All these movies only make me stronger.
22. Army of the Dead (2021) is a zombie heist action movie directed by Zack Snyder. Dawn of the Dead meets Escape from New York. But it sucks somehow. Aliens meets Ocean’s Eleven. But it’s an empty and joyless slog. It may not be satirical, smart, funny, scary, gory, exciting, or original, but it is incredibly dumb, overly color saturated, weirdly tedious, and out of focus most of the time. This was hard, because I love heists and I love zombies when they’re done right (they do feel a little empty and played out at this point, but I’m sure a talented writer can reanimate the genre with some fresh ideas) and I got suckered in because I saw comedian Tig Notaro in a teaser and thought she might bring a unique energy to what was maybe a fun action thriller. She does bring the energy (that seems to be from a different movie), but the writing doesn’t give her much to work with. Turns out she was added in post-production after the film dropped comedian Chris D’Elia. Army of the Dead is, perhaps, an intentional mixture of tired action tropes and weightless video game violence, but why do that with such a potentially fun concept? I haven’t seen much of his stuff, but maybe I’m not much of a Zack Snyder fan. Sorry.
21. A gang of small, furry aliens called Crites crash land on Earth and terrorize a small town farmhouse. The more I delve into this franchise, the clearer it becomes just how Gremlins completely eclipsed it. Critters (1986) is a wacky sci-fi creature-feature that boasts some fun practical effects and designs, but lacks the necessary humor, peril, or compelling characters (not you, M. Emmett Walsh, you’re great) to make it truly memorable. Now I can forgive a goofy monster movie for not being scary or funny, but the critters themselves better deliver and rack up the body count. Alas, despite some moments of fun mayhem and a good premise, I weirdly prefer Critters II: The Main Course more…which also isn’t great, but it does feel a bit schlockier.
20. People may hate me, but I do not love The Burbs (1989). At this point, I think I like more of who Joe Dante is and what he represents than most of his filmography. The structure is there, and there are some clever beats, but, for whatever reason, the manic, obnoxious, cartoony comedy did not work for me. Plus 2 points for Bruce Dern, but minus 4 points for criminally underusing Carrie Fisher and minus 2 more for making Tom Hanks annoying.
19. Ridley Scott’s best movie, in my humble opinion, remains 1979’s Alien. While both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant (2017) fail to deliver the punches they promise, they do have some great ideas, amazing visuals, and Michael Fassbender. I love that Scott has been allowed to return to this world and explore it more, even if they don’t quite measure up. On a story level, Alien: Covenant functions better than Prometheus, but I weirdly liked Prometheus better simply for being a bit more weird and novel. Stick with the originals to get your xenomorph fix. Watch on to observe how the franchise changed over the years. The Alien franchise, both at its best and its worst, is a fascinating exploration into different filmmaking approaches. And the H. R. Giger designs still kick ass.
18. I love a good small town mystery with a fun detective character. I am uninitiated into the world of Inspector Jean Lavardin (played by Jean Poiret) and didn’t realize he had made other appearances when I watched Claude Chabrol’s Poulet au Vinaigre (1985). The first half of the movie is a bit slow, taking it’s time establishing the characters within the town and the details surrounding the murder and coverup. When the inspector arrives, the story becomes a bit more engaging. All in all, a decent little mystery (especially when the unorthodox detective roughs up his suspects). He’s not exactly as charismatic as Columbo or Poirot, but he’s not without his charm.
17. Awkward young adult stammering mumblecore, here we go. Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha (2002) follows the trivial interactions between a recent graduate named Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer) and her college friends in the summer. Not much happens and it’s pretty aimless, but that’s sort of the point. Marnie herself doesn’t know what she wants or what she’s about. For fans of early indie mumblecore, this should probably be on your list. For the average movie goer, this won’t be for everyone.
16. I remember this being on television a lot and always being confused. Sitting down to watch it as an adult has elucidated precious little of the convoluted meanderings of what one might attempt to describe as a plot. Supergirl (1984) is an absolutely bonkers train-wreck of a superhero movie. Just watch this to scream at the TV screen. Don’t try to make sense of it. Credit where it’s due: Faye Dunaway chewing the scenery as an evil witch is so enjoyable. Peter O’Toole, in his brief screen time, hams it up pretty good. And Helen Slater as Supergirl herself looks great in the outfit…even if her story, powers, and character don’t make a lick of sense.
15. The Silent Partner (1978), directed by Anders Bodelson, is a gritty Canadian crime thriller with some fanciful pulpy flourishes. Elliott Gould plays a bank teller who gets wise to a would-be robber’s plan and winds up stealing the money himself and getting the criminal busted for it. But when the bank robber (Christopher Plummer) figures out what happened, he begins stalking and haunting the teller to get his share of the money.
14. Ever wonder where that image of Jackie Chan playing a coquettish Chun Li from Street Fighter comes from? It’s City Hunter (1993), a Hong Kong action comedy based on a manga. And while the non-stop stunt-work is as impressive as ever, the physics-defying broad slapstick, zany double-takes, and cartoon-sound-effects-laden onslaught wears thin and represents, to me, the absolute worst instincts of Chinese comedy. That said, City Hunter is unlike anything I’ve seen. It’s fast, frantic, frenetic, and pure lunacy that gleefully mows down copious amounts of innocuous henchman and innocent hostages alike (tone consistency be damned!). In addition to Jackie Chan and the usual Australian baddies, this movie also boasts a bevy of fun female characters that range from badass to big-bosomed. An altogether exhausting affair, City Hunter is like a Chinese Looney Tunes interpretation of James Bond. If you’re a Jackie Chan aficionado, or just curious as to just how bonkers a kung-fu movie can get, check this weird puppy out.
13. Road to Revenge (aka GetEven) (1993) is exactly the kind of vanity project we wait for. An inept, humorless man with negative charisma helms a film project that insists he’s the baddest action hero that ever sang karaoke and made love to the American flag. It’s an embarrassing, sexist, cringeworthy mess and deserves to be recognized alongside other so-bad-it’s-good fair. If you are someone who enjoys psychoanalyzing the misguided artistic endeavors of the narcissistic and talentless, you must check this flick out. We done cackled with this one.
12. Todd Solondz wants to hurt people with his unforgivingly depressing brand of comedy. From Welcome to the Dollhouse to Happiness, he’s a director that wants to paint a picture so devoid of hope or joy, that one’s psyche is compelled to laugh lest we succumb to the void. Weiner Dog (2016) is no exception. Don’t get me wrong. I like Todd Solondz. But I also know what I’m getting into when I watch one of his films. Weiner Dog follows the adventures of a dachshund that bounces from sad owner to sadder owner. Like Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, the animal in question is merely a vehicle to propel us into the private dramas of the individuals that become peripherally entwined with it. Featuring Greta Gerwig, Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Julie Delpy, and Kieran Culkin.
11. There has not been a deficit of off-the-wall WTF movies on today’s list, and Philip Ridley’s The Reflecting Skin (1990) lands squarely within the parameters of the precedent set by some of the wackier films mentioned above. It’s a full on surreal descent into depression on the prairie as we follow a young boy named Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper) and his strange adventures in an isolated 1950s America nowhere town. The local foreign lady outcast might be a vampire. There’s some greaser guys who cruise around abducting kids. You got self-immolations. And Seth ends up custodian of an ossified fetus that he keeps in the barn. Words can’t really do justice for just how insane this movie gets, and I’m not even sure that I’d call it “good”. All’s I can say is that when 8-year-old Seth screams for minutes on end into the dispassionate setting sun, lifeless chunks of dry earth crumbling betwixt his fingers, I felt it. Co-starring Viggo Mortensen!
10. Tilda Swinton plays a Russian woman married into an aristocratic Italian family who falls in love with her son’s friend who is an amazing chef in Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love (2009). It’s a glorified soap opera that feels weirdly cold and distant, and it moves very slowly. But when it’s not being boring, there is plenty of sumptuous cinematography showing off Italy’s fields, mountains, and architecture. And there’s Tilda. The last act has the most going on, and that’s when the score picks up and animates the drama a bit more.
9. Horny Italian arthouse psychodrama doesn’t get much artier or hornier than Elio Petri’s A Quiet Place in the Country (1968). The piercingly blue-eyed Franco Nero stars as a manic modern artists on the verge of a mental breakdown and so retires to an abandoned estate to get some work done. But something draws him to this place. There was a tragedy long ago, and perhaps the spirit of young countess haunts the place still. This film dares to ask, “what if a crazy Italian guy desperately wanted to bang a ghost?” The Ennio Morricone score and frantic style make this one weird experience. This one definitely won’t be for everybody, and I found it maddening at times, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Or Vanessa Redgrave.
8. Michael Cera plays an obnoxious American effete on a quest to do psychedelic drugs in Chile. His performance is quite the indictment of the average obtuse American abroad. The Chileans put up with their self-absorbed foreign friend – even accommodating his hasty invite (and ignoring his subsequent rude renege) of another American weirdo: a free-spirited hippie girl played by Gaby Hoffman. Sebastián Silva’s Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus (2013) is a funny and sweet road movie loaded with hallucinogenics and burgeoning maturity (in the form of realizing that other people have feelings and that maybe – just maybe – so do you).
7. In 1991, in an attempt to fight back against the growing democratization of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, communists within the government attempted a coup d’etat that resulted in a media blackout. Protestors in St. Petersburg listened to the radio and handed out flyers to keep appraised of the events unfolding. Ultimately, the military refused to betray the angry citizenry, and only a few months later the Soviet Union was dissolved. Sergei Loznitsa’s documentary, The Event (2015), utilizes wonderfully restored archival footage that places you in the thick of the confusion and mounting concern among the people in the square. The footage is punctuated by Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake which the detained Gorbachev had play over the airwaves during the coup.
6. I’m late to the party, but Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) is fun. It’s a meandering plot about a fading TV cowboy (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to get back in the game and his aimless stunt double (Brad Pitt) that is just filmed so well and so enjoyable to watch. Love him or hate him, Tarantino simply knows how to entertain, and his love letter to Hollywood on the cusp of the 1970s just encapsulates some of what American filmmaking does right. It mixes Hollywood history with a touch of revisionist fantasy in the same way that Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained did. It’s a bit of historical revisionism saving actress Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie) and thusly un-cancelling Roman Polanski. The film, apropos of nothing, asks, “but what if the Manson family went to the house next door instead and there was a stunt man on acid in there?” Perhaps it runs afoul of trivializing Tate’s tragic death and retroactively exonerating Polanski’s later pedophilic rape charges. And maybe all that’s insensitive and bad (maybe not nearly as insensitive and bad *and cringeworthy* as Zack Snyder using the song “Zombie” by The Cranberries), but it does make for one hell of a B-storyline for the main action to intersect with.
5. It’s worse than you think. Charles Ferguson’s documentary on the banking crisis and ensuing financial recession in America, Inside Job (2010), is a masterful chronicling of the powerful negative impacts of deregulation, political conflicts of interest, the mounting wealth gap, and just how and why these things keep happening. I wasn’t a fan of Adam McKay’s The Big Short. I dug J. C. Chandor’s Margin Call. But this is the best film to watch to get a fuller portrait of the scope and reverberations of the corruption within the American corporate and political spheres. Honestly, understanding this stuff is as important as knowing history and being familiar with the Abrahamic religions if you want to have a proper grasp on the western world and the current state of things.
4. Director, Charles Burnett, paints a unique South Central LA fairytale in To Sleep with Anger (1990). A good, God-fearing family extends their kindness and hospitality to a Southern drifter and old friend, Harry (fantastically acted by Danny Glover). Though they insist he is not an imposition, Harry’s weird superstitions, overbearing manners, and greasy friends soon implant something like a slow-burn voodoo virus (yet with the insidious veneer of plausible deniability) throughout the house, affecting the family’s health and testing their resolve. A delicious, atmospheric film with some great performances.
3. A young taciturn girl eventually called “Shula” (Maggie Mulubwa) randomly pops up in a small village and is immediately accused of being a witch – a claim she neither confirms nor denies at first – and is sent to a witch camp where she is the only child. I Am Not a Witch (2017), directed by Rungano Nyoni, is a brilliant Zambian satire on politics, superstition, gender roles, slavery, the media, and even the vacuousness of poverty tourism. Equal parts funny and tragic, I Am Not a Witch presents a harsh and familiar Kafkaesque world that left reason and humanity long behind.
2. Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail (1973) is the story of two foul-mouthed navy guys (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) assigned to escort a young simple seaman charged with theft (Randy Quaid) to Portsmouth Naval Prison. What follows is a gritty road trip where the power dynamics gradually lessen and the men connect more as men than as military personnel transporting a criminal. Their shared adventures bond them; all the while with the sad reality of their mission looming over their heads. Jack Nicholson gives an absolute masterclass in character acting. He feels so much a part of that dreary, cold world in which they are doomed to traverse. You simply can’t take your eyes off him. It’s also shot well and has a lot of personality and humor.
1. An unyieldingly bleak portrait of post-Soviet Russia, Aleksei Balabanov’s Brother (1997) is a low budget dark crime drama with a great contemporary rock soundtrack by Nautilus Pompilius. After serving military duty, aimless Danila Bagrov (Sergei Bodrov, Jr.) winds up in St. Petersburg to meet his successful big brother who, it turns out, is actually a hitman on increasingly thin ice with his frequent employer. Danila gets pulled into the seedy crime world and, with not much else going on, adapts rather quickly to his new deadly line of work. While Danila does become a violent force, his connections to the people in his new neighborhood lend his character added layers of humanity that make his journey all the more harsh. The film seemed to have captured the zeitgeist of the cultural mood at that time (I’ve had it recommended to me by multiple Russians who grew up in the 90s, and I’m glad I finally watched it). Produced on a tiny $10,000 budget, Brother became a cult hit and even got a sequel in 2000.
BONUS SHORTS
Keep your eyes on Andrew “All Gas No Brakes” Callaghan. He’s a true gonzo journalist, unafraid to penetrate into the heart of the overlooked parts of American culture. He’s Hunter S. Thompson meets Harmoney Korine and his latest effort, The Hoff Twins (2021), showcases his knack for lo-fi aesthetics and affection for captivating oddballs living life out on the fringes of society and presenting them for what they are, without commentary (just some editing). Subscribe to his YouTube channels. Watch his stuff.
Director Jonathan Glazer gets real weird in The Fall (2019). A strange mob of masked figures catches a man caught up a tree and sentences him to the well. It’s surreal, eerie, and fascinating. Fantastic sound design.
A little pirate girl and her faithful Teddy bear sail to New York City in Josephine Decker’s Me the Terrible (2012). Mischief is had and hijinks ensue. But too many shenanigans lead to loss. New York City is a dangerous place, after all. Childish and stylish, it’s a breezy little adventure complete with tricycle chases.
A bear hunter accidentally stumbles upon a portal to the afterlife in Helen Haig-Brown’s ?E?anx (The Cave) (2009). An interesting mix of First Nations mythology and science-fiction.
Two men love the same woman, but that woman, whilst studying the Earth’s core, learns that the planet is about to suffer a fatal heart attack in Guy Maddin’s Heart of the World (2000). It’s everything you come to expect from a Guy Maddin flick. Weird, funny, tragic, clever, creative, and looks like it was filmed a hundred years ago.
Animator and surrealist Suzan Pitt creates a spellbinding, psychosexual, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious art-piece and if none of that scares you away, then Asparagus (1979) is the animated short for you.
This Won't Be For Everyone 