Last year I dug into my “no boring movies” philosophy and put together a list of the best, most ass-slapping films I had watched through 2020 for an end-of-year top ten. I recently decided I would write another in 2021, but equally quickly realized I've been watching too much good stuff for a single list.

What follows are the top ten not-boring movies I watched for the first time in January through June. We've got bad (good?) game adaptations, a CG alien worm ghost, paranormal fauxumentaries, giallo murders, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and more — much, much more. I think you'll find something you like.

Honorable mentions to the Fast and the Furious franchise, the Saw franchise, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, and Danger: Diabolik.

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997)

While the humor trends hit-or-miss, Romy and Michele is a bizarre, beguiling love letter to friends who are just as deranged as you are. Leads Mira Sorvino (Romy) and Lisa Kudrow (Michele) propel the film with buoyant and untouchable chemistry, turning what might otherwise be an oddball misfire into a strange and touching movie, where two peculiar platinum blondes stand united against a world which would rather wring their weirdness out. Beyond that, the film is just deeply funny, with Romy’s inexplicable accent and bits like the “business woman’s special” lingering well after the fact. I don't know if I'd call Romy & Michele queer cinema in the traditional sense, but like…...come on. They're in love. It kicks ass. Good movie.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)

“You see, your father has been the milk of my business. But even milk has an expiration date.”

I thought I'd already experienced the cream of the crap of hilarious game-to-movie adaptations, but Legend of Chun-Li thoroughly kicked my teeth in. Swapping out the Saturday morning cartoon bliss of Street Fighter: The Movie for something infinitely edgier and stupider, Chun-Li is a film meant to be watched by twelve-year-old boys at a sleepover and absolutely nobody else. The plot? Total fucking nonsense. The action scenes? Manic. The sound design? Unhinged. The performances? You KNOW these folks are here for the paycheck. Though Neal McDonough’s sinister, real-estate developer (???) M. Bison can’t match the revelatory chutzpah of Raul Julia’s iconic turn as the villain, his honest attempt is accentuated by tiger roars playing anytime he does anything, ever. At one point an explosion goes off and it’s just a 2D GIF pasted in After Effects. A dude from the Black Eyed Peas plays one of the bad guys. Need I say more? I can't believe Legend of Chun-Li is a real movie, and neither will you.

Despiser (2003)

Take a few minutes of your life to watch the Despiser trailer, and then look me in the eyes and tell me it doesn't seem like the greatest movie of all time. Computer-generated environments out of a Sega CD game, copy-pasted crucifixions, clay-textured animated hell creatures, slo-mo bullet cams, mid-size sedans tumbling into lava pits, an atomic bomb, for god's sake — yes, this is Despiser. Half soap opera and half FMV fever dream, writer/director/producer Philip Cook’s magnum opus fires on all barrels for 105 nonstop minutes, unloading an experience equal parts blistering sincerity and utter derangement. Struggling artist Gordon Hauge loses his job, his wife, and then his life, ending up in a version of Purgatory derived from the score videos they play at bowling alleys. He flits between this afterworld and the living world, teaming up with a ragtag group of lost souls to destroy the eponymous, Shockmaster-voiced Despiser. I won't spoil the film, but rest assured, this one is unlike anything you've ever seen. Highly recommended.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)

The first Scorpion found a place on my end-of-year list for 2020, and it turns out the sequel, though occasionally harder to endure, is pretty damn good too! As if Meiko Kaji carrying an entire genre on the strength of her performance wasn’t enough, Jailhouse 41 tips back into the visual indulgences which made the original 701 such a treat. Here the women-in-prison and vengeance beats flow and mix with Bava-type supernatural encounters, painted in lurid reds and purples and electric oranges and hyper-cool blues. Bracing these masterful visuals is a deep sense of desperation; a focus on the partnerships and concessions made in the name of survival, and the inevitable betrayal they entail. It’s an intriguing, entertaining package, which culminates in a stunning sequence of unrestrained fantasy. Is it a dream? A statement? A proclamation of joy? Of sadness? A wish for the future? All I know is that it’s great to watch.

Noroi: The Curse (2005)

The best horror films are ones which feel unambiguously evil, so foul and inky black that their dread miasma imparts a smoke stain on your very soul. As the name implies, Noroi is less a movie and more a curse itself; a found footage audio-visual hex of such distressing and alien malice that you yourself feel caught in a zero-sum spiritual deathtrap by the time it grinds to a halt. Panicked, grotesque, and thoroughly nasty, the film kicks off with dead birds and disquieting noises and only gets more desperate and uncanny from there, especially once familiar formats such as the TV variety show and hack paranormal documentary are sucked in and corrupted and linked to its crimson web. Symbols, videotapes, waveforms, masks, folklore, rituals, tinfoil, scribblings, scrolls, chains, children - all tangled into a rotten, knotted map which leads somewhere no human can comprehend. Noroi knows there are places you can't come back from, and knows there are also places you shouldn't. Watch this one without spoiling yourself - and preferably, in the dark.

Nowhere (1997)

Few films have slapped me round from teary-eyed to hyena-cackling as quick as the conclusion of Nowhere. Who else but Gregg Araki could make a movie as simultaneously crude and unpleasant and funny and desperately touching as this? It seeps into your brain like DayGlo toxic waste; a cigarette-burned wormhole into a feverish, claustrophobic pocket dimension where everyone is horny and doomed and the very fabric of existence is woven from MTV’s deathdreams. Here, dead-end queer adolescence is rendered with supremely appropriate chaos and confusion, crossing the rubicon into something wholly uncanny, but no less able to affect the soul. It’s deeply hilarious, utterly bizarre, and supremely heartbreaking in myriad ways. Though the arms of your lover may be port in a storm, they, like all else, will eventually leave you. And though you may try your best to steal a car and sneak your girlfriend to a party, that car may well be hijacked by militant queers in shiny silver crop tops. Life’s just like that sometimes.

Santa Sangre (1989)

The moment I knew I loved Santa Sangre, like really truly loved it, was when Jodorowsky pops an Argento-style knife murder in the midst of his psychocircus childhood trauma movie. While the proceeding reels of film give the same visually sumptuous and spiritually interpretative vibe as El Topo or Holy Mountain, it’s this feverish slaying which cements Santa Sangre as an entirely different type of experience. After this point, the picture spirals out into something akin to the giallo and slashers from which Jodorowsky pulls inspiration, a sort of Psycho or Deep Red from a singular, maximalist mind who treats the vulgar and extravagant with the same measure of psychic import. The standard criticisms of Jodorowsky apply, but it’s hard not to get lost in Santa Sangre’s morbid charms, carefully considered visuals, and strange, emotional whirlpool of generational trauma. The film is unbelievable, unmatched, and most of all, unforgettable.

Ghostwatch (1992)

As if one deeply evil found footage/mockumentary horror film wasn't enough, here’s another! Infamously broadcast once on the BBC and never again, Ghostwatch tracks a group of real-life television personalities through a fictional investigation of “the most haunted house in Britain.” What begins as a Unsolved Mysteries-esque Halloween lark transforms into a slowest-of-slow-burns terrorfest, so utterly grim and insidious that it rendered me scared of the dark for three straight nights. Ghostwatch lays down sixty minutes of hypnotic, candle-drip buildup for a blackest black, flesh-crawling conclusion which snaps shut like a bear trap and absolutely refuses to let go. You don't know how high the roller coaster climbs until it drops; you don't realize how gradually the screws tighten until you hear yourself scream. I could spend forever and a day gushing about how gorgeously this film lines up the dominos (and knocks a few over without you even realizing), but I'll just tell you to watch it instead. Another “no lights, no spoilers, no sleep” type situation.

Space is the Place (1974)

Space is the Place was the first film I watched in 2021, and it remains one of the best. Science-fiction fantasy, social document, blaxploitation flick, spiritual journey, political statement, religious text, morality tale, low-budget midnight movie, a musical ritual - to attempt classification of jazz musician Sun Ra’s genre-smashing manifesto is folly, but to watch it is an absolute treat. Conceptually radical and engrossing from start to finish, Space is the Place is essential cinema; a completely distinctive work presenting a singular vision in utter command of its chosen medium. The performances are imbued with infectious enthusiasm, the script is urgent and truly hilarious when it seeks to be, and the entire package is wrapped in astounding filmmaking; the type of mastery unique to those creators possessed by the fervent spirit of genius. There’s not a single frame of this movie that isn’t incredible to look at, and by the time it ends you’re ready to watch it again. There’s nothing else on earth or among the cosmos quite like Space is the Place.

Southland Tales (2006)

This movie, right? In the first nine minutes, I said “holy hell” out loud at least three times. At fifty minutes there was a music cue that made me gasp and clap like a seal, and another at about an hour seventeen which easily convinced me Southland Tales is the best film I’ve seen in 2021. All that, AND The Rock, AND a bit where two trucks have sex? Within 24 hours I had watched it a second time. Movies fucking rule, dude.

Massive, ambitious, and completely unhinged, Southland Tales is post-9/11 post-apocalypse untouchable weirdo moviemaking. It's a deeply stupid, very hilarious, galaxy-brain film that only a mad genius could make, and it totally knocked me on my ass. Extreme Bush-era angst, bleakly relevant commentary, self-indulgent needle drops, overwrought title cards, soap opera parodies, prescient jokes astoundingly penned in 2006 and not 2020, a lip-sync musical number because fuck it, why not…...all this and more, in a grotesque, vulgar vision of America where we all communicate in detached quips and are constantly overloaded on information, forever. Huh!

This movie is so directly attuned to my wavelength of bullshit that it felt like finding a missing piece of myself; one of those rare films that hit me with those “where has this thing been all my life?” type feelings. I can’t guarantee you’ll get as much mileage as I did out of bits like “Deep Throat 2” and Jon Lovitz’s unbelievable villain turn, but I promise it’s an experience you won’t forget anytime soon. Southland Tales is a manic, totally off-the-rails vision of America’s demise, and the worst (best?) part is we’re already living it. Someday this world will come to an end, and it won’t be from climate change or an atomic bomb or any of that shit - it’ll all collapse because Elon Musk wanted to send a celebrity back in time, and no one will even know it happened. Truly bleak, truly funny shit. Nobody does it like Southland Tales, and nobody rocks the cock like Krysta Now.

See y’all in December for part two!

Morgan’s Top Ten Not-Boring Films of 2021 (Vol. I)