First Time Watches: January 2018

Welcome to a post that’s only a few months late.  It’s March as I begin this thing and May as I post it.  Life has been super busy lately between school, out of school projects, work, family engagements, and writing other things.  So much time has been eaten up doing these things that I haven’t had much time to get to these posts.  I’ve watched movies.  That will never stop.  But I’ve slacked on the writing of my first time watch posts.

If you’re new to checking these posts out, let me fill you in about what they are.  Every month, I watch a bunch of movies that I’ve never seen before.  That’s how things work.  I want to see something and I seek it out.  I watch it.  There are rewatches for me as well.  These posts aren’t for my rewatches.  They’re for my first time watches.  They let me think about what I saw and let you know about what I thought.  Sharing is caring.

This post, specifically, will cover the movies I watched during January.  There were somehow 24 first time watches throughout the first month of 2018.  Dogs made many appearances.  Multiple characters returned from the dead.  There were some Oscar nominated movies from 2017, and some stoners.  A good cop and a bad cop were paired up, and a major comedy powerhouse was born.  All that and more happened in January.  Let’s get to the movies.

xXx: Return of Xander Cage

The year started strong with one of the best action movies of 2017.  Vin Diesel returned to the other franchise that he left in the early 2000s with an all-out, over-the-top action spectacle.  Xander Cage went from being an extreme sports expert to an extreme sports god.  Along for the ride this time were Toni Collette, Ruby Rose, Deepika Padukone, Tony Jaa, and Donnie Yen.  The international cast and top notch action set pieces were reminiscent of Diesel’s other franchise, The Fast and the Furious, though this one topped the Fast and Furious movie that was released in 2017.  Definitely worth a peek if you like dumb, fun action.

All the Money in the World

There was talk around this movie leading up to its release because of Ridley Scott’s decision to reshoot all of Kevin Spacey’s scenes with Christopher Plummer.  That plan worked out.  Plummer put in a good performance.  The movie was nothing special, though.  The only reason anyone watched or talked about it was because of the whole Plummer thing, and later the pay discrepancy during the reshoots.  Everything about the movie was fine.  The acting was fine, the story was fine, the direction was fine.  It was nothing special.

Air Bud: Golden Receiver

Through my childhood, I had seen three of the five Air Bud movies and none of the Air Buddies movies.  January was the month where I changed that.  The first of the movies I hadn’t seen in the franchise was the second installment, where Buddy played football.  It wasn’t the greatest movie.  There were some weird editing choices.  The main problem, however, was that it seemed like a dog playing fetch for the movie.  Buddy didn’t throw the ball.  He didn’t tackle anyone.  He only got tackled once.  The rest of the time, he caught the ball and ran around.  He was playing fetch.  There was a decent story about the kid growing to appreciate the new man in his mother’s life.  But there was also the dumb thieves trying to steal Buddy storyline that plagued the series from this point forward.  All around, it was okay.  Not the best of the series though.  That goes to the first, and then the third.  Maybe the second comes in at third place.

The Da Vinci Treasure

The Asylum has been making mockbusters for over a decade now.  One of their first forays into that area of filmmaking was The Da Vinci Treasure, obviously ripping off The Da Vinci Code.  C. Thomas Howell signed on for this one as the lead actor.  He went around the world finding Da Vinci’s treasure vault while a bad guy played by Lance Henricksen tried to outsmart, outwit, and outplay him at every turn.  It had many of the staples of The Asylum’s movies, including bad effects, a dumb story, and actors who deserve better.  There was also a weird tech style of editing that tried to say how much tech meant to the story when it really didn’t mean too much to the story.  It’s fine.  There are worse movies put out by The Asylum.  It’s not one of their better ones, though.

Downsizing

You know that a movie wasn’t great when your story about a bad theater experience is more entertaining than the movie itself.  That’s not to say that Downsizing is a bad movie.  I enjoyed it for what it was.  But it seemed like there were three stories being told and none of them needed to be combined.  There was the whole being small part that was the focus of the beginning of the movie, yet didn’t matter after the halfway point.  There was the love story, which became the main focus, and was actually a solid story.  Then there was an end of the world story that really didn’t go anywhere.  There were ideas in the movie that could have worked really well.  The problem is that they were only ideas.  They weren’t fleshed out well enough to be great.  As for the theater story that I should probably share, there were some film students who came in late and were super loud.  The guy behind me told them to shut up and told them not to talk back to him.  They left and never came back.  Good times.

Eyes of Laura Mars

The 1970s were a big time for psychological horror and psychological thrillers.  Not that the two genres are that far away from one another.  They cross over quite often.  Faye Dunaway played the title character, a photographer who was able to see the deaths of her friends and acquaintances through the eyes of a killer.  Tommy Lee Jones played a police officer trying to help track down the killer.  The twists and turns were pretty good throughout and the performances were fairly great.  It was weird to see a Tommy Lee Jones who wasn’t the old one I’m used to.  He was young and had long, flowing hair.  Though the movie was pretty good, it seems strange that this was the one that got Irvin Kershner the directing gig for The Empire Strikes Back.  Good for him.  They’re two solid movies.  I would definitely recommend this one.

Molly’s Game

Jessica Chastain really needs to star in more movies.  I’m not talking romantic lead.  I’m not talking the great supporting character that she was in The Help.  I mean she needs to headline more movies.  She gave one of the best performances of 2017.  Sorkin’s writing tends to work for me no matter what he does, and this was another case of his writing keeping me invested in a movie.  Michael Cera was also great.  He’s usually only playing comedic roles.  His more dramatic turn in this movie was delightful to watch.  The only issue I had with the entire movie was a late scene with Kevin Costner that felt like it came out of nowhere.  I get why some people wouldn’t like it, but I loved Molly’s Game.

Air Bud: Spikes Back

Having seen the first, third, and fourth Air Bud films before, only the second and fifth were first time watches.  This fifth installment saw Buddy trying his paw at volleyball.  He hit the ball with his head to send it to another player or send it over the net.  Except for that one time where he jumped above the net and blocked the ball with his paws.  That was something.  The story was once again bogged down with thieves who stole Buddy.  This time, however, they wanted to steal Buddy and use him to steal a diamond.  They weren’t the smartest thieves.  The girl who took care of Buddy was having trouble when her best friend moved to California.  She worked as hard as she could to go see her friend.  All three stories in this final Air Bud prime installment were duds.  It ended up being the worst of the original series.  No wonder they went in a new direction soon after.

The Polka King

Jack Black is usually at his best in musically influenced movies.  He’s great in High Fidelity.  He’s great in School of Rock.  He’s pretty damn good in The Polka King, as well.  There’s an enthusiasm in Jan Lewan that was perfectly attuned to Jack Black’s charisma.  He seemed like a guy who could bring everyone in and inspire them to give him money.  The supporting cast was solid too, with Jason Schwartzman and Jenny Slate rounding things out well.  It’s not the best movie ever.  I’ll probably never go back to it.  It’s still a solid, watchable flick.

State and Main

David Mamet is a respected writer/director, but prior to watching this movie, I had only seen one of his works.  State and Main was an interesting second movie to watch, surpassing Redbelt in terms of enjoyment.  That might be because I like watching movies and television shows about making movies.  Or it could be the great writing, direction, and performances throughout State and Main.  Watching how far people will sink when making a movie was delightful.  As I go through film school, things like this are becoming truer.  People act this way.  Morality goes out the window when it comes to making art.  People put their art before almost everything.  Watching that on screen was something.

Air Buddies

After the dud that was Air Bud: Spikes Back, the franchise went in a different direction.  The focus changed from a child and their dog, and became a story about puppies.  Air Buddies followed Buddy’s puppies as they went on an adventure of their own.  A rich man, you guessed it, stole Buddy.  The puppies had to figure out a way to save him while also finding their own homes with new children.  It was a better movie than I ever expected it to be.  The puppies might have been one note characters, but they were distinct personalities who were fun enough to watch.  Oh yeah, the dogs talk now too.  The voice cast was alright.  Nothing more, nothing less.  For what it was, this was a good movie.

Bon Cop, Bad Cop

Somehow, even though I’m Canadian, this movie had passed me by for a decade.  Twelve years, actually.  It’s your standard buddy cop movie.  The only difference is that there’s a Canadian spin on it.  There’s a good cop who plays things by the books, and a bad cop who does his own thing to get the job done.  One is from Ontario and one is from Quebec.  They don’t like each other, but learn to appreciate each other.  The crime they’re trying to solve involves hockey.  There are some great comedic moments throughout the movie and solid lead performances.  It’s not one of the best buddy cop movies ever made.  It is possibly the best Canadian buddy cop movie, though.

The Big Sick

I’d been hearing for half a year how great The Big Sick was.  I blind bought it on Blu-ray, and watched it soon after.  It was the best movie I’d seen from 2017.  The performances were great, particularly from Kumail Nanjiani, Holly Hunter, and Ray Romano.  The writing was solid.  It was obviously going to be, since the movie was based on a real event that happened to writers Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani.  The story was heartfelt.  The important moments hit hard.  This could have been a dark horse contender for best picture.  Alas, it didn’t get a nomination.  It’s still tops in my heart, though.  I still love it.  I still think it’s better than anything else I saw from 2017.  The Big Sick is an exceptional movie that should be watched by everyone.

Ben-Hur

The epics of old cinema are a bunch of blindspots for me.  I’ve seen a few of them but have missed out on many more.  I took some time to check out one of the Charlton Heston religious epics.  This one was about a Jewish man who was enslaved by the Romans before finding his freedom and finding religion in Jesus Christ.  With it being over three hours long, there were moments within it that I wasn’t completely connected to the movie.  It’s hard to keep an audience’s attention for that long.  It did have great things in it.  That chariot race was one of the best race scenes to ever be put on film.  There’s a reason why Ben-Hur is considered a classic.

Snow Buddies

Let’s start this one by saying that this was a surprisingly high quality movie for the franchise, especially considering it was a direct-to-video kids’ movie in the Buddies spinoff series.  Gone were the thievery storylines that had brought so many of the movies before it down.  Instead, it was about the puppies helping a boy live his dream of being a dogsledder.  The villain was a rival dogsledder who would do anything to win.  It streamlined the story and did what the series did best.  It was dogs participating in sports, with a heartfelt story to accompany it.  It might not be the best movie to come out of the Air Bud world, but it’s a delightful watch which helped give reason to why the Buddies spinoff series exists.

Space Buddies

The good will was thrown away in the third Buddies installment.  Space Buddies may have been the most pointless of the Air Bud movies.  The dogs ended up on a spaceship and had to wait out the trip from Earth to the Moon and back.  There were a few slight obstacles in the crazy Russian cosmonaut they encountered and the guy at the Earth base who wanted the mission to fail, but for the most part, it was just the puppies waiting.  The stakes were that they could die in space.  Those are some stakes.  The movie didn’t build to them, though.  It started with them going to space and it was all about them surviving the trip that didn’t really have too many hitches.  It was boring.

The Breadwinner

One of my friends at school gave me two free tickets to The Breadwinner.  I was going to go with someone else from school who had two tickets for The Square.  Trade one for one type situation.  That didn’t happen though, so I took my brother instead.  It was a movie about an Afghan girl who had to pretend to be a boy to make money for her family when her father was imprisoned.  It was a heartfelt animated movie with an important story to tell.  Though the way it was told wasn’t always the best, there was emotion all the way through it.  The movie was touching and when shit went down, it really went down.  There’s a reason that it has been up for awards.  It’s that good.

The Kid

You might not expect it from me, but I’ve seen a few Charlie Chaplin movies.  I’ve seen Modern Times, The Great Dictator, The Gold Rush, and City Lights.  Now I’ve seen The Kid as well.  We watched this one in film class during a lecture about early Hollywood.  The chemistry between Chaplin and the child was pretty great.  They played off of each other in a way that accentuated the comedy.  It made things better.  Without either of them in either of the roles, it wouldn’t have been as enjoyable.  Charlie Chaplin managed to toss in some delightful comedic set pieces as well.  There was a dream sequence that was as masterful as any that I’ve seen.  There’s no denying that this is a great film.

Room

Don’t confuse this with the Tommy Wiseau movie The Room.  They are not the same movie.  Room was about a woman and her child being held captive and their escape from said captivity.  The movie wasn’t quite as good as people had made it out to be.  Brie Larson was solid in it, and it was nice to see William H. Macy in another first time watch from January, but the movie wasn’t anything particularly special.  It was a movie that happened in front of me.  That’s fine.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture

National Lampoon made a huge name for itself in the 1970s as a comedy magazine that was pushing the limits on what could be published.  A radio show, a stage show, and movies quickly followed that success.  This Netflix original directed by David Wain told the story of Doug Kenney, one of the founders of National Lampoon.  The cast and creative team behind the movie were pretty great.  They didn’t all necessarily look like the people they were playing, but they even said in the movie that it didn’t matter.  This was entertainment based on a real life.  Screenwriting dictates that you sometimes need to change details to make the story work better.  It did work better than a real life.  It didn’t make for a great movie, though there were great things in it.  Jon Daly’s moment as Bill Murray in Caddyshack was something to behold.  It’s definitely worth watching if you’re into comedy.

That Guy Dick Miller

I have this thing where I want to watch documentaries about people involved in the film industry so that I know a little bit more about them.  Dick Miller is someone who I’ve seen in a few things but know almost nothing about.  This movie helped me learn more about him.  It went through his filmography, showing where he was in his career and where he was in his life.  He was a prolific guy.  The problem with the documentary was that it was one of those “This guy’s so great” documentaries.  It’s one of the better ones that I’ve seen, mind you.  Those documentary styles always bother me because they become more about idolizing someone than being informative.  This one was informative within all that, so it wasn’t too much of a problem.  It could have been better.  It was still a solid documentary.

Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong

The Evil Bong franchise has never been good.  It has a dumb storyline of a bong trapping people in a bong world.  The sets look cheap and terrible.  But they have a cast of actors who have chemistry with each other.  They’re having a good time, too, which makes the movies at least the smallest amount of fun.  Evil Bong 3 continued all that with an alien bong coming to Earth to try and take over by harvesting semen.  The biggest problem with the movie wasn’t the sets or the dumb story.  It was that the first half hour was a parade of character reintroductions.  The characters who were big parts of the previous two movies each got their moment of introduction in this one.  It felt like the same thing over and over.  That could have been executed better.  For an Evil Bong movie, this one was okay, if a little messy.

Burying the Ex

This had been kicking around Netflix Canada for a while.  I decided to watch it because I could no longer pass up a Joe Dante flick featuring Anton Yelchin and Alexandra Daddario.  Burying the Ex definitely had a Joe Dante feel.  The weird sense of humour fits well alongside Gremlins, The ‘Burbs, and Looney Toons: Back in Action.  The movie wasn’t great.  It was enjoyable for what it was.  I had a good enough time watching it.  It made me wish that Anton Yelchin was still around.  That guy made some interesting career choices that I always liked to see.

Taps

There’s not much talk about this movie, which is a shame because it’s not too bad of a movie.  It brought both Sean Penn and Tom Cruise to the table.  In fact, it was Tom Cruise’s first movie, and he put in a pretty great performance.  It might not seem that way at first, but once you get to the end, you’ll realize how good he was in the role.  Giancarlo Esposito was in it too.  There’s a scene near the end that was one of the most intense scenes of that type that I’ve witnessed in a movie.  Taps is the real deal.  If you want to watch a movie about a bunch of military school students standing up for their school in a Lord of the Flies type of situation, this is the movie for you.  Check it out.

Was that 24 movies?  It sure was.  I just breezed through the 24 different movies that I watched for the first time throughout the month of January in the year of 2018.  Many of them were good.  If they weren’t good, most of them were entertaining.  There were a few stinkers (here’s looking at you, Space Buddies), but I’m okay having seen everything I saw in January.  It was a good month of first time watches.

February was also a month filled with good first time watches.  Some of the movies were in contention for major Academy Award categories.  There was a movie about interspecies relations.  One movie was about motel life.  Jane met Tarzan, and another couple met for the first time at a Halloween party.  There were stalkers, vampires, panthers, and thieves.  It was a month filled with a bunch of stuff.  Come back soon to see what I thought of the movies.

Before we go, though, let’s get some plugs in here.  I’m always up for some plugs at the end of one of these long posts.  You can find me on Twitter at @sundaybadmovies or @jurassicgriffin.  As always, I’m writing about bad movies on my other blog Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’ve written a bunch of Power Rangers posts on this blog.  Hopefully a few of those will go up soon.  My bud Jaime Burchardt is doing some writing over at Cinepunx.  I don’t think he knows I’m always plugging his stuff in these posts.  He put up something about the new Netflix movie Mute at the end of February.  Check that out.  Also check out the Talk Film Society website.  They’ve always got good stuff going on there.  They put up a little something about Duncan Jones, the director of Mute, back in February.  These plugs became all about Mute, eh?  That’s two posts away from now, though.  Don’t get too excited.  I’ll see you soon with February.