping this movie fresh no matter how many times you watch the thing. Along the way, there's a tiny bit of animation, fun camera play, some narration, a lawn gnome, and a sex montage that is as much a whimsical treat as my favorite scene in Delicatessan. Oh, and I just love the music of Yann Tiersen here. Even though it wasn't written specifically for this movie, the music matches the visuals so well. Another of my favorite little things about this movie: Amelie and Nino don't have any face-to-face dialogue in this movie. There's just something so precious about that. Ah, precious! That's a good word to describe this one. It's almost a fragile little movie, so delicate that I fear somebody with big clumsy hands might come along and accidentally break the thing. This is definitely not a movie for people with big clumsy hands.

As far as I know, this is still my brother's favorite movie.

FDR: American Badass!

2012 historical comedy

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Roosevelt fights Nazi werewolves, straight from the history books.

This movie has its moments, and Brian Bostwick and Ray Wise are good as the titular president and MacArthur respectively. Unfortunately, this thing is just so cheap. And I mean "cheap" in every single sense of the word. The effects are cheap--CGI explosions that I bet my son could make and pasted-on werewolf fur. The humor is cheap, a lot of dick jokes and polio jokes that are the sort of thing I hate the television show Family Guy for. And cheap puns. Marco Polio and a play on "debriefing" somebody. This was written by the guy behind that wiffleball movie  I watched earlier this year. Ross Patterson is his name, and he has a small part in this one, too. I think this guy's got some potential as both an actor and a writer, but he's got to learn to channel things and probably mature a bit. He's probably a little too South Park-inspired for his own good. He could also, of course, use a little more money to work with. There's a whole lot of ugliness here, definitely more than laughs. One scene probably typifies this most:

FDR has just had an affair in which his mistress squirted ketchup and mustard on his "tiny little polio legs" because, I guess, they resemble hot dogs. Eleanor pops in and says, "What the shit?" There's a bit of an argument which ends in Eleanor saying, "Tell them a rainbow took a shit on your legs." Now, I could be completely wrong. That might be historically accurate. Or it could just be completely tasteless. Either way, it makes me wonder why I watched this.

Sleepwalk with Me

2012 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Matt Pandamiglio, an aspiring comedian based on star and director Mike Birbiglia, deals with his new profession, a relationship that isn't really working anymore, and the increasing dangers of his somnambulism.

I had looked forward to this movie for a while because I like Birbiglia's comedy act. He's better than maybe anybody else at turning awkwardness into humorous. And the guy and his brother bought a van and converted it into one that looked just like the one in The A-Team. He's creative and funny, and the story he tells here about his love life, burgeoning comedy career, and sleepwalking is perfect material for a comedy movie. He's surprisingly expert as a first-time screenwriter and director at intertwining the three of those. What he doesn't have is a lot of charisma as a leading man, and I imagine there are viewers who wouldn't like his personality as much as I do and therefore not like his character all that much. Birbiglia's not a great actor, but he works well enough as an everyman to make this story work well enough. Part of the problem for me is that I'm very familiar with Birbiglia's comedy act and know a lot of the stories told visually here, as well as a lot of the jokes. This never feels like a "best of" Birbiglia or anything, however. In fact, a lot of his best-known bits are either not in this at all or started but not finished. I do wonder how somebody completely unfamiliar with the guy's comedy would enjoy this thing though. Maybe you should check it out and let me know!

Pulp Fiction Redux

1994 masterpiece

Rating: 20/20 (Dylan: 15/20)

Plot: See here for a comprehensive plot synopsis.

Part two of my son's Quentin Tarantino education. Here's all he had to say about this one: "There was only one character I liked." That was, maybe predictably since my son is a black teenager who really enjoyed those Star Wars prequels, Samuel L. Jackson. Speaking of Samuel L., I was playing that board game Apples to Apples last night at my dad's house. The green clue card was "Cool" and "Cold-blooded" was one of the other words on the card. I confidently threw my Samuel L. Jackson card. How the hell does that not win? Anyway, my son, like has been with every other movie with the exception of Raiders of the Lost Ark, is wrong. I don't think there's a character in this movie who isn't great, and I would also say that about the actors and actresses who play them. This is a movie that has a unique energy, and yes, I'm using the word unique correctly here. There isn't another movie with the wall-to-wall energy that Pulp Fiction has, and the movie has this weird power to make other movies worse. You watch another movie, think to yourself "This isn't Pulp Fiction," and not like the movie as much. Other movies just have no chance, probably because they have any of the following:

--Uma Thurman and John Travolta dancing. My God, I absolutely love how Uma Thurman moves, both in this and obviously the Kill Bills. I don't know if it's how Tarantino dressed her or films her or just the way she's shaped, but watching her move in Jack Rabbit Slim's just makes my penis giggle.

--The rapport between Travolta and Jackson. Who would have guessed that in 1993?

--Christopher Walken's ass watch story. That's just one of those things that exists only to make the world a slightly better place.

--John Goodman's voice? I swear that's him as the boxing announcer.

--Baggies and twistiks.

--"I said God-damn!" I'm going to devote 2013 to saying that just like Uma for regular everyday thing. Picture me taking a bite of a burrito, lifting my head, and exclaiming, "I said God-damn!" It's happening.

--"I don't think Buddy Holly's much of a waiter." This probably won't go down as one of Buscemi's best roles, but shouldn't it?

--The Wolf's notes: "One body no head" cracks me up. And his line, "Well, let's not start sucking each other's dick quite yet." Ah, I love Harvey Keitel.

--Bruce Willis going ballistic in the hotel room. If you'll allow me to call that a fight scene, Bruce Willis vs. hotel room might be one of my favorites.

--The Honey Bunny/"Execute every last one of you" juxtaposition, goose-pimply funny. Upon repeat viewings, you watch and wait for that moment, and then it happens and is magical.

--"Mmmm, that's a tasty burger." The entire scene in the apartment is electric. Just so so good!

--Pop Tarts, Butch? You're risking it all for Pop Tarts?

--Speaking of breakfast--Fruit Brute cereal. I think I just assumed it was Tarantino-invented. Now, however, I've been tricked into thinking I remember it from my childhood. It's definitely within my window of childhood.

--Lava product placement. Whoever makes that product has a perfect "bloody towels" commercial here.

--Jack Rabbit Slim's little fella.

--"Miserlou" to "Jungle Boogie". Who changes the channel on the radio dial during the opening credits?

--Ving Rhames. "No, man. I'm pretty fucking far from OK" and that bandaid on his neck.

--Divine intervention. Travolta and Jackson's faces after that guy comes in with a hand cannon. Hand cannon!

--That tracking shot following Willis to his apartment to fetch his watch. And while I'm thinking  of Bruce, I also like his face as he looks upon Vincent.

--The way Esmeralda says "Butch" and maybe actually everything she says. Angela Jones should be a movie star!

--Vincent's confusion when using the intercom.

--Finally, "My name's Paul and this shit's between y'all." It just occurred to me that I have a name that rhymes with a lot of things. "My name's Shane and my interest in this shit's started to wane." I don't know. Surely I can come up with something better than that.

I can't wait to see Django Unchained. I might have to hit the theater.

America the Beautiful

1996 documentary

Rating: 13/20

Plot: It was Christmas Eve, and I had grown bored with Tetris. I was having trouble breathing, and my back hurt. I was looking for the worst Christmas movie ever made, but I stumbled upon this documentary instead and decided to watch it. I had to watch it in four installments.

It wasn't this documentary. I didn't watch America the Beautiful and have no interest in watching it. I watched a different documentary instead, one about dogs and Nazis and babies. Oh, and there was a bird in there, too, but the bird refused to cooperate. The filmmaker's voice bugged me a little, and this investigation into the subject matter seemed personal and not all that deep. It was superficial giggling, and that's fine, especially here on Christmas Eve, but it doesn't quite justify the existence of itself or sweeten anything after a long day of fishing. If you know what I mean. You probably don't!

Anyway, happy holidays, readers!