Top ten picks for BMN 2020
As a less-than-humble listener of the BMN podcast, I accounted for a little over 2% of what BMN watched last year thanks to them indulging my pick of She. (Thanks everyone, Todd especially who sacrificed his pick essentially) As I probably account for less than 2% of their audience, it would probably be fair if they didn't do another film I picked until 2021. But I would be honored if the podcast covered any ONE of these ten films any time in the span of 2020. If not, there's always next year!
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- DirectorBob MisiorowskiStarsRodney RowlandKristanna LokenAlexander EnbergFAA system analyzer named Neil McCabe is the only person who seems to have this different hunch towards a group of international terrorists after a horrific plane incident occured. He thinks that an evil genius computer hacker sets out and manipulate the computer electronical system which linked to several airplanes to cause destruction and tragedy. In order to prevent the mishap, McCabe and his teammate, Rudy, finds out about the machine used by the criminals which leads them to a psychotic thrilling fight between the terrorist.I don't know if I'm an idiot, but I like this. Yeah, the CG is soooo embarrassing and there's weird choices left and right especially in the sound dept, but this movie stays tense and delivers cool moment after cool moment on a budget. It's just so fun, over-the-top, and well-paced.
- DirectorJohnny MartinStarsJackie DebatinEric EtebariJonathon KleinA co-ed group of Special Forces agents search the wilderness for a predator type creature that has been on a killing spree.A more recent find for me, I can't remember laughing as hard in a long time. The opening sequence had me doubled over, and I thought for sure the movie couldn't really sustain the opening's level of absurdity, but I was wrong. Skeleton Man is the rare so-bad-it's-good viewing that's enjoyable from start to finish with very few bland parts.
- DirectorShawn DarlingStarsSeth DarlingWendy AndrewsJames BlackburnA young boy Alex goes on a journey to find his lost mother during an attack by zombies on his hometown.This is so bottom-of-the-barrel in so many ways, but it's the kind of movie you start watching bad movies to see! It has wtf moments, moments you always dream of seeing in traditional movies, weird characters and weird choices, bad fx and props, stupid dialogue, bad acting, a plot that only sort-of slowly congeals together, a mouth-watering ad for ribs, and LARPing! And love him or hate him, it's rare that cinema is graced with a character as bold as The Man, The Myth, The Legend.
- DirectorJack StarrettStarsPeter FondaWarren OatesLoretta SwitTwo couples vacationing together in an R.V. from Texas to Colorado are terrorized after they witness a murder during a Satanic ritual.Besides all the other cool things Race with the Devil is, it is, first and foremost, evidence that 70's movies sometimes had break-neck, modern pacing. Yeah, it's not The Raid, but every second of the film is interesting, and it's not a second longer than it needs to be. It's got a really tense horror plot that's filled with awesome stunt-work, especially on the road, and boasts a really solid ending.
- DirectorLamberto BavaStarsUrbano BarberiniNatasha HoveyKarl ZinnyA group of random people are invited to a screening of a mysterious movie, only to find themselves trapped in the theater with ravenous demons.If you've ever wanted to watch a horror movie that forgot to have a plot and just starting killing people, but isn't utterly baffling and incoherent, this is your movie. Cool and self-contained, it's filled with great special FX, and has the best scene that's ever featured a motorcycle. Its soundtrack might be the most important thing to me, as the Accept song in the movie is what caused me to finally start seeking out music independently. But there's plenty more about the soundtrack that's awesome!
- DirectorC. Thomas HowellStarsC. Thomas HowellTeri Ann LinnMichael RussoA paroled short order cook and a waitress go on the run with a bag of diamonds that accidentally falls into their possession, prompting two warring gangs to come after them.Someone once told me they needed to find this based on its terrible but great trailer that featured C. Thomas Howell and everybody else shouting about, "The Diamonds, the Diamonds!" amidst lots of explosions and gunshots. I looked it up on youtube and found the entirety of its awesome ending car chase sequence and knew I needed to buy it so my friend and I could see it together. It's kind of a foul-downer of a movie, but it's just filled with stupid moments, odd decisions, occasional surprising competency and lots of signs that C. Thomas Howell really, really thought he could do a Tarantino-meets-Cohen-Brothers type thing and pull it off.
- DirectorGil BettmanStarsJohn StamosVanityGene SimmonsAfter a top-secret agent is murdered, his estranged son, a high-school gymnast, teams up with his dad's attractive female partner to stop the psychopathic hermaphroditic gang leader who killed him and now plans a major terrorist attack.When Hermaphrodite Gene Simmons kills the worst James Bond by means of "The Finger", the worst James Bond's son, Stargrove, is forced to take up the mantle of being a dumpy spy who gathers intel on sewer gangs by his dad's former assistant, Vanity, so that they can keep Gene Simmons and his reject Road Warriors from taking over the world, thus making Gene Simmons' sexy nightclub act the most popular in the world. That's really the plot.
- DirectorJason BourqueStarsWoody JeffreysDominika JuilletDoug AbrahamsWhen a super computer is linked to a video game network, a computer programmer who designed the game must enter the virtual reality world of his fantasies and defeat the computer before it causes a worldwide information crash.If you watch this, you'll feel like I pranked you. It's the film-maker's fault; they attempted something that should never be attempted, and the result is laughable. I don't want to give away what the film-makers did here, but in regards to its use of footage from 'other sources,' this movie is one unique abomination. Sort of like The Dungeonmaster of its era, but less coherent.
- DirectorDavid DeCoteauStarsMario LopezNick SpanoDamon SharpeMost of Earth has been destroyed by an asteroid. A small military colony, New America, has managed to survive in the Arctic. When a soldier goes missing at the colony, authorities send Ryan Murphy to investigate.This is like a skinemax movie that's just the shirtlless set-up scenes, but starring Richard Grieco, Mario Lopez, and Jamie Pressley unaware. Richard Grieco gets drunk, rips out his vocal chords and shouts out dialogue that's almost entirely raspy innuendo. Mario Lopez gets into repeated conflicts with his fellow shirtless men that feel like at any minute they could turn into sex, but never do. Jamie Pressley is one of the last women alive so the men can pretend they're straight. Somehow all of this illustrates a post-apocalyptic world where everyone left lives in Antarctica that aliens still want to take over for some reason.
- DirectorBert I. GordonStarsBasil RathboneEstelle WinwoodGary LockwoodThe son of a sorceress, armed with weapons, armour and six magically summoned knights, embarks on a quest to save a princess from a vengeful wizard.One of the very first Sword and Sorcery films, and probably in among the first three ever produced domestically, The Magic Sword would be by far the oldest thing ever covered on the podcast. Why venture out of your comfort zone to do it? It's really ambitious on a low-budget, features a pretty star-studded cast, has many awesome miniatures and fx shots, and has more magic than pretty much every Sword and Sorcery ever covered on the podcast. It flies by pretty quickly, and it's fun to see the genre's roots being planted.
- DirectorBill CowellStarsBill CowellKelleigh MurrayAlyssa CowellA father's psychic abilities are put to the test when his two daughters are trapped inside of a corn maze haunted by the spirits of two young girls who disappeared a year earlier.Not a recommendation, but a warning:
I've been dedicated to finding bad movies since around the year this came out. I'm probably somewhere in the thousands by now when it comes to how many I've watched looking for movies like She. This, since first viewing it on VHS in 2011, is still by far the worst thing I've ever seen. It only passes for a real movie very briefly, and then it slogs around a muddy corn maze for longer than human-beings could ever possibly be inspired to care about. The only distractions from the slog could be called even more annoying than the slog, as they are often two girls screaming in a very obvious and deliberate attempt to red-line the cheap mic picking up audio. I'm entirely serious. Don't watch this unless you want to see the worst (widely commercially available*) film ever made.