March's Best & Worst
Hello and welcome to Cinema Wellman. I am your host David, and we have a short one for you today, so you can watch this and still be ultra productive with the time that I’m saving you!
I have faith in you.
If you’re a regular here at Cinema Wellman, you know that the month of March was jam packed full of basketball movies for our March Madness episode.
Since we watched so many basketball movies and covered most of them during that episode, we only have five movies in all to talk about today, and only one finds itself on our Worst List for the month, so we had a decent cinematic March here at Wellman.
March came in like a very angry lion and went out a less angry, but still chilly lion here in New England, but the weather matters not to us when it comes to cinema.
Even though today’s list is short, it actually represents how we feel about movies in a general sense.
The one movie that was a bomb happens to be the 9th in a series, so that makes a lot of sense, and the four movies we liked were all unique in some way and brought us something we had never seen before.
Originality, originality, originality, Keef.
We only have one movie to complain about, and that won’t take very long, so let’s get it out of the way.
Predator: Badlands (2025)
PG-13/107 min./IMDb: 7.2/directed by Dan Trachtenberg
IMDb: “A young Predator outcast from his clan finds an unlikely ally on his journey in search of the ultimate adversary.”
As I mentioned, this is the 9th movie in the Predator series, which is probably 7 ½ more Predator movies than we ever really needed, or wanted.
And, once again, the CGI effects, which I assume are designed to make this more enjoyable, were just distractingly annoying to me.
I’m not asking for them to try to pull that off with practical effects, I’m just saying that I’m tired of the whole Predator series and the Predator face.
All I could picture is that performer “acting” in a green leotard covered with ping pong balls.
The only thing I remember about this movie is the fact that it bored me and brought nothing new to my table.
Make a cartoon next time.
The four remaining films we have for you today ALL brought something new to the table, and after screening over 10,000 movies, that’s really all I want.
We’ll start with yet another film recommended to me by Crystal!
In the Blink of an Eye (2026)
PG-13/94 min./IMDb: 6.1/directed by Andrew Stanton
IMDb: “Three storylines, spanning thousands of years, intersect and reflect on hope, connection, and the circle of life.”
Thank you again, Crystal, for another treat. I love that she never tells me much, she just has a feeling I’ll like something, and I’m not sure she’s been wrong yet.
This sci-fi drama spans thousands of years because its storylines feature a Neanderthal family, Rashida Jones in our present day, and an immortal Kate McKinnon in the future.
Jones and McKinnon, although known as comedic performers, have no problems here and deliver superb efforts.
I was skeptical about the connective thread between the stories early on, but it grew on me.
Like the acorn that becomes the mighty oak.
I found In the Blink of an Eye to be original, visually appealing, and thought provoking.
Director Andrew Stanton directed two Oscar winning animated features WALL-E and Finding Nemo, and I think he did a fine job telling a challenging story, especially for a live action movie.
2073 (2024)
R/85 min./IMDb: 5.1/directed by Asif Kapadia
IMDb: “A woman living on a ruined Earth tries to comprehend how the world was destroyed.”
I have to be honest with you, as I always am, and tell you that this film scared the shit out of me.
Samantha Morton, who I like a lot, is the woman living amongst the ruins of Earth, and I’ll admit that’s not necessarily anything new in a movie.
Director Asif Kapadia then uses actual news footage to tell the “back story” of how the world was destroyed.
This has also been done in movies before. Many times.
You want political unrest? We've got actual footage.
You want catastrophic weather? We’ve got actual footage.
You want war? We’ve got actual footage.
Where this film veers off the road of the familiar is when I realized that Samantha Morton is the only fictional character of note in the entire film, and her Earth is fictional, but EVERY other thing you see in this film is real.
Events that have already occurred, shown via news footage.
Many events that I remember vividly from my 63+ years on the not yet ruined Earth are shown as being parts of the overall downfall of our entire civilization and planet.
The scary part is that all of the puzzle pieces fit, and the fictional future Earth portrayed here is full of militarized police forces, authoritarian rulers, and drone surveillance, so…
Is the world ending tomorrow?
I don’t think so (if it does, thanks for watching), but there are an awful lot of things going on right now that make 2073 look more like the “documentary” IMDb has it listed as along with sci-fi and thriller.
It’s only 49 years from now. I won’t be here, but some of you will.
I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a true documentary in the sense of the word.
Red, White and Blue (2023)
UR/23 min./IMDb: 7.2/directed by Nazrin Choudury
IMDb: “A poor single mother must go out of state for a necessary abortion.”
This was one of my “Unicorn” movies as I have been looking for it for a few years now.
It was nominated for a Best Live Action Short Film, and it was the final film nominated for an Oscar that year that I hadn’t seen, so check that box.
I hunt for these “unicorns” every so often and this time around I saw that the filmmakers themselves put it online for a donation rental fee.
Donate what you’d like, and you can stream the film.
I wish more makers of short films and documentaries would do this. There are so many films out there that should be seen, but there’s really nowhere for the average person to see them.
Brittany Snow was tremendous in this 23-minute film that had me sobbing at two different points.
Two sobbing sessions in 23 minutes?! That’s a lot, even for me.
First sob at the kindness of a stranger, second sob when it hit me what was really going on in the film, which was expertly disguised by director Choudury and unveiled masterfully.
I don’t want to get political, that’s not what this show is about, but I would like to stress that abortion is not a black and white issue. It’s actually mostly gray, with as many circumstances and situations and variables as there are mothers, many of them young, facing this difficult decision.
There shouldn’t only be one answer to this matter, and the one answer certainly shouldn’t be “no.”
If you think you don’t know someone who has personally dealt with this issue, you’d be wrong.
We need to be more compassionate and take care of these women.
Human beings should support other human beings when they’re in need.
That’s all.
And I think you should see this film.
Check out redwhiteandbluefilm.com, donate a fiver, and see a moving film about a polarizing topic.
We have one more film for you, and it’s another short!
This gem stars someone who is fast approaching “Friend of Cinema Wellman” status!
How to Shoot a Ghost (2025)
UR/27 min./IMDb: 6.4/directed by Charlie Kaufman
IMDb: “Two newly dead young people meet in the streets of Athens amid the pulsing cityscape and the ghosts of history. They wander the city together, finding consolation in the difficult beauty of existence and its aftermath.”
Jessie Buckley, or I should say Oscar winner Jessie Buckley (we love her!) is one of the two newly dead young people in this Charlie Kaufman short.
Yes, that Charlie Kaufman. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (how I wish that was possible!), Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind…yes, him, so you knew this was going to be worth a look.
I forget the film, not a Kaufman film, but a scene from a film I quote all of the time involves two middle aged men hanging out together in a place where there are young women.
Looking at all of the attractive young women, one of the men sighs and says, “Before I was 40, all I thought about all day was sex.”
His friend asks him, “What do you think about now?”
“My death.”
Now I think that’s pretty funny, but at the same time I have to admit I think about death an awful lot.
Am I going to die tomorrow?
I don’t think so, (if I do, thanks for watching!), but I’m really fascinated about what’s next.
THIS version of what’s next is pretty cool, other than the ghosts from Ancient Greece still wandering around not having found their way.
I found that kind of sad.
The dialogue is more like a poetry reading in this dreamlike setting of the aftermath of existence.
This one stayed with me for days, which is always a good sign.
Well, that is a wrap from here at Cinema Wellman as we highlighted what was left of the month after our basketball movies were subtracted.
Not a bad month overall.
We hope you join us this coming weekend as we are going to have our 7th co-host, this one human, so that tie is now broken!
Joining me will be one of my all-time favorite humans and we will be discussing one of their favorite film trilogies!
Until then, take care.
