Aug 25-31 Natasha Lyonne Week: There’s a new season of her weirdo mystery of the week coming out (I can’t remember the name rn, you can look it up), and she’s been steadily delivering chuckles for decades now.

Imogene Duncan (Kristen Wiig) was once a promising playwright, but now has a magazine writing job. She gets fired, her boyfriend leaves her, and she tries to kill herself, but really wants her boyfriend to save her. Instead, her friend Dara (June Diane Raphael! Hello people of Earth!) brings her to the hospital, and she has to be released to the care of her gambling addict mother (Annette Bening) and taken back home to New Jersey.

Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini and written by Michelle Morgan, this has Imogene learn that her father (Bob Balaban) never died and never felt bad about leaving the family.

This is very much a sitcom, and luckily, Kristen Wiig would go on to do better things. You can play the spot Natasha Lyonne game like I did, wishing she were in the movie more than she is. Same as Matt Dillon, who is good, but almost not in this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Aug 25-31 Natasha Lyonne Week: There’s a new season of her weirdo mystery of the week coming out (I can’t remember the name rn, you can look it up), and she’s been steadily delivering chuckles for decades now.

Back when I worked in a Toys R Us building bikes, Saturday night at 9 on WDVE, they always played “Detroit Rock City,” which I think was to cue us to the fact that it was time to spray your hair up and go to Donzi’s. Why a Pittsburgh station would play “Detroit Rock City” is a mystery, as is why they made local favorites of songs like Kip Addotta’s “Wet Dream,” Coney Hatch’s “Monkey Bars,” and “The Scotsman” by Bryan Bowers.

The cover band Mystery — Hawk (Edward Furlong), Lex (Giuseppe Andrews), Trip Verudie (James DeBello) and Jeremiah “Jam” Bruce (Sam Huntington) — have one dream: to see KISS at the Fox Theater in Detroit. Jeremiah’s religious mother (Lin Shaye) finds out and sends him away to Catholic school, but the guys — this all happens in one day and night — get him out when they get Father Phillip McNulty (Joe Flaherty) high. On the way, they pick up disco queen Christine (Natasha Lyonne) and make it to the show just in time to lose their tickets, which causes — get ready — hijinks to ensue.

Directed by Adam Rifkin and written by Carl V. Dupré, this has fun roles for Melanie Lynskey and Shannon Tweed, as well as a general good hang feeling. Also, the two young girls’ names are Beth and Christine, so if you like KISS, you probably got that. And you probably got that the girls that they hook up with tie them to kiss: Trip wants to be Ace and gets the spacey one; Jam is Peter Criss and dates Beth; Lex gets Christine, a Gene Simmons song and Hawk, who wants to be Paul Stanley, gets the super model. Well, it’s Gene Simmons’ wife, so maybe this theory should have been left in the IMDB trivia page, huh? Paul was married to actress Pamela Bowen, who is one of the religious protestors in the movie, and is now married to Erin Sutton.

This was the first movie to be released on DVD before VHS.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

Directed, written and produced by Joel Potrykus, this is a Y2K movie 20 years too late and that’s why I love it.

In 1999, Cam (David Dastmalchian) gives his younger brother Abbie (Joshua Burge) a challenge: Beat level 256 of Pac-Man or never get off the couch. Then, Y2K ruins the world, but the game continues and Abbie is frozen to the couch, half awake, half dreaming, still running through the mazes with Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde. Then, he blows up Cam just like Scanners.

I told you the whole story but in no way will this spoil this film.

Set in the same universe as The Alchemist Cookbook — both have Cortez (Amari Cheatom) show up — and Adina Howard is also in this, a movie so made in Michigan that the soda is Faygo.

This movie will remind you: No one can drink an entire gallon of milk.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

No boss I have ever worked for has said something to me that I remember more than toss off Chris Elliot lines, things like “I do this little trick with measuring spoons,” “We’ve lost a lot of good men in mine 5, Dave,” and “I’m a male model, not a male prostitute.” No actor has summed up the weirdness that I love in comedy better than Robin Williams, and no movie shows what I love more than Cabin Boy. It’s my Star Wars.

Directed by Adam Resnick, who wrote the film with Elliot, this is less a movie than a collection of strange moments. Fancy lad Nathaniel Mayweather (Elliot) annoys everyone, which keeps him from getting on the right boat and boarding The Filthy Whore, a ship under the helm of Captain Greybar (Ritch Brinkley). When Nathaniel causes the death of Kenny (Andy Richter), the cabin boy, he must take over and be at sea for months, perhaps never getting to Hawaii. The crew, Skunk (Brian Doyle-Murray), Pappy (James Gammon) and Teddy (Brion James) will kill him way before that happens.

Or maybe they won’t. But it comes close, with him stuck in Hell’s Bucket, on his own on a raft for days at a time, burning himself by covering his body with cooking oil and drinking salt water. Only Choki (Russ Tamblyn), half-shark, half-man, saves him. The giant Mulligan (Mike Starr) almost gets him — for sleeping with his multi-armed wife Calli (Ann Magnuson), after which he yells, “These pipes are clean” — but Nathaniel is either lucky or learning. He even gets Trina (Melora Walters) to fall for him.

Chris Elliott earned a Razzie Award nomination for Worst New Star, but lost to Anna Nicole Smith for Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult. Now and forever, fuck the Razzies.

This is a movie that you must like to be one of my friends. If you don’t get it, I’m not sure we can ever connect in a meaningful way.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

The first of three horror movies by Phillip Ridley — followed by The Passion of Darkly Noon and Heartless — The Reflecting Skin starts with three friends — Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper), Eben (Codie Lucas Wilbee) and Kim (Evan Hall) — doing what bored kids stuck in Idaho do. That would be inflating frogs and blowing them up all over a widow named Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan).

Seth lives in a gas station, where he works when cars pull up, as his parents, Ruth (Sheila Moore) and Lewis (Duncan Fraser), exist in a state of ennui toward one another. At one point, a car full of men in dark suits pulls up and one of them promises that they will see Seth soon. Seth has been talking to his dad about vampires, so when he is sent to apologize to Dolphin, she mentions that she feels 200 years old. He starts to think that she is one of the dead.

Eben soon goes missing, and Seth’s father is sure they will be arrested for it, as everyone in town knows that he is gay. Instead of facing the police, he sets himself on fire. Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) comes back from the Army to help raise Seth and soon falls in love with Dolphin. At the same time, Seth finds an ossified fetus and believes that it is Eben, whom he turns to, convinced that his brother’s radiation poisoning is being fed on by Dolphin.

Ridley said of this movie, “I created a fabulous child-eyed view of what I imagined America to be like – it’s a kind of mythical once upon a time never-world, where guys look like Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley, and everything is set in a Wheatfield and it all looks very American gothic.”

Cinematographer Dick Pope captured the magic hour here, orange fields of grain set against the black car filled with evil. Everything heads to a dark end, as the actual monsters of the world aren’t the monsters in a child’s mind, but the very simple killers that roam the highways around the small town.

Coil, which had Stephen Thrower as a member, used samples from The Reflecting Skin on Stolen & Contaminated Songs.

“It’s all so horrible, you know, the nightmare of childhood. And it only gets worse. One day, you’ll wake up, and you’ll be past it. Your beautiful skin will wrinkle and shrivel up, you’ll lose your hair, your sight, your memory. Your blood will thicken, and your teeth will turn yellow and loose. You will start to stink and fart, and all your friends will be dead. You’ll succumb to arthritis, angina, senile dementia, you’ll piss yourself, shit yourself, drool at the mouth. Just pray that when this happens you’ve got someone to love you, because if you’re loved you’ll still be young.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

Why did I wait so long to watch this? Why was I able to buy it at a dollar store? Why isn’t it on a major streaming service?

Directed by Jared Hess, who co-wrote it with his brother Jerusha, Gentlemen Broncos has some of Napoleon Dynamite in it. Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano) has a strange home life, one seemingly fixated on his dead father, living with his mother Judith (Jennifer Coolidge), who dreams of selling her nightgowns but is stuck working retail and making popcorn balls. Ben escapes his real life by writing science fiction. His latest book is Yeast Lords, which is all about Bronco (Sam Rockwell), a hero he has based on his father. As he writes, the audience sees the movie in his head.

Ben’s a nice guy. He’s unable to talk to most girls, but when introduced to fellow writer Tabatha (Halley Feiffer) at a science fiction writer camp, he allows her to read his story. She reacts strangely, running away, when in truth she’s stunned by how good it is. I get the feeling she wants to be with him but doesn’t have the language or ability to do that; instead she’s with Lonnie (Hector Jimenez), who makes cheap SOV-style films.

At the camp, Ben takes a lecture from one of his heroes, Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jermaine Clement). He quickly realizes that the person who was his idol is really a jerk; eventually, one realizes that he’s run out of ideas. He turns a contest at the camp — to publish one winner’s work — into a chance to steal an idea. Ben’s Yeast Lords becomes Brutus and Balzaak with minor changes.

Throughout, Ben’s mom wants more for him. She introduces him to a Guardian Angel from church, Dusty (Mike White), who is less a father figure and more someone who teaches him how to shoot blowdarts. When everything goes bad in a few days — the Yeast Lords movie that Lonnie made is horrible, a rich man tries to assault his mother under the pretenses that he wants to get her clothes into stores and Chevalier shows up at a local bookstore — Ben flips out and gets arrested.

This is where his mother’s love appears again. She has sent all of his books to be registered and officially bound by the Writers Guild of America. There’s proof that he’s the one who wrote Chevalier ‘s work. His books replace those ones and everyone lives happily forever after.

From the opening — “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans playing over book covers — to how fully formed its villain is (and how much he sounds like Michael York in Logan’s Run — thanks Gizmodo, I couldn’t figure out who he reminded me of) and the love that drives the end of the movie, I was totally won over by this movie. At one point, Tabatha tells Ben, “Well, you’ll never get anywhere by just letting your mom read your work.” I am so happy to know the truth.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

Directed and written by Michael M. Bilandic, this is the tale of Jobe (Jaspn Grisell), a rollerblader and drug deliveryman who is blamed for the overdose of A-list actor Royce (Theodore Bouloukos). He runs — skates — away into the late-night streets of New York City, trying to stay ahead of the police — from the pigs, the fuzz, the cops, the heat — plus the press and every strange person who has decided to make the city theirs tonight.

After all, his drug dealer boss Linda (Lindsay Burdge) claimed that the drugs he was bringing were “worse than what killed MJ and Prince put together.” Jobe shouldn’t be surprised, but you may be, as this is kind of After Hours but way too high to get to any set point, and I love it for that.

Make more short movies!

You can watch this on Tubi.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

Marty Jackitansky (Joshua Burge) is stuck in the corporate world, working for a bank, turning to crime to keep things from getting to him. He’s even taken checks from the bank itself and is making small amounts of money by writing fraudulent amounts. Then he goes into hiding in his friend Derek’s (Joel Potrykus, who directed and wrote the movie) basement, playing video games and making a Nintendo Power Glove into a Freddy weapon by adding knives.

There’s a three-minute scene here where Marty just eats spaghetti in bed, getting it all over himself, that is just incredible. There are long stretches in this where nothing happens, so when something does, it’s violent and shocking and just makes you want to be patient during the slowness. Plus, Marty wears a Demons shirt for most of the movie and even if he is a violent jerk, you can forgive him some of his crimes due to this fashion moment.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

Shot on 16mm film between Tupelo, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee by John Michael McCarthy (Damselvis, Daughter of Helvis), this combines E.C. horror comics, rockabilly, teens gone wild movies, UFOs, hippie killing death machines, women with big hair and bigger breasts, David F. Friedman as an alien leader, Guitar Wolf and his band as the Men In Black, a Malt Liquor Angel, Blackie — an alien from the Lo-Fi Frequency Dimension played by Jack Olblivian from the band The Oblivians — and Kerine Elkins as a psychotic redhead that I definitely would have married at one point in my life. Or maybe that would be a union with D’Lana Tunnell, who plays Goliatha of the Amazones, a stripper who dances on top of a motorcycle.

Years ago, Johnny only killed nine beatniks and had to go back home. Now, he has to kill a number of hippies to please his alien boss, who also wants him to kill D’Lana.

It makes almost no sense, but who cares? The music is excellent. There are so many curves you’ll wreck yourself, and it seems like you’re in the third movie in a series of films, not a stand-alone. And I love that. I really feel like this has an audience of one, and I am that person, and thank you for making it for me.

You can watch this on YouTube.