October Screenings: Best & Worst
Total Films Screened in October: 63
Current 2023 Total: 676
Current All-Time Total: 8,660
Hello and welcome to Cinema Wellman! With the remnants of the pounds and pounds of Halloween candy you just consumed cluttering your head and belly, well, that can mean only one thing! It’s time to recap the month and fill you in on the Best & Worst of October.
Like a full Trick or Treat bag, you can never get all winners. There’s going to be a toothbrush or two mixed in. Those are the chances you take.
We will, as always, begin with the Worst. In a relatively surprising turn of events, there are only two bombs to eviscerate this month. There was a good amount of “meh,” but only two bombs.
Let’s light that fuse.
The Losers (2010)
PG-13/97 minutes/IMDb: 6.2
IMDb describes this snoozer as follows, “A CIA special forces team is betrayed and left for dead by their superiors, galvanizing them to mount an offensive on the CIA.”
If you feel like you’ve seen this movie, you probably have when it was made better by more talented people under various titles over the years.
What a tired premise.
I like Idris Elba, I like Zoe Saldana, I don’t like Chris Evans, but he’s not the only reason this movie is on the worst list for October.
It’s here because it’s uniquely unoriginal in its plot, and the writing is trash (I never liked Peter Berg as an actor or director. Now I can dislike him as a writer as well).
There is nothing here that you haven’t seen many times before, and that usually gets you a spot on the worst of the month list!
Even worse than that was a mind bogglingly bad science /horror movie that had me texting and sending clips to Larry for the duration of the movie.
Get ready for a very “unwelcome” visitor…
The Visitor (1979)
R/108 minutes/IMDb: 5.2
This is kind of like if you mixed Carrie with E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial and then made it really shitty and incoherent.
IMDb’s attempt at a description will not help; “The soul of a young girl with telekinetic powers and her mother become the prize in a battle between good ETs and evil ETs.”
You know who’s in this other worldly mess of a movie?
Lance Henricksen, Mel Ferrer, and Glenn Ford for starters.
Oscar nominated director/writer Sam Peckinpah is in this! As an actor, for some reason.
Two-time Oscar winner Shelley Winters is in this!
Tw0-time Oscar winner John Huston is in this! And he looked pretty stoned, if you ask me.
And teenager Paige Conner was given the “and introducing” credit in a performance I could only describe as deliciously nasty. She was the only reason to watch this.
Ms. Conner has only four screen credits in her career, but when she left acting she later became an Atlanta Falcons’ cheerleader! She is now the owner of Luxury Lash Lounge, an eyelash extension business in Atlanta. Good work!
Young Paige delivers the best line in the film during an exchange with Glenn Ford. He asks her if there was anything she wanted to say to him that she hadn’t said before.
Her response is, “Yes. Go fuck yourself.”
Tremendous.
I had the same comment in mind for whoever made this cinematic mess. Skip this one!
Well, at least there were only two on October’s worst list.
On to the best of the month!
Totally Killer (2023)
R/106 minutes/IMDb: 6.6
This entertaining comedy/horror film on Prime Video is described by IMDb as follows; “When the infamous ‘Sweet Sixteen Killer’ returns 35 years after his first murder spree to claim another victim, 17-year-old Jamie accidentally travels back in time to 1987, determined to stop the killer before he can start.”
Jamie is played by Kiernan Shipka, an actress I had never seen before. I thought she was good on both sides of the genre coin in this film.
A running gag on the comedy side involves Jamie being stunned by how relaxed everything was back in 1987. Nobody really cared what you did. The fact that I lived through the 80s and know that’s true made the bit even funnier to me.
If you’re looking for a funny slasher movie involving time travel and the 80s, this is definitely it.
Big smile for Jamie’s final line, “Fucking time travel!”
Yep!
Hair Wolf (2018)
NR/12 minutes/IMDb: 6.5
You’ve heard me praise short films here before, and I’m going to do it again with the next two films on today’s best list.
IMDb’s synopsis of Hair Wolf; “The staff of a black hair salon fend off a strange new monster: white women intent on sucking the lifeblood from black culture.”
This cultural appropriation comedy/horror short is phenomenal.
Director Mariama Diallo’s white girl zombies bang on the windows of the salon moaning, “Braids!” instead of the usual zombie anthem, “Brains!”
Brilliant.
Don’t forget that many a true word is spoken in jest. And there’s a lot of jests packed into 12 minutes here.
Seek this one out.
Zygote (2017)
NR/23 minutes/IMDb: 7.2
Our second short comes from South African Canadian director Neill Blomkamp who brought us District 9 and Chappie.
IMDb again: “Stranded in an Arctic mine, two lone survivors are forced to fight for their lives, evading and hiding from a new kind of terror.”
To paraphrase a movie that I hated, You had me at Arctic mine.
Dakota Fanning is our bad-ass protagonist helping the only other survivor (out of 100) who has been blinded by the monster.
That monster is super high octane premium nightmare fuel.
Turns out that the monster is made up of the other 98 crew members.
And it’s so unbelievably creepy and skeevy. It’s got ALL the fingers!!!! All sorts of fingers!
And hands. And legs, parts of legs, feet, multiple arms and hands and oh my god the fingers!!!
But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is the “face” which features the eyes. So many eyes.
This was wild, wild stuff.
Kill Boksoon (2023)
NR/137 minutes/IMDb: 6.6
I am a big fan of South Korean cinema, and one of the genres they do best is action. The Villainess, Train to Busan, Ballerina, Snowpiercer, and The Great Battle are all examples of edge of your seat action thrillers made in South Korea.
Add Kill Boksoon to that list. It’s filled with stunning action sequences and stylized violence, but the violence isn’t comical like what the John Wick franchise has fed us lately.
The Boksoon the title wants to kill is Gil Bok-soon, a single mom who is also a famous hired assassin. The film follows her struggles to achieve a work/life balance and her difficulties with her teenage daughter.
Even hired killers have trouble with their teenage daughters!
The action is frenetic, and one of the fight sequences is shot through the windows of a passing train. That was magnificent to watch, and I commented out loud when it was over. I believe my comment was, “That was fucking great!” Simple, and to the point as far as commentary goes.
The action is so well done, and it feels fresh, unlike the paint-by- numbers action movies Hollywood studios continue to churn out.
It’s not a comedy, by any means, but there are some truly funny moments including an exchange between a Yakuza gangster and Bok-soon about what weapons are about to be used in a fight to the death.
This movie, like many South Korean action thrillers, is a lot of fun.
And that brings us to the best movie screened here in Cinema Wellman during the month of October, and this one isn’t really that much fun at all.
The Platform (2019)
R/94 minutes/IMDb: 7.0
This is some bleak, bleak stuff here. I’ll let IMDb break the news to you, “A vertical prison with one cell per level. Two people per cell. Only one food platform and two minutes per day to feed. An endless nightmare trapped in The Hole.”
A futuristic, dystopian prison that’s part torture chamber and part social experiment is a truly horrific place in which to set a movie.
There are 334 levels in the prison. There is one food platform. The prisoners on Level 1 get first crack at the feast.
Each inmate is allowed to choose a food which is part of the smorgasbord.
Every two minutes, the platform drops to the next level.
You can imagine what’s left of the food when the platform gets to the lower levels. Not to mention some of the nauseating and vile things some of the prisoners do to the food as it descends to the next level.
Each prisoner is also allowed to bring an object with them. One brings a book, one a surfboard, and one a huge hunting knife.
After several weeks have passed, the prisoners are gassed to sleep and wake up in a new cell with a new cellmate on a new level.
Our protagonist pleads with the prisoners to begin a rationing system to ensure everyone gets to eat every day regardless of what level they’re on.
You can imagine how that goes.
The Platform had me thinking from start to finish wondering not only what was going to happen, but what I would do if I was in that situation.
I wouldn’t bring a book with me. That’s for sure.
Well, that’s a wrap for October’s Best & Worst from here at Cinema Wellman.
We hope to see you here next week when we finally get to our “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction” episode highlighting some Top Documentaries. We’ll have at least 10 of those for you next Friday. Maybe even a baker’s dozen!
Until then, take care.
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