First Time Watches: September 2017

Since school began at the start of September, life has been getting busier and busier.  It means that I’ve fallen behind on some of the stuff I meant to do.  Specifically, I fell behind on writing.  That’s where this post comes in.  Welcome to my first time watches for September 2017.

I have been writing these posts for over a year, letting everyone know my thoughts on the movies I had recently watched for the first time.  I have no idea if anyone reads or gets anything out of the posts, but I keep writing them anyway.  This is another post with another month’s worth of movies.

There weren’t too many first time watches in September.  I only ended up getting to nine of them.  What I did watch was quite varied, though.  There was a clown terrorizing some kids and a trip around the world.  There was a visit to a summer camp and a city boy visiting the country.  Twelve soldiers even teamed up to take down some Nazis.  Speaking of which, let’s get to the first movie.

The Dirty Dozen

This is one of those war movies that gets mentioned whenever war movies are discussed.  It’s a well-deserved mention.  A group of disgraced soldiers, many of whom will be hanged for what they did, are forced to team up and go on a suicide mission.  It was separated into three distinct sections.  First the war criminals became a team.  Next, they stuck it to the man through a competition.  Then, the actual mission happened.  All three sections were great, and anchored by one of the best casts to ever grace a war film.  Well worth checking out.

Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby

It’s a sad state of affairs when this and its two predecessors are a step down from Superbabies.  Who knew that there could be a step down from Superbabies?  It seemed like the lowest level already.  But here we are.  Out of the three Baby Geniuses and… movies, this was the best one.  That’s not saying much.  It still had all the bad jokes and acting.  The Space Baby was the only reason it was slightly better.  He changed things up just enough to make the story a little interesting.

Around the World in 80 Days

The version that I watched was the 1950s David Niven movie.  It was long and had a lot of big scenery.  The thing is, I don’t remember too much of the movie outside of some images in my head.  Don’t get me wrong.  It was good.  It just left my memory as quickly as it went in.  I may need to rewatch it sometime.

It

Who hasn’t seen this by now?  Everyone knows the story.  Pennywise the Dancing Clown shows up in Derry and starts eating kids.  A group of the local children, known as The Losers Club, fight back.  The movie was mostly jump scares, many of which worked, but it did also touch upon some heavier subjects.  A girl was being abused by her father.  The bully was showing serial killer tendencies.  That stuff was as scary as the clown.  The cast of kids was great and had fantastic chemistry with one another.  One of the best of 2017.

For Your Consideration

Film class got a little upgrade this year.  Instead of simply taking a camera and filming whatever, we now get a little bit of theory and some movies to show us what we’re learning.  We were shown For Your Consideration as an exaggerated, yet accurate representation of the personalities you could meet in the business.  (We were also shown 12 Angry Men as an example of camerawork, but I’ve seen that before, so it’s not in this post.)  There were funny moments, though sometimes I was left scratching my head at comedic choices.  Good movie.  Not sure I would watch it again.

Son in Law

I’m not much of a Pauly Shore fan so I was wary going into a movie he starred in.  The worst part of Son in Law was absolutely Pauly Shore.  That’s not to say that the rest was bad.  It had a solid story with a country girl going to the city and learning the city ways, then bringing a city friend to the country to learn country living.  There was a double fish out of water thing going on.  Pauly Shore just grinds my gears in the wrong way, so it was tough to enjoy.  I did appreciate whenever he sang John Denver’s Thank God I’m a Country Boy, so there’s that.

Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust

This was the second movie I watched in September involving a movie being produced.  I honestly found it to be the more entertaining of the two.  It followed the studio head, some of the performers, the effects people, and writers as they made a low budget horror movie.  Eventually, the Gingerdead Man showed up and started killing the people who were making it.  It’s right up my alley and I kind of loved it.

Don’t Hang Up

Two friends who prank call people and use the calls to make YouTube videos got pranked themselves.  Except the man prank calling them put their lives at risk.  The main problem with Don’t Hang Up was that it was easier to sympathize with the bad guy’s motivations than the two leads.  You wanted the bad guy to win because the main characters were jerks.  The movie wanted you to sympathize with the two YouTubers, though.  It was still entertaining, but weakened by poor writing.

Meatballs

All I ever heard about this movie was that Bill Murray was great in it.  When I finally watched it, he seemed like a creeper.  I get that it’s a summer camp movie.  It’s a pretty good one at that.  But there was a scene where Bill Murray forced himself on another counselor then blamed her when he got caught.  Not cool.  Camp competitions are my shit though, so it won me over in the end.

This brings to a close another month of first time watches.  There weren’t many but the few that there were are likely to (mostly) stick with me.  It was a month where I enjoyed more than I didn’t.

Next month should bring the spooky back to the first time watches.  It’s October, so there’s a lot of horror movies coming up with that post.  I’ve already seen things like The Green Inferno, Gerald’s Game, and The Monster Squad, which I will be writing about.  There are also a few non-horror movies in Blade Runner 2049 and Geostorm.  If you want to read that stuff, come back next month when I post the October first time watches.

A few last things before you go.  Let’s do some plugs.  I have a series of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers posts that I’ve been going through for a long time.  I also have another blog called Sunday “Bad” Movies, where I cover a different “bad” movie each week.  Check those out.  While you’re at it, check out my boy Jaime Burchardt as he finishes up his October Horrorfest.  He’s just an all-around awesome guy and you’ll be happy to know him.  And finally, Marcelo Pico and the Talk Film Society crew are doing some amazing stuff on their site.  Marcus Irving recently wrote a piece grading every trap/lesson in the Saw franchise, excluding Jigsaw, which just came out.  Trust me, you won’t be disappointed with any of these plugs (that aren’t my writing).  They’re all good.  See you soon.