First Time Watches: May 2020

Every month, I write about the movies I saw for the first time. It’s a way to get my thoughts down so that I can have them out there. Sure, I have a Letterboxd and a Twitter and an Instagram where I frequently share my thoughts on the movies I’ve seen. I’m going to keep using those outlets. I also want to keep doing these posts because they’re specifically about the movies I saw for the first time.

I’m doing this post a little differently than normal, however. I’m way behind on most of the First Time Watches posts. By way behind, I mean I’m over a year behind. I’m currently writing about the movies I saw for the first time in March 2019 as I try to catch up during the Coronavirus pandemic. For the sake of saving some time on catching up and trying to get these out in a timely manner, I’m going to write this one as I watch the movies. Not literally while the movies are playing. I’m going to watch the movies, then write about them right after. That way, this post should be done at the end of the month. Boom. How about that for planning?

With that said, I’m going to get into the movies I watched during May. I don’t know which movies they will be since May just started today. I can only preview one movie, which I’m not going to because I’m about to write about it. I can say that there will be some good, some bad, some in between. There will be movies featuring the cast of Dawson’s Creek, movies directed by women, International movies, and sports movies. That’s as much as I can say, not knowing exactly what movies I will be watching. Let’s get to them, though. Here we go.

Atlantics

I’m starting off with a movie out of Senegal. It was a drama about class strife, love, loss, and ghosts. That’s right. There were ghosts. Reading up on the movie, many of the performers were non-actors. I guess that makes sense, since there aren’t too many movies out of Senegal. There are rarely more than one or two a year. That would make it kind of tough to build an acting career, unless you were in every single movie made in Senegal. That said, the performances were pretty good, throughout. It was nice that the ghost story wasn’t the entire story. It was there. It was important. But the story was much more than the ghosts. They weren’t played for horror, either. Not really. It was simply a story that had ghosts within it to help highlight the themes. Mati Diop did a great job in her feature directorial debut. Hopefully, people will see this one. It’s on Netflix in Canada.

Searching

There have been a few movies that have tried to use phones and computers as their source of storytelling. It’s a modern era take on the found footage boom that exploded in the late 1990s. Unfriended and Unfriended: Dark Web used a Skype chat as the primary source of slasher-style storytelling. Open Windows used one man’s computer screen as he was being harassed by someone else. Searching broadened that a little bit, both in terms of visuals and storytelling. Where the other examples were fairly simple stories, this one was filled with emotion as a man searched for his missing daughter after his wife’s recent death. His computer, his phone, his daughter’s computer, a few conveniently placed cameras, and some news footage relayed the information to the audience. It was a thrill ride as the audience and the father discovered the twists, turns, and secrets in the same moments. John Cho was excellent. Definitely worth checking out.

North Country

Sexual harassment has always been a bad thing, and it has always been a terrible part of the workplace. Many men felt that their jobs only belonged to men and would belittle the women working with them through sexual comments and physical aggression. North Country told the story of a woman who started work at a mine, experienced the severe sexual harassment, and wanted to bring a class action lawsuit against the company on behalf of the women working there. It was based on a real case that helped shape sexual harassment law throughout America. The entire cast was great, bringing much needed gravitas to the situation. By the end, my eyes definitely had a good amount of water. Was it coming out? Maybe not. But it was ready to. That was how moving, how horrifying, the story was. That was how well everyone involved sold it. This was a great movie that has relevance no matter when you watch it.

Street Corner Justice

I’ve found out that I really like to find and watch 1980s and 1990s forgotten lower-budget action movies. I don’t necessarily like the movies. Most of them are pretty bad. But there’s something about seeing people like Lorenzo Lamas or Traci Lords starring in action movies that will always be amusing. Marc Singer took on the role of Mike Justice in this 1996 action flick. Mike was let go from his police job in Pittsburgh and moved to Los Angeles. The neighbourhood he was temporarily living in was overrun with gangs and drugs, so he decided to posse up and fight back. It was pretty forgettable. That’s probably why nobody talks about it. There was an audio problem in the version I was watching. I’m not sure if that was in the DVD transfer or an actual problem with the movie. The dialogue was all clear, but the foley work seemed to have some sort of reverb to it. It never wasn’t annoying. Anyway, not a great movie. Glad to have seen it. I’ll never see it again.

Field of Dreams

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been trying to watch an average of one new-to-me sports movie a week, jumping back and forth between what I call the big five (baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer) and any other sports. Big five one week, something else the next. This led to me watching Field of Dreams for the first time. It was a great movie. I don’t think the technical aspects were perfect. Some of the editing could have been tighter, and the story structure was a little messy at times. But there was a delightful charm to the entire thing that had me smiling and chuckling from beginning to end. It pulled me in. I was invested in the world. I was invested in the main character building the diamond, finding Terrence Mann, and returning to Iowa with Moonlight Graham. It was like a wonderful dream coming true before my eyes.

Spring in a Small Town

One of the other goals in my movie watching for 2020 is to watch a new-to-me international movie every week. That means that each week, I try to watch a movie that isn’t from Canada or the USA. And I try to make that movie originate in a country I haven’t watched anything from this year. I separated China out from Hong Kong since Hong Kong is basically its own country within China. This ended up being my movie from China, a 1948 low budget drama with only five characters. There was no action. It was all about the relationship drama. A woman was in a loveless marriage when her former romantic interest, her husband’s childhood friend, came for a visit. Her husband’s sister was in love with this man. Things went from there. For the most part, it was very slow and dull. There were some great quiet moments, but there was also a lot of dead space in the movie. People sitting outside, people walking alone, a drab voiceover that described things differently than what was being shown. I could see the appeal of the movie, but it just didn’t do too much for me.

Hardbodies

Porky’s was one of those movies that spawned a whole slew of cash-ins, rip-offs, and imitators. One of those was the 1984 movie Hardbodies, which saw three older men travel to the California beach to pick up women. They got help from one of the local young guys who taught them about dialogue rather than pick-up lines. It was offensive in the same way as most of the 1980s sex comedies. It was misogynistic with gratuitous toplessness. It’s a sex comedy. That stuff is expected. It also had a fantastic soundtrack, mostly from the band Vixen. The music drove whatever scene it was in with a nice 80s rocking feel. Everything was more fun with the music. Hardbodies wasn’t great, but it ended up being one of the better sex comedies I’ve seen, especially of the post-Porky’s bunch.

Girlfight

Karyn Kusama first came onto my radar with Jennifer’s Body, a movie where I liked the idea but detested the dialogue. That wasn’t her fault, though. I think the dialogue fell on writer Diablo Cody. I stumbled upon The Invitation a couple years later and really enjoyed it. This was the first Karyn Kusama feature film and the first that I’d seen that wasn’t based in horror. It was also the debut of star Michelle Rodriguez. It was a pretty fantastic debut for both the director and the star. There was a teenage girl with anger issues that were caused by an abusive home life. She found solace in boxing, a sport that her dad didn’t approve of because she was a girl. She ended up fighting her way through gender barriers proving to herself and others that she was better than they thought. It was a hell of a first punch for a directing career, and it helped show that Michelle Rodriguez could do much more than the Fast and Furious movies for which she is best known.

The Skulls II

Having recently rewatched The Skulls, I decided to pop in the first of two direct-to-video sequels that were made in its wake. As could probably be imagined, this was a major step down from the first film. Robin Dunne made for a much less charming star than Joshua Jackson. The story wasn’t as well laid out. The biggest issue, though, had to do with the secret society itself. The Skulls were still the secret society of choice. But in the two years since the events of the first film, they had fallen. They had fallen hard. No longer did they have the sway over every aspect of life. Their rituals and initiations were much less refined. The entire membership seemed to have been overhauled between the movies. It was a huge step down in both the impending danger of The Skulls and the filmmaking. I’m not looking forward to seeing the threequel.

The Dreams of Elibidi

I managed to find a Kenyan film to check out for my international film road trip. It ended up being one of the more interesting movies in this adventure. That doesn’t mean it was one of the best. It was the structure and message that stood out. The message was about HIV and AIDS. The movie set out to dispel rumours about the diseases, as well as give awareness to how important it is for people who participate in unprotected sex to get tested. It touched on people who fear people who have the disease, lies about how to get rid of the disease, and battling through the disease to continue living life. The movie was structured in an interesting way where half of the story was done in the style of a motivational speaker performing sketches with actors, while the other half was full dramatizations. This helped to break up the monotony of a serious tale about disease with some comedic, semi-lighthearted moments. It wasn’t a great movie, by any stretch of the imagination, but it had enough going for it to keep me invested in what was happening.

Wonder Boys

The big problem with this one upon its initial release was the marketing. The marketing team didn’t do a good job selling it to audiences, so audiences never really came out for it. Watching the movie, it’s easy to see why the marketing team had such a tough job with it. It felt like the people behind the movie wanted to make a dark comedy, but they weren’t confident enough to jump right into it. They held back and tried to make things a little more serious because they didn’t think people would take their dark comedy seriously. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie. The cast did their best to make the most out of everything. The guy jumping on the hood of the car to leave a butt impression was a great moment that I won’t soon forget. I understand why the marketing didn’t work, though. It’s tough to market a movie that didn’t completely know itself.

The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy

Greg Berlanti deserves the utmost respect for writing and directing this movie, and getting it released in 2000. That’s a huge achievement. It was a movie about a bunch of gay men being friends and dealing with their ever-changing relationship statuses. The usual stereotypes of gay characters at the time weren’t there. There was no character who was dealing with AIDS. The closest to a coming out story was one character telling another character that he came out to his parents and they were fine with it. The movie, instead, focused on the camaraderie of the gay characters in Hollywood. It went against all the film conventions of the time, when dealing with being gay. It was refreshing to see a look at gay men that hadn’t really been done before. And to have a cast that included Dean Cain, Timothy Olyphant, Zach Braff, and John Mahoney shining a light on this community was a wonderful thing.

The Wrong Missy

Adam Sandler and Happy Madison have had a deal with Netflix for many years now. For the most part, it has turned out some lackluster movies. The strange part of it is that my two favourites have been movies starring David Spade. There’s something about having David Spade step into the straight-man role that has truly worked for the Happy Madison brand in a way that it never really did for the ones with Sandler in the lead role. Spade played a sales employee on a trip to a resort for a company getaway. The problem was that he brought a woman that he mistook for another one in his phone contacts. Let the antics ensue. Lauren Lapkus was the wrong Missy in his contacts and filled the vacation with her crazy antics. The two were a great comedic pair. If this movie doesn’t land Lapkus more starring roles, there’s something wrong with Hollywood. Well, there’s something wrong with Hollywood already, but this would be another travesty. The two stars elevated what would otherwise be another forgotten recent Happy Madison flick.

But I’m a Cheerleader

This movie was wild. It was a coming of age movie where the coming of age was the coming of being a lesbian. There was a cheerleader. Her family and friends thought she was a lesbian, so they shipped her off to a conversion therapy camp. There, she realized that she was a lesbian. She grew into it and learned that there was nothing wrong with it, even if everyone else in her life thought there was. It was a romantic comedy as she fell in love with another girl sent to the camp. Though the subject matter was serious, with the negativity of conversion therapy, everything was played as farcical. The bright pinks for the girls and the blues for the boys. The decorations in the yard where the boys play looking homosexually suggestive. The fact that the woman in charge of the camp had a son who seemed extremely gay. I enjoyed the way the material was handled. It was a good movie.

The Stalking of Laurie Show

Not so great was this true crime television movie. In 1991, a girl named Laurie Show was harassed, stalked, and murdered by three classmates. This movie aired on USA in 2000 and was an exploitative account of the events. It took pleasure in the stalking of Laurie Show. Very little sympathy was given to the main characters, with things focusing instead on the insanity of the killers. There’s something to be said for building up a villain for the screen, but it shouldn’t come at the detriment of the main character. I should be able to care about Laurie Show or her mother as they are being harassed. Instead, the film chose to give me a crazed villain for entertainment purposes. Look how crazy she is sort of thing. Isn’t this wacky? It did a disservice to the true story, exploiting a real tragedy. Some of the performances were good. That was about it.

Cruel Intentions 2

The first Cruel Intentions film was a well-crafted teen sex thriller where the twists and turns were guiding the audience through a web of corruption. With how it ended, it was going to be tough to continue the story with the same characters. Well, there was no need to worry. Roger Kumble, the writer and director of Cruel Intentions, wrote and directed a direct-to-video prequel that allowed him to explore the relationship between the main two characters in more detail. Except, something was lost in the move from theatrical to DTV. The actors had changed, though that wasn’t the problem. Robin Dunne and Amy Adams (WHAT?) filled in the roles nicely, feeling like the same characters while also making them their own. The problem was the storytelling. It wasn’t nearly as well crafted. There was more focus put on call-backs than telling a natural, thrilling story. The final twist was especially underwhelming as it betrayed the entire story. Coming off a pretty smart teen thriller, the prequel was a dumb follow-up.

Swept Away

For whatever reason, this was the third Madonna film I’d seen in 2020. It was the only first-time watch, though. Her husband at the time, Guy Ritchie, directed this remake of the 1970s Italian film. It was not good. Madonna’s character was a terrible, piece of shit rich woman who treated everyone else like garbage because she could. Madonna was bad in the role. Adrianno Giannini starred as the man she was stranded with. The casting choice was interesting since his dad played the role in the original, but he was also not very good. The behaviour that the two characters exhibited toward one another was excruciating to sit through. It didn’t endear me to them at all. When a relationship happened, I didn’t care. I was over it. Then the back half of the movie was montage after montage after montage. The acting was bad, the storytelling was bad, and the direction was bad. There’s not much going for this horrid remake.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

I don’t always like Kevin Smith movies. I haven’t even seen his recent flicks Tusk and Yoga Hosers. But I’ll always have a fondness for that original run of View Askew movies from Clerks up through Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. And Clerks 2. I get a varied amount of enjoyment out of them, but I love the world that Kevin Smith built. I was obviously going to check out the newest installment when it was released. For the most part, I liked it. I didn’t love the moments where the movie broke the fourth wall to speak directly to the camera or directly about Kevin Smith. But when the movie told jokes that weren’t self-referential or self-deprecating, and instead focused on the characters going through their world to try and get their names back… That stuff was a lot of fun. I especially liked whenever Fred Armisen was around. Those were the best parts. It’s a good watch for anyone who liked the View Askewniverse.

Hababam Sınıfı

Going back to my movie watching trip around the world, I made a stop at a Turkish film about a new vice principal trying to take control of some unruly students. The Hababam class would do whatever they could to distract the teachers and get out of tests. If they were forced into the tests, they had elaborate ways of cheating. That was only scratching the surface of things. They ridiculed each other through their classes, they distracted and tricked their teachers, they played soccer where they weren’t supposed to, they snuck off of school grounds, they extorted other students, and they even kidnapped and tied up three students so they could participate in a quiz competition. These were some really rowdy and unruly students. And their vice principal learned to understand why and embrace it, rather than change them. I should also note that, looking into the film, it was the first appearance of Kemal Sunal as Şaban, a character he would continue to play throughout his career, until his death in 2000. That only goes to show the following that the movie had in Turkey. It was pretty entertaining and I will definitely check out the sequels some time.

Hustlers

There’s a type of crime and gangster movie that Hustlers fell into which is one that I almost always find entertaining. There is a group of people who get into a nefarious gangster-type business. They find great success through that business. As they find the success, they start living in excess. Eventually, that success and excess reaches a point where the law steps in. The people get taken down for their criminal actions, but they wouldn’t change what they did for anything. It’s a story that has been told through movies like Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street. The difference was that this one was about women building a criminal empire. It was also written and directed by a woman, Lorene Scafaria, which gave a fresh perspective on the whole thing. I was unsure about the movie at first, but there was a specific moment when it hooked me right in. It never lost me after that. I liked it a lot. More movies like this, directed by women, please.

Shooting Gallery

Many sports have their own worlds surrounding them. Football has the whole southern states, dad wants to relive his glory days through his son thing. This movie wasn’t about football, though. It was about pool. Specifically, Shooting Gallery was a crime story revolving around the world of poolhall hustling and nine-ball. As a crime story, it was decent. There were some good twists and turns in it. The problem was in the world building. Language was an important part of the pool hall world. Words were thrown in there to make the language of the characters unique, much in the same way that poker players have their own vernacular. It didn’t work for the dialogue between the characters, though. They were talking to each other using pool language instead of using the pool language during pool and talking normally outside of it. The use of pool language made sense for the characters but took away from the overall entertainment of the movie.

Uncle Drew

I’m not crazy into basketball or anything. I’ll watch the odd game, after having been brought into watching it with my friends last year. But I don’t follow it. I don’t pay too much attention to the players. I do enjoy basketball movies, though. And with Uncle Drew, I’ve realized that I love basketball movies where basketball players play basketball players. That’s especially true when they’re having as much fun as they seemed to be having in this one. Kyrie Irving played Uncle Drew, a character originated in a series of Pepsi Max commercials. The character was an old basketball star who, with his old teammates, joined a tournament that he had previously won. Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber, Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson, and Lisa Leslie filled out the rest of the roster. It was a bunch of basketball players goofing off in old person makeup. I had a great time watching it. The fun that they were having on screen was infectious.

Grigris

Working my way through the world as I watch international movies, I checked out a co-production between Chad and France. It was about a disabled man who wanted to be a dancer. When his father got sick, he resorted to illegal means to get money for hospital treatment. Then he had to deal with the consequences of illegal work. There was a weird twist near the end that I couldn’t have expected. Maybe twist is the wrong word. It wasn’t something that spun the entire story around in a new direction. It was just an event that happened. But it was a strange event that I didn’t expect. Overall, Grigris was a solid movie.

The Lovebirds

Another in the recent trend of “murder” mystery romantic comedies. The murder is in quotations because some of the movies aren’t technically murder. They’re kidnapping or things of that sort. This one was murder, though. A couple broke up, then witnessed a murder. To try and clear their names, they attempted to solve the murder on their own. The teamwork brought them back together as a couple. There were things that I liked. The two leads, Issa Rae and Kumail Najiani, were great together. I’d watch another movie they were paired in. Michael Showalter directed it, and I tend to enjoy his work. However, The Lovebirds felt like a lesser version of similar movies. It had a few good moments. Overall, though, it was just kind of there and wasn’t all that memorable. There was a nice Goo Goo Dolls needle drop. I’ll give it that.

May 2020 came to a close with The Lovebirds. The month wrapped itself up and I went onto another month of first time watches. That other month was June, the month when I’m writing this little ending bit. May was a fun month of movie watching. I saw a few movies I had been meaning to get to (Searching, Field of Dreams, Uncle Drew). I checked out some Netflix originals (The Wrong Missy, The Lovebirds). I also watched a few movies from that late 90s/early 00s teen movie era that I love so much (The Skulls II, Cruel Intentions 2, But I’m a Cheerleader). It was a good month of movie watching.

June is shaping up to be another good month. I might only be a few days in, but I know a few of the things that I’ll be checking out. There will be more of that teen movie stuff. There will be more sports, more female directors, and more international movies. I might even check out some stuff I’ve been meaning to get to because of course I will. You’ll get to read about that stuff soon, too. This post worked out so well with me writing it as I went through the month that I’m going to try and keep up with that. That means the next post should be done at the beginning of July. We’ll see.

Before you go, though, a few plugs. You can find me on Twitter here and here. You can find me on Instagram here and here. I write about Power Rangers here. I also write about bad movies at the Sunday “Bad”Movies. If you’re sick of me, check out @JaimeBurchardt. He’s a good guy. Also check out Talk Film Society. They’re doing some great writing over there. I want to send your eyes back to December for an article by Manish Mathur about Us and Parasite. Check that stuff out. And come on back next time for another post.