The 2024 Covie Awards

 

The Covie Awards are as bogus as climate change is real. They were created during the pandemic to honor cinematic achievement in an ever-shifting variety of categories. If there were actual awards to hand out, and anybody cared who they got handed out to, the Movie Buzzard would recognize the following:

Picture: "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" (2024)

Actor: Ralph Fiennes in "Conclave" (2024

Actress: Leonie Benesch in "Teacher's Lounge" (2023)

Supporting Actor: Ed Harris in "Love Lies Bleeding" (2024)

Supporting Actress: Isabella Rossellini in "La Chimera" (2023) and "Conclave" (2024)

Ensemble: "Sing Sing" (2023)

Cameo: Dwight Frye in "Sinners In Paradise" (1938)

Couple: Line Renaud and Dany Boon in "Driving Madeleine" (2022)

Juvenile Performance: Helena Zengel in "News of the World" (2020)

Short Film: "Incident By a Bank" (2010)

Revival: "Time of the Heathen" (1961)

Director: Steve McQueen. "Blitz" (2024)

Musical Score: Armando Ortega Jr. and Mel Elias, 

"Murder At Yellowstone City" (2022)

Set Design: "Bad Times At the El Royale" (2018)

Costume Design: "Times Square" (1980)

Title Sequence: "Strait-Jacket" (1964)

Blood and Bikinis: "Bikini Bloodbath" (2006)

Worst Haircut: Christian Friedel in "The Zone of Interest" (2024)

Best Villain: Colin Farrell in "The North Water" (2021)

Best Mad Scene: Jennifer Jason Leigh in "Kill Your Darlings" (2013)

Heads or Tails: "The Seventh Coin" (1993)

Life Is a Carnival: "She Freak" (1967)

Flipping the Switch: "High Maintenance" (2006)

Going Electric: Timothée Chalomet as Bob Dylan 

in "A Complete Unknown" (2024)

Looking Lost: Derek Jacobi in "Gladiator II" (2024)

Made In Milwaukee: "Lake Michigan Monster" (2018)

Ambition, Glitz and Chaos: "Megalopolis" (2024)

On and Off the Wagon: Saoirse Ronan in "The Outrun" (2024)

Disappearing Act: Adrien Brody in "Giallo" (2009)

Canadian, Eh?: Donald Sutherland in "Alien Thunder" (1974)

Once Upon a Time In Mexico: "They Came To Cordura" (1959)

Wickedest Lipstick: Courtney Love in "Beat" (2000)

Out With a Bang: Don McKellar in "The Event" (2003)

You Mean There's Really a Movie With a Title Like That?: "Jesus Christ: Serial Rapist" (2004)

Fly That Flag: "Alam" (2022)

MASH Before "M*A*S*H": "Battle Circus" (1953)

Dance Performance: Emma Stone in "Kinds of Kindness" (2024)

War Is Hell: "Merrill's Marauders: (1962)

That Face Looks Familiar: Strother Martin in "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950)

It's Not Easy Being Green: Cynthia Erivo in "Wicked" (2024)

Waiting For a Miracle: Sylvie Testud in "Lourdes" (2009)

Hell Is a Middle School: "Teacher's Lounge" (2023)

How To Dress For a Day In the Jungle: The Amazons 

in "Gold of the Amazon Women" (2010)

Lost In Paris: Omar Sy in  "Samba" (2014)

Chewing the Scenery: Anne Bancroft in "'Night, Mother" (1986)

Dancing For Dollars: The cast of "Dancing At the Blue Iguana" (2000)

On the Road: "Gasoline Rainbow" (2023)

Best Frank Sinatra Impression: Jeff Bridges in "Starman" (1984)

He Had To Start Somewhere: Paul Newman in "Ice From Space" (1952)

The West Was Never Like This: "Lucky Luke" (2009)

Most Eye-Catching Nude Scene: Marion Cotillard in "Ismael's Ghosts" (2017)

Most Discreet Nude Scene: Julia Swayne Gordon 

in "Lady Godiva" (1911)

Most Colorful Nude Scene: Dulcamara in "Yellow & Blue" (2022)

Nudes In Wartime: "Mrs. Henderson Presents" (2005)

Most Unconventional Nude Couple: Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in " The Substance" (2024)

Worst Casting: Robert Evans as a matador in "The Sun Also Rises" (1957)

Best Animal Performance: Balto the dog in "The Rodeo" (1929)

Best Title For a Film Noir: "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands" (1948)

Best Performance In a Lost Cause: Linnea Quigley in "Spring Break Massacre" (2008)

Best Performance By an Actor Playing a Character Pretending To Be Buster Keaton: Zachary Mooren in "MaXXXine" (2024)

Best Performance By an Actress Playing a Woman Turning Into a Horse: Simone Bucio in "Piaffe" (2022)

Best Movie To Watch Stoned: "The 400 Tricks of the Devil" (1906)

Weirdest Nicolas Cage Movie: "Longlegs" (2024)

Cutest Drag Performance: Marion Davies in "Beverly of Graustark" (1926)

Lost Generation: "The Moderns" (1988)

Dog Days: "Away To Me" (2012)

Done Too Soon: Robert Williams in "Platinum Blonde" (1931)

How To Be a Diva: Isabelle Huppert in "The Crime Is Mine" (2023)

The Kids Are All Right: "Empire Records" (1995)

Herman Scobie Award For Career Achievement: Karen Allen

Szamanka (1996)

 

SZAMANKA  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Andrej Zulawski

    Iwona Petry, Boguslaw Linda, 

    Pawel Delag, Agnieszka Wagner

An anthropologist has a turbulent affair with a woman who's nuts. How nuts? You'll see. Poland's answer to "Betty Blue".

Pink Flamingos (1972)

PINK FLAMINGOS  (1972)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: John Waters

    Divine, Mink Stole, David Lochary, Danny Mills,

    Mary Vivian Pearce, Edith Massey, Cookie Mueller

John Waters' famously transgressive comedy about a contest to determine who's the filthiest person in the world. (Not to give anything away, but one of the contestants is Divine.) Even Waters calls it "one of the most hideous movies ever made," and it's basically a catalogue of every depraved thing he could think of that hadn't turned up on the screen before. It's disgusting, and that's the point. (It's also pretty damn funny.) Added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2021, to the everlasting amusement of John Waters.

Terror In the Midnight Sun (1959)

 

TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN  (1959)  ¢ ¢

    D: Virgil W. Vogel

    Barbara Wilson, Sten Gester, Robert Burton,

    Bengt Blomgren, Åke Grönberg, Gösta Prüzelius

A meteor crashes to earth in northern Sweden, and a team of scientists go to investigate. It turns out the meteor doesn't look much like a meteor, and there's a 20-foot-tall beast prowling the frozen landscape. The pace is leisurely, with several long breaks in the story to allow a couple of the characters to go skiing. (YouTube calls it "ski-fi," an esoteric subgenre if there ever was one.) The movie does answer one important question: How do you kill a yeti? Answer: Throw torches at it till you set its hair on fire and it burns to death. You never know when a piece of information like that could come in handy.  Alternate title: "Invasion of the Animal People".

Tag (2015)

 

TAG  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Sion Sono

    Reina Triendi, Mariko Shinoda, Erina Mano,

    Yuki Sakurai, Aki Hiraoka, Ami Tomite

Two buses filled with schoolgirls are motoring down the highway when a strange wind comes up and slices the vehicles in half, along with their no-longer-giggling passengers. Only one girl survives - she's a poet who was on the floor retrieving a pen when the carnage occurred - but is she really better off than her dead classmates? She appears to be trapped in an ever-shifting nightmare that turns out not to be a dream, but something potentially more frightening. It's 85 minutes of kinetic, fast-moving horror with blood-spurting special effects. When the teachers, armed with heavy-duty machine guns, start slaughtering their own students, you know all bets are off.

Rolling Thunder Revue (2019)

 

ROLLING THUNDER REVUE  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Martin Scorsese

In 1975, Bob Dylan set out on tour - driving the bus, it looks like - along with Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and a bunch of musicians known collectively as the Rolling Thunder Revue. Some 40 years later, Martin Scorsese took footage from the tour and concocted this alleged documentary, with Dylan in whiteface and eye makeup performing some of his best songs, while he and others provide retrospective commentary as talking-head witnesses. "I don't remember a thing about Rolling Thunder . . . so what do you want to know?" Dylan says at one point, and that's as close as he comes to explaining himself. The movie makes no distinction between what's real and what's invented, and you don't always know, till finally Michael Murphy turns up in his persona as Senator Jack Tanner, talking about how Jimmy Carter once got him into a Dylan show in Niagara Falls. In a movie like this one, fronted by Bob Dylan, the fact that Jack Tanner is fictitious makes perfect sense. 

The Top Ten Movies of 2024

The following list was scraped together from the movies I saw last year, either for the first time ever, or for the first time in years. Some I managed to see on a big screen. Others were on Kanopy, or YouTube, or DVDs I watched with friends. Some were rentals from Scarecrow, Seattle's only remaining video store. 

MOVIES I LIKED A LOT:

"Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" (2024)

"Love Lies Bleeding" (2024)

"Driving Madeleine" (2022)

"Bad Times At the El Rloyale" (2018)

"A Complete Unknown" (2024)

"The Substance" (2024)

"Empire Records" (1995)

"Incident By a Bank" (2010)

"The Zone of Interest" (2023)

"Strange Darling" (2023)

SECRET TREASURES:

"Lourdes" (2009)

"Lawless Heart" (2001)

"Picture Claire" (2001)

"Murder At Yellowstone City" (2022)

GUILTY PLEASURES:

"Backtrack" (1990)

"Maxxxine" (2024)

"L0nglegs" (2024)

"Carry On Don't Lose Your Head" (1967)

MOVIES I MIGHT WATCH AGAIN SOMETIME:

"Conclave" (2024)

"Blitz" (2024)

"Kill Your Darlings" (2013)

"Gasoline Rainbow" (2023)

"The Burning Sea" (2021)

"Lucky Luke" (2009)

"Wicked" (2024)

"Horizon: Chapter 1" (2024)

"Gladiator II" (2024)

"The Outrun" (2024)

SILENTS, PLEASE:

"Filibus" (1915)

"Running Wild" (1927)

"Beverly of Graustark" (1926)

BACK ON THE BIG SCREN:

"Time of the Heathen" (1961)

"Strongroom" (1962)

"Black Tuesday" (1954)

FOUR FROM THE VAULT:

"The Moderns" (1988)

"Starman" (1984)

"One of Our Aircraft Is Missing" (1942)

"Raggedy Man" (1981)

TOXIC WASTE:

"Gorp" (1980)