First Time Watches: December 2017

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas in December, and there were some Christmas first time watches that came along with it.  The month wasn’t completely filled with movies that I watched for the first time, but it had enough of them that I’m going to write this post.  They weren’t even all Christmas movies.  There just happened to be some because it was December.

For those of you who are new to these posts, I write about my first time watches each month.  The posts help you, the readers, to understand my thoughts about the movies I’ve seen.  They help me to come to terms with how I feel about them.  Most of all, these posts are a record of what movies I watched for the first time.  That’s enough to constitute writing a post, I think.

December had nineteen first time watches.  That’s almost twenty movies that I saw for the first time.  Some of them were short films and others were not.  There was a police officer who did his best work in the night.  A woman was being cured of her grumpy Christmas attitude.  One movie will be covered twice because I saw two drastically different versions.  We’ll even go into space, and then come back down to visit a drive-in.  That’s all coming up in my December first time watches post.

Another WolfCop

The first WolfCop was a movie that came onto my radar a few years ago as part of my Sunday “Bad” Movies blog.  I don’t remember how I stumbled onto it, but the name made me feel the need to seek it out.  I fell in love almost immediately and anticipated the sequel, which was released in late 2017.  The sequel wasn’t quite as good as the first.  It had all of the best parts back.  Lowell Dean had returned to direct again.  Leo Fafard and Amy Matysio were back, as was the always fun to watch Jonathan Cherry.  They even had some more music by Gowan, and he showed up in the movie.  It was super Canadian.  However, the first movie had a slightly better story which kept it above the sequel.  Still a good, fun movie that I saw in the theater.

A Miracle on Christmas Lake

There are a lot of Canadian movies that revolve around hockey.  This was one of them.  A young man was dealing with the death of his friend by trying to shovel a path across a lake.  One night, a hockey rink appeared before him.  The hockey rink was a release for his emotions.  When the town tried to turn the land around the lake into a new residential area, he fought to keep it because of the rink.  There was a good heart to the movie.  That couldn’t save it from feeling like a Canadian movie.  There wasn’t enough put into it to make it look as cinematic as it could have.  It was okay.  I’m happy to have watched it.  It simply could have been more.

Santa’s Slay

Christmas horror always hits that soft spot in my heart.  I love horror and to set it at a holiday brings me in every time.  Elves might be a terrible movie, but I love it.  Halloween was great.  Krampus was a solid horror movie set during the end of the year holidays.  Another Christmas horror movie was Santa’s Slay, which saw Santa going on a killing spree because he loved killing people.  Bill Goldberg was having a great time playing the symbol of Christmas cheer, bringing fear to the town of Hell.  The movie didn’t strive for excellence.  It was going for fun and brought that to the table by the truck load.  This is a new holiday staple for me.

The Disaster Artist

I had been looking forward to the adaptation of Greg Sestero’s book about his friendship with Tommy Wiseau and the making of The Room since the movie was announced a couple years ago.  The cast began coming together and it was a bunch of people I enjoyed watching.  If there’s one thing that stood out above all others in the final product, it was the performances.  Everyone put in some of their best work throughout The Disaster Artist.  The movie focused much more on the friendship of Greg and Tommy than the making of The Room, which gave a solid emotional core to the story.  It was about their journey as brothers in the world of entertainment.  They may have put out a bad movie, but they would stick together.  There was a lot to like about the movie I had been anticipating since reading the book.

The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree

There’s not much worse in the world of cinema than a bad animated movie.  Something about them hurts more than most others.  It could be that the majority of animation is directed at children, so a poorly done animated flick feels dumbed down to the point of nonsense.  It could be the ugly visuals made by animators who don’t care.  The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree hit both of those negative aspects.  It was only forty minutes, but it felt like an eternity.  It was not good and I hope nobody tortures themselves with this one.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

This was one of the most divisive films of 2018.  There were people who loved it and people who vehemently despised what it was doing.  I fell in the middle.  I was a fan of what the movie was trying to do, though I think it could have handled some things better.  The horse creatures, in particular.  Yet, I ended up on the defensive when the people I went to see it with (the second time, one night after the first) began trash talking the female characters.  Eh.  This post isn’t about that though.  What I liked about The Last Jedi was that it was a movie about hope.  The characters might not have always succeeded at what they were doing, but they inspired others along the way.  They thought they were the last bit of hope in the galaxy.  They were actually the instigators for hope that would come.  I’m excited to see where the trilogy ends.

Moon Palace

One of my teachers worked on this short television film.  The idea behind the film was pretty solid.  A guy takes a job as a fortune writer for the fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant.  He would eavesdrop on the customers and tailor their fortunes to suit them.  Aside from the creep factor of the eavesdropping, the concept was good.  It fell apart with the television look.  Had it been made a few years later, the short probably could have fared a little better.  It had the potential to go places.

Pottersville

The story of this one brought together a bunch of different things that you wouldn’t think fit together.  It was a Christmas movie where Michael Shannon’s character discovered his wife was a furry who was cheating on him and decided to wear a gorilla costume while getting drunk.  The townspeople mistook him for Bigfoot, and a reality television crew showed up to hunt down the creature, not knowing it was Michael Shannon’s character.  There’s not much to say about it outside of what it’s about.  I basically spent the whole time wondering how they got such an interesting cast.  Shannon, Judy Greer, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Tom Lennon, and Ian McShane all showed up.  That cast was way better than the movie, which left my jaw on the floor.

54 – Theatrical Cut

This was messy.  54 was a semi-fictional biopic about the famous New York club.  There were real people in the story, but the main character was only loosely based on real people.  The story wanted to be something darker.  It hinted at the sex, drugs, and money skimming that would eventually bring the club down.  But everything was glorified.  Everything was made to look good.  The tone of the story with the way it was edited and the way the ending was rewritten caused a conflict of tones that tore the theatrical version apart.  Luckily, there was a director’s cut that was released a few years ago.  I’ll get to that later.

Humbug

Once again, Christmas and horror came together in this short film.  A woman who was extremely passionate about the holidays decided to rid another woman of her holiday grumpiness.  The idea was fun, and the performances were perfectly over-the-top.  There was a fun attitude to the short.  It should be watched and appreciated by more people, but I’m sure there aren’t too many who know about it.  This under-the-radar horror short is going to be something I watch annually for years to come.

Alien Worms

Sometimes a movie comes along where you’re baffled as to why it was made.  It’s not that it was terrible (though this one was).  There just seemed to be no point to it.  Alien Worms had a guy go into a house, shoot some alien worms, and escape with his life.  The only saving grace about it was that it was short so the pain ended quickly.  The effects were atrocious.  The acting was bad.  Everything had an ugly filter over it.  This is a short film that should be given a hard pass if ever offered the chance to see it.

Born Again

Many movies are made based on a new twist to a familiar story.  The story in this case was a satanic ritual that was going to cause a woman to give birth to… something.  One of the people involved in the ritual, however, was a bumbling Best Buy employee who didn’t fit into the vibe.  He was messing things up.  It was the right kind of comedy for me, making me laugh more than once in the short runtime.  The final little twist was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.

Cloooowns!

Killer clowns have been a huge thing over the past few years.  Two years ago, people were frightened about clowns stalking them wherever they went.  Last year, It came out and people went wild.  Something about clowns frightens people.  This was a short made during the clown rage and it was about clowns attacking a Halloween party.  The acting was solid.  It was easy to see that everyone was into being a part of the short.  The characters were fun to watch.  Cloooowns! wasn’t the greatest, but it was a good enough time for a few minutes.

Closed

A child fled from a monster that could only attack if he had his eyes open.  The child tried to keep his eyes closed.  The only thing that I didn’t like about this one was the acting on the part of the child.  You can’t really hold that against it too much.  Good child actors can be tough to come by.  It was alright.

54 – Director’s Cut

The reason that I counted my two watches of 54 as separate first time watches was because the two versions were vastly different.  The director’s cut brought in some gay relationships, and made the club into a darker place that wasn’t meant to be glorified.  The moments of the theatrical cut that seemed too dark for what it was doing fit perfectly into the director’s cut.  All in all, this was a better version of the movie that seemed to have a clear tone and story to be told.  It wasn’t backtracking on any of the story beats.  Instead, it said the club life wasn’t all it was made out to be.  It wasn’t the best life.  There were shady things, and going into that life got you involved in things that weren’t necessarily good.  Busted relationships, drugs, and even death.  The director’s cut should be the cut that anyone sees.

Grin

Clown horror struck again in December.  This one was kind of strange.  A woman decided to paint over a clown picture on a stone wall.  There was a clown who didn’t like it and was silently threatening her.  There’s not much to say about the short film.  It was amusing, I guess.  Not much more than that.

Twisted

I was waiting a couple years for this one.  It was about the area in which I live.  There’s an urban legend around here that a tornado went through a local drive-in theater while Twister was playing.  Some versions even say that it happened during the part in Twister where they’re watching The Shining at a drive-in theater.  There was some truth to the urban legend.  The documentary short was about what really happened and how the urban legend spread around the area.  Maybe I liked it more because it was a local story, but I think it was just a good short documentary that anyone could enjoy.

Colossal

It is always interesting to see movies tackle serious issues in odd ways.  Colossal used giant monsters as a way to present a story about the troubles that come with alcoholism.  The performances were great, especially from Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis.  Not many movies can make a grown man stomping around the sandy section of a playground frightening, but this one did.  It was an excellent way to tell the story which resonated while also providing the fun of a monster movie.  This is a must see movie.

How the West was Won

Closing out the month, and a year of first time watches, was this epic from 1962.  It was split into five different parts, each telling a different story about the same family at a different point in their life.  There was a huge cast of recognizable faces, and some solid action to spice up each of the stories.  For an almost three hour movie, it was entertaining and attention capturing the entire time.  This was a great way to cap off the year.

2017 came to a close with a few of my favourite first time watches of the month, and possibly the year.  I won’t be doing a best of post for 2017.  It’s tough enough getting these out with the smaller amount of writing time I’ve had over the past few months.  I will say that my top first time watches of the year were Before Sunset (January), The Belko Experiment (August), Atomic Blonde (July), The Wiz (July), and Deepwater Horizon (June).  There were other movies that I loved to.

I’m going into 2018 optimistic for what I will see.  It seems like my film classes will be getting more into the classics to teach the methods of making movies.  I’m also planning on catching up on some stuff I’ve been meaning to watch.  And, as always, I have a blog of bad movies.  So there should be a good variety of stuff that I watch.

I will be back with another post at the end of January.  There are sure to be a lot of movies in that post.  I’ve seen some already, including Air Bud Spikes Back and State and Main.  They’re two vastly different movies.  I also saw a bunch of stuff at the theater during my one week break from school, so you’ll get my thoughts on those as well.  Come back in a month to see what I have to say about these movies.

Before you go, though, let me just plug a few other writing outlets.  As I mentioned, I have a bad movie blog called Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Check that out for my weekly writing about movies based on a bad movie I saw.  I write about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers too.  If you want something that’s not me, Talk Film Society is always a good outlet when looking for writing.  Mark Watlington wrote something about Cats & Dogs for them.  Another option would be to check out a great guy named Jaime Burchardt.  He wrote something about Jaume Collet-Serra for Cinepunx.  Thanks for checking any or all of these things out, and have a good time between posts!