December Screenings: Best & Worst

Hello! Happy 2024, and welcome to Cinema Wellman as we kick off Season Three with our Best & Worst films from the month of December.

I hope you had a pleasant holiday season and have recovered from any overindulging you may have done while visiting friends and family. 

Santa was busy at the end of December delivering goodies and coal around the world and Cinema Wellman was busy all month sampling cinematic goodies and coal, and we have nine films to talk about today. 

Four made the naughty list, and five made the nice list in December.

We will, as always, begin with the naughty. 

And this was a load of coal. 

Apology for Murder (1945)

AP/67 min/IMDb: 5.7/directed by Sam Newfield

I was only ten minutes into this before I started researching to see if the filmmakers were sued by Paramount Pictures or the people who made Double Indemnity since this is a blatant rip-off of that film-noir classic.

Lo and behold, Apology for Murder was originally titled Single Indemnity!! The nerve! The producers of Double Indemnity caught wind of it and threatened legal action if the title wasn’t changed.

They should have also threatened legal action over the script that was virtually stolen. 

In an odd occurrence, the heel in Double Indemnity was played by Fred MacMurray who was later famous for playing all-American dad Steve Douglas on “My Three Sons;” in Apology for Murder the heel was played by Hugh Beaumont who was later famous for playing all-American dad Ward Cleaver on “Leave it to Beaver.” 

The Beave’s dad was in on a murder!

Barbara Stanwyk was replaced by Ann Savage in this one, and with all due respect to Ms. Savage, nobody could replace Barbara Stanwyk. In anything.

Don’t even think about this, just watch Double Indemnity again.

And, if you HAVEN’T seen Double Indemnity…

Well, you know where I’m going with this…

Christmas Twister (2012)

PG/86 min/IMDb: 3.5/directed by Peter Sullivan

The original “Worst List” for December had a combo plate of Asteroid: Final Impact and Christmas Twister.

Since I kind of remember them being the exact same movie, I’ll just attack Christmas Twister because…Tis’ the Season!

Have you ever seen Starship Troopers? The ultra violent sci-fi film about humongous alien bugs and featuring a co-ed shower scene for no reason at all directed by Paul Verhoeven?

If you have, then you’ll be familiar with the lead in this holiday monstrosity. 

It’s Johnny Rico himself, Casper Van Dien!

This movie appears to be made by a collaboration between The Weather Channel and The Hallmark Channel, both known for their quality feature films. 

The special effects in this were absolutely pathetic. There’s nothing even close to reality when it comes to the twister, or Christmas for that matter. 

I may have missed some of Mr. Quatararo’s physics class senior year due to mono, but I remember enough of it to know that it’s impossible to get as close to a tornado as the characters do in this film. 

Casper would have been a, forgive me, ghost in the opening minutes if real physics existed in this movie.

But it’s a Christmas movie, and I watched 21 of them last month. I didn’t expect them all to be memorable gifts.

This one was the bottom of the Christmas stocking after the trio of movies we covered in “WWW 6: Holiday Magi Matchup.”

Next up is a horror film set in a water park. 

If that sounds interesting to you, I’m here to tell you that it is not. 

Aquaslash (2019)

R/71 min/IMDb: 3.7/directed by Renaud Gauthier

I definitely need to begin with the IMDb synopsis: “Thrills, chills, and screwball comedy meet tiny bikinis and gory dismemberment in this chlorine and blood drenched murder mystery.”

Reading that synopsis was more entertaining than watching this 71 minute dumpster fire.

Thank you so much to Hannah and Denise for kind of recommending it to me. Part of Hannah’s original text read, “We are watching what looks like a BAD slasher movie!”

Her later text “reviews” featured the following analysis; “Too much plot, and not enough slashing so far, plus a lot of gratuitous nudity.” And, “An unnecessary dance off just happened!”

She finished her review by adding; “The slashing is only beginning at the 52 minute mark!” Or, as CinemaSins would say, “It took 52 minutes for Aquaslash to start slashing!”

I totally agree with a majority of what Hannah had to say, but I didn’t think there was enough gratuitous nudity to distract me from the “plot.”

And a horror movie with a run time of 71 minutes titled Aquaslash, should NOT wait 52 minutes (or ¾ of the way through the movie) to start slashin’!

When the gore does begin, the first use of the effect is pretty sweet. The killer put blades crosswise in one of the water slide tubes so a person sliding down would be cut into four big pieces. 

Decent effect until you then continuously use it for the rest of the film’s runtime. 

At one point, the entire slide tube is just pumping out bloody water and body parts. The water (and there’s a lot of it at the bottom of this huge, multi-tubed waterslide) is totally blood red. Which made me do some research.

The human body contains somewhere between 1.2-1.5 gallons of blood. Even your small waterslides use about 5,000 gallons of water. For the water to turn as red as it did, you’d need hundreds of people to be quartered on the way down. With the amount of people killed here, the water would be stained, but not dark crimson!

Come on, people, do your homework!

A final insult is that this film was marketed and released in Russia as a Final Destination film!

HOW DARE YOU!!!!!

Village of the Giants (1965)

NR/81 min/IMDb: 3.7/directed by Bert I. Gordon

This is one of those few occasions where the very worst of the month is terrible, but I would suggest you watch it if you can since you just won’t believe what you’re looking at. 

Take it away, IMDb! “Delinquent teenagers ingest a substance and grow thirty feet tall, then proceed to take over a small town”

Yes. You heard that correctly.

Beau Bridges is the obnoxious leader of the giant teenagers. Lloyd’s son! Jeff’s brother! I’m sure he’s embarrassed about this movie’s entry on his filmography.

Johnny Crawford is in this! He was the son on “The Rifleman,” and watched his dad shotgun a ton of people in the old west.

Ron Howard is in this! But he’s just a kid. He’s the boy genius who creates the substance the teens ingest. 

And Joy Harmon is in this!

If you’re not familiar with her, she was in Cool Hand Luke. There are a grand total of two women in that entire movie. Luke’s mother, and Lucille. Joy Harmon was Lucille. If you’ve seen that film, you remember Lucille.

The special effects were atrocious, but this was 1965, so I’ll cut them a little slack. 

When they make the teenagers huge they have them walk and move in an exaggeratedly slow way. It looks ridiculous.  

The music, especially when they’re slo-mo go-go dancing, is pure grindhouse stuff, which is wonderful.

They also NEVER seem to get the proportions right. If the giant teens are 30 feet tall, they’re approximately the height of a three-story building.

When they enlarge, their clothes obviously don’t so they set up shop in an abandoned theater and use the curtains for clothing. 

When’s the last time you were in a theater that had curtains big enough to cover someone 30 feet tall, even if you’re just covering their naughty bits (as Monty Python would say). There are a half dozen of them. How many curtains did that theater have?!

They then make the theater their hangout. Even if the ceilings in the theater are 30 feet tall, the doorways certainly aren’t. How are they getting in and out of the building?!

Another proportional mistake occurs when the teens are brought buckets of chicken and cases of bottled soda.

You should see what they’re holding! The chicken they’re eating wouldn’t even fit in a wheelbarrow, let alone a bucket. 

Johnny Crawford hanging on to a 30 foot tall stuffed bikini top has to be seen to be appreciated. I’m just saying. 

Good thing the trailer pretty much features everything I’ve already mentioned.

And I haven’t even mentioned the giant dancing ducks! They’re ALSO in the trailer!

This one is truly so bad that it’s entertaining. If you can’t find the film, the trailer will suffice.

And now the presents under the tree that we were glad to open, starting with…

Love Hard (2021)

PG-13/104 min/IMDb: 6.3/

directed by Hernan Jimenez

Oh, my goodness. Is this possible?! I enjoyed this movie so much that I included it in the best of the month and yet when I look it up on IMDb, the genres listed are “Comedy” and “Romance.” 

It’s a ROM-COM!!!! Egads! What is happening in Cinema Wellman?!

I have a feeling it was being in the holiday spirit, and possibly having holiday spirits in me, but this was a fun movie.  

The story follows an unlucky in love LA woman named Natalie who falls in love with a man via a dating app. Natalie is played by Nina Dobrev who is approaching “Friend of Cinema Wellman” status. 

The man on the app is handsome and rugged looking, everything Natalie thinks she’s looking for, especially when she develops a relationship via the app’s messaging feature.

She then impulsively travels across the country to surprise him for Christmas (Yes…not only is this a rom-com, it’s a CHRISTMAS ROM-COM!). 

When Natalie arrives, it’s not the man she saw pictures of, it’s Josh Lin (played by comedian Jimmy O. Yang). Natalie has been catfished. 

What follows is a sweet story with a decent message and also a good amount of laughs.

I watched this with my sister, Vanessa, over the Christmas weekend, and she loved it! She’s certainly a better judge of rom-coms than I am, and I also thought it was fun. 

I love that the title is a mashup of the two main characters' favorite Christmas movies. 

That was a nice touch. 

And I’d like to add that I LOVE that people get all worked up once a year and engage in frothy debate about Die Hard being a Christmas movie!

I don’t give shit one about that!

You want it to be a Christmas movie? It’s a Christmas movie. 

You don’t think it’s a Christmas movie? Fine. It’s not a Christmas movie.

All I know is that it’s better than It’s a Wonderful Life.

The Wall (2012)

NR/108 min/IMDb: 6.7/directed by Julian Polsler

If you’ve ever read Stephen King’s Under the Dome or watched the TV show based on it, you’ll be familiar with the basic premise of this Austrian film.

          A young woman is visiting a remote hunting lodge with friends. When the couple she’s traveling with go for a walk and never return, things begin to go wrong. 

The woman goes for a walk to the village to see what happened to her friends when she runs into a wall. 

Literally.

It’s totally transparent, but she is definitely behind it. 

As time passes, the woman tries to find other people, but there is simply no one else under this dome.

Animals, yes, people, no. She has a dog, a cat, and a cow to take care of before long. 

This is definitely one of those “What would you do?” movies as the woman struggles to free herself from this mysterious prison while trying to keep her sanity.

This is not an action packed movie. It’s a slow psychological burn as we struggle for answers along with the main character.

Parts of this were painful to watch. 

          

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

R/134 min/IMDb: 6.6/directed by Charlie Kaufman

The first thing you need to know about this movie is that it was directed by Charlie Kaufman. If you’ve seen any of Kaufman’s movies (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) you know that you’re in for a very unique cinematic experience from the start. 

IMDb tells us this, “Full of misgivings, a young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents’ secluded farm. Upon arriving, she comes to question everything she thought she knew about him, and herself.”

In all fairness to our dear friends at IMDb, that’s not quite it, BUT it certainly BEGINS to explain the story.  

The simple fact is that it’s almost impossible to explain a Charlie Kaufman movie in a couple of sentences.

Even if you watch the trailer, which I recommend you see even if you don’t intend on watching the movie, it doesn’t quite capture what it’s really all about.

I can almost guarantee that you’ll want to watch the movie after seeing the trailer.

The young woman is played by Jessie Buckley, and her boyfriend is played by Jesse Plemons. Both turn in terrific performances in this film that will keep you guessing from start to finish.

I’m already planning on seeing it again soon now that I know what was actually going on.

A special thanks to my friend and coworker Maxine who recommended this to me! Max has been on a roll with movies she recommends to me, and I can’t wait to see what she throws at me next!

The next movie had me texting my friend Larry with short clips and commentary throughout because I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. 

The Natural History of the Chicken (2000)

PG/60 min/IMDb: 7.0/directed by Mark Lewis

This informative (and hysterical) nature documentary was directed by Mark Lewis who specializes in amazingly interesting (and silly) documentaries about animals.

I saw a Mark Lewis documentary, Animalicious, that re-enacts a true event where a dead turkey shot a man! Lewis also made two documentaries about Cane toads, and I’ve seen them both, and would recommend them, but this chicken doc is just bananas. 

Through interviews and re-enactments, we hear the stories of a chicken frozen solid but brought back to life, and a chicken who lived for years after having its head cut off!

My favorite segment was about a Florida woman who bathes her pet chicken and takes it swimming and shopping. 

Florida!!

Larry has been sending me videos of chickens in Miami that he has taken himself!

They’re everywhere!

We now move on from a movie about chickens to the best movie of the month, which is about a giant sea monster (and lifelong friend of Cinema Wellman).

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

PG-13/124 min/IMDb: 8.4/

directed by Takashi Yamazaki

Okay, you may be saying to yourself, Isn’t this guy a self-professed Godzilla freak? Doesn’t he have the Japanese word “Gojira” tattooed on his left arm? Doesn’t he own 33 Godzilla movies?! What a ‘surprise’ that this is the best film of the month.

Well, yes to the first three questions there, and although it’s not a surprise, I am not alone in praising this film.

Fans and critics alike are in agreement that this is one of the best of the numerous Godzilla movies. 

8.4 on IMDb is nothing to sneeze at. 

I’m glad I saw this in the theater, and seeing it at the local AMC convinced me to renew my AMC Stubs A-List membership that I let expire when COVID hit. Looking forward to making money off of them by seeing as many movies as I can. 

I have yet to officially rank the Godzilla movies, but this one is number two as far as I’m concerned. Only behind the 1954 original because he’s the literal O.G.

This film was amazing. It’s a period piece which I believe is the first for the series. It takes place after the end of WWII.

IMDb: “Post war Japan is at its lowest point when a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb.”

It was produced by Toho Studios who also made the original 70 years ago. Oh my, Godzilla is 70 this year! Mark your calendars! November 3rd! Big party here at Wellman for that one. 

The effects, NONE IN THE DARK, were spectacular. Godzilla looks the way Godzilla should look. 

Godzilla swimming behind and chasing a boat was an excellent sequence. 

He also busts up a city, which was expected. Those scenes were phenomenal. I love the way Godzilla picks up and tosses large ships, city buses, and subway trains.

And his tail does some serious damage.

This film does something that few others have and that’s having “people on the ground” playing a major part in the film. 

A failed kamikaze pilot, a young woman, and a baby are brought together by the post war destruction. The characters are realistic and important to the film.

I liked the character of the pilot so much that I was rooting for him. I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want him to kill Godzilla (I always root for Godzilla), but I wasn’t hoping for his death. 

The effects of Godzilla “loading up” his atomic breath were my favorites. His tail and back plates clicking in and going neon blue before he unleashed an atomic blast. The visuals AND the sound were tremendous for these sequences. 

I read that “American audiences” were disappointed at how little this movie “Godzillad.” I guess there were complaints that he wasn’t in it enough. He was in 9% of this film’s runtime, which was the same percentage of screen time he had in the 1954 original, so good enough for me!

I was not at all surprised at the fact I loved this movie. What did surprise me was how much I loved it. 

I’d love to see it again in the theater before it leaves, and I’m definitely buying it on DVD when it’s available. 

People still do that, right?

Well that is a wrap for Season 3: Episode 1 of Cinema Wellman!

Thank you so much for returning for another season of a guy babbling about what movies he likes. I appreciate your support. 

We hope you return next week when we present something that our production staff has yet to decide upon!

Come on, Chet! Take a stand!

Regardless of what we have for you, we hope you join us.

Until then, take care.