September's Best & Worst

 September’s Best & Worst

Hello and welcome to Cinema Wellman. I am your host David, and today we’re going to reveal the very best and worst of everything we screened here during the month of September.

We went a couple of months without ANY bombs, and thankfully that streak will end today in a big way since we will have another Cinema Wellman first and have more bombs than good films to talk about.

Four bombs as opposed to only two films to recommend for September, a month which saw us screening 44 films here at Cinema Wellman.

That’s certainly an oddity considering the amount of films we watched, but these things are bound to happen, and we certainly can’t explain them.

We begin the bombs with a sports movie from the early 30s that one movie website had listed as a “comedy,” and if that wasn’t a mistake, they surely don’t understand the meaning of the word.

College Coach (1933)

AP/76 m/IMDb: 5.9/directed by William A. Wellman

IMDb: “Coach Gore, a ruthless and cynical big-time football coach neglects his wife in his unrelenting drive to make Calvert College a football power.”

This film featured a college coach paying players who fake exams and skip classes and transfer from team to team whenever they want.

This was made in 1933!

In one big game, the unscrupulous coach sends in a kind of “goon squad” to take out an opposing star player, which they do, and the kid ends up dying!

They pretty much murdered him on the field!

And then the coach’s poor wife who the unscrupulous coach neglects throughout the movie gets a call from the school whose team was just beaten by her husband’s team and offers the following deal; $40, 000 a year, a radio show, and the players don’t even have to go to classes.

And he takes it.

Hardy Har Har. 

In some ways this is as prescient as Network.

Next up is a movie with a special spot in my heart and in my blood stream since I’m a two-time sufferer and “Lyme Disease Lifer.”

Ticks (1993)

R/85 m/IMDb: 5.5/directed by Tony Randel

IMDb: “A group of troubled teenagers are led by social workers on a California wilderness retreat, not knowing that the woods have become infested by mutated, blood-sucking ticks.”

Made and released internationally as Ticks, then tested in the U.S. under the title Infested, and then changed back to Ticks when released on VHS.

It really doesn’t matter what you want to call this, it’s still terrible.

The screen reads, “Based on an ‘idea’ by…” 

Isn’t everything ever based on an idea by somebody?

Do we need to mention that?

And the ticks are the bad guys in this along with marijuana farmers. I know ticks, and I know marijuana, and I still can’t excuse any of this. 

The cast includes 90s stalwarts Alfonso “Carlton” Ribeiro, Seth Green, Peter Scolari, Ron Howard’s brother Clint, Ron Howard’s father Rance, and Monkey Mickey Dolenz’s daughter Ami. 

Ticks feast on nepo blood.

Next up is a movie my sister Vanessa will be interested to hear about since it is Twister adjacent!

The Twisters (2024)

NR/86 m/IMDb: 2.6/directed by Michael Su

IMDb: “Dozens of deadly tornadoes converge in the Midwest merging into a mega twister set to obliterate everything for hundreds of miles.”

In 2024, Twisters was released.

It was a reboot, or whatever you want to call it of 1996’s Twister (my sister’s favorite movie!) and the reboot starred Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones.

I saw it, and I enjoyed it.

That 2024 Twisters is NOT this 2024 THE Twisters!

Is that like “THE Ohio State?!”

Hopefully you followed that, but actually it doesn’t matter because THE Twisters is the one you want to avoid.

Tiffany is in this, and I’m not sure why.

I’m not saying she was terrible, I just wasn’t sure she was an actress, so I went for a look.

34 acting credits, 18 of which were her music videos, and then there’s actually some interesting stuff.

She voiced Judy Jetson in Jetsons: The Movie, did an episode of “How I Met Your Mother” as “Catholic School Girl,” one episode of “The Young and the Restless” as “Christmas Caroler,” and then…

Necrosis, Mega Piranha, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, Ted 2, and The Twisters.

I never saw it, but I’d bet money that I’d hate Ted 2 more than any of those other Tiffany movies. 

One more bomb, and it was a true head scratcher.

Invasion Planet Earth (2019)

UR/98 m/IMDb: 3.0/directed by Simon Cox

IMDb: “After the death of his young daughter, Thomas Dunn is a man who has lost his faith. On the day he finds out his wife is pregnant again, aliens invade Earth.”

I read that it took 17 years for this film to make from the script being finished to the film’s release, and I’m really not sure what that says about this entire production; labor of love, or why on Earth did it take that long for this?

Special effects seem to have been stolen from a filmstrip I saw in 7th grade. 

There are zombies, and then there are no zombies, and then people are being sucked up into spaceships, and a guy was almost castrated by garden shears?

I mean, what the shit?!

People are being chased by a gigantic spaceship in the desert and a guy throws a rock at the gigantic spaceship, hits it, and it careens into a cliff where it explodes.

So, throw that gun once it’s out of bullets!

You never know!

Is this time travel?

Is this aliens?

Is this zombies?

Is this incomprehensible?

I was almost as baffled by this movie as I was by the “meatloaf” movie.

My final notes while screening this were, “Here they come. Brace yourself.” 

A direct quote from a video I took at the end of this film, “I’m sure I’ll do the same goddamn thing, but, in all these sci-fi movies where the aliens are just vaporizing people, the amount of people just standing there, staring at it and walking backwards slowly until they themselves get vaporized, well, that’s just on you, isn’t it.? It’ll all be amazingly weird when it happens, and it’s gonna suck.”

I have to admit that I loved the end of this when our protagonist says, “Don’t be afraid, it’s gonna be alright,” before all sorts of extinction level bombs explode incinerating absolutely everything. 

That was fun.

Now for the two films we’d actually suggest you see.

Obsession (2025)

R/109 m/IMDb: 7.8/directed by Curry Barker

IMDb: “After breaking the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.”

First of all, kudos to writer-director Curry Barker who shot this in 20 days for about $750,000 and then sold it to Focus Features (who won a bidding war involving A24 and Neon) for $15 million dollars. 

Well done.

At the heart, this is a modernized “Monkey’s Paw” tale in which a young man, Michael Johnston’s “Bear,” gets what he asked for, and more.

Much, much, more.

Inde Navarrette plays Bear’s crush, Nikki, and she is amazing in this film that will make you pretty uncomfortable even if you’ve never been in an obsessive relationship.

If you have been in an obsessive relationship, I’m thinking Obsession will make you extremely uncomfortable.

I was unfamiliar with Navarrette, and she blew me away in this role that required her to do quite a bit of work. 

I’m planning on watching it again and just concentrating on her performance.

She does things I’m thinking were quite difficult to pull off, and I’ll definitely be looking for her in future movies, AND when she hosts SNL on Halloween night!

Perfect slot for her.

I read that Navarrette doesn’t really like horror films at all, and when she watched Obsession at a screening, she had to watch part of it through the fingers that were covering her eyes.

I don’t want to give anything else away, so I’ll stop here.

If you’re a horror fan, I definitely think this is worth a watch since it scares you in unconventional ways.

And if you ever have the opportunity to make a wish on a “One Wish Willow,” just pass that opportunity by.

One Wish Willow = The Monkey’s Paw, and it’s rigged for you to lose even though you technically get what you asked for.

Our last film today marks the return of Friend of Cinema Wellman Wes Anderson! 

The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

PG-13/101 m/IMDb: 6.6/directed by Wes Anderson

IMDb: “Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists and determined assassins.”

Four Oscar Winners appear in this film along with six Oscar nominees, so business as usual on a Wes Anderson production.

While talking about disaster movies of the 70s on a recent episode, I spoke about the movie posters of those disaster movies and their proclivity when it came to featuring cast members on the poster.

I mentioned that you don’t see that outside of disaster movies, and the only director whose movies would possibly deserve such treatment would be Wes Anderson.

The poster for The Phoenician Scheme features a 4x3 box with the pictures of 12 cast members!

Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Hanks, F. Murray Abraham, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Brian Cranston, and Michael Cera are all a part of this, but the star of this production is Zsa-Zsa Korda, played to quirky perfection by Benicio Del Toro.

Korda is pretty much insane, and Del Toro’s deadpan delivery is hysterical as he survives several plane crashes and assassination attempts. 

I won’t tell you anything else since this is a Wes Anderson film and I wouldn’t actually know what to tell you even if I wanted to.

I don’t think The Phoenician Scheme is in Anderson’s Top 5, but if you’re a fan of his, you won’t be disappointed.

The color palette alone is worth another visit to Wes’ World.

Well, that is a wrap from here at Cinema Wellman for our first “Bomb Heavy” Best & Worst episode.

We hope you’re back with us next time when we pay homage to an entity that is at least somewhat responsible for my “obsession” with film; “The 4:30 Movie.”

More nostalgia coming to you from Cinema Wellman.

Until then, take care.