I feel like I usually have a fairly good idea on what a movie is about just from the premise. Not specifically every twist and turn, but for the most part I can watch a trailer and figure out if the movie's going to be a trainwreck or not. And I absolutely expected Becky to be a disaster. All you have to do is look at Mr. Kevin James and the swastika tattoo on the back of his head! Paul Blart as a neo-Nazi, trying a serious role? Bound to be a disaster. So imagine my surprise when this movie was not only not bad, but actually kind of good...
2020
The year I started this blog. Nothing else important happened.
Run (2020)
Trailers lie all the time. Sometimes it's for good reasons, like Avengers: Infinity War hiding how many Infinity Stones Thanos had when he fought Captain America. And sometimes it's for bad reasons, like Slender Man cutting a bunch of scenes that would explain what the hell was going on while apparently forgetting that they were left in the trailers. Then you have a movie like Run which lies like a fucking pro.
A Wrestling Christmas Miracle (2020)
Mr. Ken del Vecchio is a bad man. His politics sucks, his writing sucks, his acting sucks, and the fact that he forces his kid into his movies sucks. Joker's Poltergeist was in very poor taste, A Karate Christmas Miracle, was baffling, and A Wrestling Christmas Miracle was so, so boring. The others may be worse to some people, but this was the bottom of the barrel for me.
Blood Freak (2020)
I have no one to blame but myself. Not only did I willingly invited suffering into my life, but I sought it out. And all it cost me was a piece of my soul. And $13. Free shipping, though!
Don’t Listen (2020)
I've changed my mind a bunch of times about what should be the last weekday horror movie in October that's not a part of the Hellbound Halloween. Lot of caveats there, I know. I eventually decided it would be one of the movies I was going to watch for this week's Movie Night. And the selections were... very different. The Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror is a bad movie and I have a lot to say about it, but that's going to have to wait until November cause I want to talk about something actually good before the month is over. And foreign! I really need to watch more non-English movies!
Joe Bell (2020)
When I first saw the trailer for Joe Bell, I thought to myself, "What kind of hetero nonsense is this?" It told too much of the story: a young gay man kills himself, and his father feels really bad about it. I joked that the real title should be A is for Ally and just assumed that it would be a movie that would make my eyes roll. But oh, dear reader, I was wrong. This movie pissed me the FUCK off.
PG: Psycho Goreman (2020)
Man, after being disappointed that Fear Street: 1994 wasn't 10 out of 10 amazing, it's nice to find something like PG: Psycho Goreman, which is absolutely my jam in just about every way possible. Horror? You've got a demonic alien trying to destroy the universe. Black comedy? It's not going to make sense here, but that was the weightiest "You're welcome," in the history of cinema, and it was hilarious. Over the top gore? To an unrealistic degree which wraps back around to enjoyable! Some of the wettest puppets imaginable? Not my particular fetish, but I know this hit the spot for some people.
Out (2020)
It's Pride Month, and you know what that means! It's time for corporations to slap rainbows on their logos and pat themselves on the back so hard that they'll strain something! And this applies to streaming services, too! Netflix has an LGBTQ section, although it's there year-round and isn't being advertised on the main site as of writing. Tubi actually does have their LGBTQIA+ Pride movies on the front page, but after you click the Load More button (and it's also a year-round thing). And Disney+ has... several TV shows that feature one (1) gay side character, a couple shorts with some gay themes, and a few documentaries. At least it's on the main page, though! That almost makes up for things like their consistent lack of queer representation, their ability to easily remove any overt queerness they do add in order to appease homophobic countries (and their money), and stuff like a gay man suing the company for discrimination due to his sexual orientation. Yay Pride!
The Empty Man (2020)
You know what I did recently? I had a friend over to my place... and neither of us wore our masks! Scandalous, I know. He was one of the Movie Night guys, and the fact that we haven't had one of those in over a year is really getting to us. It was a thing we did every week for over a decade! But it was nice to have someone over watching a horror movie with me, even if we were as far apart as possible while not sitting on the floor. Anyway, we watched The Empty Man on his recommendation, and it was a fun experience all around.
Queen: The Awakening (2020)
The letter Q vexes me. Not only is it associated with one of the most batshit political conspiracies AND is a nightmare in Scrabble--seriously, how hard would it be replace the tile with "Qu" and save everyone the hassle--but in the entire first year of this blog I never got around to reviewing a movie that started with Q. But I'm here today to solve two of these problems! The first is that "QI" is a recognized word in the official Scrabble dictionary with the definition, "The vital force that in Chinese thought is inherent in all things," in case your relatives call bullshit. The second is Queen: The Awakening, an low budget vampire movie that IMDB doesn't recognize as existing. But it's on Tubi and Letterboxd, so it counts!
Chwineka Watches 