EMN Programming Guide - Other Movies
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Napoleon Dynamite
Year: 2004
Synopsis: A social outcast in rural Idaho lives through the ups and downs of high school and hangs out with his friends.
EMN Notes: Before I saw this movie I remember seeing the merch that got made because of it. Then people would ask me if I was copying things from the movie. I only finally checked it out because I heard it used Forever Young by Alphaville in it, and I was on a big Alphaville kick at the time thanks to various AMVs using songs from them. Anyway, I finally saw it and...I actually really, really loved it. I joke about this movie a lot, about how it felt like they just copied me to make it (or at least copied how I was in high school). It's not just things like the dancing scene, which was something I would do for fun at school dances, but there's just something about the easy tone of this movie, the dialogue between the friends, and the social aspect of it all that genuinely feels lifted out of my time at the school on base. I don't even find this movie that actively funny, even if references and impressions from it are amusing, it's more just a really sweet slice-of-life that hits extremely close to home in weird small ways. I just have a different relationship with this movie than most, I think.
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Year: 1985
Synopsis: An eccentric childish man goes on a cross-country adventure to find his stolen bike.
EMN Notes: This is another classic of the video era, and a film that has surprisingly stood the test of time in terms of just being pretty weird and pretty funny. It's a Tim Burton film, which I didn't actually know until recently, and some of the jokes in it crack me up - "Remember the Alamo" in particular. It's not a movie I'm in love with, and I was never actually allowed to watch Pee Wee Herman's show growing up, but it just fits right in as a true EMN Movie.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Year: 2016
Synopsis: A true Hollywood look into the rise of one of the hottest young stars today, Connor4Real.
EMN Notes: This film is so underrated. While I've always liked the Lonely Island, it wasn't until we were inspired by Kralyssa to go listen to their albums on the way home from a con that we both fell completely in love. I laughed so hard at Spell It Out I nearly swerved into a ditch. A while later, we checked this movie out, and my god, it's so, so, so funny. The songs are spot-on style parodies and so funny and biting and weird, and the story of Connor4Real is, much like Spinal Tap, so true-to-life that it kills me. The TMZ segments are a highlight because the jokes go on just long enough to get both extremely annoying and extremely funny. I don't know how this movie didn't blow up when it dropped, because it felt like it came at the height of the Lonely Island's popularity. Still, I'm glad we can give it a home here.
Power Rangers
Year: 2017
Synopsis: Five teenagers with attitude find ancient medals in an alien spacecraft that allow them to become Earth's heroes - the Power Rangers.
EMN Notes: I'll defend this movie with my life. It's a great sentai movie, first and foremost, with a fun team that gets their powers together and fights a major threat, and the twist it gives to the story is really interesting and fun. Also, Rita is still ridiculous and campy, while also being threatening. This isn't a movie exactly like the old series, I just see it as a brand new sentai property, and I enjoy this very much. It somehow transcends being a Hollywood Young Adult Movie and becomes something new, and I think part of that has to do with how entertaining the Rangers are but especially how well-written Billy is. Billy, the Blue Ranger, is the heart of the movie, and it's just nice to see a character with autism who actually, like, feels like me or my friends, and he's up there and being a Power Ranger! I don't know what happened, but it's somehow a marvelously authentic role when it could have been awful. It's wild how this is the film that had both an autistic superhero and a gay superhero, and I'll treasure them both. Plus the movie is just...kind of fun. It's janky and imperfect, but it means something to me - to us. I hope it can mean something to everyone else I show it to, too.
Ready To Rumble
Year: 2000
Synopsis: Two huge wrestling fans, tired of their day job as sanitation workers, try to get their favorite wrestler out of retirement so he can take a corrupt promoter down.
EMN Notes: This movie is infamous because it's such trash that lead to David Arquette winning the WCW World Championship in real life and I can't help but love it for it. It's such a weird piece of work because it's clearly trying to ape Scream or American Pie and become the next Big Dumb Teen Comedy but it also has an entire section devoted to WCW pro wrestling and jokes that are stupidly out of place. It's such an awkward film, but that makes it so memorable. It has a toilet paper explosion, farting nuns, and a guy called Jimmy King whose catchphrase is that he's going to "rule ass". It has Diamond Dallas Page playing a bad guy for no reason. And despite being a wrestling movie featuring and about wrestlers it has no idea how wrestling actually works. A trainwreck. Gotta love it.
Samurai Cop
Year: 1991
Synopsis: The Yakuza have taken over LA, and the only man who can stop them is a cop known as "The Samurai".
EMN Notes: I love how incompetent this movie is. It tries so, so hard and fails on every level. As Mandy puts it, "every time I watch Samurai Cop I forget that I've already seen Samurai Cop". It's so funny, and so weird, and so baffling. Why is this man's face so red? Why did they get him to play a character that supposedly speaks fluent Japanese but pronounces katana so weirdly? Why did they think he had leading man chops? Why is the original poster just a clear Maniac Cop ripoff despite not being a horror movie at all? I don't know. I don't want to know. I just want to perceive this movie when it's on.
School of Rock
Year: 2003
Synopsis: A fired band member flubs his way into a teaching position at a music school and now has to teach his class how to rock.
EMN Notes: It's extremely funny that this movie is on EMN, because I completely forgot I added it until one day Mandy just calls from their room "Why is School of Rock on EMN?". It turns out I had downloaded it on a whim and here it was. It was a happy accident, too, because this movie is passionate, comforting, and sweet, and I love having a bit of Jack Black on EMN since we only have the Kickapoo music video on the main channel, with Pick of Destiny a shoo-in for Rhapsody once we get on that.
Scoody-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Year: 2004
Synopsis: Mystery Inc. is back in Coolsville, and this time someone's trying to imitate some of their most famous adversaries.
EMN Notes: I think Mandy likes this film more than anyone not named Scott Niswander. Yes, this is an extremely stupid kids movie. No, that doesn't make it not fun. It's extremely mindless Scooby stuff with of-the-time jokes and an overall fun little Mystery Inc. plot. It's not a deep movie that you have to pay attention to when it's on, it's a live-action Scooby-Doo movie that you watch to see Matthew Lillard say "Zoinks" when the ghosts show up. Nothing wrong with that.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Year: 2010
Synopsis: A Canadian nerd who kind of sucks has to defeat a woman's seven evil exes in order to date her.
EMN Notes: I saw this movie in theaters completely by accident. I and a few friends were going to go see The Expendables, and I thought they had ditched me. As I walked up to the ounter, something possessed me to ask for tickets to Scott Pilgrim instead. I still haven't seen any Expendables films. I remember watching this in sheer awestruck delight at how gorgeous the effects were, how excellent the humor was, and also how it felt like the closest thing we'd ever get to a No More Heroes movie. Since that time I've seen it twice more in theaters, I bought the DVD, I annoyed everyone on my wrestling forum at the time about it, the game was the entire reason I started using the PlayStation Store, and I even have a mock VHS of it. I briefly RPed Matthew Patel on Twitter and met some fun people through that. Hell, I even watched it when it was on EMN the other day, and it's still as good as I remember! It's just such a trip, and it has so many tiny moments that make me smile.
Shaun of the Dead
Year: 2004
Synopsis: A disaffected Englishman just wants to deal with this zombie outbreak so he can go have a pint.
EMN Notes: We have a bunch of Edgar Wright on this channel, and for good reason. This is such a great film, and it may be one of the first proper horror-adjacent films I ever watched not counting Sweeney Todd. It's fast and funny and packed with all the great things you've come to love in an Edgar Wright flick, and I love how so many of the characters act like members of my family just because of that good old English stoicism. This is a fun one to watch late at night.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Year: 2020
Synopsis: The fastest hedgehog around gets sent to Earth and befriends a nice young couple from Montana, but the government has one of their top scientists hunting him down.
EMN Notes: The last film Mandy and I saw in theaters before the official start of pandemic lockdown in 2020 and it was a very fun one to go out on. Yes, this is mostly a goofy by-the-numbers kids' movie, but it treats Sonic so well, making him cute and vulnerable with a winning vocal performance by Ben Schwartz. It's not gonna blow minds, but it was good! It was good, Jim Carrey as Eggman is hilarious, and it made everyone in the theater excited for the sequel. It's fun to have something a little newer on the channel, too.
Space Jam
Year: 1996
Synopsis: Famous basketball player Michael Jordan gets sucked down a golf hole and into the Looney Tunes world where he has to help them win a basketball game against an invading alien force.
EMN Notes: Yes, I was a Space Jam kid. I saw it in daycare, I had the VHS tape, and I remember watching the VHS tape just before we moved houses in England and going to my mother and asking for the soundtrack because it was "in stores now". I did get that soundtrack CD, and I still have it, and it was a permanent fixture in my home entertainment center until recently. Mum even recorded it onto a cassette at one point for me so I could listen to it on my Walkman. Space Jam is an undeniably goofy movie, but it has charm, it has fun, it has a great soundtrack, and it has Michael Jordan. That's good enough for me.
Stay Tuned
Year: 1992
Synopsis: A couch potato buys a new satellite TV setup that sucks him and his wife into a television-inspired Hell where if they die the devil gets their souls.
EMN Notes: I don't actually remember exactly why we watched this movie. I think it was another one that was free on some streaming service, but as we watched it I remember just being floored by how utterly strange and inventive it was. It has a really offbeat and dark tone that melds with the comedy of these two people going through different TV genres as people die around them. It's not really a horror movie, but it's not not a horror movie. It has incredibly detailed sets and costumes, and an entire animated segment that is completely professionally done and is one of the highlights of the film. It's a super weird little movie that must have fallen through the cracks, but I'm glad that it ended up in our laps. Definitely one of those weird movies you would have seen on UPN or what-have-you when nothing else was on.
Street Fighter: The Movie
Year: 1994
Synopsis: The warlord M. Bison has created an empire and seeks to take over the world, and the only ones who can stop him are a team of expert fighters headed by Colonel William Guile.
EMN Notes: I love this movie. I love, love, love this movie. I don't love it as much as the Super Mario Bros. movie, but I find it impossible to hate a film that features Raul Julia as M. Bison giving the hammy performance of a lifetime and also an incredible screen adaptation of Vega. This film has a lot of flaws in how it handles, well, almost everything, but at the same time it genuinely nails a lot of things too. Also, it's just funny. It's dumb, it's cheesy, and I can't help but grin at every weird and baffling decision it makes all the way until the truly excellent Bison scenes. A wonderful ride.
Streets of Fire
Year: 1984
Synopsis: Popular singer Ellen Aim has been kidnapped, and her ex-boyfriend has to team up with a rough punk girl and all kinds of other characters in order to stop the kidnapper played by Willem Dafoe.
EMN Notes: I learned about this movie for the first time when I first discovered The Protomen and found that their second album's cover was a reference to this film's movie poster. It's still one of my favorite movie posters of all time. After watching this movie on Netflix I bought the poster for my college dorm room as well as the soundtrack. Nowhere Fast is still one of my favorite songs, and that poster survived all the way until my house, where it proudly hangs in the guest room. This movie always makes me think of a nice conversation I had with Roger Barr of i-Mockery regarding it, and when I watched it most recently with Mandy I was taken by it all over again. It's a movie with the structure of a JRPG where our hero goes from plce to place, picking up party members as he trains to fight the boss. It's stylish, it's fun, the music is excellent, and I can't believe it took me this long to figure out it was by the same guy who did The Warriors. Most surprising unsurprising fact I've ever heard.
Super Mario Bros.: The Movie
Year: 1993
Synopsis: Two plumbers from Brooklyn accidentally dive into a portal leading them into an alternate dimension where dinosaurs became the dominant evolved species.
EMN Notes: I can't help but absolutely adore this movie to death. I just think the sci-fi world that Jankel and Morton created is so absolutely fascinating, and it's well-thought-out, too! Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo have incredible chemistry, and divorced of the Mario name it's an amusing and fun sci-fi romp with some issues but ultimately brings me just as much joy now as it did when I was a kid and saw this movie on the Disney Channel and later on a tape I bought from a shop in England. I watched the recently-restored Director's Cut the other week and it made me love the movie even more, as it both connected it to the games even more with cute references and shoutouts and it made some jokes and foreshadowing moments actually have setup and payoff. This movie is done so dirty and while it's not an actual masterpiece, it sure is one in my eyes. I'll take something spectacularly weird and visually interesting over a forgettable cash grab any day.
Swiss Army Man 
Year: 2016
Synopsis: A depressed young adult is stranded on a desert island with only a corpse for company.
EMN Notes: This was my favorite movie I watched in 2022. I was a mess when it ended, with my only review being "I love my wife". I stand by it - it's such an unbelievable piece of art that somehow masterfully combines maximalist tendencies with the hardest-hitting dialogue peppered on either side with fart jokes. The Daniels are such incredible filmmakers, and this movie is indescribably and one-of-a-kind. I've seen it twice now and I want to watch it a thousand more, because each time I noticed more and more and felt more and more strongly about it. It's special.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Year: 1990
Synopsis: Four turtles get exposed to radioactive goo that make them half-human and all-radical.
EMN Notes: This and the other Turtles movie are so fun for me because I had them on VHS as they were my brother's (you may notice I borrowed a lot of my brother's things growing up). He was the real Turtles fan in the family at the time, but I enjoyed them too. This is a movie that is on here for the vibe and the atmosphere alone. Sometimes you really just want to see some people in turtle costumes kicking some shell and doing their thing.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
Year: 1991
Synopsis: The mutagen that created the Ninja Turtles is in the hands of the evil Shredder who wants to use it to create an army of mutants.
EMN Notes: Now, this is the Turtles movie I have the weirdest relationship with. I didn't watch this one 'til much later, and I only watched it because I had read an i-Mockery article about a River City Ransom ROM hack that let you play as ninjas. At the end of the article they had made a funny flash animation for it that used the Ninja Rap. I then promptly fell in love with the Ninja Rap, because of course I did, and I made a Naruto AMV using it, because of course I did. Then I watched Secret of the Ooze. It's a fun movie! It's cartoony, it's goofy, it's closer in tone to the show than the first one, and I'm happy it's here.
The Big Lebowski
Year: 1998
Synopsis: Debt collectors piss on Mr. Lebowski's rug after they mistake The Dude for a rich and powerful man of the same name.
EMN Notes: This movie is so absurdly and eminently quotable. If Black Dynamite didn't exist I'd say it's the most quotable film on the channel. Jeff Bridges and John Goodman are in top form here, to the point that it took until recently for me to realize it was John Goodman at all. It's amazing that this movie has become the classic it has - it sits in a Napoleon Dynamite state for me where I definitely find it amusing but I mostly find the atmosphere intriguing. I associate this movie with that time when I was between high school and college and got really into watching movies I had heard were good. I remember the bowling alley scene hitting and realizing that that was where the reaction image I had seen so many times was from. It's a good film and it fits right in with other films we have on EMN that may not be absolute personal classics but are just excellent video store films.
The Karate Kid
Year: 1984
Synopsis: In order to defend himself from bullies, a young man who is new in town learns karate from an old master who lives next door.
EMN Notes: Mandy wanted to add this one, and I was on board. In many ways this was an entirely aesthetic choice, as the overall energy and vibe of this film just feels like it belongs on a television channel so it can pop up at 3AM. It's a classic film, and a quite good one at that, but EMN isn't always about quality, it's about emotion, and there's some kind of emotion this film channels that really strikes me.
The Muppet Movie
Year: 1979
Synopsis: The true story of how Kermit the Frog and his band of Muppets gathered together to start the world-famous Muppet Show!
EMN Notes: I adore the Muppets and I always have. We have The Muppet Show on this channel so it only made sense that we include at least one Muppets movie, and the original is such a funny and catchy and truly heartwarming piece of work that feels like the culmination of a whole lot of passion and a whole lot of love. I get so many of the songs stuck in my head at random points during the day, and there's never a bad time for this movie to come on. The Muppets are so nostalgic and fun, and this movie has stood the test of time.
The Princess Bride
Year: 1987
Synopsis: A whimsical fairy tale featuring a charming adventurer, a beautiful princess, a Sicilian pirate, a dashing musketeer, Andre the Giant, and some very large rats.
EMN Notes: An absolute triumph of a film, an epic fantasy that has humor and genuine film magic radiating from every second of it. It's also a very good aesthetic film for the channel, much like Karate Kid. This film is packed with lines everyone quotes and parts you probably didn't know were from it originally. I just don't think there's ever going to be a time where I DON'T want to watch this movie.
The Producers
Year: 2005
Synopsis: A producer whose star is dwindling and his weedy accountant come up with the perfect scheme - create the worst show on Broadway and pocket the extra cash.
EMN Notes: So this film is an interesting one because while I love it I wouldn't say it's a great movie musical. What it is is an extremely funny, but a bit flat, movie version of an incredible musical. I love the original film a lot, but the musical is the one that makes me bust a gut laughing every single time. I know all the words to all the songs and there are jokes in it that always straight kill me. It's outrageous.
The Room
Year: 2003
Synopsis: A stunning tale of duplicity as a great guy's fiancee cheats on him with his best friend.
EMN Notes: The pinnacle of late night cinema, a film that defies explanation, a film that is the work of one man and his extreme desire to make a movie. You have to respect the craft. What's funny is that I have absolutely seen worse movies than this, and I've seen plenty of movies just as baffling as this, but The Room has such an unbelievable story to go with it and is still extremely funny and Tommy Wiseau is so supremely weird that this one just sticks.
The Warriors
Year: 1979
Synopsis: When a visionary trying to unite the gangs of New York is shot, blame gets pinned on The Warriors. Now they have to stay alive until sunrise.
EMN Notes: It wasn't until recently that I realized this movie was directed by the same person who did Streets of Fire, which made a lot of things make more sense. When I first moved to Ohio I was in a phase where I really wanted to expand my scope of films I'd seen, which seems to be a mood I get into every few years. One of the movies that was recommended to me was this one, and upon watching it I really found myself in love with this strange vision of the future, with factions fighting factions and a scrappy group of youngsters just trying to make it until sunrise, aided by the pirate radio show host that narrates the whole thing. It's so stylish.
This Is Spinal Tap
Year: 1984
Synopsis: Spinal Tap was once the most influential rock band in the world. Now they're a footnote in music history. This is their story.
EMN Notes: I wasn't allowed to watch R-rated films until the day I turned 17 - or I suppose technically the day before, as my parents gave me a Blu-Ray copy of 300 just before my party. Before that day came, I wanted to see this movie more than anything else in the world. I knew who Nigel Tufnel was because of i-Mockery, and I knew that this movie was considered a comedy masterpiece as well as one of the most realistic unreal mockumentaries ever made, with actual bands threatening legal action because of how accurate it felt to their lives. I stared at this DVD in the library and then when I could finally check it out I took it home and watched it and thought it was incredible. It's a low-key film that sneaks up on you, because it almost lures you into the joke with how real it feels. Only when you stop and think about some parts of it, outside of the obviously outrageous bits, do you realize how intricate and insidiously funny it is.
Tommy Boy
Year: 1995
Synopsis: The family business is dying, so two brothers band together to try and save it.
EMN Notes: This film is to Mandy what King Ralph is to me, an enjoyable comedy with some charismatic and talented actors that is so special to them because of how much it reminds them of home. In their own words, it's the most midwestern film ever made, a film that makes them remember all the good about Wisconsin and where they grew up. I love that, because in so many ways it embodies the EMN spirit, a channel that is meant to surprise and delight in equal measure and soothe the soul in tiny imperceptible ways.
UHF
Year: 1989
Synopsis: A fry cook lucks into inheriting an old low-power TV station from his uncle and makes it his personal mission to save it from being shut down.
EMN Notes: This movie is messy and has plenty of material that has aged like milk but god I can't help but love how stupid and zany it is. It's a film that is near and dear to my heart as I rented it in high school during a very tumultuous time in my life and I can't help but be fond of Weird Al and his stupid smart guy humor. The entire "who wants to drink from the fire hose" sequence is like living in a pinball machine and it takes me off guard every single time because it refuses to slow down at any point. It was one of the first films we knew we had to add to EMN.
WarGames
Year: 1983
Synopsis: While messing around on his computer, a teenager accidentally hacks into the Pentagon and starts a simulation that could lead to global thermonuclear war.
EMN Notes: When I bought VHS tapes from charity shops in England, I bought this with Ferris Bueller because my brother remembered it vaguely. I'm so glad I did. This is a film that has something to say but is also a really extremely 80s anti-war film. It's almost tonally confused, with the overall idea chilling and yet the bulk of the movie playful and adventurous. I don't mind that, though, because what this film did was leave an impression on me. I actually hunted for this film on DVD for a long time and it took until 2019 for me to finally find it in the wild. It was never available anymore, new or used, so when I finally found it in an FYE at the Dayton Mall I snapped it up.
Wayne's World
Year: 1992
Synopsis: Wayne and Garth have a hit public access show in their basement, and the owner of a large chain of arcades wants to take them national. However, they'll soon learn that capitalists are super lame, and super shady.
EMN Notes: I mentioned that I had a phase in early high school, before I could watch R-rated movies, where I really wanted to expand my film tastes. For some reason, I decided to do that with a Wayne's World 1 & 2 two-pack. I don't regret it at all, as this movie is still extremely clever and extremely funny. It introduced me to Alice Cooper, and it was the entire concert scene that eventually lead to me making my first wrestling OC. So yes, Wayne's World is technically the entire reason I write so much. Thanks, Wayne's World.
Wayne's World 2
Year: 1993
Synopsis: After having a vision in a dream, Wayne and his buddy Garth decide to put on the concert of a lifetime - Waynestock. Party on.
EMN Notes: This film is a little dumber than Wayne's World and a little more derivative, but I can't lie, it's still a fun time. Outside of my gripes where they clearly copied a few of the jokes from the original, I think this still manages to provide a very funny, very fun little buddy movie with some very silly and funny scenes that I won't complain about seeing again. It helps that Wayne and Garth are just such funny and lovable characters.
Wet Hot American Summer
Year: 2001
Synopsis: A delirious spoof of 1980s sex comedies with an all star cast as "kids" during their last week as summer camp counselors.
EMN Notes: We watched this movie because of Orange Cassidy, a pro wrestler who loves this movie and uses Jane, the opening song, as his entrance music. It immediately put us in a great mood nd we ended up really loving this film. It has the same madcap energy as Dude Where's My Car, though it takes longer to come together and get there. When it gets there, though, it's as charming and funny and wild, and it really is incredible how good the cast is. Almost every member would go on to shape comedy TV and film for the next two decades. Not bad for a critical and commercial failure! And critics be damned, we love this movie. Fun fact, it's the second movie we watched in 2023 that used Jane as the opening song, the first being Cocaine Bear. Funny how that works out.
Zachariah
Year: 1971
Synopsis: An "electric Western" featuring two young gunslingers going off to find themselves and ending up on opposite sides of a conflict.
EMN Notes: We watched this for a movie night along with the excellent film Network and while I absolutely loved that movie, this is the one I can't stop thinking about. It's a concert film for a band that has never done anything more than this film. It's a gay cowboy movie decades before the famous gay cowboy movie. It doesn't really take place in the Old West, but it's not quite set in the 70s, either. It's a story about two sweet boys, both trying to live up to the masculine ideal of the wild gunman, and neither quite able to make it. It's such an oddity that won't leave my brain - one day I really want to write an article about it and post it here. It's funny how we watched this movie because of the eye-catching poster and ended up with a movie that burrowed itself deep in our minds. I highly, highly recommend it.