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Best and Worst Films from July 2022

Best Films from July 2022:

3. The Sea Beast

This wasn’t a particularly strong month for me. I ended up watching all three of these best movies in the second half of the month. The Sea Beast is my pick for this third placement. It’s the best Netflix animation so far. It’s a familiar, didactic story in its preachy message, but it’s still a beautiful animal rights message and the adventurous elements are spirited. The protagonists are quite endearing and the CGI is breathtakingly lifelike, especially that of the water itself. It’s a wonderful flick overall.

2. The Black Phone

The Black Phone is an impressive horror thriller that features a rare villainous turn from Ethan Hawke and he really is very creepy here. The highlight, though, is the sibling bond at the heart of the story and their resilient spirit. The supernatural premise did wonders to make it a more unique tale than it could have been otherwise while the execution of its jump scares and plot scenarios was superb throughout. It’s a hugely entertaining genre flick.

1. The Madness of King George

The best movie I saw all month and the only 4.5-rated picture is this British period piece that is so tonally diverse and authentic. It starts as this very funny take on a king going mad, but then it transitions into a heartbreaking drama about said king and how everybody else mistreated him. Nigel Hawthorne was brilliant as George and the movie is both deeply layered and highly entertaining, a rarity for historical movies. It fired on all cylinders, leading to one of the best stage adaptations out there.

Worst Films from July 2022:

3. Child’s Play 2

The second entry in the Chucky series is everything that the first was not – loud, bombastic, campy and obvious. The story is quite mediocre and gone is the minimalism of its scares and the mythology behind its story. Chucky himself is great, but everything else was so bad here.

2. Waterworld

I loved the premise behind Waterworld and it did look excellent, but the movie was so boring, overlong and a failure in every single aspect ranging from dialogue to acting to characterization and especially to the plot. Even the action sequences weren’t all that great, which made it even more tedious to watch.

1. Gemini Man

Gemini Man is by far the worst movie in Ang Lee’s entire career. It’s a SF flick that focused so extensively on action that it became annoyingly frenetic and dull. The visuals are also quite ugly while the overall storyline was pretty terrible. Nothing here worked in a rare total misfire for Lee.