Author: swampflix

Fences (2016)

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three star

I’m struggling to pinpoint exactly what people mean when they complain that the Denzel Washington-directed adaptation of August Wilson’s infamous work Fences never transcends its limitations as a filmed version of a stage play. I don’t necessarily disagree with the criticism, but it’s difficult to say exactly why not. Washington does an exceptional job of injecting motion in the film’s camera work when necessary, but bottling up the tension of most scenes in a cramped backyard for the majority of the runtime. I wouldn’t say that this aspect of the film is a “limitation;” it’s more of a necessity that heightens the claustrophobic nature of the material, a common aspect of the best filmed play adaptations I can conjure: The Bad Seed, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Birthday Party, etc. The massive volume of dialogue over the limited stage direction/action might also be a potential factor in that complaint as well, but it’d be foolish to ask for any less of the dramatic masterclass Denzel Washington & Viola Davis run in the their roles as a troubled married couple in 1950s Pittsburgh. The only thing I could point to in Fences, a movie produced from a screenplay Wilson himself penned before his death in 2005, that feels limited by its source material is the blatant way it approaches metaphor & symbolism. In any work written specifically for the screen, a line like “Some people build fences to keep people out, and some people build fences to keep people in,” would stick out like a sore thumb as being too obvious and unnatural. It’s a line that works within Fences‘s context as a stage play adaptation, though. It makes sense considering the project’s origins, but in a way that points to its limitations as an adaptation that other spacial or dialogue-based complaints don’t.

Within that spiritually uncinematic framework, Fences shines as an intense character study for an emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive father figure who stands as a tyrant in his own home. Troy Maxson, brought to life by a top-of-his-game Denzel, is a boisterous garbage man & former minor league baseball player who’s “got more stories than the Devil has sinners.” In the world at large, Troy is trivialized, diminished, and overtly oppressed. Even as a garbage man, he’s second class to white garbage men. At his home and on his block, though, he rules over his subjects like a tyrannical king. The entire mood of the home depends on whatever whim Troy is currently following. When he’s loudly bullshitting about physically conquering the personification of Death in a literal wrestling match (another moment of stage play artificiality), his proud command of everyone’s attention means lifted spirits and a moment of ease. When he’s frustratedly stomping around his modest domain looking for something to be angry about, his small world cowers under the threat of his potential abuses. The world has treated Troy like total shit, but Fences makes it clear that his perpetuation of that cycle of abuse within his own home is inexcusable. His wife Rose, played by an equally top shape Viola Davis, can barely hold the family together under the oppressive weight of Troy’s demanding, selfish persona. She constantly preparesq meals within the couple’s cramped kitchen throughout the film as an exercise of peacekeeping that can only last for so long before Troy topples it over in a fit of misdirected rage.

Well, I thought August Wilson’s construction of Troy as a villainous presence within his own home was a clear intent at the heart of Fences, anyway. Much to my horror, a significant portion of the audience surrounding me at our screening of Fences was mumbling in agreement with many of Troy’s tirades. I don’t know if he reminded them if their own father figures or of their own badly dealt hand in life, but Troy’s obvious (to me) caricature of Toxic Masculinity Personified was somehow lost on a large portion of that room. So maybe that points to my initial complaint that the blatant metaphor of stage play dramas being too obvious for naturalistic cinema being just as off-base as any other choices Denzel Washington made in his adaptation of a play he obviously reveres on a deeply personal level. Pushing aside any concerns with Fences‘s uncinematic tone, strange sense of pacing, and iffy final moments of redemption for a despicably cruel character (that seems to go even further than the source material in their cautious forgiveness), there’s a lot worth praising in what Washington & his small cast of supporting players accomplish here. Besides the obvious merit of bringing a play he greatly respects to a much wider audience who would not have had the opportunity to see he & Davis perform on stage, Washington does the quintessential thing actors-turned-directors are often accused of: crafting a work as an actor’s showcase above all other concerns. I may have some reservations about Fences being suitable for a big screen adaptation on a tonal, almost spiritual level (although I do very much appreciate the play as a text), but there’s no denying the power of the performances Washington brings to the screen with the project. The film is very much worth a look just for that virtue alone. I’m just afraid the massive audience he brought it to might have identified more with his monstrous performance as Troy more than he intended, thanks to Denzel’s inherent Movie Star™ charm. The people surrounding me responded that way, anyway, and it was just as terrifying to hear as anything Troy had to say onscreen.

-Brandon Ledet

Episode #21 of The Swampflix Podcast: The Top Films of 2016

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inaworld

Welcome to Episode #21 of The Swampflix Podcast! For our twenty-first episode, the first of the year & by far our longest to date, Brandon & CC welcome back former co-host James Cohn to count down their favorite movies of 2016. We don’t want to spoil what everyone’s individual Top Ten choices were in this description, but here’s a glimpse of what the official Swampflix’s Top Films of 2016 list would’ve looked like with the podcast crew’s input:

1. The Witch
2. 10 Cloverfield Lane
3. Moonlight
4. Arrival
5. Kubo and the Two Strings
6. Midnight Special
7. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
8. The Handmaiden
9. The Nice Guys
10. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Brandon’s Top Films of 2016 list is already available for anyone who wants to read it, but to hear what CC & James loved from last year (and to hear Brandon defend outlier choices like Nerve & Tale of Tales) give the episode a listen below. Enjoy!

-Brandon Ledet, CC Chapman, and James Cohn

A Monster Calls (2016)

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fourstar

It’s difficult to say objectively if A Monster Calls is likely to resonate with most audiences the way it did with me at the exact moment I happened to catch it in theaters. The very same week the fantasy-leaning cancer drama reached New Orleans I had lost my grandmother to an aggressive form of cancer and, at the time I’m writing this review, she still has not yet been memorialized with a funeral. The wounds are still fresh in a lot of ways, so I don’t have enough critical distance to say if this dark children’s fantasy about “a boy too old to be a kid and too young to be a man” struggling with the gradual loss of his young mother to failed chemotherapy treatments is truly the emotionally impactful, thematically complex filmgoing experience I found it to be. I can only say for sure that A Monster Calls is admirable in the brave ways it tackles issues of frustration, resentment, and self-conflict that wreak havoc on families who are hit with this kind of loss through prolonged illness. The film’s multi-faceted, sugarcoat-free discussion of how grief can be destructive long before it’s cathartic is not the thematic territory typically expected of a kids’ movie featuring a talking tree, but A Monster Calls fearlessly dives head first into those troubled waters and emerges as a hauntingly beautiful experience for taking that leap, one that arrived at the exact moment I needed it.

Liam Neeson voices the titular monster in this dark fantasy drama, a talking tree that visits a young boy each time he wakes from the recurring nightmare of physically letting his mother go while holding her hand at the edge of a cliff. The mother (Felicity Jones, who in all honesty gets just as little character development here as she does in Rogue One) is losing her battle with a rapidly progressing cancer; the boy is being physically bullied at school by the one kid who bothers to notice him; and the rest of the family struggles to figure out what to do with him now that his only attentive parent is at the verge of death. The tree monster solves none of these problems. He only awakes to tell the boy three seemingly unrelated stories (illustrated in beautiful watercolor-style animation) about dragons, kings, suicide, magic . . . pretty much nothing to do with his current predicament. Instead of smiting the boy’s enemies and bringing his mother back from the brink of death, the tree monster merely teaches him a few harsh life lessons: that sometimes life is a cheat, that sometimes good people do horrifically bad things, that sometimes “bad” people can do good, that terrible things often happen for no reason at all. The monster coaches the child through a tough moral gray area and, in the process, allows him to admit & accept some less-than-honorable feelings he’d been repressing about his mother’s impending death before it’s too late.

Besides the obvious reasons why I would connect with this kind of a cancer-themed familial drama at this time in my life, A Monster Calls also appeals to me directly by evoking the same brutal honesty & melancholy tone I found solace in with the similar dark children’s fantasies Paperhouse & MirrorMask. In all three films, young British children process real world emotional grief in a harsh dream space of their own artistic design. A Monster Calls joins this tradition, which unfortunately has a bad critical & financial track record, with a morally ambiguous tale of how there are no easy answers to the ways we process loss and how you’re not always going to be proud of the things you do, say, or feel in your worst moments of grief. It’s the exact kind of thoughtful, morally complex narratives I look for in my children’s media combined with a distinct visual palette (complete with a muscular tree butt for some reason) and impeccable timing, arriving just when I needed to wrestle with my own conflicted modes of grief. I may not be able to discuss A Monster Calls objectively due to my own recent familial loss, but I can say that it’s a deeply relevant & revelatory experience when you’re in that very particular, very fragile state of grief & mourning. There’s just some things about life that you need to hear from Liam Neeson dressed up like a talking tree to fully grasp, I suppose. It worked for me, anyway.

-Brandon Ledet

The Late, Great Planet Mirth V: Future Tense (1990), and a Jeremiad for America

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three star

Welcome to The Late Great Planet Mirth, an ongoing series in which a reformed survivor of PreMillenialist Dispensationalism explores the often silly, occasionally absurd, and sometimes surprisingly compelling tropes, traits, and treasures of films about the Rapture. Get caught up in it with us!

As the end of the world approaches, it’s time to get back into the swing of things with a look at more premillenialist dispensational fearmongering with Future Tense. I thought about moving on to the older tetralogy of Rapture flicks that I remember from rainy recesses at Christian school, starting with 1972’s Thief in the Night, but those films are harder to track down, so I went with this 1990 half-hour evangelism video instead. Tense was produced and distributed by Mars Hill Productions shortly after that ministry’s 1988 split from their parent organization, Youth for Christ/Houston, following the division’s formation in 1977. The plot, such as it is, concerns newly born again student Michael Cummings (A.J. Merrill), who joined the Christian faith after leaving his atheistic home for college. His attempts to share this good news are rebuffed by his parents, so he records a tape in order to preach at them without interruption tell them about his newfound Savior and warn them about a spooky metaphorical dream he had about the Rapture, and how they can avoid being left behind.

Of particular interest is the way that this film was created as a proselytization aid and how that actually informs the viewing experience in a positive way. The Apocalypse series shows the Rapture event happening very early, and is largely concerned with the Tribulation period that follows and how new converts will have to live in that supposed future; the Left Behind series (both the books and films) were also more invested in what follows the Rapture than being prepared for it, and when we talk about the Thief series soon we’ll see many of these same ideas. For all that Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins, Hal Lindsey, and their ilk may like to think of themselves as selfless Jeremiahs come to warn unbelievers of a doomy future and by their warning save the lost, there’s a sense of smugness that pervades their work, a depraved (and frankly unChristian) desire not to save souls from damnation but lord their rightness over them. They don’t look forward to the Rapture because they’ll finally be with God, they look forward to being proven right in their eschatology: “We were right and you were wrong, so get ready for Wormwood and Babylon, sinners.” Future Tense, for all that it may fail to adequately connect with an audience that is not already “Rapture Ready” is genuinely and earnestly concerned with the viewer’s salvation, for better or worse. Despite its short run time (which, like Apocalypse and many films created for Christians to use as evangelism tools, includes a montage sequence during which your Christian friend showing you this video is supposed to offer to pray with you), Future Tense crams in more humanity than the entire Left Behind oeuvre, which should be properly lauded.

Also notable in this film is that Michael’s father (John Shannon) voices many of the secular—as opposed to scriptural—objections to Rapture ideology that PMDs hear in the real world, making this one of the more realistic Rapture flicks, although this does not render the short without flaw. The purveyors of this kind of Christian media exist within such an ideological echo chamber that they seem unable to actually comprehend that the viewing audience isn’t already invested in their worldview and the beliefs thereof. For instance, in one scene Michael’s father states that “For as long as [he] can remember” there have been doomsayers predicting the end of the world, and he’s right! For instance, Hilary of Poitiers, whose Commentarius in Evangelium Matthaei is the oldest complete extant Latin commentary on Matthew, predicted that the world would end in 365 CE. When we get to Thief in the Night, we’ll see a Lindsey-influenced PMD pastor state that the then-impending 1980s apocalypse must mean that the Antichrist was already politically active in that film’s production year of 1972; Martin of Tours said essentially the same thing: “There is no doubt that the Antichrist has already been born. Firmly established already in his early years, he will, after reaching maturity, achieve supreme power.” Of course, Martin was predicting a world expiration date of 400 CE, a good fifteen centuries earlier than Lindsey. All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

The filmmakers, of course, don’t intend for Michael’s father to be seen as a voice of reason; his protestations are supposed to ring hollow in the ears of True Believers™, but the producers fail to consider that the real intended audience, the unsaved, needs to be presented with some kind of rebuttal to Mr. Cummings’s rhetoric if they’re going to be swayed by this video. His smugness is undoubtedly meant to be read as the most deleterious form of prideful arrogance: the kind that damns others as well as oneself. We’re meant to pity him and his family because they will be left behind and because he refuses to listen to his son, but what aspect of his recounting of historical apocalypse hoaxes is inaccurate? What concerns does he have that don’t demand an answer, one which the evangelist should be ready to present? Ultimately, the fact that counter arguments are invoked but not discussed undermines the intended message.

Instead, what we are left with as a result is less a sermon than a text that can be read as an unintentional short-form presentation about one man’s mental illness, and how his fanaticism about his newfound faith and the accompanying dreams (or hallucinations, if you will) have a harrowing effect on his relationship with his family. He calls his parents, anxiously weeping and begging his parents to join his religious sect, warning them that, if they do not come to believe what he does, they will suffer. His younger sister is affected most strongly by these warnings, becoming paranoid about the end of the world. After all, Michael is her older brother; she respects and admires him. Couldn’t he be right? Mr. Cummings, unsure of how to deal with his son’s deteriorating sanity and worried for his daughter, forbids discussion of this Rapture nonsense in his home. And there’s Mrs. Cummings, caught in the middle, so desperate to reach out to her beloved firstborn but unable to do so because every phone call ends in admonitions and premonitions of darkness to come. When she refuses to play along, he sends them a recording of his ramblings so that they can’t interrupt his stream-of- consciousness diatribe.

That’s not the story that Mars Hill set out to make, but that’s what’s on screen.

So, what have we learned from Future Tense? We’ve learned that PMD media can be genuinely human when it focuses less on shaming those who will be left behind and more on building the flock. We’ve learned that a fundamental misunderstanding of (or an unconscious unwillingness to empathize with) the intended audience can turn an evangelistic parable into a dire warning about the perils of religious susceptibility. But most of all we’ve learned that, if your loved ones won’t listen to you, the best solution is to give them an audio cassette and an ultimatum.

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“A jeremiad is a long literary work, usually in prose, but sometimes in verse, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society’s imminent downfall.” – definition via Wikipedia

A tangent here, if you will indulge me. There is no mention of the “Antichrist” in Future Tense, although that figure is often a major player in most of these films. We live in dark days, and whether or not we (as individuals or as a nation) emerge from the next four years at all is in question. I have to ask, what is the Antichrist? Many modern Christians interpret the term to mean a singular entity, even though this is . . . not really textually accurate. A more correct reading is that the term describes a system of ideas that are antithetical to the actual teachings of Jesus, such as: condemning usury and calling upon money lenders to forsake their trade and follow him; finding the image of God in the faces of the sick, the elderly, and those of a foreign land, and caring for them as one would for Christ himself; rebuking the adherents of a religious doctrine that curried political favor by supporting the oppressor and the status quo; encouraging de-escalation as the truest means of seeking peace; discouraging the accumulation of wealth at the expense of the destitute; and, most importantly, loving one’s neighbor, without caveat. I never wanted to be Hal Lindsey or Martin of Tours, but let me say this now while we are still here: the spirit of the Antichrist is very much alive in our current social and political systems, and within the religion which claims to follow Christ. If there is a physical embodiment of that spirit, his ascension is upon us. It’s enough to make a man consider conversion.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Always Shine (2016)

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twohalfstar

I first heard of the psychological horror cheapie Always Shine when its director, Sophia Takal, mentioned in an interview on the Lady Problems podcast that she was annoyed by its constant comparisons with the Alex Ross Perry film Queen of Earth, since the two works were produced simultaneously & independently. She even suggested in the interview that Perry may have read the screenplay for her film before writing his own, lightly suggesting that their coincidental parallels might not be so coincidental after all. As I pointed out when I labeled 2014 as The Year of the Doppelgänger, it’s not at all uncommon for doppelgänger films to find their own unlikely doppelgängers in the world. In fact, it’s an eerily frequent occurrence. If you can recall back a full year, though, Queen of Earth was highly rated around here as one of our Top Films of 2015, so seeing a smaller, less celebrated work that might have influenced its production was an exciting prospect for me. Unfortunately, I can only add to Takal’s frustration by admitting that Always Shine was only interesting to me as a comparison point for Perry’s superiorly executed work, and only barely so.

Always Shine opens with two striking, tightly framed monologues that codify its two main characters, played by recognizable-from-TV-roles actors Mackenzie Davis & Caitlin FitzGerald, as a demurely feminine waif & an “unladylike” take-no-shit brute. Best friends, but professional rivals in their acting careers, the two women often find themselves competing for roles, much to the detriment of their personal relationship. The demurely feminine character is rewarded for her sheepishness by the men who control her life: lovers, casting directors, strangers, etc. The confident one is punished for her perceived unfeminine brashness and is professionally unsuccessful as a result, despite being the more talented actor. This tension comes to a head when the two friends vacation together in a remote locale in Southern California, igniting a bottled up nightmare of competitive jealousies that results in a violent confrontation & a disorienting psychological break. Any tension lurking under the surface of their friendship is made explicitly clear & insurmountably cruel, leading the two women to a breaking point that cannot be mended once it’s reached.

I like the basic structure & themes of this narrative and both Davis & FitzGerald are exceptionally well suited for their respective roles. That’s about where my appreciation for Always Shine stops. The gloriously disorienting opening, where you can’t tell where an actor’s audition ends & the real world begins, is a great window into where the film will eventually go once it gets its plot rolling. However, that style of stilted, unnatural dialogue continues throughout the film’s entire length, never allowing either of its central characters to feel like a real person, since you can feel the screenwriter’s fingerprints on every word they deliver. The characters are way too cleanly categorized, to the point where the more confident one says something to the effect of, “If I weren’t a woman . . .” in at least the first three conversations she participates in. This clean cut stageyness bleeds into the way the film’s pinnacle psychological break is depicted as well. Unlike with Queen of Earth, there’s never any question of what a character is imagining & what is “really” happening. This means that its blend of identities & indulgences in fantasy signify nothing in any given moment, since it’s always evident they’ll have no effect on the “true” plotline. Worst yet, the film is overly impatient with its own sense of mood. As soon as the opening credits it begins an assault of quick, abrasive edits that scream “Don’t worry! This is Art Horror! It’ll get weird!” between calm scenes of dialogue that deserve a less oppressive hand in how they’re delivered. In attempting dread & disorientation, the atmosphere-evoking cuts of Always Shine feel like an obnoxious joke at th the expense of artsy horror films as a genre instead of a genuine participation in that aesthetic.

I really wanted to like Always Shine. It’s got all the necessary resources to put together a memorably eerie psychological horror picture, especially in its performances & its basic themes. It just falls flat so miserably in both its screenplay & editing choices that it’s difficult to get on its side. As frustrating as it must be for Takal to continually hear, the film is too reminiscent of Queen of Earth not to draw the comparison and, in all honesty, it often plays like an awful parody version of that far superior work. That’s not the only point of comparison that makes it look like a weak substitute for the genuine thing, either. Persona, an influence both films obviously owe a lot to, smartly jumbles its psychological break in a way that cannot be easily, neatly understood the same way Always Shine‘s can. The Neon Demon does a far better job filtering feminine jealousy & competition through an unrealistic art horror lens. Felt has a much firmer handle on the way feminist themes can be discussed openly & even viciously in a broken psyche narrative while still feeling like natural, human dialogue. Creep, Joshy, The One I Love, The Invitation, and The Overnight all top this near-miss in turning California wilderness locales into emotional hellscapes of isolation & hurt feelings. None of these movies’ successes dictate that Always Shine has no right to exist in the world as its own separate work of art. They just point to the various ways the film’s promising formula falls flat in an embarrassing way, Queen of Earth especially so.

-Brandon Ledet

Swampflix’s Top Films of 2016

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1. The Witch – A cinematic masterpiece from the first frame to the last, The Witch at once acts like a newly-discovered Nathaniel Hawthorne short story, a “Hansel & Gretel” type fairy tale about the dangers of the wild, a slice of Satanic panic folklore, and an impressively well-researched historical account of witchcraft unmatched in its eerie beauty since at least as far back as 1922’s Häxan. Despite its historical nature and Puritan setting, this film will make your skin crawl with dread. Each captured moment is elegant and haunting, transporting the audience back to the 17th Century and tempting those along for the ride to question their sanity. The Witch is a true New England American Gothic piece. It sidesteps the mushy romances and familial dramas typically set in New England, one of the most beautiful areas of the country, in favor of a spine-chilling Satanic tale that features dense layers of historical & moral subtext, an amazing soundtrack of ominous ambient sounds, and a breakout star in its scene-stealing goat, the almighty Black Phillip. It’s not the usual terror-based entertainment you’d pull from more typical horror works about haunted houses or crazed killers who can’t be stopped, but even as a beautiful, slow-building art film & a mood piece it just might be the spookiest movie of 2016.

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2. 10 Cloverfield Lane – Far better than it has any right to be, this sequel in-name-only combines elements of horror, sci-fi, and the supernatural thriller to craft an intimate, difficult-to-categorize indictment of doomsday prepper culture. In a year that saw an excess of great confined-space thrillers (Green Room, Don’t Breathe, Emelie, Hush, The Shallows, The Invitation) 10 Cloverfield Lane stands above the rest by locking its audience in the basement with a small cast of fearful apocalypse survivors and a complexly monstrous John Goodman. Relentlessly & intoxicatingly tense, this Louisiana-set woman-in-captivity horror will rattle you in a way that its 2008 found footage predecessor never even approached. It will disturb you, surprise you, and confirm your deepest fears about “survival” nuts’ ugly thirst for post-apocalyptic power grabs, largely thanks to a career-altering performance from someone we formerly knew as the cool dad from Roseanne.

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3. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping – The pop music version of This Is Spinal Tap, Andy Samberg’s greatest achievement to date thoroughly skewers the totality of hedonistic excess & outsized hubris on the modern pop music landscape. In a larger sense, it also functions as an incisive & withering dissection of the dreamy pop culture star-making machine as the industrial complex that it really is. Popstar can be easily dismissed as a profoundly stupid film. In its smaller moments, it often delivers the quintessential mindless humor we all need to endure this increasingly shitty life & its throwaway consumer culture. There’s legitimate criticism lurking under its frivolously parodic mockumentary surface, though. Popstar smartly & lovingly dismantles the entirety of pop’s current state of ridiculousness, from EDM DJ laziness to Macklemore’s no-homo “activism” to the meaninglessness of hip-hop that apotheosizes empty materialism to the industry’s creepy fetishization of military action & nationalism. Do yourself a favor and at least download the song “Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song)” to sample the film’s well-calibrated sense of pointed, yet absurd satirical humor.

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4. The Boy – There’s really no pleasure quite like a campy horror movie about a haunted evil doll. Not every scary movie is (or ought to be) the next big thing in horror, and The Boy is fairly run of the mill in its light supernatural tomfoolery. That is, until a sharp left turn in its third act completely obliterates its more generic psychological/supernatural slowburn to delve into some utterly bonkers motherfuckery that should be a crowdpleaser among all schlock junkies looking for entertainment in pure novelty. The Boy delivers both the genuinely creepy chills and the over-the-top camp that we crave in our horror flicks, ultimately feeling like two memorable genre pictures for the price of one. In its own goofy way, it completely upends what we’ve come to expect from the modern PG-13 evil doll movie as a genre in recent years, offering a surprise breath of fresh air in its last minute deviation from the norm.

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5. Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday – Our favorite Netflix Original in a year that saw many, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is essentially Pee-wee’s Big Adventure on a Big Top Pee-wee scale & budget, which is all that Pee-Wee Herman fans could really ask for in a direct-to-streaming release after a 30 year gap. Following a giant Rube Goldberg device of a plot, with each chain reaction proving to be just as kooky (or even kookier) than the last, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday’s most immediately endearing aspect might be the love story of the year: a steamy bromance between Pee-wee Herman and Joe Manganiello (who are both billed as playing themselves). Manganiello enters the scene as a living embodiment of a Tom of Finland drawing on a motorcycle and the queer subtext certainly doesn’t end there, eventually blossoming into a really sweet, very romantic story about two souls who just can’t get enough of each other. We can’t get enough of those two either. In fact, we’re ready for a sequel!

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6. Tale of Tales – In a world full of fairy tale media (Once Upon a Time, Disney Princess movies, live action remakes of Disney Princess movies, etc), it’s a curious thing that more keeps getting made, and that so much of it is adapted from the same tales we already know. Adapted instead from the more rarely-seen source of 17th century Italian fairy tales that fell into obscurity, Tale of Tales is narratively unique, visually striking, morbidly funny, brutally cold: everything you could ask for from a not-all-fairy-tales-are-for-children corrective. The film fearlessly alternates between the grotesque & the beautiful, the darkly funny & the cruelly tragic. Its cinematography as well as its set & costume design will make you wonder how something so delicately pretty can be so willing to get so spiritually ugly at the drop of a hat (or a sea beast’s heart). There is no Disney-brand fantasy to be found here, only black magic, witches, ogres, and giant insects, each waiting to stab you in the back with a harsh life lesson about the dangers & evils of self-absorption once you let your guard down in a dreamlike stupor.

7. Kubo and the Two Strings – The latest masterful offering from the stop-motion animation marvels Laika is pure, gorgeous art. The puppetry is incredible, an overwhelming triumph in Laika’s continued attention to detail in visual & narrative craft. At heart a story about the power of storytelling & the ways memory functions like potent magic, Kubo and the Two Stings finds inspiration in Japanese folklore & the rich cinematic past of samurai epics to craft an immense visual spectacle and to explore dramatic themes of past trauma & familial loss. This allows for a darkness & a danger sometimes missing in the modern kids’ picture, but what Laika most deserves bragging rights for is the mind-boggling way they pulled off this awe-inspiringly beautiful innovation in the moving image, the most basic aspect of filmmaking.

8. Hail, Caesar! – Would that it were so simple to sum up this movie’s charms. A smart, star-studded, intricately-plotted, politically & theologically thoughtful, genuinely hilarious, and strikingly gorgeous movie about The Movies, Hail, Caesar! might be one of the Coen Brothers’ strongest works to date. Much like with Barton Fink, the Coens look back to the Old Hollywood studio system in Hail, Caesar! as a gateway into discussing the nature of what they do for living as well as the nature of Nature at large. In the process, they perfectly capture Old Hollywood’s ghost. There’s the hyperbolic threat of Communism, ancient Hollywood scandals, endlessly moody directors, a musical number featuring a tap-dancing Channing Tatum and, behind it all, an unsung hero just trying to hold everything together off-camera. Hail, Caesar! is not only worthwhile for being loaded with its stunningly beautiful tributes to Old Hollywood, however; it’s also pretty damn hilarious in a subtle, quirky way that’s becoming a rare treat on the modern comedy landscape.

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9. Midnight Special – Focused more on mood than worldbuilding, Jeff Nichols’s sci-fi chase epic mirrors the best eras of genre cinema giants Steven Spieldberg & John Carpenter. Midnight Special is surprisingly accessible for an original sci-fi property, never getting wrapped up in the complex terminologies and detached-from-reality scenarios that often alienate audiences in the genre. This may be the Nichols’s most ambitious work to date in terms of scale, but he’s smart to keep the individual parts that carry the hefty, supernatural mystery of its narrative just as small & intimate as he has in past familial dramas like Mud & Shotgun Stories. You never lose sight that these are real people struggling with an unreal situation. And, if nothing else, a world-weary Michael Shannon’s studied command of his role as the father of a child with godlike, unexplainable powers is something truly special, a grounded, believable performance that everyone should witness at least once.

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10. Hunt for the Wilderpeople – The story of a young boy going on the lam in the New Zealand bush with his reluctantly adoptive uncle after a devastating tragedy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople very nearly tops Boy for Taika Waititi’s best feature to date, mixing small, endearing character beats with the large scale spectacle of a big budget action comedy. We all need a good laugh this year; we also need a good cry. Fortunately, Wilderpeople has both! It’s funny, cute, and even twee in a way that sometimes resembles a Wes Anderson movie, but there’s also a certain darkness to the film that doesn’t shy away from real life consequences or scathing political satire. Many people have rightly latched onto this adventure epic as one of the most consistently funny comedies of recent memory (with a surprisingly gruff comedic turn from Sam Neill registering as especially cherishable), but there’s so much more going on in the film than a mere assemblage of a long string of jokes.

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Honorable Mentions – Here are a few films we loved that just missed our collective Best Of list: The Handmaiden, Moonlight, Arrival, Shin Godzilla, Ghostbusters, and Keanu. They may not have made our Top Ten, but they’re each worthy of praise & attention in their own various ways.

Read Alli’s picks here.
Read Boomer’s picks here.
Read Brandon’s picks here & here.
Read Britnee’s picks here.

-The Swampflix Crew

Nude on the Moon (1961)

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While we were performing our various autopsies on the best movies we watched in 2016, I noticed something embarrassing about my own viewing habits. Out of the near-400 films I watched last year, less than 40, a mere 10%, were directed by women. As a minor corrective to this massive oversight, I’ve decided to take the 52 Films by Women pledge this year, a very simplistic resolution that only urges that you watch one film a week directed by a filmmaker. It’s very little to ask of someone who watches film with any regularity, but I think it’s an important means of consciously paying attention to who’s behind the camera in your media production. My first step in achieving this goal, and my first viewing experience of this year overall, is proof positive that this 52 Films by Women pledge will in no way limit the variety of films I’m watching in terms of genre, style, or content; it will only make sure that a woman is behind them. The light sci-fi nudie cutie Nude on the Moon, directed by undercelebrated sexploitation filmmaker Doris Wishman (under the psuedonym Anthony Brooks), is not likely to be a typical inclusion on most people’s 52 Films by Women lists. It was a solid start for the year in my mind, though, considering how much it tickled my lowbrow sensibilities.

Two amateur rocket scientists tinker away with vaguely defined bleep bloop machines & chem lab beakers in order to pull off a self-funded trip to the moon. Ignoring the all-too-obvious romantic desire of his sheepish, but buxom secretary, the youngest scientist buries his head in his work until an inheritance payment from a deceased uncle fully funds the trip, newly energizing the ultra-macho nerd. The two-man expedition to the moon goes beautifully smooth . . . almost too beautifully smooth. The men land in a crater teeming with unexpected treasures: water, plants, “moon gold,” and, most treasurable of all, half-naked space aliens. The citizens of the moon are beautiful humanoid specimens, both male & female, who wear only shiny lamé booty shorts & dumb little antennas that allow for telepathic communication. Much like in the similar erotic fantasy piece Cat-Women of the Moon, they follow a matriarchal Moon Queen, except in this case the monarch is topless & means no harm for the Earthmen. Our two rocket scientist heroes frolic in this nudist colony for as long as they’re allowed, then return to Earth unharmed, but without proof of what they’ve witnessed. The only thing that’s changed upon their return is that the hunkier professor finally notices that his adoring secretary looks an awful lot like his beloved Moon Queen (both roles were played by an actress billed simply as “Marietta”) and he rapturously returns her affection.

As the title suggests, there’s not much more to Nude on the Moon than an indulgence in light-hearted kitsch. The main innovation Doris Wishman brings to the post-Immoral Mr. Teas nudie cutie genre is in transporting the typical nude colony setting to an extraterrestrial locale. Adding a sci-fi touch to its genre’s flimsy excuses to leer at beautiful, naked bodies makes the film a memorable novelty, especially in its dinky rocket ship model & ASMR telepathic space alien whispers. Nude on the Moon is careful not to frame its actors in the same shot as its kids’ science fair project moon rocket, which is only shown from a distance. We do get a close look at the astronauts’ space suits, though, which feature exposed skin where the helmet doesn’t meet the body and vaguely resemble either the green Power Ranger’s 90s getup or The History of Future Folk, I can’t decide. The dialogue is exactly as goofy as you’d expect, given the circumstances. For instance, an astronaut points for his Earth-buddy to notice a ladder that’s leaning on a wall, only to tell him in perfect deadpan, “This leads to the top of the wall.” All of this cheap sci-fi silliness combines with an original lounge crooner number “Moon Doll,” set to a a picturesque, starry sky moonscape, to pad out the film’s opening half, which has been tasked with the dubious honor of entertaining audiences before the film delivers on the nudity promised in the title. It’s all delightfully inane.

Don’t be surprised if when I recap the films I watched for the 52 Films by Women pledge at the end of the year, over half of my selections are Doris Wishman productions. Although this light nudie cutie territory is far-removed from the nastier “roughies” genre pictures her career would eventually devolve into (strangely mirroring Russ Meyer’s own sexploitation career path), it was wildly entertaining stuff. Making an interesting picture solely out of near-nude actors & cheap sci-fi effects is a much more difficult kind of genre film alchemy than you might imagine. Although Nude on the Moon didn’t quite match my enthusiasm for the less bawdy, but similar-in-spirit Cat-Women of the Moon, it was still a delightful novelty and I can’t wait to see what else Wishman delivered with that innate understanding of what makes this kind of half-cooked frivolity so appealing to audiences like me.

-Brandon Ledet

Hurricane Bianca (2016)

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It’s honestly not at all fair for me to make this comparison, since Bianca Del Rio (the drag persona of local boy-made-good Roy Haylock) was already a success long before she appeared on the show, but the campy drag queen comedy Hurricane Bianca feels like a sketch from RuPaul’s Drag Race stretched to a feature length film. The comedy sketches have never been the highlight of that show, which is more about fashion artistry & reality show competition than drag-themed SNL skits, but every now & then the right performer can make them worthwhile. Bianca Del Rio was already a fully developed talent by the time she arrived at (and won) Drag Race, so selling the comedy in the show’s aggressively corny bits was second nature to her. She actually might be the most over-qualified queen in the history of the show to helm a feature length broad comedy like Hurricane Bianca, which is even below such prestige-free ventures as SNL‘s Superstar & It’s Pat! movies in terms of production quality. Cameos & bit roles from Drag Race standouts like Willam, Alyssa Edwards, and RuPaul himself (out of drag, as a weatherman) only reinforce the film’s general expanded Drag Race sketch vibe and your enjoyment in (and patience with) Hurricane Bianca might depend largely on how much fun you have with that aspect of the show.

Presented as a storybook fairy tale (or, in the film’s terms, the tale of a fairy), Hurricane Bianca stars Haylock as a queer high school teacher from NYC who’s forced to find work in rural Texas to make do. Headed by an unusually hateful Rachel Dratch (applying her trademark SNL-style mugging to her role as a bigoted bully), the group of Conservative Texans this hopeless nerd science teacher/failed stand-up comedian interlopes reject him outright as a pariah (“There’s something queer about him. I just can’t put my finger on it.”) and our put-upon hero once again finds himself jobless. Then, in a plot straight out of an aborted Adam Sandler screenplay, the teacher gets re-hired at the same school as a woman, adopting his meant-to-be Bianca Del Rio persona almost 2/3rds into the runtime. Del Rio presents a dichotomy where drag equals confidence and the teacher transforms from a timid nerd to an instant queen bitch. Her Don Rickles insult-clown routine destroys the false superiority of Dratch’s evil bigot antagonist and the teen bullies who do such delightful things as take “Smear the queer” selfies with the one openly gay student in their school, whom they abuse daily. Strangely mirroring the third act of The Dressmaker, Hurricane Bianca gradually transforms into an absurd revenge fantasy in which drag queens have their day and the evil Texan Christians are put in their place by such cartoonish weapons as Bugs Bunny gags & surprise swarms of bees.

It’s difficult to say if Hurricane Bianca works as a starmaker for Del Rio, since it is such a for-fans-only proposition. The film is so cartoonishly silly & unapologetically queer that it’s bound to appeal to a very limited subset of camp-minded dorks, likely the exact crowd who would have followed Bianca’s career closely enough to hear about this very minor release in the first place. It very much feels like a SNL movie or a WWE Studios production in that way and, as a trash-gobbling dork myself, I would love nothing more than for Drag Race as a brand to keep making small scale movies that appeal only to its own insular audience (starting with Alyssa Edwards’s Ambrosia Salad character from this film, preferably). Within that limited scope framework, Hurricane Bianca is a resounding success. It provides Del Rio with a larger platform for her insult comedy, gives Haylock an excuse to appear out of drag to hopefully expand his familiarity, and actually has a surprisingly political bent to it between its sillier moments, especially in the way it spoofs the bigotry of Texan Christianity & attempts to provide hope for queer high school students who are continually bullied by their peers. I can’t say that if you aren’t already on board with Del Rio that you will be surprised & won over by what Hurricane Bianca provides. If you’re already a fan & you don’t often find yourself fast-forwarding through the sketch comedy bits on RuPaul’s Drag Race, however, you’ll likely have a gay ol’ time.

-Brandon Ledet

Brandon’s Top Campy Treasures & Trashy Comedies of 2016

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1. The Mermaid – At heart, The Mermaid is a very basic tale of “evil” humans learning that making money isn’t necessarily more worthwhile than simple universal needs like clean, unpolluted water & air. What’s fascinating is the way that director Steven Chow (of Kung Fu Hustle fame) tells this story through a kaleidoscope of different cinematic genres. Part earnest romcom, part heartbreaking drama about environmental destruction, part spoof of the 60s super-spy genre, The Mermaid is a bizarre, hilarious, wonderfully idiosyncratic live action cartoon that might stand as the director’s most satisfying work to date. Chow’s hyper-specific & increasingly focused comedic lens feels like a melting pot of aesthetics that establishes him as a sort of goofball auteur. At different times throughout The Mermaid, I felt sincere romance, I laughed until I was physically sore, and I sat in abject terror as the movie took a nastily violent turn in his portrayal of just how evil humanity can be. Like most parody artists (or at least most of the ones who are good at what they do) Chow has an innate sense of how genre tropes work & how they can be repurposed for varying effects. The film requires a leap of faith in its opening minutes, but once you get into its cartoonish, almost psychedelic groove it’s greatly rewarding as a slapstick comedic fantasy with a charming interspecies man-and-mermaid romance & a unique visual palette, one that puts its cheap CGI to profoundly effective & deeply silly use.

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2. The Greasy Strangler – As a creature feature, The Greasy Strangler undeniably delivers the goods. Although a decidedly camp-minded comedy, it boasts a truly hideous, horrifying, grease-coated monster that’s sickening to behold. What I find much more unique, however, is the way the film satirizes and sets aflame the modern indie romance genre. The color palette & social awkwardness of titles like Juno or Napoleon Dynamite (or whatever their post-aughts equivalent would be) is meticulously recreated here, but employed for a grotesque effect. This is quirk used for pure evil. Within seconds the antagonistic humor of this dirt cheap indie horror comedy establishes itself as the definition of not-for-everyone, but it shouldn’t feel too out of step for folks who’ve spent enough time following Adult Swim’s ever-evolving line-up over the years. I wouldn’t fault anyone who disliked the film for being cruel, grotesque, or aggressively stupid. Those claims would all certainly be valid. As a nasty slasher by way of Eric Warheim, however, that’s just a natural part of a very unnatural territory.

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3. The Love Witch – The Love Witch plays like a restoration of the best camp film you’ve never heard of. It’s pursues an eerily accurate dedication to recreating the half-hearted attempts at sophisticated smut of many erotic horror B-pictures of the 60s & 70s, right down to the awkward dead space that punctuates each line of dialogue & the over-use of goofy lighting tricks to evoke its love potion psychedelia. Filmmaker Anna Biller doesn’t rely solely on easy humor & cinematic nostalgia to make this schlocky throwback worthwhile, however. She instead uses her backwards gaze into the B-picture abyss to reappropriate traditionally misogynist modes of genre filmmaking for a fresh, fiercely feminist purpose. The Love Witch filters modern feminist ideology through old modes of occultist erotica & vaguely goth burlesque to craft the ultimate post-modern camp cinema experience. Biller establishes herself as not only a stylist & a makeshift schlock historian, but also a sly political thinker and a no-fucks-given badass with a bone to pick, which is more than you’d typically expect from an intentionally “bad” movie about witchcraft & strippers.

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4. The Bronze – Anyone going into The Bronze looking for Melissa Rauch to deliver the broad, calculated comedy she’s associated with on The Big Bang Theory is going to be shocked by the loose, raunchy cruelty she brings to the screen here. Rauch helms The Bronze as a writer/lead actor & the film reveals that her personal sense of humor has a wicked mean streak to it that is sure to alienate a lot of fans, but also draw in some new devoted ones, myself included. Besides the dark humor of her merciless selfishness, The Bronze‘s ex-Olympic gymnast protagonist is eternally horny in a purely animalistic, Jerri Blank sort of way. She’s constantly barraging her mild-mannered, Midwestern counterparts with phrases like “cock hole” & “clit jizz” and lights up the screen with the film’s centerpiece: an epic sexual encounter that could only be pulled off by a pair of oversexed Olympic gymnasts. Some of my favorite comedies of the past decade have been this gender-swapped version of raunch cinema (The To Do List, Appropriate Behavior, Wetlands, etc.) and The Bronze fits snugly among them. Combine that genre subversion with the film’s heartless cruelty, the novelty of its gymnastics-world setting, and expert use of my all-time favorite movie trope, the plot-summarizing rap song, and you have a strong contender for a future cult classic.

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5. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping – Andy Samberg’s greatest achievement to date lovingly skewers the totality of hedonistic excess & outsized hubris on the modern pop music landscape. Popstar smartly & lovingly dismantles the entirety of pop’s current state of ridiculousness from EDM DJ laziness to the devastation of a negative Pitchfork review to Macklemore’s no-homo “activism” to U2’s invasive album release snafu. The modern pop documentary format, the character, his world, and our own pop music terrain all back up each ridiculous gag Samberg & his fellow Lonely Island bros throw at the screen, making the film out to be an efficient little comedy machine in comparison to the sprawling, Apatow-dominated landscape comedic cinema’s been exploring to death in recent years. You’re never entirely shaken by a throwaway gag like a baby playing drums like Neil Peart or an artist responsible for the “brilliance” of catchphrases like “#doinkdedoink” having the self-confidence to declare the Mona Lisa “an overrated piece of shit” because the movie is well-calibrated enough to support those kinds of over-the-top indulgences. There’s certainly loose improv afoot in Popstar, but it’s arranged & edited into highly functioning efficiency.

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6. Ghostbusters – Easily the most over-complained about film of 2016, the Ghostbusters reboot is an all-around hilarious, well-made popcorn flick. I most appreciated the way director Paul Feig & casting director Allison Jones have delivered an undercover SNL cast ensemble. When they just comprised half of the main cast in the original property, all four of the Ghostbusters are SNL players in the 2016 version: Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, and honorary cast member (through regular, fully-committed hosting gigs) Melissa McCarthy. They’re also backed up by the bit role roster of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Higgins, and Cecily Strong. More convincing yet, the movie is proving to be something of a star-maker for the consistently funny McKinnon, who’s been up there with Strong, Bryant, Moynihan, and (formerly) Killiam as one of the most essential backbone pieces of the show’s current cast. If Ghostbusters did nothing more than promote & develop Kate McKinnon’s screen presence, it would already have done its job, but by lighting internet nerds’ idiotic indignation on fire in the process, a nontroversy the film addresses directly in some brilliant moments of meta-commentary, it stood out as one of the more notable dumb comedies of the year.

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7. Clown – Without any intentional maneuvers in its fashion, music, or narrative, Clown effortlessly taps into a current trend of reflective 90s nostalgia by lovingly recreating the horror cheapies of that era. It does so by striking a very uncomfortable balance between horror comedy & gruesome misanthropy, forging a truly cruel sense of humor in a heartless, blood-soaked gore fest featuring a killer clown & his tiny tyke victims. You’d have to change very few details of Clown to convince me that it was actually a Full Moon Features release made twenty years ago. Besides small details like cell-phone usage and the inclusion of “That guy!” character actor Peter Stormare, the only noticeable difference is that, unlike most Full Moon “classics”, it’s a genuinely great product. Clown is smart & incredibly uncomfortable, but houses its horror film thrills in a very specific era of nontheatrical genre trash, so it’s easy see how its better attributes might be readily dismissed by those not in tune with its highly specific aesthetic.

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8. The Boy – I expected The Boy to play out more or less exactly like the last PG-13 evil doll movie to hit the theaters, the largely disappointing Rosemary’s Baby knockoff Annabelle, but the film sets its sights much higher than that light supernatural tomfoolery. It’s far from wholly original as a horror flick, but instead pulls wacky details from a wide enough range of disparate sources that it ended up being an enjoyably kooky melting pot of repurposed ideas. A sharp left turn in the third act of The Boy completely obliterates the psychological/supernatural slowburn established in its first half & delves into some utterly bonkers motherfuckery that should be a crowdpleaser among schlock junkies & trash gobblers. I’m always a sucker for the evil doll movie as a genre, so it was a given that I’d see The Boy no matter what, but the film really does prove itself to be a solidly fun thrill of a horror trifle in the end, even if it functions as a pastiche.

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9. Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday – Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is essentially Pee-wee’s Big Adventure on a Big Top Pee-wee scale & budget, which is all that fans could really ask for in a direct-to-streaming release after a 30 year gap. It also helps that the film finds Pee-wee just about as charming & hilarious as he’s ever been, even if its financial freedom & resulting ambition are somewhat diminished. All the movie has to do to succeed is provide Herman (who’s billed as playing himself) with a variety of backdrops & supporting players to bounce his bizarrely childish humor off of. In one highly pertinent scene, Herman proves that he can entertain an entire village of on-lookers with a single, ordinary balloon. Just about the only aspect of Pee-wee Herman’s Big Holiday that isn’t bare bones in this way is Joe Manganiello’s involvement. Manganiello, also playing “himself,” enters the scene as a living embodiment of a Tom of Finland drawing on a motorcycle. The gay subtext certainly doesn’t end there. By the conclusion of the film, Herman & Manganiello’s instant attraction to each other fully blossoms into a really sweet, very romantic story about “friendship”. If there’s any chance for a non-Pee-wee fan to enjoy Big Holiday it’d be in watching just how naturally & enthusiastically that “friendship” develops.

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10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows – Instead of pushing the brooding grit of the post-Dark Knight era of needless reboots to its most ludicrous extreme (like its hilariously hideous predecessor), Out of the Shadows calls back to the light, fun, cartoonish energy that made the original Ninja Turtles trilogy such a nostalgia-inducing pleasure in the 1990s. I guess you could argue that banking on 90s nostalgia is a dispiriting snapshot of where blockbusters are seated in 2016, but that’s not what makes Out of the Shadows special. Here’s what does make it special: a manhole-shooting garbage truck modeled after the franchise’s infamous pizza van toy; a pro wrestler that plays a tank-operating rhinoceros; a perfectly hideous realization of the villainous mech suit-operating brain Krang; etc. Given enough time, this is a film both silly & visually memorable (read: deeply ugly) enough to generate its own future nostalgia entirely separate from that of a previous generation’s (not that it was above playing the 90s cartoon’s theme song over the end credits). Kids are going to grow up loving this movie and its reputation will outlast the short-term concerns of however well it did or didn’t do at the box office this summer. In that way, it’s a successful work of art.

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11. Nine Lives – Speaking of 90s nostalgia, mark August 2016 down as the exact moment it reached peak ridiculousness, since we’re apparently now making movies about corrupt businessmen who learn life lessons by getting turned into talking animals again (in this case a cat). And I’m talking real movies with real theatrical releases, too, not just some straight-to-DVD trifle from Air Bud Entertainment. Said talking animal comeback film, Nine Lives, even features two (!!!) Academy Award-winning actors and hinges its lovable furball antics on topics as hefty as greed, adultery, the ethics of leaving a vegetative state loved one on longterm life support, and attempted suicide. If you regularly find yourself losing valuable time to internet wormholes of cat-themed home video, you’re likely to get a kick out of Nine Lives‘s simple pleasures: a cat drinking scotch, a cat falling over, a cat slow-dancing with his human daughter, a cat rushing to prevent his human son’s attempted suicide. You know, the little things.

12. Mother May I Sleep With Danger? – James Franco’s 2016 remake of the Tori Spelling Lifetime Original Movie Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? is a biting sociopolitical commentary on the pervasive homophobia, sexism, and rape culture issues that plague college campuses in the 2010s. That’s a half-truth. The film is also a shameless, leering camp fest about lesbian vampires that sometimes borders on the less-than-prestigious realm of dime store erotica. Either way you look at it, it’s is easily the most outrageously entertaining work I’ve seen from Lifetime in decades (unless you include those Mommie Dearest marathons they do every Mother’s Day; those are hilarious). It’s funny, it’s trashy, it’s dirt cheap, and it’s more than a little bit sleazy: pretty much the perfect calibration for an instant Lifetime classic. Better yet, its penchant for cheesy sleaze feels 100% earnest, never truly crossing into the winking parody of an Asylum mockbuster or a ZAZ-style spoof, despite what you may assume from its pedigree. If this vampiric “re-imagining” is an indication of where Lifetime programming is currently headed, we’re in for some tawdry good fun in the years to come, a second golden age of made-for-television schlock.

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13. Hardcore Henry – This trashy novelty’s central gimmick of mirroring the look of 1st person shooters by mounting GoPros to its camera/stuntmen is a lot to handle for 90 minutes of action cinema and the video game-thin plot & villains that accompany it don’t help much either. There’s far more to hate about Hardcore Henry than just its video game gimmick, too. Its rampant misogyny, gay panic humor, and constant, gleeful violence & gore are sure to turn off a lot of folks, rightfully so. However, I don’t personally see much of a difference between the misanthropy on display here and the macho-hedonism of any other generic shoot-em-up. Hardcore Henry is loud, obnoxious, one-note, nearly plotless, and entirely over the top in its meat-headed self-indulgence, but so are a lot of my favorite hallmarks of action cinema: Commando, Rambo IV, Invasion U.S.A., etc. I contend that the film’s glaring, perhaps even deplorable faults are all outweighed by its consistently goofy tone (particularly in the scenery-chewing sorcerer villain & 1st person POV visual experimentation). There are hordes of 13 year olds who’ll latch onto Hardcore Henry‘s naked girls, guns, and cocaine version of masculinity in an unsavory way, I’m sure, but I never really look to my dumb action movies for moral high ground and, truth be told, those kids will grow out of it eventually. Hopefully.

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14. The Shallows – The 2016 version of the giant shark creature feature is smart to recognize its place within this trashiest of cinematic traditions. The popcorn thriller The Shallows is brilliant in the way it keeps things simple. It’s Blake Lively in a neon bikini fighting off a CGI shark for 90min. What do you need, a road map? There’s so much swinging The Shallows in the direction of goofball camp: a couple especially silly encounters with CGI dolphins & jellyfish, a gratuitous explosion, a hideous model of a whale carcass, a caricature of a witless drunk so over the top it could’ve comfortably existed in the 1930s, a puke-eating sidekick named Steven Seagull (who’s easily up there with Black Phillip for Animal of the Year), etc. Even the film’s basic 1-shark-vs.-1-woman premise has a campy appeal to it. However, the shark attacks do have a real gravity to them as well. There’s intense gore in the film’s moments of self-surgery & genuine heart-racing thriller beats when our hero & her friend the seagull have to stave off real-life dehydration & cabin fever. The Shallows is satisfied relegating itself to a 100% trashy surface pleasure ethos, but it doesn’t let up on the practical results of its central scenario’s violence & confinement and that dual goofy/scary balance is what makes this such effective summertime schlock.

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15. Elvis & Nixon – Written around the photo op/publicity stunt in 1970 when Elvis Presley visited the White House & was awarded an official title as a federal narcotics agent, Elvis & Nixon is a low-energy camp delight. Taking great pleasure in its own historical inaccuracies & caricaturist liberties, the film finds easy camp value in casting Michael Shannon as Elvis & Kevin Spacey as Richard Nixon and propping the mismatched pair up in a room (the Oval Office, of all rooms) merely so it can stew in its own unlikelihood. The result isn’t anything mind-blowing or revolutionary, but it is an offbeat pleasure to behold. Elvis & Nixon finds its best possible self in its laidback, weirdly relaxed vibe. Instead of pushing for big, unlikely moments between The President & The King, the film instead finds lowkey fascination in a past-his-prime rock ‘n roller living out a fish-out-of-water comedy in a political atmosphere he knows nothing about.

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16. Look Who’s Back – A Borat-style farce in which Adolf Hitler clumsily navigates & eventually finds popularity in the modern world, Look Who’s Back mixes seemingly tame, broad comedy with fiercely biting, unforgiving political satire, a tonal whiplash that’s as odd of a delight as it is difficult to classify. The film starts with a sci-fi/fantasy premise where Adolf Hitler is mysteriously transported to modern times Germany and follows his first-person POV as he tries to make sense of concepts like selfies, television, the internet, etc. This broad, cheaply campy farce mostly functions as a Trojan horse for the film’s real bread & butter: unscripted, Borat-style street interviews where Hitler interacts with the modern public. A lot of folks treat Hitler like a joke — hugging him, posing for pictures, chirping “I love Hitler!” & honoring him with a Nazi salute — an uncomfortable gaze at toxic hipster irony & modern refusal to engage with life sincerely. However, Look Who’s Back‘s main mode of political satire is in pairing Hitler with real-life, unscripted people who agree with his nationalistic, horrifically racist rhetoric when it comes to the issue of Muslim immigration. They aren’t all easily identifiable neo-Nazi skinheads, either. Think of the German equivalent of your average diehard Trump supporter and you pretty much get the picture. Look Who’s Back is something of a structural mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a surprising amount to say about current political attitudes towards immigration that disgraces a vast majority of The West, America included (obviously).

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17. Keanu – Not unlike their sketch comedy show, Keegan-Michael Key & Jordan Peele’s debut feature is not always consistently funny, but has really great, transcendently absurd moments. A fun action movie spoof featuring a cute kitten, plus some remarkable flashes of both Anna Farris and George Michael content, Keanu’s more memorable touches are rare gems to come by (especially in light of George Michael’s recent death). It also gets major bonus points in my mind for being the first movie I’ve seen smart enough to include not one, but two Future songs on its soundtrack, which is a resource more movies really need to start tapping into.

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18. Masterminds – A harmless madcap bank heist comedy starring Zach Galifianakis & three Ghostbusters (Jones, Wiig, and McKinnon), Masterminds is essentially a feature length visual punchline. The machinations of Zach Galifianakis’s hapless security guard being coerced into robbing a bank by his milquetoast seductress, Kristen Wiig, or her sleaze ball cohort, Owen Wilson, aren’t nearly as amusing as just the mere look of him. The Prince Valiant haircut, the full beard, the tight novelty t-shirts: Zach Galifianakis is the fashion version of a slapstick pratfall. Certainly, there are funny turns of phrase in the film (mostly delivered by Jason Sudeikis’s cold-as-ice contract killer) but no dialogue made me laugh nearly as hard as just the distinctly awkward visual tableau divisive comedic director Jared Hess crafted with his vanity-free players. In many ways Kate McKinnon was perfect casting for this comedy style, as it’s the criticism she most often receives from her work in SNL. She doesn’t deliver jokes so much as that she is the joke, striking such a specifically strange, crazy-eyed image that no verbal play is needed to sell the humor. This might not be enough for some folks, but just the mere sight of her posing for wedding photos with Zach Galifianakis to an Enya song is personally all I need to guffaw.

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19. Suicide Squad – The studio meddling of Suicide Squad, with its joke-heavy re-shoots, shoehorned-in neon color palette, diminished screen time for Jared Leto’s Joker, and Guardians-aped soundtrack was admittedly haphazard & disharmonious, but it at least made the troubled material a decently fun action picture in the process. In a lot of ways Suicide Squad is just as bloated & tonally inept as Dawn of Justice & Man of Steel. It’s never boring, though, and thanks to some studio meddling it actually allowed for a few interesting moments & decent performances to shine through all of director David Ayer’s trashy genre film bravado. In an ideal world I wouldn’t necessarily want to see Ayer’s Sabotage (a film I described as “oozing with scum” & “garbage water pessimism” in my review) reworked as a superhero spectacle, but Warner Bros. found a way to make that formula remarkably palatable. Kudos to the studio for reigning in Ayer’s bad taste & aggression just enough to make the movie work while still allowing it to breathe new, testosterone-corrupted life into what was previously a drab, depressive franchise. Suicide Squad is not the winning success the budding DC Comics film franchise desperately needs to turn its frown upside down, but I left the theater in a much better mood than I did with the two Batman & Superman films that preceded it.

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20. Scooby-Doo & WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon – Recognizing that its larger-than-life cast of musclebound pro wrestler characters don’t necessarily have to live in a wrestling ring in their animated form, Curse of the Speed Demon picks an entirely new context for them to flex muscles & deliver promos in: off-road monster truck racing. The sequel to WWE’s original Scooby-Doo collaboration plays less like an animated pro wrestling picture & much more like a little kid’s imagination as they smash together Hot Wheels toys in a sandbox. Instead of attending a second WrestleMania, Scooby & the Mystery Gang find themselves at Muscle Moto X, an impossible Vince McMahon startup that combines monster truck mayhem with dirt track speed racing. As the plot unravels, Curse of the Speed Demon gets further & further away from realistic versions of what off-road pro wrestling monster truck races might look like (as unrealistically goofy as that starting point is on its own), eventually just says “Fuck it.” and indulges in some Mario Kart-type cartoon races & settings you’d find doodled in an eight year old’s dream journal.

-Brandon Ledet

Alli’s Top Films of 2016

/ swampflix / 3 Comments

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1. The Handmaiden – Park Chan-wook has a way of crafting gorgeous Victorian-inspired scenery and making it work even if the setting (in this case, The Japanese Occupation of Korea) doesn’t necessarily call for it. I say “Victorian-inspired” because of the film’s occasional frilly costuming and elaborate, lushly decorated sets, but The Handmaiden is definitely sexy enough to make any room full of self-respecting Victorians faint. It’s such a lovely erotic thriller. Like any of Park Chan-Wook’s other films, it also gets gritty and brutal, but despite the tension and brutality, it’s my favorite love story of the year.

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2. The Witch – The Witch follows in the footsteps of Häxan and presents a more historical account of witchcraft. Despite its historical nature and Puritan setting, the film will make your skin crawl with atmospheric dread. It is beautiful and dark; and, like with every great horror movie, its soundtrack is amazing, just teeming with ominous ambient sounds. Also, how many movies have a goat as the star??? Black Phillip is the king of everything.

3. Moonlight – Moonlight is a lovely deconstruction of the hazards of toxic masculinity, homophobia, and the war on drugs. I can’t begin to say how important this movie is. It comes at a time when tensions in our country are high, and people are actually fighting to be able to discriminate against other people. To have a film like this right now, showing us how damaging these attitudes are, is vital. It helps that Moonlight is so good. It has such a tender earnestness in how it approaches the subject, and the way it’s told in three parts gives it a poetic rhythm.

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4. Ghostbusters – This movie was so much funnier than I expected. I think I was predisposed to like it anyway, because it made a bunch of man-children angry, but all the jokes landed and it captures just enough of the original film’s spirit while also having its own liveliness.  The cast really picked up the torch and ran with it. In particular, it was really great to see a lighter side of Chris Hemsworth that isn’t just his culture-shocked Thor act. I’m so glad that this movie didn’t just function as another unnecessary reboot.

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5. Hunt for the Wilderpeople – I think we all need a good laugh this year, but we also need a good cry. Fortunately, Wilderpeople has both!  This is the story of a boy going on the lam in the New Zealand bush with his reluctantly adoptive uncle after a devastating tragedy. Though it’s funny and cute, even twee in a way that resembles a Wes Anderson movie, there’s a certain darkness to it. It doesn’t shy away from real life consequences or scathing political satire.

6. Kubo and the Two Strings – This movie is pure, gorgeous art. The puppetry is incredible. The first time the origami flittered and moved, I just teared up at how wonderful it looked. I’m not even sure how they pulled this stuff off. Laika has done it again, and they deserve all the bragging rights.

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7. Tale of Tales – In a world full of fairy tale related media (Once Upon a Time, Disney Princess movies, live action remakes of Disney Princess movies, etc), it’s a curious thing that more keeps getting made, and that so much of it is adapted from the same tales we already know. Adapted from a book of 17th century Italian fairy tales that fell into obscurity, Tale of Tales weaves together many stories which, while very old, feel very new. There is no Disney here. The stories told are everything fairy tales should be: strange, eerie, brutal, gory, and beautiful.

8. Hail, Caesar! – Would that it were so simple to sum up this movie’s charms. It’s such a fun parody of McCarthy-era Hollywood. There’s the hyperbolized threat of Communism, old Hollywood scandals, moody directors, a musical dance number with Channing Tatum tap dancing and singing about gams, and the one guy in the background who’s just trying to hold it all together. On top of all of that is the Coen Brothers’ ability to assemble an amazing cast. I think Hail, Caesar! might just be one of their strongest works.

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9. Shin Godzilla – It’s very difficult for a franchise this old and with so many titles to it to offer a new take on the tale, but Shin Godzilla really pulls it off. Instead of a story about a giant lizard terrorizing Tokyo, it’s a deconstruction of Japanese bureaucracy and foreign policy with a giant hideous monster destroying Tokyo in the background. It’s In the Loop meets Kaiju and just about as strange and wonderful as you’d expect from that combo.

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10. Pee-wee’s Big Holiday – If The Handmaiden was my favorite love story of the year, the bromance between Pee-wee Herman and Joe Manganiello might be my second favorite. Just like any Pee-wee movie, it’s just a giant Rube Goldberg device of a plot, with each chain reaction being just as kooky or even kookier than the last.

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11. Into the Inferno – Herzog and his vulcanologist friend Clive Oppenheimer nerd out about volcanoes for an hour and forty five minutes. It’s a dream come true.  Part anthropological exploration, part nature documentary, Into the Inferno is gorgeous and enlightening.

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12. Rogue One – How political can a Star Wars movie get while the producers vehemently deny it? Very. Rogue One is about the rebel group who smuggled the Death Star blueprints. Somehow, it manages to take a 40 year old franchise and frame it in such a newly dark light. Also, despite the all haters, I thought that CGI Peter Cushing was very impressive.

-Alli Hobbs