"Top Ten" List - #8

 8. Don’t Hate Me, I Loved This Garbage

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures anymore, but if I did, these would be mine for the year.

Marry Me

This is dumb fun with a truly ridiculous premise, and I liked it probably more than I should have. A pop star (Jennifer Lopez) plans to marry her boyfriend on stage at a concert, only to find out juuuuuuust before going on stage that he’s been cheating on her. In a haze of emotions and facing humiliation, she spots someone (Owen Wilson) holding a “Marry Me” sign (in tribute to her song of the same name) and brings them on stage for some impromptu nuptials. Once the concert is over and she’s somewhat come to her senses, she and her team persuade the guy to play along with the stunt marriage for a few months to help her save face in the press. They eventually fall in love for real, yadda yadda yadda. JLo is great, playing a heightened version of herself, and I always love a good aw-shucks Owen Wilson performance. *shrugs* It’s not great but it worked for me. It has an especially good “last minute dash” sequence (like everything in this movie, your mileage may vary). (Available on Amazon Prime and to rent on other streaming services.)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (‘22)

The original 1974 film is one of my favorite horror movies ever, but as a franchise it is a sweaty hot mess (though I am fond of TCM2). This movie is one of those “requels” that people are suddenly talking about, which takes what it wants from the franchise history (in this case, just the first movie, like the new Halloween trilogy) and throws out the rest. We see a reappearance of the original film’s final girl, Sally Hardesty, now played by MANDY’s Olwen Fouéré (RIP to the original, Marilyn Burns), as well as (obviously) Leatherface himself. Don’t ask me how Leatherface ended up in a children’s home after the events of the first movie in which he was a grown-ass man – this movie does not care about such trivial things. I also think the setup – with the young entrepreneurs who have just … bought this town (?) and are fixing it up to entice small business owners (???) – is hella weird. (*insert underpants gnome “PROFIT!” meme*) But Leatherface is actually pretty great here, and there are a TON of great kills (the party bus massacre is an all timer, and I really loved the stabbed-with-a-wristbone kill). Also, that townie mechanic was super hot. (Available on Netflix.)