First Time Watches: June 2018
It is now September, so the time seems right to get to this
post about the first time watches I had in June of this year. That’s right.
Two months late on getting this post out. Maybe I’ll catch up within the month. It’s not like my busy life will keep being
busy going into school. Nah. There’s no way that will happen.
For those that are new to these posts, this is where I let
you know what they’re about. Every
month, I try to get a post out about the previous month’s first time
watches. They are the movies that I saw
for the first time the month before the post.
Recently, it hasn’t been working out that way, and I fell behind on the
posts. The idea is to give some thoughts
for reference for myself, as well as letting you know what I thought about the
things I watched.
June was an interesting month with nineteen first time
watches. That was bouncing back from
May, where there were only about half as many.
June saw two movies with the same name.
It also saw a wrestling documentary and a buddy cop comedy with a man
and a dog. There were spiders, ghosts,
and mutineers. It was a big month with
some of the best first time watches I’ve had all year. It will be difficult for other months to
surpass this one. Here come the movies.
Tag
There are weird movies, and then there’s Tag.
What started out as a horror movie about wind chasing people and cutting
them in half became a teenage romance between Japanese schoolgirls before
turning into a crazy action/horror movie filled with twists and turns that
there was no possible way to ever see coming.
It was a wild ride the whole way through. The Japanese schoolgirl romance wasn’t the
greatest thing. In fact, it kind of
fetishized the whole Japanese schoolgirl thing, which was uncomfortable. Once the movie switched into the
action/horror, however, it fired on all cylinders and became a highly enjoyable
movie that I won’t soon forget. Tag definitely isn’t for everyone, but
for those into heightened, weird, wacky Japanese horror, it is worth checking
out.
The Blazing Ninja
The only Godfrey Ho movie that I had seen prior to this was Robo Vampire, which I recently
rewatched. It gave me an idea of his
directing style, with the nonsensical plotting and the crazy editing together
scenes that didn’t seem to fit with each other.
That was all in Robo Vampire. It was all there in The Blazing Ninja. The story
had something to do with a war between Japan and China in the early 20th
century. A spy had been sent from one
country to the other and was up against a resistance. That didn’t come through too well as the
protagonist seemed to change as frequently as the scenes, making the movie a
mess. It was a fun mess to watch,
though. The action was
entertaining. The dialogue was
absurd. Godfrey Ho has a way of
irritating me while making me enjoy his work.
It’s a love-hate relationship, and I’ll surely be checking out more of
his work at some point.
Show Dogs
I went to the drive in to see the next movie I’ll discuss,
and it was paired with this one. There
was nothing about this movie that had me excited. The cast normally would, but the word of
mouth was pretty terrible and it didn’t look like an enjoyable kind of bad. It wasn’t good. The jokes were stale and created many more
groans than laughs. In fact, it didn’t
really provide any laughs, other than the “What the hell is even happening?”
kind. It was one of the lesser entries
in the man and dog team up for a buddy cop comedy genre. There’s not really much to say outside of how
much I didn’t like it.
Life of the Party
The second film in the drive-in double feature was a comedy
from the husband and wife pair of Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy, who also
brought audiences Tammy and The Boss. I was interested in checking it out mostly because
Gillian Jacobs was in it. It was
okay. There are those movies that you
can turn on in the background while doing something else, and whenever you take
a break from that something else, easily digest a few minutes. Life of
the Party fits nicely into that area.
It’s not great, and not terrible.
It’s a perfectly serviceable movie that I would watch again if I caught
it on television. Not really much more
than that. I wouldn’t go out of my way
to see it again. There was one moment that
made me laugh for a good thirty seconds, but I’m three months out from seeing
it now, and I forget what the joke was.
Sorry.
2 Lava 2 Lantula!
When the first Lavalantula
came out, I watched it out of curiosity.
It was from Mike Mendez, the director of Big Ass Spider!, a movie that I love. It starred Steve Guttenberg, an 80s star who
I enjoyed watching. It was connected to
the Sharknado franchise, a bunch of
movies that have influenced me a great deal.
There was some disappointment in that first movie, though it was still
an enjoyable action movie about killing some lava spewing spiders. The sequel did for the Lavalantula franchise what Sharknado
2 and Sharknado 3 did for their
respective franchise. It became more
focused on what worked. 2 Lava 2 Lantula! took the story to
Florida, and played with the movies and television that had been set
there. There were references all over
the place that brought extra fun to the sequel.
Everyone was having a good time.
The people behind the camera, the people in front of it, and the
audience watching the movie. It was a
great time, and I’m sure to revisit it at some point.
Creep 2
The two Creep
films don’t get the recognition that they deserve for being one of the best
horror franchises of the past decade.
The theatrical releases get all of the attention, while these two
Netflix releases get a glance or two. Creep 2 picked up a little while after
the events of Creep, as a webshow
host decided to research the main character for a new episode. She traveled to his house and stayed with him
for the night. Over the course of their
time together, things got more and more disturbing. What worked best in Creep 2 was what the title implied.
The film was creepy. Mark Duplass
was great as the titular creep, managing to make both the audience and the
protagonist wary of how unhinged he got.
We saw the things he did to other people. She hadn’t.
But both the audience and the protagonist were cautious when it came to
Duplass’s character, and that caution was put through the ringer in the most
satisfying way.
Jack Reacher: Never
Go Back
Over the past few years, a team has formed with Tom Cruise
and Christopher McQuarrie. McQuarrie
wrote Edge of Tomorrow, which Cruise
starred in. That was a great science
fiction action movie that helped show why Cruise is still one of the top stars
in modern film. Then there were the two Mission: Impossible movies that
McQuarrie directed. He also wrote The Mummy and Valkyrie, two movies starring Cruise. But the pair found their real magic in Jack Reacher. The sequel to that movie was not directed or
written by McQuarrie, and that certainly showed. The action wasn’t as good, and the writing
felt like it was lacking something.
There were still some good things in there. The way that the three main characters played
off of each other brought enough fun to make the movie watchable. The problem was the lack of exciting action. It was an okay movie that deserved to be
better. There’s worse, but this one
isn’t anything to write home about.
Hereditary
Few horror movies affect me in a theater like Hereditary did. The atmosphere of the place as everyone was
drawn into what was happening was unlike most other movies at the local
Cineplex. The tension boiled over and
each person in those seats was reacting just the way they were supposed
to. It was magical. Hereditary
drew everybody along as a family fell apart.
We were shown the deteriorating minds of the different family members,
and watched as things got worse and worse.
They were in a downward spiral of despair that wouldn’t let up until the
final moments. It was one of the
greatest horror experiences of the year, and will possibly hold up as one of
the best of the decade. Hereditary blew me away.
The Landlord
Horror comedies tend to work for me, but the low budget ones
can be rough. A lot of work needs to be
put in to make the comedy and the horror work well together. The writer behind The Landlord managed to get it to work. The performances only helped to make it
better. It was a low budget movie about
a man renting out an apartment to tenants who would be eaten by the demons
living upstairs. There were some
extremely absurd things happening in The
Landlord that make it kind of work.
The fact that the town was infested with vampire type things brought
another storyline to the movie. There was
a hotel manager who did nothing but yell at people. The main character’s sister was having an
affair, and forced the main character into running the apartment building. There was an odd karaoke scene. For whatever reason, I enjoyed this one.
Being John
Malkovich
Everything that I’ve seen that has been written by Charlie
Kaufman has been a great exercise in the power of writing. He always tries things that few other people
do. Whether he’s adapting a story and
writes about the process of adapting something, or whether he’s writing about
how life can be a performance in and of itself, he brings big ideas with each
of his scripts. Being John Malkovich was no different. It was a story about wanting to be someone
else, taken to the quirkiest, most extreme place. The characters had their problems. They were problems that would turn most
people off of liking any of them. Yet it
was captivating to watch their stories unfold and the crazy levels that they
would take things to in order to get what they wanted. Not my favourite Kaufman, but definitely one
I’ll be watching again and appreciating more in the future.
Hotel Artemis
There was a certain something missing from the movie. The world was interesting. A future where criminals could go to the
Hotel Artemis if they were injured, as a place to heal and rest up for their
next battle. They weren’t allowed to
fight there. They weren’t allowed to
bring weapons of any kind. Yet, on one
fateful night, all hell broke loose in the hotel and the criminals had to fight
their way to safety. Most of the movie
was spent building the slightest bit of rapport between the characters, and
there was very little action actually in the movie. It felt like there should have been another
half hour to build out the relationships and allow more time for the climactic
action near the end to really pop. It’s
not bad. It could have been more,
though, and that’s where it faltered.
That said, the cast was solid, and they did a good job with what they’re
given.
Mutiny on the Bounty
This story has been told many times on the big screen. This 1935 version of the tale that has been
one of the most enduring, classic versions.
Much of that is due to the three main performances of Charles Laughton,
Clark Gable, and Franchot Tone. The
movie was about the workers on The Bounty, a ship sent out to get breadfruit
from Tahiti. Due to the poor working
conditions, some of the crew staged a mutiny and took the ship away from the
captain. It was a true story with some
artistic flourishes for the entertainment of movie audiences. The performances were great, though most of
the time I was distracted by the fact that Franchot Tone looked like Tom
Hiddleston. Not that it was his
fault. He couldn’t help that he looked
like the guy who would play Loki some 75 years later. Great movie.
Game Night
Comedies come and go all the time to little or no
fanfare. A bad comedy is really bad and
nobody really wants to watch it. It’s a
good thing that Game Night isn’t bad then.
It’s a masterful action comedy that takes elements from many different
games and puts them together to tell and entertaining story about trying to
save someone from a kidnapping. The cast
worked very well together, with their chemistry being the best element of the
movie. The way that the group of competitive
game loving friends played off of each other brought a camaraderie to the
proceedings, making everything all that much more fun. The situations they got into, from an
Operation-style bullet removal to a Fabergé egg game of hot potato, led to some
highly entertaining set pieces. This is
one of the best comedies of the year.
Tag
The second movie called Tag
being mentioned in this post was a comedy about a group of adult friends who
had been playing the same game of tag for years. They came together for one of their weddings,
and the tag hijinks reached new, extreme levels. The comedy was solid, though not necessarily
great the entire time. The action of the
game of tag was okay. What really worked
for Tag, though, was the story of
friendship that flowed beneath everything.
The game of tag may have been the focus of what was happening, but the
friendship of the characters was the heart of the movie. It was what brought the characters
together. It brought the story together. Though not necessarily a great film, the
friendship element was some of the best work on that front in any movie of
2018. The actors and their characters
felt like true friends. By the end, I
wanted to make sure that I had long lasting friendships like theirs. It did great work with the friendship stuff.
Ocean’s 8
For most of the runtime, I was unsure why the movie had to
be an Ocean’s movie. It didn’t really feel like one, and the only
connections were a cameo, and one of the main characters being related to one
of the main characters from the other movies.
It wasn’t until the final act, when things started to unfold like an Ocean’s movie that it truly felt like a
proper continuation of the original trilogy.
The cast is good, as was the story.
It was a fun heist movie that managed to have enough twists and turns to
be surprising throughout. If they make
another one, I would definitely go see it.
If they leave it at just this one movie with the female cast, that’s
good too. We have this one movie. This one entertaining movie.
Screwballs
80s sex comedies became a big thing following the success of
Porky’s. They weren’t all good movies. In fact, few of them were. Screwballs
falls in among the many not good movies as a fairly forgettable entry that
tried to push boundaries and fell flat at every turn. The movie was about getting one girl, the
wholesome virgin, to show someone her breasts.
That was the entire movie. A
group of guys who ended up in detention made a pact to see the girl’s breasts. It was a competition too, since they each
wanted to be the first person to see them.
The jokes fell flat throughout and the story was pretty bad. And even if you were interested in their
plight, the movie ruined it because as soon as her breasts were shown, the
credits rolled over them so you couldn’t see them. This movie was all kinds of bad.
Jurassic World:
Fallen Kingdom
I seem to be one of the few people who outright thought that
Jurassic World was a good movie. The main characters might have been fairly
bland and hollow, but the supporting cast and the action made up for that. I had a good time with it. The sequel looked different, and it was
different. First off, the opening scene was
the best thing to be put into either of the Jurassic
World movies. It was the closest
that the two movies have come to feeling like the original Jurassic Park. The stuff on
the island was good. Had they stayed
there the whole time and gone full The
Lost World, I probably would have enjoyed the movie more. What took my enjoyment down a notch was the
underground, black market dinosaur auction.
That never connected with me, and I felt that it did a disservice to
everything else the movie was building.
Still a fun enough watch with some great stuff. Could have been more, though.
GLOW: The Story of
the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling
At the beginning of June, I decided to finally watch GLOW, a series I had been meaning to
watch for a year. I fell in love with it
fairly quickly. As preparation for the
second season, I watched a documentary about the 1980s show that GLOW was based on. It profiled the wrestlers, the show, and the
crew of the show. The talking heads were
the people who worked on the show reminiscing about how it was to produce a
weekly wrestling show together. It made
me want to check out that original wrestling show, since it looked like a
riot. An episode of the second season of
GLOW was an episode of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling show, and
that was a delight to see. Learning
about the people who inspired the show I love was fascinating, and I cared
about them by the end of the documentary.
What an interesting little corner of television history the show
was. The documentary nearly had me in
tears from the feelings. Great stuff.
Do the Right Thing
Finishing off the month was a Spike Lee joint that I hadn’t
yet seen. There are a lot of those. This one was all about the race issues in New
York on a hot day. Race issues are a big
theme throughout Spike Lee’s work. As
the day goes on, the black people of the neighbourhood clash more and more with
the white pizza owners and the police officers who patrol the area. It all explodes in a huge climax that still
hits hard in the modern political climate.
Not having seen too many of Spike Lee’s movies, I can’t say much about
his entire career. I can say that Do the Right Thing stands the test of
time as an important film. Aside from
some of the characters being a little too heightened (which I know some people
will argue against), it was a great piece of filmmaking giving an important message
to audiences.
June came to a close on a Spike Lee joint that will stick
with me for a long time. As I’m writing
this, I saw his newest joint last night, and it’s just as well done a race
message as Do the Right Thing
was. The guy knows how to hit hard with
his message in an entertaining, and intelligent way. The rest of the month was just as
fulfilling. Friendship, insanity,
heists, and horror were some of the highlights.
It wasn’t a bad time.
July was filled with even more movie fun. That’ll come in a post soon. Let me tease you a little bit, though. I saw Ant-Man
and the Wasp, obviously. I wasn’t
going to miss a Marvel movie in the theater.
I saw the newest Purge
movie. And, of course, the sixth
installment in the Mission: Impossible
franchise. Those are only the theatrical
releases. Just imagine what I watched
outside of the theater. You won’t have
to imagine for too long. I’m planning on
getting the next post out before school starts back up.
Before you go, though, let’s get some plugs in here. I write the Sunday “Bad” Movies blog. I also write some Mighty Morphin Power Rangers stuff on a not-so-regular basis. If you don’t want more of me, check out my
pal @JaimeBurchardt. His Horrorfest will
be starting up in a month, and he wrote about it here. Then there’s Talk Film Society, who are
always doing good things. Check out one
of their newer posts, about saying goodbye to Moviepass. Good stuff, guys. That’s it for now. Until next time, keep on watching stuff.
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