Comedy Challenge 2019 Wrap-Up!

At the start of the year, I claimed comedy films aren't really my thing, that I laugh far more readily at humor divorced from narrative structure or typical stage-bound set-up/punchline stuff, being the kind of dweeb who gets a big kick out've Vinesauce compilations.  Perhaps in an example of sticking true to form, or perhaps because I didn't make the best selections for this year's programming, my first round at this comedy challenge turnt out fairly in line with the expectation set by that sentiment.  Of everything I kept active tabs on, the comedy challenge scored lowest on average, and led to the most groans and complaints about films simply not being very funny.  I wouldn't make TOO much of this, for I'm still plowing ahead on next year's challenge with high hopes, but a year largely dominated by "mn, alright" is a year dominated largely by "mn, alright."

Still, this more muted reaction to the selected films means the ones I DO hold and cherish as my favorites are the ones I truly, earnestly love, and count a few instant favorites amongst their ranks.  But since I ran the Cult wrap-up post with the favorites first and the worst second, why don't we flip the script a little here, plow through the negativity right from the breach, savor the positivity for last?  Sounds good to me, should sound good to you, let's sally forth:

I Did Not Find These Films Particularly Funny

Coneheads
(SNL Alumni Week)

10: One third weird immigrant origin story, one third new twist on the old SNL sketches, one third budget space adventure, tied together by way too many celebrity cameos, attempts at serious drama, and talk about Conehead sex.  Sound atonal and messy?  Well, it is.  Dan Aykroyd probably should've cashed it in after Coneheads (or preferably beforehand), and stopped before he could further embarrass himself over the last 30 years.

Diplomaniacs
(Wheeler and Woolsey Week)

9: You've not heard of Wheeler and Woolsey?  No big surprise, considering Robert Woolsey died in 1938, and Bert Wheeler in 1968, right before the major boom of old comedians reviving their careers on the talk-show circuit.  They were a pretty big box office draw in the 30s compared to many acts we now think of as the classics, although Diplomaniacs isn't quite the best showcase of their talent.  It's full-up on hokey jokes without strong enough personalities to back them, and the racism... well, there's a lot of it. A whole lotta it.  The climax is one big blackface joke lot of it.  Eesh.

(Over the last year, nobody has been able to adequately explain why there's a swastika casually sitting in the RKO copyright byline.)

Yankee Doodle in Berlin
(Silent Comedies, Sans Giants Week)

8: Yankee Doodle in Berlin's a touch uncomfortable nowadays.  A big, unearned all-American victory dance all over the German's stupid faces fully written, shot, and distributed after the Great War was over, its generally low-energy presentation and slapshod sense of humor is exacerbated by how it reminds one of the way pretty much every Western power convinced themselves punitive, humiliating retribution against the Germanic people could have no possible long-term consequences.You get to see Bothwell Browne's female impersonation act, though, the only time he was filmed performing too, so that's neat.

Ka-Boom
(Queer Comedy Week)

7: Confession: I let Ka-Boom's not being Mysterious Skin get to me more than was probably reasonable.  Gregg Araki is not trying for the same effect here as in his earlier devastating masterwork, but while I don't think it fair to damn Ka-Boom on the grounds of not featuring similar themes and performances as a different movie with different goals, I do think it fair to put the film on blast for not featuring much in the way of proper effort at all.  The film stinks of a filmmaker diddling round in circles with more a mind for shock and purposeful quirkiness than any coherent point to make, and ends on a note that marks the whole production as pointless in the eyes of those who created it.  Fine to not be Mysterious Skin, not so fine to fail at being anything worthwhile yourself.

The Iron Petticoat
(Bob Hope Week)

6: I'm sure there's a Bob Hope film out there for me, one with him putting on an agreeable persona and delivering some jokes I can get behind.  When he's in his whole "Boy, fellas, these broads sure are a real pain in the keester, right?  Good thing I can set 'em straight!" mode, though, I'm gagging like there's no tomorrow.  The laziness extends to the plotting, which dawdles around to such an extent that it loops back round and keeps the jokes from evolving beyond a repetition of one already sour note again and again.  Doesn't help in the slightest for the shrew Hope's trying to tame taking the form of one way-too-good-for-this Katharine Hepburn, losing all her usual vocal charm to a really bad Russian accent and the need to act second banana to Hope's buffoon.  Maybe the Jerry Lewis collaborations are more my speed...

What's New, Pussycat?
(60s Sex Comedy Week)

5: A comedy of errors largely free from errors, what with its contentment to explore characters who're on the same page far more than any whose various hang-ups and quirks clash to produce comedy when forced into close contact.  You can feel the spirit of Warren Beatty forcing Woody Allen out've the lead any time Allen's supporting player has a scene to himself and does something funnier than anyone around him.  By the time What's New, Pussycat? feels like waking up and actually doing something amusing, it has spent so much time on blah material, I just don't feel like going along with it, which is a poisonous attitude for a comedy to install in an audience member during its zaniest moments.

Boy, Did I Get A Wrong Number!
(Female Comedian Week)

4: God, why did I schedule myself for two Bob Hope films in a row?  Why'd I have to make one of them Boy, Did I Get A Wrong Number!, a sex comedy free from any sex that treats its most risque player like an agency-free prop for Hope to toss about like a sack of potatoes?  Why'd it have to be so square and bland, sandwiched right between the wilder excesses of true 60s counterculture and the more fully-fleshed beats of 70s television programs in the same style?  Why, when presented with any notable female comedian as the subject for this theme, did I go with a Phyllis Diller production where she's barely in it, and not able to take advantage of her greatest strengths besides?

More like Boy, Did I Pick the Wrong Film.  You may shoot me now.

Mother Riley Meets the Vampire
(Long-Running Series Week)

3: I listened to some've Arthur Lucan's Old Mother Riley comedy records from the 40s before watching this, the ones he made while his wife and long time comedic partner Kitty McShane played foil to his doddering-whipcrack old woman character.  Although the act WAS stronger in its intended form than with Lucan trying to carry on solo, I doubt McShane's presence would've saved a film produced at the tail-end of 16 years' constant production with a completely dry well for creativity and budget alike.  Lugosi's about the only fun element in Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, and he's simply not around long enough for you to do much more than smirk at his usual over-the-top silliness inherent to his poverty-era performances.

Billy Madison
(Comedian You Hate Week)

2: Oh, like there was any hope for Billy Madison with this theme.  I won't skewer Adam Sandler quite so deeply as I might otherwise, given Uncut Gems is doing the round and inspiring a whole slew've career reappraisals, but I see no reason to claim his early mainstream successes point to anything other than a man who knows and appreciates anything beyond the lowest level of filth.  This is a vile, hateful, miserable little film, not even well-made by the standards of a 90s gross-out slobs vs snobs comedy, and it makes me want to puke thinking about it again.  That phone call scene with Steve Buscemi is one I've seen multiple times in tumblr gifs and videos, and I thought it genuinely hilarious, so learning it has just a tiny little bit extra at the end where it turns into a borderline transphobic gag just makes me all the angrier at Billy Madison for ruining something I actually liked.

The Pick-Up Artist
(80s Teen Comedy Week)

1: Would The Pick-Up Artist be a better movie if Robert Downey Jr weren't playing the worst person in the whole wide world as the film tries to pretend he's secretly a really nice guy who should be seen as everyone's friend?  Yes, but then it wouldn't be The Pick-Up Artist.  Fun fact: director James Toback is apparently this sort've harassing, abusive scumbag in real life, so there's absolutely no reason to look on his work as anything other than a celebration of how degradation, misplaced charm, and engineering hostile or dangerous situations are the ideal ways to catch a mate!  Also I don't think it's very funny, and Molly Ringwald doesn't have anything she brought to The Breakfast Club here.

The Dishonorable Mention

Pineapple Express
(Stoner Comedy Week)

I very purposefully did not grant Pineapple Express a rating, because I acknowledge my inherent, extreme distaste for stoner culture put me in a position to hate it before I ever gave it a chance, and kept me from enjoying what I do believe is a fairly well-structured movie with some good jokes in  its pocket.  However, this lack of rating does not prevent me from putting it on record that I still kinda just hate its stupid guts, nor from posting the "IT'S NOT FUCKING WEED YOU PIECE OF SHIT STONER" image again in lieu of thinking about it further.

Enough negativity, let's talk funny!

I Laughed At These :D

Burn After Reading

(Dramatic Actors Going Funny Week)

10: I don't remember which actor I singled out as the one making a notable rare comedic turn when I picked this, considering they've all done comedy and drama with fair frequency, but I'm glad I chose Burn After Reading for a watch anyways.  John Malkovich's rage against everyone asshole, George Clooney's Smoothest Man in the World slowly degrading into total paranoia, Brad Pitt's stunning turn as a man with as few brains as he has audience-grabbing charm (I seriously don't understand why my dad hates this guy, he's great in everything I watch), Frances McDormand's cottonmouthed flailing for competency, they're all wonderful pieces of a story that gets bloody and senseless before anyone figures out what the hell is going on anyhow.  Special props to the dildo chair and everything with JK Simmons.

The Lavender Hill Mob

(Ealing Studios Week)

9: As I mention in my review, I didn't think The Lavender Hill Mob an especially special film immediately after its last frame, not compared to the same year's The Man in the White Suit.  Further consideration found me appreciating the way it exploits the camaraderie between its characters and a new ridiculous situation every scene to set off a series of firecrackers that SHOULD cause the whole thing to explode with manic energy, yet remains hilariously tamped down because we mustn't let ourselves get TOO ruffled, you know.  Great acting and clever filmmaking combine for a solid tale of comedic woe.  I'm still of the opinion this is one of the few times American censorship standards of the day forced the ending to be even better to release across the pond.

Bringing Up Baby

(Katharine Hepburn Week)

8: Love me some Howard Hawks.  Love the euphoric madness he brought to every picture, the unique, undeniable sense of a man happy to run rabbit rampant across the silver screen in the name of a laugh, in whatever form he liked.  Bringing Up Baby contains the single funniest moment from this entire challenge, for while I'm still a tad iffy about how Katharine Hepburn's character was written, it all becomes worth it when she storms back into the picture with a wild leopard in tow, completely oblivious to the danger she's in, as a final match in an already flaming powder keg.  Plus, y'know, she's tag-teaming with Cary Grant in one hell of an upper performance, and making ol' Bob Hope look hopelessly flacid about 20 years before he had the chance to do the same himself.

(The general consensus is right: "Because I just went GAY all of a sudden!" really is a hilarious line in an already funny scene.)

The Crazy Family

(Japanese Comedy Week)

7: Things fall apart in The Crazy Family.  Each member of the Kobayashi household has their little quirks, same as any family, which grow ever-more pronounced as the stress and isolation of the suburbs coupled with the absurd standards of Japanese family life push them deeper into their eccentricities.  When Gakuryuu Ishii touches a live wire to their wavering sense of sanity, the whole film erupts into a crazy battle between outrageous personalities, with our central father figure growing nihilistically homicidal.  Nobody's stable, everyone thinks they're the only sane person left despite all appearances, and they're all out for blood as they literally tear their house to shreds.  It's hilarious, and I'm gonna bluntly tell you that you should watch it, considering you've probably not heard of it compared to all the other top 10 selections.

Smokey and the Bandit

(Any Comedy You Like Week)

6: A pleasant last-second surprise from the very last comedy film choice of the year!  I've rambled about how Hitchcockian Smokey and the Bandit is in my review, so allow me to simply say its high-speed yet easy-going spirit, with Sally Field settling into Burt Reynolds' rhythm of life just as easily as Jackie Gleason lets it outrage and fluster and ruin his day, a murderer's row of colorful CB-usin' truck drivers on tap, and the musical styling of Jerry Reed permeating the whole film makes a wonderfully engaging time.  You've gotta love any film that treats expensive top-of-the-line vehicles like big kid toys to be thrown tumbling all throughout the American South.

Some Like It Hot

(AFI Top 100 Comedies Week)

5: To reuse an analogy from the review: Two men playing poker and blatantly cheating on every hand, only to lose to a woman who sat down and played the game straight despite being a little hazy on the rules.  With those men being Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon, the woman being Marilyn Monroe, and the whole thing being orchestrated by Billy Wilder with a focus on executing such a dynamic again and again and again with new ideas and smartly-written dialogue on every reset, it's no wonder Some Like It Hot ranked so highly amongst the American Film Institute's voters, and there's no trouble understanding why it's still widely beloved today.  Way, WAY better at crossdressing gags than pretty much anything I've ever seen.  Also, Joe E. Brown as Osgood is just plain perfect.

A Night at the Opera

(Marx Brothers Week)

4: The first film I found actually, no qualifications hilarious this challenge, and one I continue to have trouble articulating why.  Even accounting for how the Marxes lost their long-time producers after a studio change and dropped Zeppo for A Night at the Opera, the hell raised by Groucho, Chico, and Harpo on their journey across the Atlantic is so howlingly funny yet honestly sweet and wholesome that I can't imagine the kind of person who wouldn't find them funny.  We all remember the contract scene, the stateroom, Harpo's piano playing, etc, but I'm personally more inclined to name the Marxes gradually emptying a bedroom of its beds in a circular chase with a delightfully pompous police officer.  Funny's funny, the Marxes were funny, and this movie's a hoot.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

(Steve Martin Week)

3: Expecting Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to be indiscriminately meanspirited and cold-hearted towards the world entire, and finding it actually a wryly self-aware, even-handed, ultimately positively sentimental work is downright one of the best surprises I experienced this year.  After years of keeping John Candy off my radar for no real reason other than general ignorance, I now regret not giving him a chance sooner, as he's a total delight to watch, and stunningly easy to care for without losing his loudmouthed, annoying traits.  Steve Martin, for all his badgering and rudeness and self-satisfaction, gets it way more often than he's capable of giving, and learns to love and accept this boorish man he thought he could only hate in a sequence that had me begging him to do the right thing through my TV screen.  Probably the perfect holiday travel comedy?  Yeah, I can get down with that descriptor.

Ball of Fire

(Screwball Week)

2: The film that clarified Howard Hawks for me.  Prior to this, I couldn't put my finger on what made his work so damned special in my eyes, what common element united the man noted for experimenting in every genre available.  The above-described sense of mad euphoria is plain as day in Ball of Fire, a rip-roarer of a comedy if there ever was one, with too many endearing bits and bobs to mention.  The best strategy I can think of is reminding everyone of how Hawks often cited an approach centered around "Three good scenes, no bad ones," and suggesting that if the matchstick rendition of Drum Boogie, the conga lesson scene, and Gary Cooper confessing his love to Barbara Stanwyck in a darkened bungalow are merely good, then the concept of "great" has been rocketed far beyond any mortal's reach.  Not only my second favorite of the year, my absolute favorite of the six Hawks productions I've seen, and likely to remain so for a long time.

It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

(Massive Ensemble Week)

1: Are there words?  A large portion of my review for It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World consists of me alternately listing out my favorite parts in a massive block paragraph and exploring how it flows structurally for a few more, but are they words enough?  Can anything explain the sheer joy of watching Stanley Kramer exercise every comedy star under the sun in a madcap race to the prize for nearly three hours, short of watching for yourself and seeing with your own eyes?  I'd like to think one can do so, for one should be able to communicate just about anything with the right words and sufficient length... but hell if I know what those words are or could be.  It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World moves with a fleetness a film its size reasonably shouldn't, contains more funny moments by proportion and volume than anything else I watched this year, and has a killer structure to beat all with Spencer Tracey as the unexpected MVP.  It's a screamer to end all screamers, the kind of project that could only happen once and then never again, and they pulled it off beautifully.  The lone five-star film of the bunch, and it deserves it like no other.

Honorable salutes to the special effects wizardly and theme music of Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Cantinflas' Spanish wordplay that I couldn't understand thanks to shitty subtitling in Romeo y Julieta, the Birmingham Jail sequence from Stir Crazy, and Sean Penn's little smile from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, proudly pictured above.

See y'all in 2020 for even more comedy stylings, hopefully ones better on average than this year's!

Cult Movie Challenge 2019 Wrap-Up!

YEAR TWO OF CULT IS DEAD, LONG LIVE CULT.

Myself, Jackie, and John have watched weird, obsessively detailed Something Weird catalog videos disguised as a documentary on old pornos.  We've learned why you don't muck about with Black Magic Fuckery.  We've entered and questioned the strange world of Andy Sidaris, he of the Bullets, Bombs, and Boobs.  We've pondered the philosophical question of "why isn't Elijah Wood punting any of these zombie kids"?  We've been 20,000 leagues under the sea, to a strange, happenin' New York version of Oz, and whatever the hell you call the ending of Big Man Japan.  But through it all, which films were great, and which were not?  That's what we're here to look at today!  Hope y'all enjoy this way-too-high-effort end of year Content!

IF SOMEONE GAVE YOU THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE

A Pistol For Ringo
(Spaghetti Western Week)

10: More in the spirit of the classic American westerns with the indulgences spaghetti westerns allowed pumping through its veins than something truly in the style of a Leone or Corbucci, A Pistol For Ringo nevertheless delivers an excellent time at the movies thanks to its balled-up contradiction of its main character, the savagery of its villains, and how cleverly the two flit in and out've advantages and disadvantages between them.  It's the kind of tense battle of wills where bodies can still drop with great frequency, and both parties need to bullshit some quickie explanation for why it happened and why it's justified before there's a bullet 'tween their eyes.  Plus, as I mention in the linked review, it has a weaponized Christmas tree in the finale, so it outranks Die Hard for best non-conventional Christmas movie.

Tremors
(USA Up All Night Week)

9: I say again, the most American monster movie to ever grace the silver screen.  Tremors fully commits to the classic "buncha stock characters trapped by weird monsters in a hostile setting" set-up of 50s monster movies, and runs hog wild with the possibilities offered by that setting being a run-down middle-of-nowhere desert town with plenty buildings to destroy and its own resident survivalist loaded on guns galore.  The monsters act intelligently enough to create an active push-pull dynamic that keeps the movie from resting for too long, the characters all acquit themselves nicely, and it features a contender for my favorite scene of the challenge when Burt and Heather empty an entire wall of firearms into a single Graboid.  Yee-haw, y'all! 

The Killer
(John Woo Week)

8: Without seeing Hard Boiled, I can't declare The Killer the definitive John Woo package - I CAN, however, declare it promises his brand of kinetic gunplay at a peak, relationship/rivalry between Chow Yun-Fat and Danny Lee that can't be beat (those parts where they spend an entire scene with guns to one another's temples while pretending to be on good terms for Sally Yeh's sake are great), the kind of effortless, butter-smooth pacing you think one only dreams about, and a genuinely tragic, gut-wrenching ending to cap it all.  Really glad our decision to go with more unconventional John Woo films for this theme didn't pan out.  I'm sure Red Cliff is great in its uncut two-film form, but then we wouldn't've time for this action classic.

Porco Rosso
(Anime Week)

7: The first Miyazaki film I've seen to dip below a perfect 5 star rating, and still considerably better than the vast majority of films we watched this year.  Where Porco Rosso doesn't quite touch the highs of Castle in the Sky or My Neighbor Totoro, it still soars on the strengths of its beautiful flying animation, memorable character designs and personalities (big, big shout-out to the Mama Aiuto Gang), and contemplations on mortality and forgiveness.  Porco's vision of fighter pilot heaven ranks up there with the most arresting images Miyazaki ever committed to film, and the extended fisticuffs brawl against a rival pilot towards the end has some real weight behind its comedic rhythms.

An American Werewolf in London

(Werewolf Week)

6: John Landis sure did get some innocent people killed with his recklessness, but damn if he wasn't a great filmmaker in his prime.  Even knowing its place as a horror-comedy, I found An American Werewolf in London an unexpectedly uproarious time, a black as hell's pits joke about life slamming David Naughton's face straight into a brick wall over and over again, and him being too oblivious about anything to pick up on the hint until he's lost half his blood and all his teeth.  The werewolf and Griffin Dunne's decaying ghost corpse still look great nearly forty years on, and the film's rocking a strong sense of place whether we're on the wild wet moors of Northern England or playing out a fifty car pile-up in Piccadilly Circus.  Romance is a bit weak, but that conversation about suicide with a bunch've recent werewolf victims in a porno theater is killer.

Eight Diagram Pole Fighter
(Shaw Brothers Week)

5: Gordon Liu's thickheaded, eager-to-fight Fifth Brother is my favorite character from any of the films this challenge.  His skullbrained attempts to achieve enlightenment through peaceful meditation by threatening to beat and break everyone and everything around him would make Eight Diagram Pole Fighter a top-ranked film on their own, and yet the movie also offers gorgeous sets, ridiculous plot convolutions, and easily the best hand-to-hand action I saw all year.  That fucking rotating coffin pile, man.  The monks using their poles to rip out full sets of teeth from the enemy mooks' mouths?  The whole opening massacre scene?  The splinter-bomb bamboo staffs?  Or...

Head
(Psychotronic Encyclopedia Week)

4: "Hey hey, we are the Monkees, you know we love to please/A manufactured image with no philosophies."  Need I say anything more than my original opening line describing Head as the perfect cinematic equivalent to a suicide note written in magazine clippings?  The Monkees, Bob Rafelson, and Jack Nicholson went right the hell off in this attempt to detonate not only the band's popular public image, but any possible alternate interpretation, leaving naught but ash behind.  They chose to do this in a wildly inventive, literally acid-fueled charge across the entire pop culture landscape of their day, with some of the band's catchiest psychdelic tunes as backing, and highlights like the alternating black-to-white Ton Basil dance to a casual conversation about suicide amongst dozens of others.  It came for the head of everything Monkees related, and walked away with about twenty more representing the whole 60s counterculture movement on its belt.  And somehow, it's still a prime example thereof.

Danger: Diabolik
(Mario Bava Week)

3: I often claim films attempting appeal to spectacle, high-octane action, or simple hipness are often let down by a perceived need to still tell some kind of coherent story or impart a message, which often leads to the stuff you're supposed to find appealing getting lost beneath the greater volume of less expensive subpar character work, or else overwhelming interesting ideas in the event some arose in the screenwriting.  Danger: Diabolik needn't worry about this problem, because it is the Pure film I have chased after all these years.  It wants to be cool, it strives to be cool in every single scene, and it IS cool in every single scene, because Diabolik lives a life of fabulous, enviable crime, pulls off some incredible new stunt, heist, or escape every time we see him, and lives a life scored to Deep, Deep Down.  When we are not with Diabolik, we are still in a world shot and acted to revolve around the idea of his personality, and make his next action seem all the cooler whenever he next appears.  It's the kind of movie where a bad guy who operates at the peak of James Bond villainy by dropping people out've planes through a hidden trapdoor in his on-board office is no match for an anti-hero willing to pump him full of emerald bullets, and then retrieve them from his ashes in the crematorium, which plays even better than I describe it.  Forget Endgame or Joker, THIS is the best comic book movie I've seen all year.

Manos: The Hands of Fate
(Mystery Science Theater 300 Week)
(Bwang!)

2: It is all broken, and it is all glorious.  Manos: The Hands of Fate is the proverbial movie that's so bad it crashed straight through the floor and came out the ceiling again good.  Nothing works as intended, not the acting, not the screenplay, not the camerawork, not the music, not the sets, nor the props, nor the lightning, or the basic scenario.  It is still the single funniest thing I've seen in my entire life when Torgo, poor ol' John Reynolds in those malformed satyr legs, starts hobbling along to his discordant, repetitive theme tune, which stops abruptly for some shaky dialogue, only to strike up again after a sudden jump cut to Torgo struggling back inside.  The total lack of ability here loops round in circles until it crashes in on itself like a particle in the Large Hadron Collider, sparking an alchemical process whereby a movie of total ineptitude becomes one of the few I'll ever describe as So Bad It's Good.  Anyone who claims you absolutely NEED Joel and the Bots to make this one watchable is Wrong, for it is a cult classic all on its own merit.

Inferno

(Dario Argento Week)

1: MATER SUSPIRIORUM!  LACHRYMARUM!  TENEBRARUM!  DOMINAE, DOMINAE, DOMINARUM!

Beautifully horrifying, oblique to an extreme, rocking a Keith Emmerson synth-heavy soundtrack - this is the real deal.  Dario Argento tosses conventional narrative structure right out the window in favor of imparting the impression of a curse senselessly tearing through anyone and everyone you know with no possibility of understanding, only the raw horror of watching something you cannot explain strike again and again in weirder and weirder forms.  Each image more exquisite and haunting than the last, Inferno builds to a peak from which it can build no more, and then tops itself with the ultimate in indulgence: a spooky lady smashing through a mirror as she shouts "THE MORTALS CALL US DEATH!" and turns into a scary skeleton while the building burns down around her.  Of everything here, Inferno jams itself right into my list of favorite films ever made, no questions asked, except maybe "Can we stop acting like Suspiria and its family are meant to be understood like one of your shitty Star Wars lore books?"

Gahbahge Movies, Throw Them In the Trash, Please.

 

Ghost Shark
(SyFy Week)

10: Is it at all fair to hold Ghost Shark's quality against it, given its status as a low-effort film of the week from the SyFy Channel?  Yes, because I dedicated most of my review to proposing rewrite ideas, and in total they create a more enjoyable trashy movie than the wasteful film on offer.  I come to you expecting a movie to equal the slip-n-slide death everyone giffed on tumblr a few years back, and you give me this?  For shame.

Dune
(David Lynch Week)

9: You read the order correctly, I am putting Actual Theatrical Movie Dune From Highly Respected Director David Lynch a slot before Junk Bin Movie Of the Week Ghost Shark.  Even acknowledging Lynch was the wrong man for the job of adapting Frank Herbert's Dune (a job I'm still not sure anyone is suited to), and even knowing the film suffered heavy post-production meddling courtesy of Dino De Laurentiis, there's just no reason Dune should've come out bad as it is.  Initially a crushingly-dense attempt to communicate a small sliver of Herbert's complicated network of characters and interplanetary politics with an ill-fitting aesthetic and way too many hoarsely whispered voice-overs, the film manages the rare feat of reversing the polarity on its badness, and speeds through an entire half of the book inside half an hour with such ruthless efficiency it becomes impossible to tell what's going on if you've not read the book in the last ten years.

Sandworms looked cool, tho.

The Swarm
(70s Disaster Movie Week)

8: Hoof, The Swarm.  How does one succinctly describe The Swarm?  Well... picture a movie with far too many characters it invests way too much time into that still kills them off by the trainfull whenever it gets bored, asks you to take the sight of little black dots bip-boppin' across the screen as a legitimate threat, manages to make a bee swarm detonating a nuclear power plant and setting an entire city on fire seem boring, starts out incoherent and loses any ability to speak clearly as it goes along, and is two hours forty minutes in its uncut form on top've all that.  Should give you something to work with.

(Jackie never got me my gif of the children hiding in the garbage cans, and I am still miffed over never receiving meandthelads.gif.)

Microwave Massacre
(Bleeding Skull Week)

7: Jackie Vernon has nobody to play off in Microwave Massacre, and everyone else in the cast is convinced they can match his deadpan schtick, so the whole film is a toneless dead joke.  Focusing all the humor on "I hate my wife!" one-liners and gags about black prostitute meat doesn't help matters any.  It lacks even the conviction necessary to pay off the obvious "here's a little dog, here's a big microwave, dog, microwave, dog microwave" set-up it hammers on so much in the early goings, so it can't function as something legitimately disgusting either.  At the least, the disappointment of not getting anything enjoyably depraved convinced us to pop on The Boogens the next night, which introduced us to just... the most wonderful, beautiful boy I've ever laid eyes upon.

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace
(Bad Movie Week)

6: The reputation is deserved - Superman IV: The Quest For Peace hails from impossibly restricting origins, and falls below even the lofty standards of a piece abandoned by its original creators and picked up by Cannon with a last-second major budget slash and a cast who visibly want to leave.  Surprisingly, it shares some issues with Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, in that if it chose to focus on one or two of its ideas, some of the misguided aesthetic and acting elements could be forgiven by mining some interesting territory, yet instead it plows ahead on every last notion, and makes them all worse for the overcrowding.  It's just BVS is swinging for the fences with big philosophical ideas, and Superman IV has Nuclear Man and a Superman double date.  Christopher Reeve deserved far, far better than this, but so does every Superman actor in the end.

Surf Nazis Must Die
(Troma Week)

5: Let's not besmirch Troma's good* name by associating them with this.  They only distributed Surf Nazis Must Die, and if Lloyd Kaufman had actually overseen production, it might've turned out a worthwhile artifact of trash cinema.  As is, there's precious little in the way of surfing or Nazism, and the Surf Nazis mostly stand around talking a big game without actually doing anything.  A promised revenge rampage from a black mother whose son gets killed about halfway through takes too long to get going, and by the time it finally starts up, the movie's pissed away whatever goodwill and engagement I was willing to offer.  There's nothing but an alluring title and poster here.

(*Good here meaning "slimy, grody, and proud of it.")

The Food of the Gods
(American International Pictures Week)

4: Meanwhile, LET'S besmirch Samuel Z Arkoff's good name by associating him with this.  Much as Arkoff made his fortune by selling on that empty promise of a title and poster and little else, he still found ways to deliver satisfactory product to ensure he wouldn't lose ticket sales TOO fast - I Was A Teenage Frankenstein is a drive-in classic, and nobody will convince me otherwise.  He went completely off the rails and became negligent in his duty when he permitted Bert I. Gordon to direct The Food of the Gods, which plays like Frogs without the joys of watching little amphibians command an army of swamp creatures.  It's a go-nowhere, do-nothing, show-off-the-worst-effects-of-Mister-BIG's-already-shaky-effects-driven-career film, and more than likely committed animal abuse to get some of its effects besides.  Only good thing to come from this was an imprompteau Village of the Giants rewatch, which convinced me Gordon wasn't ALWAYS the absolute worst.

Night Feeder
(Shot on Video Horror Week)

3: Y'see the killer baby on the poster?  It's not in Night Feeder until literally the very final minute, and it looks like it's made from burlap.  Meanwhile, there's an EXCELLENT brain dissection scene round the middle of the movie, which I cannot for the life of me believe was shot without a real cadaver.  Something this low-budget and low-effort could only boast so good a special effect if it were not a special effect at all, and just a fresh corpse someone's buddy dragged over from the morgue.  I got The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes flashbacks during that scene.

Anyways the movie's not good and I don't feel like saying anything else about this one.

Monster a-Go Go
(Bill Rebane Week)

2: I ask of you, which is the greater tragedy?  The way Monster a-Go Go, already a doomed venture from the start, languished on the shelf half-finished for years before HG Lewis took it up and slapped together a non-movie to fill out the runtime in a weekend?  Or the way I exerted so much effort in proposing a means of taking Monster a-Go Go of all things and making a satisfactory movie from its crumpled, broken body during my review?  I ask this as a legitimate question, for I truly do not know.

Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold
(Fred Olen Ray Week bonus)

1: Because Wizards of the Demon Sword was not satisfactorily bad enough, apparently, I, in my infinite wisdom, decided we should also watch John's pick for the week that didn't make the final list, on the grounds of my having looked at clips of Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold on YouTube when I was a teenager.  I apparently thought it would be funny for us to waste an afternoon watching a stupid softcore porno from Fred Olen Ray, a man with no talent and no interest in developing any.  It wasn't supposed to be here, it wasn't funny, I hold the film in active contempt, and wish to only repeat that its sole saving grace is making a giant lipstick joke instead of a giant vibrator joke at one point.  Just kinda fuck this movie.

As to what my watching companions thought this year?  Jackie says her favorites were Inferno and Porco Rosso, with her least favorites being Surf Nazis Must Die and Sgt Deadhead; while John says his favorites were The Killer and Pump Up the Volume, with The Swarm and Surf Nazis Must Die as his least.  Everyone hates Surf Nazis, that's the big takeaway this year.

CULT ROUND THREE.  CULT LIVES FOREVER.

Mixed Nutcrackers Wrap-Up!

Heads up: sometime in the next few days, I intend to write some wrap-up posts for the Cult, Comedy, and Queer challenges I run on letterboxd, as a means of introducing such content to the site and prepping for the next year of featuring them more heavily on this space.  For these, I'll probably provide a top ten best and top ten worst from each challenge (perhaps less for the Queer challenge, just because there's fewer films than in the other two, and they never got quite so bad as the others), alongside any stray observations about other notable films or ideas we encountered in the last year's watching.  This post... will not be like that!  While I could easily handle it like I did the wrap-up for the Loft Film Fest and rank all the films in contention, there's not much fun there - I've already given the full extent of my thoughts on everything here, and the rankings seem fairly obvious.  Here, I can burn through em right now:

1: Fantasia (5/5)
2: The Nutcracker 1973 (4/5)
3: Nutcracker Fantasy (3.5/5)
4: Nutcracker: The Motion Picture (3.5/5)
5: The Nutcracker at the Bolshoi Ballet (No rating)
6: Barbie in the Nutcracker (3/5)
7: The Nutcracker 1990 (3/5)
8: The Nutcracker Prince (2.5/5)
9: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2/5)
10: The Nutcracker in 3D (2/5)
11: Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tail (2/5)

Fun-ish.  But I believe we can have yet more fun than this!  I believe there are elements to these Nutcracker tales deserving their own ranking, separate from that of the pictures as a whole.  As such, we are going to rank...

The Nutcrackers!

(With respect to both their animate Nutcracker forms, their real human forms, their inanimate forms where applicable, and overall personality!  Obviously Fantasia won't partake in these events, but it has won enough by being wonderful as it is already.)

Letterboxd Film Festival Wrap-Up!

My very first film fest, done!  Like three days ago at this point!  Driving up and back four or five times in the space of a week while also writing up reviews for every one of the eight pictures you saw in addition to a VR experience and some material from an entirely different film fest is tiring, so please excuse me for being a little late!  Part of it is my fault for returning to my regular schedule and having to write stuff for that too, but we're here now, we're talking the CICAE Award nominees, and how I feel about 'em in brief!  Let's have ourselves a quick little chat about these films, in ranked order, before talking about the judge's pick for the winner, and my own personal preference thereby!

ONWARD!

8) Falls Around Her: As mentioned in the review, I really wish Tantoo Cardinal had better material to work with.  The story of her singer returned to the reservation with reservations of her own about reconnecting with friends and loved ones has many potentially interesting avenues to develop along, and a compelling small-town friendly vibe, but the film's threats to take greater interest in its least interesting mystery are, unfortunately, made good on, and produce a climax I simply cannot abide by.  A disappointing entry, though one I'm glad to have viewed regardless for its star and overall presence throughout the first two acts.  I have to also admit: not wanting to be down on this film anymore also contributed to this write-up's delay.

7) Hjärtat: Was it the fact of director Fanni Metelius playing her own main character here and not quite clicking with her romantic co-lead that kept me at arms-length from this modern love story?  Was it the difficulties I experienced with her character's shallowness when it does still have merit as a human aspect and ties together thematically with her lover's own challenges in finding their respective ways through young adulthood?  Was it being reminded of Blue is the Warmest Color during the ending without the utter gutpunches the older film served?  Probably all of them, but at least the film still finds its feet and pulls a few resonant moments from its hat for good measure.

6) The Condor and the Eagle: Fine film, fine goals, fine execution, fine people behind it who do more important work than anything I do on this blogspace.  But man, I just can't square away the crimes they show with the "slow and steady wins the race" approach to protest they advocate.  The Guerras and the people they represent on the silver screen have extremely legitimate points about the need for a worldwide cooperative movement between indigenous persons to affect real change; I only wish they'd get louder and angrier about step-by-step tactics to help further said goals.  Its low placement is ENTIRELY a philosophical difference between myself and the directors/subjects, so one's mileage may very well vary.

5) Always in Season: You know you've a solid documentary on your hands when my biggest complaint is wanting more of the stories that rend at my soul.  Each of the subjects here could easily sustain a feature documentary of the same length all on their lonesome, so it'd be nice to see Jacqueline Olive's work stretch beyond its ninety-minute runtime to cast an even more damning light on these ugly parts of American culture, past and all-too-sadly present.  What is here hurts to watch, and because it hurts so bad it is necessary viewing for all.  I'm still knocked a little senseless by the first lynching reenactment scene.

4) I Was At Home, But...: I've been reading s'more reviews of this most enigmatic film at the festival over the last week, and seeing plenty of varying interpretations vastly different from my own.  The old man with the voice box and the bicycle, the extended conversation about the nature of acting with an uneasy director, the way Astrid treats her children, the significance of the other children flatly reciting Shakespeare - every last one a turning point for one's opinion and final analysis.  I remain staunch in my own view of it as the effects of depression on a small familial environment, but I'm always glad to see a cinematic Rorschach test in action, and rather wish I'd seen this with more folks I talk to on the regular to compare notes.  Either way, the slowly paced, sterile atmosphere is wonderful on its own, and the events within highly compelling.

3) Temblores: Its frankness about how even the softest-spoken objections to homosexuality carries an undercurrent of hatred and desire to destroy hits and hits hard.  Despite standard plot points and characters you might find in any queer narrative of this nature, the actors' pained performances and the distant promise of potential understanding before we're dragged through the jagged reality of conversion therapy and hollow eyed reunification grants it an impact and staying power beyond the nature of its components.  As I say, until such time as the world entire has moved beyond this out-and-out refusal to acknowledge those in one's life as essentially human because of such small things as a differing sexual preference and the resultant cruel torture, films predicated on depicting this suffering remain necessary, however overwhelmingly prevalent they remain.

2) Advocate: The international three person jury's pick for the CICAE award, and one I can easily get behind.  Handily the most artistic and clever of the three films here, it speaks volumes about the historical weight of its criminal subjects through the way it chooses to protect their identity, and draws you into the life of Lea Tsemel with a back-and-forth conversation between her life to this point and her activities in the modern day, before revealing a tiny yet crucial piece of information that completely recharacterizes the rest of the film.  There's an ideal synthesis between fascinating subject and clever presentation here that makes for an exceptional documentary.  I do not fault Boglárka Nagy, Luice Morvan, and Alison Kozberg for making this their selection at all, in spite of the crossness I indicated last week.  Advocate deserves all the praise in the world, and as many eyeballs on it as it can get if it means more exposure to the true face of Palestine's plight.

My own heart, however, belongs to another...

1) Aga: Yeah, I was right, no other film could challenge Aga.  It's more than a modern evocation of Flaherty's century-old documentaries, more than a climate change issue movie, more than an exploration between traditional and modern ways of living, more than an exploration of the effect of absence and the drive to reconnect, more than an allegorical representation of how stories and song echo in our daily endeavors, more than the quiet relationship between an old couple with lifetimes of experience between them on the barren landscape of a shrinking, increasingly hostile Arctic circle.  Aga is, above all, what happens when you strive to depict all of these ideas in active conversation with one another, and succeed on every level.  It is as immediate and vibrant and lively as every gasping breath Mikhail Aprosimov and Feodosia Ivanova take as they slowly go about the tasks they've grown old through, as expansive as the stories they tell to shredding emotional impact and the sounds of modern machinery that consume their whole world from miles away, as intimate and human as anything else I've ever seen.  This here is life on-screen, with all that implies, and nothing lost in the effort.  I say once more: this is a triumph of filmmaking.

I do hereby Award Aga The Gilbert W Hays Non-Accredited Bootleg CICAE Award.  It has earned it, and every other ounce of praise I can heap upon it in the future.  Please, God, let this thing have a wide release, or a physical disc, or a digital distribution deal, or SOMETHING I can use to show it to everyone I know.

And with that bit of gushing, I declare this year's film fest coverage over and done!  See y'all on the flip-side with whatever comes next!  Probably a review of The Bat, because we're being REAL slow getting through this season challenge stuff!

It's Film Fest Season in Southern Arizona! Borderland Film Fest and The Loft Film Festival!

So hey, guess who's got an opportunity to check out some film festivals in their area?  Lots and lots and lots of people all round the world, but also me!  Over the next week, I'll bring y'all coverage of Tucson's own Loft Cinema as they run their tenth annual film festival, featuring specially curated films from all across the festival circuit!  In specific, I'll be running reviews of the eight films in competition CICAE Award, and offering my take on which one seems best suited for a win.  If there's time left over between the communte, the watching of eight competing films across a week-long period, and providing the write-ups, I'll try to block out a little whiles to watch one or two other films featured.  Can't promise any coverage of Parasite, the Phantasm remaster, The Two Popes, or Son of the White Mare due to the lateness of the hour, or Varda By Agnes or White Snake due to scheduling conflicts, but The Chambermaid, The Cave, Words From a Bear, Cunningham, and And Then We Danced are all definite possibilities!

(And, y'know, anything I can't catch is going into my letterboxd watchlist, so who knows if they'll crop up on this space in the future or not.  S'possible!)

So, for full scheduling of the CICAE competitors, that's:

• Thursday the 7th: Temblores and I Was Home, But
• Friday the 8th: The Heart and Always In Season
• Monday the 11th: The Condor and the Eagle
• Tuesday the 12th: Advocate and Aga
• Wednesday the 13th: Falls Around Her

Now, you may wonder, hey, that link up there shows plenty showings for stuff Saturday and Sunday.  Why aren't you doing any coverage then?  Well, hypothetical reader who missed the full title, Saturday and Sunday are the main events for the Nogales Borderland Film fest!  Simultaneously held in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, the events are currently a little sketchy in terms of timing, but I have every intention of showing up for the selections of films about and filmed in the county border area, and Saturday night's Film at the Fence, 2004's A Day Without A Mexican.  Incidentally, I attended last year's Film at the Fence, 1983's El Norte, and provided a brief write-up on the experience here.

It's gonna be quite a lot to take in, and I intend to run some semblance of my regular programming both her and on letterboxd in the meanwhile, so here's to hoping the whole endeavor doesn't kill me!  I'll see y'all on the flip-side with plenty of southwestern, Arizona-based film coverage!

Business and Programming

Right, new venture, new blog.  Gotta get the transitioning stuff out've the way here...

Hi!  I'm Gilbert Hays.  I'm 25, call Arizona my home, and I write movie reviews for the internet under the name GargusSCP.  To now, I have exclusively published my work on letterboxd, producing hundreds of reviews over the last two years, to... fairly alright results.  87 follows is respectable when you're not producing content that fits a site's popular trends and not playing the follow-back game.  However, I'm currently looking to push my reviews to a wider audience, hopefully through an actual publisher so I can supplement my current income, and I am finding the process of getting my foot in the door difficult.  There's nowhere online a potential employer can click and see my work in full view that actually has my name on it, see.  Not exactly the best situation when you've never been published before and have no strong contacts with anyone in the industry.

Fortunately, we live in modern times, and the magic of the internet lets us prod at folks we've never met who are in the industry for advise.  Someone who publishes their work in a professional capacity advised me that I might do better if I had someplace to wholly call my own, a blog where I can publish my work in a way more strongly associated with me and mine, rather than the cramped hubbub of a film social media site.  So... we're here now!  On my awfully gradiented Blogger blog - because I came here briefly twice before to publish on two equally-quickly burnt-out ventures, and I can't think of anywhere better.

Even if this doesn't lead to any employment, I at least hope it'll lead to an audience of folks I can get to know!

So, housekeeping business.  At present, I pick and choose films to watch and write about through several year-long challenges on letterboxd - the host sets up the weekly themes, me and some friends pick the films, we watch, I write.  As of this writing, I have five active challenges up and running: the Cult Movie Challenge, the Queer Cinema Challenge, the Classic Hollywood Challenge, the Comedy Challenge, and the Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-2020.  There are also a few challenges waiting in the wings, which I slapped together on a whim to help cope with depressive episodes, those being the Sci-Fi Odyssey Challenge and the Everybody's Into Weirdness Challenge.  These I am saving for when the shorter Queer and Classic challenges are properly wrapped up in a few weeks.  There's also the matter of a few holiday-themed marathons I run with friends, and the wholly odd notion of just watching movies on my own time, of my own volition, without the need for any big overarching structure.

All of these are published as full-length reviews on letterboxd.  Naturally, despite my small audience on the site, I don't want to suddenly convert absolutely everything to blog-exclusive content all at once.  Anyone who's currently following there might not like a big, out've-the-blue shift like that.  To this end, I've determined that for the time being, only certain reviews will appear on this blog, for the sake of a smooth transition and a clean cut.  To writ:

• All four challenges I began at the start of this year will come to their conclusions on letterboxd.  When 2020 roles around and new editions of the Cult and Queer challenges begin, those reviews will appear on this space.  Wrap-up posts for these challenges WILL appear here, however, as I don't really have anywhere else to put them, and have wanted to do something like that for a while.
• The Season challenge will appear here regularly.  At present, it is on a "whenever we have time" schedule, as we are watching three films for each theme, and do not have the time, coordination, or energy to push a full seven films through each week.  Expect to see them whenever they're up.  Reviews for the first six films, already watched and written about, will appear in this space over the next few days, as fodder to make it look busy.  Letterboxd followers will get a single paragraph blurb with a link to the full review.
• When they begin, the Weirdness and Sci-Fi challenges will appear here, also on a "whenever we have time" schedule.  Same principle for letterboxd followers as above.
• Any holiday-themed marathons I run with friends (such as this Made For Halloween list we're gonna start in a few days) will have their reviews run here.  Same principle as the previous two bullet points for letterboxd followers.
• Films I watch on my own time will appear on here and on letterboxd in the same form.

That should cover everything.  Hopefully this venture goes well, and something comes from all've this work on top of a full-time county job!