June Screenings: Best && Worst

                        June Screenings: Best & Worst

Hello and welcome back to Cinema Wellman! It’s the end of the month, so it’s time once again for our Monthly Best & Worst!

Now that I’m working full-time again, it appears that the days of 80 movie months are behind us for the foreseeable future. It looks like I’ll have to be content with 50 or so movies per month, and I’m fine with that. 

June was an odd month here cinematically. I watched over 60 movies, yet there really wasn’t that much that stood out. I’m reminded of the very few times during my teaching career when we had finished a project a day or two early heading into a vacation week. No way I’m starting something new before a week off. On those rare occasions I’d look at my students and tell them, “I really don’t have anything for you.”

June was kind of like that.

We always begin with the bad and the worst, but I’ve already crucified Zoombies, Zoombies 2, Aquarium of the Dead, MacGruber, The Ladies Man, It’s Pat: The Movie, and Stuart Saves His Family, this month, so…what’s left?

No worries! There’s never a shortage of bombs here at Cinema Wellman, so bombs away!

The Howards of Virginia (1940) 

AP/116 m/IMDb: 6.0/Oscar Nominated for Best Sound & Best Music

I want you to imagine that you’re a casting director for a moment. It’s 1940 and you need an actor to fit the following part in a pre-American Revolution period piece: “an unsophisticated rustic farmer and surveyor.”

Any thoughts? Who you got? Jimmy Stewart? He could play a farmer. He can play unsophisticated.

How about John Wayne? Clark Gable? Sure, other than the fact that neither of them could act.

Bill Holden? Sure thing. You get the point.

Well, the producers of The Howards of Virginia chose Cary Grant for the part of the unsophisticated rustic farmer. Cary Grant, unsophisticated?!? Cary Grant, rustic?!?

And the fact that he’s English bothered me more than it should have. I realize that half of the colonists at the time were English, but they weren’t CARY GRANT ENGLISH!!!!

On top of all of this, the movie is flat out boring. It’s terrible and it rightfully earned Grant some of the worst reviews of his almost 40 year acting career. 

I would have steered clear of this if it wasn’t nominated for both Best Sound and Best Music Oscars. How about the Best Sophisticated English Gentleman Playing a Farmer Oscar?!

Speaking of movies I would have steered clear of…

Buster (1998) 

R/102 m/IMDb: 5.8

Some singers can act. Lady Gaga, Tom Waits, Beyonce, David Bowie, Dwight Yoakam, and The Ices (T & Cube) to name a few. 

Some singers can really act. Queen Latifah, Ann-Margret, and Bette Midler were all Oscar nominated for acting performances!

Jennifer Hudson, Cher, and Frank Sinatra all WON Oscars for acting!

If my godmother Jo is reading this right now, I know she’s wondering where her favorite singer/actress is in this rundown…

Well, a singer who could REALLY act would be Barbra Streisand. Also an Oscar winner with multiple nominations across the board. 

The reason why I bring all of this up is that some singers CANNOT and SHOULD NOT act! Madonna is a terrible actress, Bing Crosby (although he won an acting Oscar!) was an absolutely awful actor, and Elvis…well, Elvis was Elvis.

Another singer who should have never acted is Phil Collins. It doesn’t help that I also hate his music, but whoever thought it was a good idea to have him star in a movie should be incarcerated in some sort of Offense to Art prison somewhere. Maybe The Hague can handle that. 

Buster was basically 102 minutes of torture. Boring torture at that. Collins plays the title character who is a petty criminal who is, I believe, trying to impress a girl by robbing a bank or something. That’s how interesting this was.

If, for some reason, you like Phil Collins, listen to an album of his for 102 minutes instead of queueing up this garbage.

So enough of the Worst, only two this episode, but since I already dumped all over seven bombs this month, that should be enough.

Let’s look at some good stuff screened here in June!

We’ll begin with a “doubleheader!”

World of Tomorrow (2015) & How Do You Measure a Year? (2021)

 

G/17 m/IMDb: 8.1/Oscar Nominated Best Short Film, Animated

NR/29 m/IMDb: 6.8/Oscar Nominated Best Documentary Short Film

I decided to lump these two films together since they have so much in common:

*They’re both shorts

*They were both nominated for Oscars

*They both involve young daughters and their dads

*They both piss me off so much because I wish I thought of these projects. BOTH of them!!!

World of Tomorrow is a delightful animated short by filmmaker Dan Hertzfeldt, but the star of the film is his four-year-old niece Emily who voices Winona Mae.

The film consists of Winona Mae talking about the future, both hers and the world’s.

The brilliance is that Hertzfeldt just recorded his niece talking about random things, as children do, and he edited her musings into a coherent story.

It’s everything you’d expect from an unscripted film from the mind of a four-year-old. It’s compelling, zany, sweet, head-scratching, and really funny.

Damn, I wish I thought of this!!!

Damn, I wish I thought of this, Part II is How Do You Measure a Year? In this short documentary film, a man named Jay Rosenblatt came up with a series of questions for his then two-year-old daughter, Ella. 

The questions never changed, and he filmed this interview every year until Ella turned 18. It’s absolutely adorable. Ella’s answers make little to no sense when she’s really young. One of the questions is about “power” and Ella has no idea what the word means. As she gets older, and wiser, Ella’s answers become more thoughtful and introspective. There are also years when she can’t wait for this once a year experience to be over with.

As a father, I couldn’t help but think of my girls when watching both of these films. I used to think that the old adage “they grow up so fast” was bullshit. I’m here to tell you that’s some serious shit. 

I am so proud of my girls and the strong, independent women they’ve become. These movies made me think about how fortunate I am to be their father, and how happy I am to have such wonderful women in my life.

It also made me think about how pissed off I was that I didn’t think of either of these ideas!!!!

Between Midnight and Dawn (1950) 

P/89 m/IMDb: 6.5

There’s really nothing overly spectacular here. It wasn’t on a list because it was nominated for or won an Oscar. It wasn’t made by a favorite director of mine, and it doesn't star any of my favorite actors or actresses.

The only reason it caught my eye, and I’m glad it did, as I went through what TCM was offering for the month was that it sounded like a good film-noir movie. And I love film-noir.

From IMDb: “Prowl car cops on night duty romance a reluctant young woman who works for the department while in danger from a vengeful racketeer.”

There are “noir” words all over that description! 

I read that this was one of the few times a movie was made about the “beat” cops, as opposed to detectives who seemed to cinematically get all the credit for crimes being solved.

This is a gritty, enjoyable noir that presses all the noir buttons!

The Blackbird (1926) 

NR/86 m/IMDb: 6.7

One of my favorite old time movie stars is Lon Chaney. Mr. Chaney has 162 acting credits, 161 of those films were silent. His only “talkie” was a remake of one of his silent films.

Lon Chaney was the star of He Who Gets Slapped. That’s the silent film about a circus clown who gets slapped for entertainment. That’s the silent film for which I made a TOOL soundtrack. Good stuff!

The Blackbird is a silent film in which Chaney plays a man who is living as two men. They “both” fall in love with the same woman. 

That can’t be good. 

The Blackbird was directed by Tod (Freaks) Browning, so this is kind of a three-part recommendation. See anything you can directed by Browning or starring Chaney. And also, don’t be “afraid” of silent movies. There are some tremendous ones out there that are worth a look.

Which leaves us with the best film screened in June here in Cinema Wellman…

Rancho Notorious (1952) 

AP/89 m/IMDb: 6.9

When you see the title Rancho Notorious, which genre comes to mind? The “notorious” suggests film-noir, but that “rancho” reeks of western!

And a western it is, although not your usual film of the genre. It was made by a renowned Austrian director and stars a German actress!

As I went through the TCM roster for June the title caught my eye. I went straight to IMDb: “After the murder of his fiancee, a Wyoming ranch hand sets out to find her killer.”

I was in. I love a good revenge western. Then I saw that it was directed by Fritz Lang and stars Marlene Dietrich?! Say what now? 

Correct! Fritz Lang and Marlene Dietrich. So the DVR was set, and I wasn’t disappointed.

It really checks all the boxes when it comes to the revenge western genre, and to see it all through the eyes of an excellent European director made it even more interesting.

I read on IMDb that Lang wanted to name the film “Chuck-a-Luck” since that was a popular gambling game played in saloons in the Southwest. That’s the setting in the film, the game is played in the saloon in which Dietrich works, it’s mentioned by characters, it has luck in the title which means gambling, it’s perfect. Lang was shot down because he was told that, “Europeans wouldn’t understand what it meant.”

Lang’s response was, “Well, it’s a good thing that they ALL know what ‘Rancho Notorious’ means!”

Rancho Notorious has nothing to do with anything in this film. 

AND…Chuck-a-Luck is such a good name for a revenge western! You were right, Fritz!

Well, that’s a wrap for June’s Screenings: Best & Worst!

Thank you again for joining us. We at Cinema Wellman realize there is a ton of content out there, and we appreciate you spending some of your “entertainment” time here with us.

Whether you read the blog, watch on YouTube, or listen to the podcast, we are very pleased that you’re consuming all things Cinema Wellman no matter how you do it, and always consume safely.

Please join us next week when we will be doing something very special here at Cinema Wellman. 

There will be a special episode launching on Tuesday, July 4th! That episode will be devoted to just one movie. I’m pretty sure you know the movie, but join us to see if you’re right!

Until then, take care. 

And always swim with a buddy. 🦈