In a very special Apirl’s Fools episode of The Criterion Project, I am joined by Louie G, host of the Robots vs. Dinosaurs podcast, to talk about a true hidden gem and one of my favorite movies: it’s Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! Now, make no mistake, the fact that this is an April’s Fools episode does not mean that we are here to dunk on this independent “backyard” style movie. It’s the absolute opposite, we wholeheartedly love this movie, and we believe it should be regarded as one of the great movies of our time. What’s more, this episode includes a great cameo by the star of the movie, the legend Matt Farley himself!
An image from ‘First Cow,’ a beautiful movie that has been praised enough already.
Here we go again. More than ever, it feels like making a “best movies of the year” post is simply inadequate. Movies, which were alreadyon the decline as far as their centrality to cultural life was concerned, declined even further and sharper than ever this pandemic year. To some, this very fact has provided even more reason to put out a list that champions movies that would’ve gotten a better chance at connecting had they been released in a “regular” year. I felt similarly until I started reading the lists and top tens that have already been published and saw the same movies mentioned over and over again. Boring, overwhelming critical consensus is nothing new, but it seems to have gotten even more obvious this year (maybe it’s just me?) And let’s face it, nobody cares if you put Nomadland at number 3 or number 7. Lists of this kind are only valuable in as far as they recommend movies that you might not have watched otherwise.
So, what to do if everyone is recommending the same movies as me? I toyed with the idea of making a list with only movies that I felt had been overlooked by other lists, considered giving up and simply conforming to the year-end list tradition, and even thought of not publishing a list at all. Ultimately, I decided to embrace the big movie-watching lesson of the year. Ever since the pandemic flattened time into my computer screen, I’ve been watching many, many more older movies than I would have otherwise. Some of them – if not most – made a bigger impact on me than even 2020’s best new releases. At this point, I assume we’re all in agreement that “best of” lists are recommendation machines, so here comes the most honest and truthful list of recommendations I could write after a long year of staying home, making a brilliant web series, and watching movies. I’ve identified four main themes in my movie-watching this year and written a bit about them and how they affected me. I hope you read them because they’re far more interesting than just a dumb list, but if you’re the kind of person who simply wants to get the list and get it over with, I’ve posted that at the end.
The Motern MediaUniverse The biggest cinematic event of my year was, without any doubt, the discovery of Matt Farley, Charles Roxburgh and their Motern Media empire. I was first introduced to Farley through the Important Cinema Club podcast, which I began listening in late 2019. I learned that Farley was a prolific musician who has written more than 20,000 songs and lives off the royalties created by his massive output being played on Spotify and Apple Music. More importantly, I learned that he and his friend Charles Roxburgh had been making self-financed horror comedies in their small town of Manchester, New Hampshire for years. The hosts of the podcast spoke so enthusiastically about these movies that I tuned in to a Twitch screening of some of their output and have been obsessed ever since. The key Motern movie is probably Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! a horror comedy about a disgraced tutor and a town terrorized by a mysterious monster that encapsulates everything great about the Farley-Roxburgh collaboration: It might seem like a “so bad it’s good” movie at first, but it is actually one of the most perfectly calibrated, inventive, and absolutely hilarious movies ever made. As much as I love Riverbeast, however, the movie that spoke the most to me is Local Legends, an autobiography of sorts directed by Farley in which he explains his life and his art. The movie is as funny as it is touching, and I am not ashamed to admit that I found an enormous amount of inspiration in seeing not only the way Farley has built a creative life for himself, but in how great these movies are. In fact, the web-series I worked on for most of this year, Wormholes, is deeply indebted to my discovery of Motern Media. Most of their movies are available on Amazon Prime, but you can also get them on blu-ray. If that weren’t enough, the co-hosts of the Important Cinema Club have written a whole book about them.
Racial Justice There is no question that the most important piece of cinema produced this year wasn’t anything we would traditionally call “a movie” but the video, recorded by Daniella Frazier, that documented the murder of George Floyd, followed by the flood of images that documented the violence and repression of protestors at the hands of police. During the summer, it became impossible for anyone living in the United States to not consider the extent to which racism and white supremacy still dictates life in this country. The intense grief and anger of the moment also awakened an unexpected willingness by non-black people to self-reflect and consider how they had contributed to America’s racists systems. At the expense of sounding like some poser “ally” trying to get extra points, I include myself in that group and want to highlight some of the most illuminating movies about the black experience I watched this year. The Killing Floor was the directorial debut of actor Bill Duke. Initially produced for television, the movie has been recently restored and through the story of an integrated union in early 20th century Chicago, provides a clear-eyed view at the way racism and capitalism feed off each other. The short documentary Black Panthers, directed by the late Agnès Varda, documents a 1968 protest rally after the incarceration of Huey P. Newton. Seeing this historic footage at the height of the protests, hearing the interviews featured in the documentary (including ones with Kathleen Cleaver and Newton himself) had a deeply bittersweet effect: realizing how much hasn’t changed, and hoping that the spirit of these activist had been reignited for good. As far as more recent released, Garrett Bradley’s Time is a deeply moving glimpse at the life of a family divided by America’s system of mass incarceration.
On a lighter note, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman is a mockumentary in which an aspiring filmmaker named Cheryl (and played by Dunye) investigates the history of a forgotten silent film star known only as “the watermelon woman.” The result is an incisive and delightful romantic comedy about black, queer, and female representation on screen. Equally delightful is the much celebrated Lovers Rock – a chapter in Steve McQueen’s five part Small Axe series – that chronicles a house party in 1980s London. In a year where we were all stuck inside, it was particularly moving to see young lovers falling in love on the dance floor during a moving sing-along to Janet Kay’s “Silly Games,” a scene that will surely be remembered as one of the year’s best.
Charlie Chaplin I picked The Kidfor an episode of Criterion Project and was surprised by how much I loved it. I had tried and shrugged at Charlie Chaplin back in my teenage years (like all teen hipsters, I preferred Buster Keaton, who is admittedly great) but 2020 brought a newfound fascination with the Chapmeister. It’s unquestionable that the man had his issues (both as an artist and as a person), but it’s also undeniable that he was a genius. I was thrilled by the action climax of The Gold Rush in a way that most recent blockbusters don’t even come close to matching. I delighted at the incredible precision and social commentary of Modern Times. I sobbed like a baby at the end of City Lights. And I was fascinated by Monsieur Verdoux, one of Chaplin’s least talked-about movies – an anti-capitalist talkie where the beloved comedian plays a serial killer. I will even stick up for A King in New York, a messy late entry in Chaplin’s filmography that is nevertheless one of his most fascinating movies. Even though his later work can be deeply ego-centric, Chaplin was sharply attuned to politics, especially early in his career. He didn’t forget what it was like to grow up in abject poverty, and even his most heart-warming comedies show a society that is deeply indifferent to the working class, where cops exist only to harass the poor, and where happy endings are only achieved through Deus Ex Machini that highlight the bleakness of the situation. It only felt appropriate to be drawn to such a vision of the world this year. Speaking of which…
Looney Tunes Somehow I convinced the great folks at Alternate Endingto let me write a long article about Looney Tunes that was really an excuse for me to watch A LOT of cartoon shorts without feeling like I was doing nothing with my life. I am very proud of that article, which is a beginner’s guide to the world of Looney Tunes shorts. Beyond these animated classics, I found myself craving zany, violent comedy throughout the year – and it’s not because “comedy is the escape we need right now.” Quite the opposite, actually. These chaotic movies were the most accurate depiction of what it felt like to live through this wretched year. How else could you respond after being confronted with the utter failure of our current existence but with nonsensical amounts of extreme comic violence? I found real anger bubbling under the slapstick of The Three Stooges. I saw dystopian premonitions of greed and fame in Albert Brooks’s Real Life. I connected deeply with the absolute anarchy of Duck Soupand Hellzapoppin.’ I laughed and cringed equally hard during Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, even though I was deeply disappointed by its deeply naive “now vote” conclusion (more on that here.) Among 2020 releases, I was most surprised by Bad Trip, a hidden-camera gross-out comedy starring Eric Andre, Lil Rel Howery and Tiffany Haddish that presents a truly deranged and chaotic world of mean-spirited practical jokes. Seeing the way “normal people” react to these truly insane pranks with humanity and kindness ended up giving me more hope than anything else I saw this year.
“Alright, but get on with it already” I hear you say. Fine, here it is…
I have been preoccupied with art and success lately as documented here and here. Then out of nowhere*, as if sent to me by destiny, comes Matt Farley. His movie Local Legends, shot on a “backyard budget” and starring Farley and his friends, unexpectedly provided the answers I was looking for. Or rather, it provided an answer. This might sound ridiculous given the circumstances of the movie’s origin, but I’m being serious when I proclaim this to be one of the most truly profound movies I’ve ever seen.
Farley is a comedian, actor, filmmaker and musician. He’s gained some notoriety for having written 20,000 novelty songs – none of them are particularly popular, but the volume of his output is enough to provide something close to a living wage in royalties. All of this is explained in Local Legends, which is an autobiographical film about Farley’s life in Manchester, New Hampshire. The movie’s not unlike a Woody Allen dramedy, if you add Farley’s zero-budget aesthetic and dry sense of humor. Just to be clear, Local Legends is not a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie. If anything, the pleasure comes from the way the movie destroys any accepted notions of what constitutes “good art.” I could say that by making it impossible to distinguish what is ironic, sincere, or a a simple accident of budget-cutting, Farley has created a totally new and unique art aesthetic**, but the truth is the best way to get my point is to watch the damn movie.***
If Local Legends is a justification for Farley’s lifestyle, it is also a roadmap for an alternate view of creative success in a capitalist society. Like the bus-driver poet protagonist of Paterson (another movie I love), Farley’s character reaches a sort of understated enlightenment about the role of creativity in his life. Unlike Paterson, however, he is not a Romantic idea of a working-class artist concocted by one of the world’s most celebrated auteurs. He’s the real deal. Matt Farley is a real man who spends his life writing novelty songs and making low-budget movies because, as he puts it, “they’re just so much fun.”
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* I say “nowhere,” but the thing that alerted me to Farley’s work was The Important Cinema Club, a truly wonderful movie podcast hosted by Justin Decloux and Will Sloan. In fact, if you wanna know more about Matt Farley, I recommend an excellent essay by Sloan.Â
**Â If Farley has, in fact, created a new and unique aesthetic some of the credit is owed to Charles Roxburgh, who has directed most of the horror-comedy movies Farley has starred in. If you’re curious about their work, there’s an upcoming Twitch double-feature of ‘Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You’ and ‘The Paperboy.’Â
***Â You can order a special blu-ray version of ‘Local Legends’ from Gold Ninja Video, or you can do what I did and message Matt Farley directly on Twitter.Â
Coco Hits New York 