EMN Programming Guide - Other Movies
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A Night At The Roxbury
Year: 1998
Synopsis: Two brothers live the fast life caring only about each other...and the dance.
EMN Notes: This movie is super dumb and super harmless. It's a perfect TV movie you don't have to pay attention to but will sometimes make you look up and smile as you watch two goofballs do the little head bob as What Is Love plays. I watched this movie in high school because of my friend Brian and his brother Ben, who both loved it, and this was when the meme was pretty big too so I had a fun time with it. When I was really actively starting to seek out films on the cusp of 16 and 17, I grabbed this one and Wayne's World, among others. Like I say, it's not the deepest, but it makes me smile.
Baby Driver
Year: 2017
Synopsis: A young getaway driver who loves music finds himself in over his head in a doomed heist.
EMN Notes: When Mandy visited for my birthday in 2017, this was one of the two movies we watched together after confessing our love for each other behind the King's Table bar. Edgar Wright is one of the most talented directors in Hollywood, able to tackle any subject and genre with madcap energy and excitement. I adore how tied to music this film is and the visuals of the opening made me know I was in for a ride. I think it's easy to compare this to my favorite film, Drive, but I also feel that that does a disservice to both films. Either way, this is an action-packed thrill that bleeds style.
Beyond The Black Rainbow
Year: 2010
Synopsis: Art film in which a woman raised in a containment facility attempts to seek a way out.
EMN Notes: Before the film Mandy, which we'll talk about later, the director made Beyond The Black Rainbow, an utterly spectacular art film that is as slow as molasses and has some of the finest science fiction visuals I've ever seen. It's slow for a reaason because it puts you in a trance and snaps you out of it right at the end. I can only imagine what it would be like to wake up in a delirious haze and see this in the glow of a CRT at 2AM. It's clever, it's funny, it's strange, it's meaningful. It's not as rich or snappy as Mandy, but it's so offbeat and I love that this director gets to make these movies. I can't wait to see what else he has in store.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Year: 1989
Synopsis: Two rockin' goofballs commandeer a time machine to gather major names through history so they don't fail their class.
EMN Notes: I originally saw this movie on TV in pieces and my only impression was "Why are they mispronouncing Beethoven?". I've since grown extremely fond of this film and the sequel because it's just such a weird little pop culture Thing and I enjoy the banter and jokes in it a lot. Also, I had the Game Boy game as a kid, and I actually really enjoyed it a lot! It's hard as hell, though.
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
Year: 1991
Synopsis: Bummer! Bill & Ted are dead! And they've been replaced by evil robots! They need to come back to life and stop these robots before their lives are ruined forever!
EMN Notes: The only reason I've ever seen this movie is because my family got it for free with an order of some pizza we bought, either Papa John's or Domino's. After watching it, I gotta say, we lucked out - it's pretty good! It's funny, it's extremely weird, Bill and Ted are still super funny and now there's four of them, and while it won't knock your socks off like some of the other great comedies on the list, it makes for another extremely fun time while watching it on television. Also, for some reason, I never understood the wedgie scene as a kid. I couldn't tell you what I misinterpreted about it, all I know is that I remember not getting it.
Bill & Ted Face The Music
Year: 2020
Synopsis: Dude! Bill and Ted are adults now! And they STILL haven't written the song that'll unite the world! They better start time-jumping along with their daughters to figure this thing out!
EMN Notes: Sometimes a movie comes to you when you need it the most and feels like it was written for you. I mean, yeah, I like Bill & Ted as a franchise, but this is the movie that means the most to me. I watched it in 2021 one day while Mandy and I were both frustrated with work and utterly miserable and feeling the weight of the pandemic bearing down on us yet again. I turned the lights out and picked a random movie we hadn't seen, and what we got was something sweet, meaningful, optimistic, funny, and featuring Louis Armstrong and Mozart and Jimi Hendrix all playing together to unite the world. The way the movie deals with the frustrations of growing up spoke to me especially watching it when I did. It's tough being promised one future and wanting to create something beautiful only to see your future taken from you and you unable to create at all. In a lot of ways it helped put my anxieties at peace because when watching it I really felt like everything was okay and that it was possible to live a full, rich, and beautiful life, even now. It made me cry, it made me laugh. It's something special.
Black Dynamite
Year: 2009
Synopsis: A parody of 70s exploitation films featuring the coolest cat in town as he takes to the streets to find out who killed his brother Jimmy - and who's been dealing smack to the kids.
EMN Notes: I think this film might be one of my biggest inspirations in general. It made me fall in love with 70s filmmaking because it served as a gateway into learning about an entire era of film I knew nothing about, and the incredibly funny dedication to the bit turned what could be a ridiculous but forgettable parody into one of the most quotable films ever. Like, this film didn't just use its gimmick as a cheap trick, it used it to pay homage to a kind of film that occupies a unique and strange space in history and it did it by taking itself extremely seriously and never quite winking at the camera. It never needed to.
Bottoms
Year: 2023
Synopsis: Two deeply-uncool lesbians start a fight club at their school in order to pull cheerleaders.
EMN Notes: Quite handily the funniest comedy I watched in 2023, and it was up against some incredibly stiff competition. You can feel the influence from But I'm A Cheerleader and 00s-era comedies, and that's before the protagonists eat at a place called But I'm A Diner. It has incredible queer transgressive humor, amazing set design, and had me in hysterics in the theater multiple times. It had to be added - it's a modern-day cult classic that would have made a killing on home video.
But I'm A Cheerleader
Year: 1999
Synopsis: A cheerleader in the closet is sent to a conversion therapy camp against her will. But, like, in a funny way.
EMN Notes: No, really, in a funny way! This is a movie we watched as part of our movie nights along with The Conjuring 2, another favorite. We watched this somewhat as a joke because it was Pride Month and what we got was a brightly-colored comfortable film that had some absolutely hilariously bitter things to say and some sweet romantic payoff to boot. It stops being laugh-out-loud funny about halfway through, but the payoff is that the rest is earnest, honest, and wonderfully queer in its bones. It's so funny to me that this film was unfavorably compared to the works of John Waters as if that's not the highest compliment, but also I don't think John Waters would be caught dead making a film that actually has taste. But yes, this is sweet, this is gay, this is funny. To this day I think it and The Conjuring 2 was one of our best double features.
Clerks
Year: 1994
Synopsis: A cashier hates his job and all his friends and everything that happens at the video store he works at.
EMN Notes: Kevin Smith's first is still one of his best, a magnificent no-budget comedy full of bitterness towards retail, a love of weed, and sharp dialogue and jokes that still hit. It's a strange and curious film, one with vision and you can really tell how Kevin Smith got to be as big as he is. It's just sharp and full of earnest and rugged determination. Not bad for a comedy where a character laments his girlfriend sucking thirty-seven dicks and a guy dies in a bathroom.
Dogma
Year: 1999
Synopsis: Two fallen angels discover a loophole on how to get back to Heaven, unaware that exploiting that loophole will end reality entirely.
EMN Notes: This is my favorite View Askewniverse film, and it's the one that introduced me to it. My brother bought it for me - get this - on a PSP UMD. Movies on PSP, what a time that was. Now, there was a time in my life where I had to watch a few specific movies on my PSP again and again in order to stay sane, and this was one of them. I'm glad it was! It's extremely funny and has a real intelligence and philosophy to it that not all of Kevin Smith's movies have. It contains one of my favorite quotes as said by the 13th apostle, Rufus, and it manages to be extremely crass and extremely thought-provoking at the same time. Oh, and Alan Rickman is incredible here.
Double Indemnity
Year: 1944
Synopsis: A woman and an insurance agent concoct a plan to kill her husband and run away together.
EMN Notes: This may be the most unusual film on the channel, but at the same time, what is modern TV without a bunch of old black-and-white movies and shows randomly playing in the middle of the day? I genuinely love this film, as it's a thrilling mystery, a real gritty noir story, and an absolute ride from beginning to end. I love having the variety that it provides on EMN, and it's also just fun to go listen to accents that just aren't practiced in Hollywood anymore. It has real bite to it despite being from the 40s, and is a fascinating and moody piece that goes by in a flash.
Dude, Where's My Car?
Year: 2000
Synopsis: Two dudes lose their car.
EMN Notes: I have an extremely bizarre and personal connection to this movie, which is great, because that's the name of the game when it comes to EMN. Mandy and I first heard about it because of queer theorist Jack Halberstam, who loves this movie. I mean, okay, sure, I heard about it beforehand because of ads in videogame magazines, and I knew about one of the jokes about it because I saw Scary Movie 2 on Cox Digital Cable and it had a parody of that same joke. I shouldn't have been watching that movie. Anyway, and sorry to sound like a weird white mom recipe blog here, after the shooting in Dayton's Oregon district, Mandy and I were terrified and decided that day to live life as fully as we could, and at one point that consisted of digging out our DVD that we had bought at Goodwill and finally watching this movie. This is quite honestly one of the absolute funniest movies I've ever seen. It's shocking and outrageous and feels like it should be forgotten like all the weird 2000s teen comedies, but there's something about how it escalates, how the two protagonists are high off their asses stumbling around town as things get weirder around them, and how they throw themselves into all of the weirdness that just works. Combine that with some weird-but-surprisingly-okay queer stuff, an absolutely incredible joke scene with Fabio, and gags that come out of nowhere and you have us having to pause the movie constantly to laugh until tears poured from our eyes. This movie shouldn't work, and yet, somehow, it does.
Fat Albert
Year: 2004
Synopsis: Fat Albert and the junkyard gang come out of the TV and into the real world where they learn that things don't work like they do in the cartoons.
EMN Notes: I mentioned earlier about my PSP and the movies it had on it. When I was staying in a family friend's basement for my last few months of seventh grade before moving to Ohio this was one of the movies I had. It's an extremely sweet film, it's simple, it's kind of brainless, but it's just...kind of fun for me. It was a small comfort during a time I needed it more than anything, and it still manages to be just that. It's a little strange now, looking back on it, for a lot of reasons, but I can't help it. It's the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese of weird little kids' movies I watched in high school - it doesn't taste great, but it'll warm you up when you need it to.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Year: 1986
Synopsis: A high schooler fakes a sick day to make some trouble and have the ultimate day off.
EMN Notes: This is one of the movies I remember buying in England from a charity shop, which is how I watched a lot of films back then. They were cheap, plentiful, and Nan had a VCR. I got this with WarGames and while I don't have the same devotion to this film many others do, I still thoroughly enjoy and respect it for being funny, breezy, and entertaining. It's a great "TV" movie, much like another one on this channel, and while I prefer the other movie I bought with it, WarGames, I still had a lot of fun with this one.
Hot Fuzz
Year: 2007
Synopsis: A cop gets transferred to a remote town in the English countryside, but his boring life is interrupted by a series of grisly murders.
EMN Notes: I've talked about Edgar Wright and how his films are great for this channel, but this one also has the benefit of being one of his best. It's extraordinarily funny, nasty and violent at points, and also has a great mystery behind it. I was shown this film by Kris during a weekend I rode a Greyhound down to where she lived in Michigan at the time, and we had a great time that weekend playing Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes, watching episodes of the Persona 4 anime and Nichijou, and this. It's so good and I'm so glad I have it associated with such warm memories.
King Ralph
Year: 1991
Synopsis: After the entire British royal family dies, the job falls to the only member of the bloodline left - a down-on-his-luck Las Vegas lounge singer.
EMN Notes: When Peacock first got introduced, Mandy and I looked at what it was offering for free, and thought that this sounded like the worst movie ever. We settled in for a night of drunk-watching some utter garbage, and instead we got...well, we got King Ralph. This is a film that in so many ways is utterly unremarkable - it has a fairly standard premise, the opening scene is oddly dark and mean-spirited for what the movie eventually becomes, the love story is cliche, and the jokes are all what you'd expect from a film about an American in England, and yet the smiles never left our faces the entire time. I know that this film means a little more to me than to them, as I found it to be something that evoked a feeling of homesickness and wistfulness, but not in any negative way. It has a beating heart underneath all the cliches, and it is a film that loves the place I consider my childhood home. It is earnest, sweet, and John Goodman is warm and inviting as Ralph. It is a calming film that I can't help but love, and the music is so good too.
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Year: 2014
Synopsis: An unrefined street kid gets recruited into England's top spy program in order to stop an evil plot by a powerful tech mogul. Manners maketh man.
EMN Notes: God, what a treat this film is. It manages to be an utterly thrilling spy film that combines the best parts of all spy films, a gorgeous action film with stunning fight scenes, and a hilarious madcap comedy, all wrapped up in a world of excess and violence. You'll fall in love with the characters and while I once had an issue with the climax (I simply do not find vomit funny) it was easier on a second watch and the fireworks scene is a work of art and from experience absolutely stuns on a CRT. How could they top this?!
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Year: 2017
Synopsis: Now an expert Kingsman, Eggsy is thrust into a whole new mess that takes him to America.
EMN Notes: Answer: they add Elton John! Okay, so I think this film isn't really better than the first, especially because something happens near the start that kicks off the plot but also kind of sucks a lot. But never mind that, because once you're past that you have an absolutely incredible villain who outshines the first film, just as many amazing over-the-top action sequences as before, gross gore to stunning campy excess, and, yes, Elton John. This film also has what is very easily one of the best uses of Country Roads I've ever heard, a spectacular and emotional rendition of an already incredible song and one of the most earned scenes in an action film I can think of. These two films are so much fun and belong on EMN because they work with the format to give you a boost when you're expecting it least.
Linda Linda Linda
Year: 2005
Synopsis: A group of schoolgirls form a band to play at the school festival.
EMN Notes: We've watched several movies this year that stuck with us, but this one washed over us like a warm breeze and never let go. It's so sweet and full of life, so unfocused yet perfectly captures what really mattered and matters about growing up - the quiet moments, the friendships, the falling-out, those times when the smallest things feel like the biggest life will ever get. I immediately went to Half Price Books and found a physical copy of this film just so we wouldn't lose it ever. It's such a treat that fills my heart with joy and song just thinking about it. Perfect for this channel.
Mallrats
Year: 1995
Synopsis: After being dumped, two friends go to the mall.
EMN Notes: When you look into the story of film-on-video and films that were cut for TV, Mallrats is the one that always comes up. It's a decent View Askew film, not one of my favorites, but it's culturally significant because it showed that films that may have not been appreciated theatrically could find new life on TV and video. I absolutely love the idea of a film that needed a shift in medium in order to be appreciated. That's really the ethos of EMN, y'know? We take pieces of media and art and arrange them in a way using a specific format to change your conversation with them, change how you experience them. Mallrats started it all.
Mandy
Year: 2018
Synopsis: A couple who live out in the mountains are captured by a hippie cult looking to indoctrinate the wife.
EMN Notes: It takes a lot for us to add a horror movie to EMN. A combination of it needing to have exactly the right atmosphere and not wanting to detract from EMN Horror means we have to have discretion. But, like, this is one of Mandy The Person's favorite movies of all time and it's one I've watched around five times by now and every time it just gets better. It's funny, I bought them a Mandy The Movie t-shirt as a joke because it had their name on it, and the day it arrived Joe Bob Briggs played the movie on The Last Drive-In and it blew us away. I couldn't believe movies like this were even still being made. It's a slow and beautiful art film that is a sonic delight and a visual feast. I can't get over it, Nicolas Cage's tortured performance as Red Miller and the way grief and fury are channeled into every inch of this film. Mad. It's so haunting, so beautiful, and so dense with meaning and allegory that I truly feel like I get something new every time I see it. What a film.
Miami Connection
Year: 1987
Synopsis: Only through the eradication of violence can we achieve world peace.
EMN Notes: This is my favorite extremely bad movie. The man making this film barely knew English, knew nothing about movies, and really, really wanted to make a movie where the kids used taekwondo. I'm not disparaging taekwondo, but it is probably the least-threatening-sounding martial art. Anyway, what we got is a movie that makes me absolutely go bananas every time I watch it. A band that plays songs like "Friends Forever" fights ninjas on motorcycles who deal cocaine. They fight them with taekwondo. A guy tries to find his father at one point. It's just a mess, a beautiful, unbelievable mess. I love it.
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie
Year: 1995
Synopsis: The Power Rangers have to team up to take out the newest threat to Earth, the dreaded Ivan Ooze.
EMN Notes: When Mandy and I were planning out the initial EMN lineup, this was a movie that had to be on it. We love tokusatsu, but I admit outside of the toys I was never allowed to watch Power Rangers as a kid. At the same time, this is such a fun little encapsulation of the best and the worst the show had to offer, at least the original season. It's silly, it's fun, and it's nice to have just a little bit of Super Sentai on the channel.
My Boyfriend's Back
Year: 1993
Synopsis: Johnny Dingle wants to go to prom with the girl of his dreams, but after a robber shoots him dead he comes back as a zombie! Now what's he gonna do?
EMN Notes: This movie was an impulse VHS buy at a Half-Price Books. The title, the obscurity of it, and the plot all came together to make this a movie we felt we absolutely had to watch with our friends, and we were right. It's awkwardly-paced, tonally strange, has a weird racism allegory in the middle of it, and there's a whole part where an overly-chipper mom wields a shotgun to provide her zombie son with some sustenance. It's a fantastic weirdo movie that stuck with us ever since we saw it, and Mandy joked about adding it to EMN only for us to both realize it was absolutely perfect for it. I ended up having to stream this from a library streaming service and record it just to get a copy that wasn't on tape. Wild.