Best of 2020

Instead of listing my favorite movies of the year I'm going to list all the movies I watched this year in order. In order of what? Maybe chronological, maybe number lines of dialog but probably in order of how much I liked the credit typeface.

Movies

1. Palm Springs

In 2008 Tropic Thunder was my favorite movie of the year and I wasn't quite happy with that. It was my favorite movie but did it deserve that designation? With time, sure, fine, Tropic Thunder is great. Palm Springs is the Tropic Thunder of 2020. I'm rooting for you Palm Springs.

2. His House

A well made horror movie is all I need. A little too many, I'm going to call them "horror house", moments when a scary thing just stands there because they can't legally touch you. I guess I wanted more touching this year. Can't put my finger on it.

3. The Vast of Night

People talk about the opening "gym" scene and I'm going to talk about the opening gym scene. There's this scene, partly in a gym, that opens the movie and it's really good!

4. Dick Johnson Is Dead

A woman making a documentary about her declining dad is better than you're thinking. Unless you like movies about declining dads you weirdo.

5. Irresistible

This didn't get a lot of attention and, yes, it's a little on the nose and makes fun of Wisconsin. But it's funny, had interesting things to say and Wisconsin has things to make fun of.

6. The Invisible Man

Strange remake to the John Carpenter/Chevy Chase movie more accurately portrays the Chase role as a murderous monster that was only funny decades ago.

7. Mank

I liked every scene in Mank. I don't know if it equaled a story but I don't know if Rosebud being a sled is anything either. My last words are going to be "Jabba the Hutt set with included Salacious Crumb".

8. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

We're entering the "it's fine" part of this list.

9. Sonic the Hedgehog

Last movie I saw in theaters. To be fair I don't go to a lot of movies in the theater. I wish you well theaters, in that I don't wish you any specific harm.

10. The Old Guard

It wasn't Atomic Blonde but Charlize Theron doing her thing is good.

11. I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Everything at the house was great and I haven't been the biggest Charlie Kaufman fan but it had some things to say about janitors.

12. Save Yourselves!

I was hopeful because I liked Sunita Mani's Progressive commercials. In retrospect, that may not be enough to choose a movie. But this adds to my list of exclamation movies!

Airplane!

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! 

Top Secret! 

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! 

¡Three Amigos! 

Mars Attacks! 

That Thing You Do! 

Baadasssss! 

Saved! 

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

The Informant!

SLC Punk! 

Foodfight!

Viva Knievel! 

Zero Hour! 

Return of the Killer Tomatoes! 

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!

Machete Maidens Unleashed! 

Zapped! 

Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez!

Everybody Wants Some!!

Hail Caesar!

Mother!

Save Yourselves!

13. 7500

Joseph Gordon was back at least. 

14. Onward

I have no patience for Pixar movies. I'm glad they make you cry. You think they look good. Okay. To be fair the only Pixar movies I've seen in the theater are A Bug's Life and A Good Dinosaur. So long theaters! The one I've seen most is Cars. Can I interest you in How To Train Your Dragon if you want a better story? Any Laika movie if you want a better looking movie? Zootopia if it has to be Disney? I haven't seen Soul.

15. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

You know those parody movies that just recreate a scene from another movie and that's supposed to be funny? Never Rarely Sometimes Always imitates so many indie movies without doing anything for itself. It made me angry at how much it wasn't trying. There's a reason the "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" scene is the only good scene in the movie. They had that short scene in mind and tried and failed to come up with anything else.

Television

1. The Last Dance

I don't like sports but this was great. Games have a natural suspense and climax so you don't need to write an actual story with those things. Like a movie for stupid people.

2. Solar Opposites

I was surprised how much this proved that the tone of Rick and Morty is coming from Justin Roiland and not Dan Harmon. The Wall could have a spin off.

3. Big Mouth

We've started teaching the kids about puberty. Would this be a good tutorial or a horror show?

4. The Mandalorian

I'm fine with Grogu eating the eggs for the record. And I love that there's a fisherman planet. Next I want to see the pet groomer planet. 

5. Pen15

We've started teaching the kids about puberty. Would this be a good tutorial or a horror show?

One Day To Halloween Movie Night

Raiders of the Living Dead is so obscure there are only two interesting things about it. It stars Scott Schwartz, the boy that receives Richard Pryor as a gift in The Toy (yikes). He went on to a porn career in movies like Scotty's X-Rated Adventure and Cafe Flesh 2 before coming out the other end (don't) in the BMN movie Alien 3000. 

The other thing is it's the last movie to star Zita Johann, who's most known from 1932's The Mummy with Boris Karloff. She was briefly married to John Houseman who died on... October 31st, 1988! Horror movies in theaters on that date would be Night of the Demons, Pumpkinhead and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Wait a month later and you could've gone and seen The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, the last movie to feature... John Houseman! That was more than two interesting things.

I said in the invite that this was the only notable movie from the director of Scary Movie. That may be a lie. The only other movie he did was a movie starring only mannequins that looks fascinating:

Here's what happened last week:

One Week To Halloween Movie Night

One week later and we're two weeks closer to Halloween. That's how time works now. The theme I played with is foreign movies. Cemetery of Terror is a rare subtitled movie (for BMN) from Mexico but filmed in Texas. Nightmare is Italian but filmed in Florida. I hope those two states turn red soon, with blood!

Cemetery of Terror isn't that foreign. It has Hugo Stiglitz from Nightmare City.  The director made Don't Panic. If that helps, great that I held your hand over to Xenophobia.

IMDB says Nightmare is also known as Nightmare in a Damaged Brain, a rather presumptuous assertion that Nightmare is known in the first place. Take that Blood Splash! That's another alternate title.

Here's what happened last week:

Three Weeks To Halloween Movie Night

 

Lady In White is the return of Frank LaLoggia, director of Fear No Evil from September 1, 2018. His only other movie is some TV movie with Diane Ladd and Olympia Dukakis AFTER their Academy Award wins/nominations. It looks... interesting.

Who says there are no roles for older women? Crazy mother and scary cougar. There are two.

The director of Blood Massacre is Don Dohler, who you remember from The Alien Factor 

and Nightbeast (fake clip)

Blood Massacre is on the same boxset as Las Vegas Bloodbath, the best Las Vegas-based movie pre-Neil Breen. Yes, we watched it on a "Punishment Bad Movie Night" which was always the week after no one showed up to BMN and the movies were especially bad. You thought Wizard of Gore was bad? The movie shown with Las Vegas Bloodbath was Ogroff.

People always showed up for those nights. You guys are awesome!

Here's what happened last week:

Last Week Again Movie Night

 

We're repeating last week but with different movies. To see if we can improve upon it. Impossible you say!

Well this is somehow our first Herschell Gordon Lewis movie, known as the "Godfather of Gore". Not George Romero, Sam Raimi or Gore Vidal. I say somehow but the only movie I've seen of his is Monster a Go-Go and only in Mystery Science 3000 form. That's easily the worst movie they ever watched, Manos: The Hands of Fate be damned. His exaltedness must be unearned. Prove me wrong Wizard of Gore, prove me wrong.

Pumpkinhead stars Mushroom the dog observing people dying from a monster named Pumpkinhead. Pumpkinhead's head, I guess, kinda looks like a pumpkin. The dying people are teenagers and therefore must die, as was required in the 80s. You can check doesthedogdie.com to see if Mushroom makes it but I'll give you one spoiler from that website. Under the question "Does someone fart or spit?" the answer is yes.

Here's what happened last week:

Woods Movie Night

This is the start of Horror Movie Month. We're in the Woods with this week. Which is a reference to a thing I mentioned in the e-mail invite and would feel weird repeating here. So...

Wood you believe there's a movie about a group of friends going into the woods looking for an old scientist that has an ancient book that a bunch of monsters are interested in and the movie isn't The Evil Dead? Yep, it's a Chevy Equinox. Bad Movie Night's Ed Begley Jr. (Eating Raoul) was an assisstant camera man for Equinox marking his return to BMN after Eating Raoul. Ed Begley Jr. was in Eating Raoul.

Someday we'll watch Robert Rodriguez's terrific El Mariachi. We saw his Machete. But for now we'll watch his most high profile movie (if that's not Sin City). Remind me to warn Marissa that John Stewart is stabbed in the eye in The Faculty. She has a phobia about being stabbed by one of her students.

Here's what happened last week: