First Time Watches: November 2016

Every month, I watch a bunch of movies.  Some of them are old favourites, while others are movies that I haven’t seen before.  It’s these new watches that I focus on every month because it gives me a chance to write about them and think about what I saw.  What’s the point in watching a movie if you aren’t going to get anything out of it?  Every movie should have a meaning to you, no matter how big or small.  They should inform your cinematic mind, helping you further your knowledge.  Good and bad movies can make educate you on filmmaking.  They inform you.  They’re important.

This post is a little late.  School took up a lot of time over the past month and I haven’t been able to write as much as I wanted to.  I’m only now getting to the movies that I watched in November, even though we’re nearing Christmas.  So, yeah, this is the November post.

There aren’t too many movies to cover in this post.  Like I said, I’ve been busy.  That gave me less time to seek out new watches.  There were only nine in November.  One of them wasn’t even in my own free time.  It was watched in lecture.  Here’s what you can expect out of this post.  There are some strange happenings around the world.  There’s an old Humphrey Bogart movie.  I watched some breakfast food, and watched a band fight Neo-Nazis.  It was an interesting month, even if there weren’t too many first time watches.  Why don’t we get into the movies, though?

Hell Comes to Frogtown

Since I had devoted October to horror movies, I immediately came out of the month with something different.  It was a post-apocalyptic action movie about Roddy Piper being the most fertile man in the world.  He needed to free a bunch of captive women so that he could knock them up.  That’s the movie.  It’s not that good.  It lacks momentum in the pacing that leads boredom.  The movie is also a little too goofy for its own good.  It doesn’t know who the audience is.  It has adult themes, but goes for low hanging fruit in the jokes.  They’re two separate directions that never found a good mixture.

Doctor Strange

One thing about Marvel and their movies is that although primarily action movies, they define the characters well enough that I know who everyone is and enjoy watching them.  The characters might not be deep, but they are defined.  Doctor Strange is a movie full of characters who are defined enough that I would definitely watch another movie with any of them.  The inventive action helps too.  Sure, it got influence from Inception, but there were still visually stunning moments, and the climax was unlike anything I’ve seen in mainstream action movies.  Not my favourite of the year or even my favourite Marvel movie, but Doctor Strange earned its place in cinema.

Inherent Vice

I’ve been a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson as long as I’ve been a fan of movies as art.  Boogie Nights made me realize that movies are more than entertainment.  Of course I was going to get around to seeing Inherent Vice when it was put onto Netflix.  This is a movie that I imagine will get better on subsequent viewings.  I liked it the first time, but I’m not in love with it.  It had an interesting comedic side that I appreciated coming off PTA’s serious previous two features.  The cast was great and the story was solid.  Again, I could grow to love this.  It is not a one-time movie.  You can’t get it on one viewing.

True Memoirs of an International Assassin

Kevin James is a name that turns most people off of movies, but I enjoy watching him.  His physical comedy makes me laugh.  The movies where he is the star have been a staple of my movie watching life since the release of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.  I was excited to hear that Netflix was releasing a Kevin James comedy where he was a writer mistaken for an assassin.  It ended up being Paul Blart light.  The concept was interesting, and I wish they had leaned heavier into the writer’s mind versus reality aspect.  The one shining light was the soundtrack which brought Spanish versions of popular songs.  Those covers were entertaining.  The rest of the movie had its moments but never really left a mark.

Razors: The Return of Jack the Ripper

People still have no idea what happened with Jack the Ripper.  They don’t definitively know who was behind the murders.  There are suspicions, but that’s it.  This movie decided to tell a supernatural continuation of the murders, set in the present day.  It didn’t make a lot of sense.  The idea was okay.  The explanation for it was garbage and destroyed any logic that the movie had set up.  It also had the gall to say that the Jack the Ripper story was one of the scariest that could be told.  If you’re going to make that claim, you should make a scary movie.  This was not a scary movie.

The Petrified Forest

I bought a Humphrey Bogart box set a couple years ago.  It has been sitting, untouched, on my shelf since then.  November seemed like the perfect time to crack it open.  The Petrified Forest was the first film in the set.  That’s fitting since it was the first major role for Humphrey Bogart.  The movie was a pure acting movie.  It was about a group of people being held hostage in a restaurant by a gangster.  As they spent the night together, you learned about the characters and their troubles.  Everyone was great, and it made for an engrossing watch.  There’s nothing bad to say about it.

Green Room

Almost the entirety of 2016, I had been hearing about how great Green Room was.  Like I’m prone to do, I waited.  Sometimes hype can influence me and I’ll be looking for reasons not to like something.  I try to stop that by not seeing things for a few months if I can’t see them immediately.  I don’t want to go into a movie during its third week in theaters thinking about how great everyone said it was, only to find out it’s not of those high standards.  I shouldn’t have worried about Green Room.  Though I almost zoned out during the opening portion, once the main story kicked in, I was into the movie until the credits.  It was one of the greatest experiences I had all year, and I watched it on a laptop in the comfort of my own home.  I don’t have too much more to say because I don’t want to ruin it.  Watch the movie.  It’s worth it.

Waffle Street

After about a week of rewatches, I searched Netflix for something new to me.  I found a movie called Waffle Street.  It was about people working in a waffle house.  I thought “why not?” and turned it on.  It ended up being exactly what I needed.  It was a dramedy that struck the right chords.  Maybe it’s because it fits my life.  I thought I was going one way, that didn’t work out, and I took a minimum wage job to find myself before discovering what I really wanted to do.  Hey, I relate to the movie, okay?  Anyway, I had a good time.  That’s all that matters.

The President’s Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office

Rounding out the month was a documentary that I saw in photography lecture.  It was mostly about Barack Obama’s photographer and what his job entailed, but also looked back upon the last fifty years of photographers.  There were interesting thoughts on what it takes to create good photographs and what it means to keep a document of what the president does.  It was informative, the people were interesting to listen to and watch, and it was enjoyable.  It’s not a must see.  I’m glad I saw it, though.  It gave me insight into photography, which may have helped me with my final project in that class.

And that closes out my November of first time watches.  There were nine movies, with two thirds of them being solid.  The others were interesting failures.  I don’t regret watching any of them.  I wouldn’t have the month any other way.

I promise that in early January, I will come out with another post filled with first time watches.  It will likely include more than this post, since I’ve already matched the number with a week and a half left.  I’ll let you in on a few of the movies that will be popping up.  Of course, I’ve already seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  I saw a movie called Black Legion.  The Kirk Cameron classic Saving Christmas will also be in there.  And there will be a bunch more too.  I hope you return next month to see what I have in store for you.  Until then, watch some of the movies I saw this month, okay?