First Time Watches: January 2017
It’s halfway through February as I’m writing this. That means January came to a close nearly two
weeks ago. That also means that I need
to get around to compiling my list of first-time watches for the month. It’s what I do every month. I watch a bunch of movies for the first time
and I write about them here.
These posts exist for a couple of reasons, which I go over
every once in a while. The first reason
is that it lets you, the readers, know what I liked and disliked about a movie
so that if you decide to maybe check it out, I might be of service to your
wondering if it’s good or not. That’s
not to say that my opinion will be your opinion. Everyone has differing opinions. It just means that you can use my opinion as
a little bit of background. The other
reason is that it will help me remember if I liked or disliked a movie. If I’ve forgotten about the movie in a few
years’ time and I’m thinking about watching it again, I can check these posts
to see if it’s worth rewatching.
January was a fairly good month for first time watches. There were some truly great movies among the
not-so-great stuff that I tend to watch.
One of the movies was about movies, one was about movie making, and one
was about television. There was a movie
about the dangers of technology and a movie about the dangers of
reanimation. I saw some animated shorts,
and a few horror movies. But enough
about the vague descriptions. Let’s get into
the actual short reviews.
Cell
Stephen King released the novel Cell in 2006. It wasn’t
perfect or even one of his best, but it was still an entertaining tale of
survival after the human race had been turned into zombies by technology. The episodic nature of the story didn’t fit a
movie adaptation. There wasn’t enough
time give to any of the characters to give emotional impact to what happened to
them. It didn’t help that many of the
“chapters” were replaced with other, lesser versions that weakened any
impact. I should have expected it to be
bad after how the initial outbreak was presented, but the movie far exceeded my
expectations. Nearly everything about it
was bad. Maybe a miniseries with a
different creative team could do the story justice.
Don’t Speak
This is not to be confused with Don’t Breathe. Don’t Speak was about a group of friends
exploring an island with a horrific past, and being killed one by one. The story was solid and there were some
interesting creative choices in how the flashbacks were presented, but it was
let down by lackluster acting and weak scares.
There is the promise of something better in the future of the writers
and the director. This is just a misstep
that could have been better.
I, Frankenstein
Why did this happen?
The story of Frankenstein is a
story about the morality of creating life.
It’s like Jurassic Park on a
smaller scale. Should man play God? This pseudo-sequel to the original Mary
Shelley tale lost that depth in favor of some gargoyle versus demon
action. It was like the producers wanted
to make a new Underworld movie
without using the Underworld
franchise. There was no reason for this
to be a Frankenstein movie. It had nothing to do with Frankenstein outside of a name. The story’s bad too, which doesn’t help. Even without the annoyance of the name, it’s
still bad.
Broadcast News
Television has been a major part of the program that I’ve
been taking since going back to school in September. I have learned about the behind-the-scenes
stuff that was depicted in this movie. I
know the basics of a functioning control room.
It was a great experience watching a movie that depicted so closely what
I’ve been a part of, even if the technology has advanced thirty years since the
movie came out. Thrown into the mix were
some interesting, quirky characters, and a romance story that hit with as much
impact as it did groans. All around,
it’s a movie worth watching for anyone interested in how live TV is put
together or 80s dramedies.
Evil Exhumed
There’s not much to say about this movie because there’s not
much to it. It’s a slasher movie where
the same kill happens over and over again, but you never see it. Every person gets murdered the same way. A mummy with a small sickle slashes their
face. What makes it super repetitive is
that it’s always one person showing up on the island where the movie takes
place, then running through the woods alone.
There were long sections of the movie where young men ran through the
woods shirtless before being killed.
Once was enough. It didn’t have
to happen three more times. It was David
DeCoteau doing his thing, and I have yet to see his thing work well.
Romancing the Stone
Adventure movies made a comeback in the 1980s thanks to
movies like The Goonies and the Indiana Jones franchise. Romancing
the Stone was a romantic take on the adventure genre that helped it to
stand out from the others. A romance
adventure novelist played by Kathleen Turner ended up going on a real life
adventure that played like one of her novels.
It was Robert Zemeckis playing to his directing strengths in his 1980s
heyday. There was fun action and comedy
that worked. The performances were
enjoyable the whole way through. At some
point, I’ll have to check out the sequel.
Bigfoot vs. Zombies
If I could roll up a newspaper and hit this movie over the
head with it, I would. This was a bad
movie. The title sort of gives that away
though, since after you get beyond the “Oh! The fight!” you realize that 95% of
the time, someone making a movie like this is not a good filmmaker. Bigfoot
vs. Zombies was filled with bad acting, bad cinematography, and all around
bad storytelling. The worst part is that
it didn’t even fully succeed in making the material fun. There was a fart joke, though. Every bad movie could use one of those.
Hugo
Martin Scorsese loves movies and people love Martin Scorsese
movies. It only seems fitting that he
would give people a movie about the discovery and magic of movies. It’s not nearly his best work, but Hugo is still a great love letters to
one of the biggest influencers of cinema.
Scorsese’s adaptation of the book was littered with homages to early
pioneers of cinema, specifically Georges Méliès, who was also a major part of
the story. This is an important movie to
watch, based on the subject matter.
Before Sunset
Dialogue can be one of the most difficult things to make
entertaining while retaining realistic conversation. Adding style to the way people talk to make
them sound more interesting will make the characters feel like characters. If you want them to feel like real people,
they have to talk like real people. They
have to react like real people. The Before trilogy manages to capture that
realistic feeling and make it entertaining.
Before Sunset, the second in
the three-part series breezes by as the two central characters just talk about
their lives since they last met nine years before. It’s a wonderful, realistic love story that
should be studied for the masterful dialogue work.
Fifty Shades of
Black
Most modern spoofs have forgotten how to tell a proper joke,
instead removing the humour and adding pop culture name-dropping. The jokes will be that people recognize the
names. Fifty Shades of Black didn’t do that and instead tried actual
jokes. Most of them didn’t land too
well, but I respect that it tried to actually bring humour back into
spoofs. Although the jokes leaned more
toward the bad side of the laugh scale, there was something completely
watchable about this movie. It could
grow on me if I give it another watch or two, which is more than I can say
about other modern spoofs that are trying to fill up the comedy movie
world. Respect to Marlon Wayans for
actually giving a damn.
Hannibal Buress:
Comedy Comisado
If I’m being completely honest here, I don’t remember much
of the material in this special. The one
thing I can tell you is that Hannibal Buress is a fun guy to watch. His jokes might not be as memorable as some
other comedians out there, but he has a personality that makes what he says
enjoyable. This special fits into that
description. I don’t remember much of
it. Yet, I remember having a good time
because he makes the watching experience better. He elevates whatever material he has just
because he is who he is. I appreciate
that.
In the Name of the
King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Uwe Boll was given his biggest budget ever to make this
fantasy epic based on the Dungeon Siege
video games. It was one of his better
movies, with a solid cast of actors including Jason Statham, Burt Reynolds,
Leelee Sobieski, Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta, and Matthew Lillard. Basically, he let Jason Statham be Jason
Statham with a sword and it worked masterfully.
There were still some Boll style moments, since the insanity of the
movie was amped up to an unexpected level.
But it all came together in the end to create a highly enjoyable action
adventure movie set in a middle age world.
It’s the best I’ve seen from a director that everyone agrees is one of
the worst.
In the Name of the
King: Two Worlds
The sequel doesn’t have the same magic. Most of that loss can be attributed to the
lower budget. After the box office
failure of the first movie, Uwe Boll said that he would never have a budget
that high again. That is why the
original cast was replaced with new characters played by the likes of Lochlyn
Monroe, Dolph Lundgren, and Aleks Paunovic.
They’re still recognizable, but they aren’t as big. Two
Worlds brought time travel into the story with the main character being
relocated from present day Vancouver to the middle age landscape of the first
movie. The monsters were replaced with
shadowy warriors. The battles weren’t
large scale anymore, which hurt the fun factor.
It is watchable but nothing much beyond that.
In the Name of the
King: The Last Job
For the third movie in the sword-fighting trilogy, the cast
was even worse and the characters more unlikeable. The story was about an assassin played by
Dominic Purcell (the only recognizable actor in the movie) who was sent back in
time to stop an evil king from ruling the kingdom. The Bulgarian shot movie was as forgettable
as anything. If there’s any real problem
with it, it’s that it was boring. There
was a little inkling of an interesting story, but it was lost on the fact that
the main character was an ass and treated everyone poorly. It wasn’t even bad enough to make me feel
anything except bored.
Gertie the Dinosaur
Here, we begin a bunch of animated shorts that I saw during
my history of cartoon animation class.
This one was originally a part of Winsor McCay’s stage show, and he
would interact with Gertie. In the
version I saw, McCay was replaced with dialogue. It was a fine enough concept. There’s something about McCay’s style that I
don’t really like though. The characters
tend to move back and forth mid-action before actually doing anything, which
just adds extra, unnecessary time. Still
a good short.
How a Mosquito
Operates
This ended up being my favourite of the four Winsor McCay
shorts that I watched. It’s not because
it’s necessarily better. The reason I
hold this one higher is that it actually got a reaction out of me that was more
than mere amusement. As the mosquito bit
the man, I physically recoiled because of how deep the needle-nose stab
was. It looked painful. That reaction means more than simple
enjoyment of the animation.
Little Nemo
Technically, there’s another name to this one, but I’m going
to call it Little Nemo because that’s
the part of it that we were discussing in class. The short itself consisted of the animation (Little Nemo) and a live action
re-enactment of the creation of the cartoon.
The cartoon was a simple early cartoon just showing that characters
could move. There was no story, there
was no gimmick. It was all about making
the images move. The live action portion
told as much. It was a comical take on
the bet that Winsor McCay made that he would be able to make a certain number
of frames’ worth of moving animation.
Overall, this one was alright.
Dreams of the
Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House
This is the final Winsor McCay I’ll write about, but not the
last one that was watched in class. I
zoned out during the last one, so I’m not willing to consider it a watch. Anyway, this was a trippy cartoon. A guy made his house fly into outer space and
some crazy things happened. The
animation was great, especially for early work in the field. Not a lot of people, even in the heyday of
hand drawn animation, came near the levels of artistry that McCay showcased. Not my favourite, but masterful all the same.
Fantasmagorie
and The Puppet’s Nightmare
We also watched two of Emile Cohl’s cartoon shorts in our
animation class. I’m lumping them both
together because, thinking back, I can’t differentiate between them. Both felt like fever dreams. The images were drawn, and then some sort of
negative coloring was used to make them look like white lines on a black
background instead of black on white.
Lines joined lines and characters melted. It was some weird stuff that it difficult to
explain. I’m not sure I liked it.
Monster Trucks
For the final two first-time watches of January, I took a
trip to the theatre for a personal double feature. Monster
Trucks was about a teenager who found a monster and put it in an old truck
he was rebuilding. The monster ran the
truck. But there were also bad people
trying to find the monster, so the kid teamed up with a girl from his school to
keep the monster safe. The movie was
basically Mac and Me, only the kid
wasn’t handicapped, and the McDonalds product placement was replaced with
Dodge. There was a lot of Dodge in the
movie. There was a building trucks
montage set in a Dodge dealership. The
thing is, it plays better than Mac and Me. Though the story is almost the exact same, it
was more fun and more competently made. Paul
Rudd won’t be using this movie in all his interviews, but this should be a
movie that people know about, see, and enjoy.
La La Land
Rounding out the month was a musical that was up for Best
Picture at this year’s Academy Awards.
Funny enough, it was playing on the same screen as Monster Trucks, right after Monster
Trucks. It’s weird. I enjoyed the movie but I can’t figure out
what makes it as enjoyable as it is.
There’s some sort of undefinable quality within La La Land. It’s magic, like
the Hollywood feeling it’s trying to give off.
That ending is devastating, and I love it for that, but something about
the rest of the movie is just plain and simple magic and I can’t grasp why it
works as well as it does.
What a way to round out the month. It ended with a double feature trip to the
theatre for two movies that I highly enjoyed.
They rounded out a fairly solid month which included a couple movies
that might be some of my worst watches this year, and a few that could be some
of the best. That’s a good month, I
think. It had a variety of quality.
February is looking to bring some more fun to my first time
watches. There will be more animated
shorts since that cartoon history class is still ongoing. I’ve seen movies like Timeline and Grand
Hotel. There’s much more that I watched
that I will need to cover. I hope you’ll
come back to read about February’s first time watches. See you when that post goes up.
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