June Screenings: Best & Worst

 June Screenings: Best & Worst

Total Films Screened in June: 38

Current 2024 Total: 322

Current All-Time Total: 9,094

Race to 10,000: 906

Hello and welcome to Cinema Wellman. I am your host David, and since time stands still for no one, another month is over and I’m here to report on the Best & Worst films we screened in the past 30 days. 

I want to begin by mentioning that I watched Spice World last month in preparation for our upcoming City Spotlight: London episode.

It was terrible.

But I am not going to include it on today’s Worst list since it really wasn’t their fault, and I don’t want to pick on them. 

It was hastily made without anything resembling a story, but none of that was their fault. 

I’m not here to be mean to the Spice Girls. 

However, we do have a movie on our worst list this month that we will be kind of mean to because it was terrible.

Just because it’s the only movie on the Worst List, DOES NOT mean it’s getting the Road House treatment!

It just was a pretty good movie month, and there weren’t that many bad films to talk about.

I guess that’s a good thing.

The Worst:

The Last Days of American Crime (2020)

NR/148 min/IMDb: 3.8/directed by Olivier Megaton

        This doesn’t happen to me often, but I was totally hoodwinked, bamboozled, and hornswoggled by the trailer for this movie. 

I’ll begin with IMDb because the plot is so stupid, I’ll have them give it a shot: “In the not-too-distant future, as a final response to terrorism and crime, the U.S. government plans to broadcast a signal making it impossible for anyone to knowingly commit unlawful acts.”

So, giving off kind of a Purge vibe, yes?

I thought the same thing, and the trailer supports this as well.

Now those Purge films were extremely problematic, and most were pure trash, but at least they attempted a story. 

This was a boring, boring, boring 148 minutes. It seemed like 6 hours. 

Most of the “plot” is disseminated using “Newsposition” as my friends at “CinemaSins” call it. 

You can’t have fake news reporters tell 80% of your story via conveniently placed monitors and televisions all over the place. 

It’s really just a bad, nonsensical heist movie with a story that could have been told in 80 minutes.

It’s certainly not worth 148 minutes of your time. 

Equinox was also really bad, and it was the debut film of Frank Bonner (Herb Tarlek from the great TV show “WKRP in Cincinnati”), but that was its high point.

It was originally a student film, and the creatures are obviously made of clay which made me giggle, but…it was still better than Road House.

Let’s move on to the good stuff. 

The Best:

The Outfit (1973)

PG/103 min/IMDb: 7.0/directed by John Flynn

When I saw that TCM was showing this and I read a little about it, my first thought was, “How on earth have I not seen this?”

IMDb: “Earl Macklin (Robert Duvall) robs a bank owned by the mob, serves his prison time and is released, only to start a private war against the crime outfit that owned the bank.”

A “Man vs. the Syndicate Revenge Film?!?” And I hadn’t seen it?

How is that possible?

I’m a huge fan of the “One Man Army” genre. Think Thief, White Line Fever, The Transporter, Commando, Taken, etc.

I love these movies for many reasons, and one is the overabundance of henchmen that our hero will dispatch before meeting up with and killing the kingpin of the entire “Outfit.”

Henchmen bonus points for those who tell the good guy they, “Have no idea who they’re messing with,” before they get killed. 

Since The Outift was made in 1973 we get guns with silencers, serious car chases involving cars with rocking suspensions, and a lot of pistol whipping.

This is a gritty 70s action flick with a very capable supporting cast including Karen Black, Joe Don Baker, and Robert Ryan as the kingpin of the Outfit. 

And the film debut of Joanna Cassidy even though she appeared as an uncredited party guest in Bullitt. 

Joanna does not have her snake in this film, but she is the kingpin’s moll.

IF (2024)

PG/104 min/IMDb: 6.7/directed by John Krasinski

Just a couple of episodes ago I made a remark about Ryan Gosling (and Dakota’s friend Ryan) being the only two Ryans.

That was a very thinly veiled shot at Ryan Reynolds, who I had no use for at the time of that comment.

I like to think I’m the type of person who admits when I’m wrong, so…

I was wrong.

I still hate Deadpool and those phone commercials, but I no longer have a “Ryan Reynolds” issue. He’s not close to becoming an official FOCW, but my issue with him has been resolved, thanks to John Krasinski and IF.

The title can be pronounced like the word if, or as initials, I.F. standing for “Imaginary Friend.”

Krasinski wrote, directed, and also has a small part in this delightful look at imaginary friends and what happens to them when they are no longer needed by their young companions. 

I never had an imaginary friend, which kind of surprises me. I’ve also never worn a dress, which also kind of surprises me.

I guess there’s still time for both. 

No spoiler here at all, but I cried during IF. More than a couple of times, so you know it’s meant to tug at those heartstrings. 

Cailey Fleming plays Bea, a young girl going through a difficult time in her life with her widower dad (played by Krasinski).

Bea starts to see odd creatures here and there (the IFs) and attempts to get to the bottom of it. 

Reynolds is along to help her with the process and act as kind of IF wrangler.

The IFs themselves are absolutely tremendous, and Krasinski assembled an amazing group to lend their voices to these delightful, animated characters. 

Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr., Awkwafina, Emily Blunt (how’d Krasinski get her?!), George Clooney, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Keegan-Michael Key, Blake Lively, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, Amy Schumer, John Stewart, and Brad Pitt (kind of).

What a phenomenal group lending their voice talents to help bring these IFs to life.

There’s a sweet message behind it all, there’s a twist that I saw coming but that didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the movie, and it was just a good time.

And I’m sorry, Ryan. 

Safe Haven (2013)

PG-13/115 min/IMDb: 6.7/directed by Lasse Hallstrom

I love when someone starts a sentence directed at me that begins with, “Have you seen…”

I perk up like a puppy hearing a fire engine.

A work conversation a couple of weeks ago centered on “romantic” movies that weren’t classified as “rom coms” (NOT a fan, as you may know).

I was mentioning to the group how I tend to stay away from rom coms but have no problem with other genres that “romance” sneaks into.

That’s when my boss Renee looked at me and said, “Have you seen Safe Haven?”

The answer was no, so I made it happen that very night. 

One of the first things I noticed was that Josh Duhamel was one of the leads, and I have no use for Josh Duhamel.

BUT…since Ryan Reynolds was given another chance, why not Josh Duhamel?

And I was wrong again! 

Josh Duhamel was fine in this. He didn’t ruin it.

Here’s IMDb: “A young woman (Julianne Hough) with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.”

There were a lot of things I liked about Safe Haven, and one of them was how Hough’s “mysterious past” is unveiled to us slowly, keeping the suspense moving along.

We are shown a bit of the event that has her on the run, but we’re not quite sure what actually happened.

What we do know is that she’s being pursued by the law.

And Southport, North Carolina looks wonderful!

I’ve always thought I would love living in a really small town. Yes, everybody knows everybody else and their business, but I don’t have that much business, so I don’t care. 

Duhamel’s movie children are decent performers, especially the young girl who is extremely likable. 

Safe Haven is a mystery/thriller, so no spoilers here. 

It did keep me guessing until almost the very end when I think I got a twist a little early, but I wasn’t positive, so I’m not giving myself official credit. 

Lasse Hallstrom directed, and he certainly knows his way around a movie. 

I was pleasantly surprised by this romantic thriller.

Not ALL romance movies need to be comedies!

And that brings us to our top film screened during the month of June, and, what a surprise!

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

R/148 min/IMDb: 7.9/directed by George Miller

So, no real surprise seeing a Mad Max movie making the Best of the Month here at Cinema Wellman. 

It’s as surprising as me enjoying Godzilla Minus One and including that in a best list. 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the 5th Mad Max movie made by the great George Miller, and I’m not ready to say it’s the best, but it’s certainly worthy of debate. 

This entry in the “Mad Max Saga” is truly epic. At 148 minutes, it’s the longest in the series, and I’m not sure how long the overall shoot was, but there’s an action sequence in this movie that took 78 DAYS to film!

Mad Max: Fury Road had a very small amount of computer enhancements (2,000) while this film has over 20,000 computer enhancements, but it all still looks very real.

One of the major enhancements was to the sky for that chase sequence that took 78 days to film. 

You may have 78 “different” skies if you’re filming on 78 different days, so they chose the “best” sky and used a computer to insert that best sky into all of the shots for the entire sequence.

So, CGI, but a lot of it wasn’t used in the usual manner. 

As usual, the vehicles used in this film were totally out of control. The mishmash of recognizable cars and trucks transformed into nightmarish vehicles that reminded me a little of the animals in Poor Things. 

Since this is a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, there’s no Charlize Theron as Furiosa unfortunately. She was absolutely amazing in that role. 

Younger Furiosa is played by Anya Taylor-Joy who doesn’t even appear until an hour into the movie because Miller was prequeling in the prequel and needed another, younger actress to pull that off. 

That also involved CGI as they morphed Taylor-Joy’s face with that of the younger actress playing Furiosa. Very effective.

Taylor-Joy has only about 30 lines of dialogue in the entire movie. She thought that would make this role easier for her, but she said it was much more difficult than she imagined. 

She said that she’d go weeks without shooting a scene in which she spoke, and it was extremely stressful. 

Miller thinks dialogue slows movies down, so he pared it down big time here. He wanted Taylor-Joy to act with her eyes, not her voice, and she does a tremendous job. 

Again, no spoilers, but this is one impressive film, and the attention to detail pays off. 

The script for this film was completed BEFORE filming began on Mad Max: Fury Road.

Since he wanted to tell Furiosa’s story in the form of a prequel, Miller wanted to make sure the story was cohesive.

That’s why this script was finished before Fury Road was shot in 2015. 

It’s also why this all makes sense. 

Miller has another story in the Mad Max Saga ready to go if this was successful, and I think it was. 

It’s titled The Wasteland, and I’m sure the script has already been written, if I know George.

Well, that is a wrap from here at Cinema Wellman for our Best & Worst of the month of June.

We hope you join us next week for a milestone episode!

It’s the next in our “City Spotlight” series as we visit London at the same time Dakota and Lucas are visiting London, and it’s also our 100th episode, believe it or not. 

We thank you if you’ve been here for all 99 so far, or if this was your first. 

Join us next week for “London Calling!” and until then, take care.