First Time Watches: June 2019

Over the past five or so years, I have regularly been sharing posts about my first time watches in any given month. There was a time that I fell behind, resulting in nearly a year’s worth of backlog. Though, it hadn’t been a whole year without a post. I’m currently working my way through that backlog to finish the first time watches posts that I missed during that down time. This is one of those posts.

June 2019 was an interesting time. I had been out of school for a month. I was working full time at a new part time job. I was hanging out with friends, having bonfires, and hitting up patios. I had even bought myself a bike so that I could get some bike exercise in. It was a big summer filled with life and work and not knowing that a pandemic was just around the corner. It was also a month of fifteen first time watches.

Over the course of that month, I went to the drive-in to see a couple movies. One was a rewatch and one was a new watch. I went to Netflix to check out two original movies. I went to the theatre four times. And I saw a few other things in between. There were re-imaginings of classic monster characters. There were trading cards brought to life. There was a Disney live action flick based on a Disney animated flick. It was all there. It was all in June.

Always Be My Maybe

Kicking things off was a continuation from May. I was getting some more Keanu Reeves into my film watching diet. He didn’t play a big part in the movie, but it was a pivotal couple scenes that he was in. Two friends hadn’t seen each other in a while. They reconnected. They clearly loved each other. But their lives and other romances got in the way. Until they didn’t. It was a standard romantic comedy story made better by Ali Wong and Randall Park, and a great Keanu-playing-Keanu role. It’s one of those Netflix originals that I know I’ll be going back to time and time again. One of my favourites from the streaming giant.

Wind River

There’s something about this movie. It could be the Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner in the lead roles. But I think it’s the setting. I think the setting does a lot to add to the overall atmosphere of the movie. There was a cruel crime that happened in a desolate snowy landscape. White man came and caused death and destruction for the Indigenous population there. The isolation of the location combined with the systemic racism of white men killing an Indigenous woman made it feel even more like nobody cared about what happened there. It was like a classic pulp crime novel told with a bleak winter shimmer. I just don’t see it enough in this setting. It’s like a western in snow. It is a western in snow. It’s a modern western in snow. There need to be more movies like this.

Godzilla

This was not the original Godzilla. This wasn’t the 1990s Roland Emmerich directed Godzilla. This Godzilla was the one from a few years ago that jump started the whole new American Kaiju universe. It was okay. A lot of people complained about the character work when it came out. That was understandable. The characters weren’t the most fleshed out. But that wasn’t really the point of any Godzilla movie. The point was the destruction of property by a giant dino-lizard thing. And that was where the problems came. I was not a fan of the cinematography. The look of the film left a lot to be desired. It all looked like smoke and dust and modern military. I understand that was the angle the movie was taking with the monster attacking. But that look is rarely fun to watch and Godzilla movies should be fun to watch. Again, the movie was okay. It could have been a lot better with some better visuals.

Kong: Skull Island

This was better. The characters were defined, which was a nice step up. The visuals were great. Bright daylights with colourful jungles, popping greens against the basic browns, whites, and greys of the expedition group. The smoke scene. The look of Kong. The visuals were much better done which made for a much more exciting movie. It also helped that the film was given a 70s period, Vietnam War era setting instead of the present/slight future military feel of the Godzilla movies. Something about the look of the Vietnam War is just better than the look of a War in Afghanistan or Iraq War. Too bad Aaron Taylor-Johnson keeps getting stuck in the modern-era soldier roles.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

And we’re right back to the underwhelming visuals of the other Godzilla movie. At least the visuals were consistent between the two movies. I might not like them, but they were consistent. This sequel was a little better on the story and characters. I can give it that much. I enjoyed it and remember it more than the first film. I was still disappointed. Maybe it’s because I had just seen the visuals of Kong: Skull Island, and I was comparing them. Perhaps that was an unfair comparison. But they were in the same universe so I’m allowing myself to make it. I don’t know. If the Godzilla vs. Kong movie uses the Godzilla visuals instead of the Kong visuals, I’m not going to be excited for it.

Rough Night

A group of women had a bachelorette party sort of getaway to Miami and accidentally killed a stripper. The rest of the movie was spent trying to cover it up and/or uncover new secrets about the stripper. I don’t remember much about this one. I remember being stunned that Eric Andre and Bo Burnham were in very small roles as one of the fiancé’s friends. But I don’t remember much else about it. I watched it. That is all.

On the Line

They aren’t always good, but I always enjoy a good case of someone becoming popular for one thing and being put into a movie as the starring player. On the Line was one of those instances, with Lance Bass and Joey Fatone being put into major roles in a romantic comedy. You know, the two guys from N*Sync. Justin Timberlake and Chris Kirkpatrick showed up for small bits, too. It was an N*Sync movie. The movie itself wasn’t good. A guy met a girl, forgot to ask for her number, and tried to find her by putting up flyers. That was essentially it. The best part was a montage set to an N*Sync song called That Girl (Will Never Be Mine). Solid song. Not a solid movie. I knew that from the horrible cover of Two Princes at the beginning.

Aladdin

I liked it. Sue me. I had a good time seeing it in the theater. I didn’t mean to see it, but I went with a couple friends after eating at the restaurant across the parking lot. Okay? Cool. Let me get into something related to this movie though. They want to do a spin-off with the Prince Anders character. Of all the people to spin-off with, they chose the one whiter than white guy. I like Billy Magnussen, don’t get me wrong. He’s great in Ingrid Goes West and Game Night. He’s solid in Aladdin. But a movie about Arabia, and they think the white guy is the one to make a spin-off for? Come on, Disney. Get your shit together.

Roller Blade

This was from the director of Hell Comes to Frog Town. I wasn’t expecting it to be nearly that good. I expected it to more be on par with Return to Frogtown, and it didn’t even get there. I remember women. I remember it being the future. I remember roller blades. I don’t remember anything else about the movie. I was bored the whole time. I remember that. Story-wise? Nada. Don’t remember a damn thing. It felt like the director, Donald G. Jackson, may have been testing out his zen filmmaking ways, where he wouldn’t write a script. Though, clearly, based on it being the same year as Hell Comes to Frogtown, he wasn’t down that path yet. I don’t know what the hell this movie was.

Murder Mystery

So far, this was my favourite of the Adam Sandler comedies to be produced for Netflix. It was like an Agatha Christie mystery filtered through the lens of Happy Madison and surprisingly worked better than the actual recent Agatha Christie adaptation. There was a solid mystery. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston had a good chemistry. The reined in Adam Sandler jokes worked, while the ridiculous ones may have been a tad too much. Overall, it exceeded my expectations, and I was happy to watch it. It’s going to be one that I’ll revisit a few times.

The Dead Don’t Die

There’s something about this movie that I love. But I really need to be in the right mindset for it. When I saw it in the theater, I wasn’t into it at first. It felt a little too on-the-nose with the meta humour. About half an hour in, though, it clicked. Everything settled in place in my mind, and I just went with it. I loved it. I was laughing the whole time. It was laid back and casual while being obvious and in-your-face. It had cast members who had no business being in the movie, yet they all worked exceptionally well. I have nothing bad to say about this one.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

Oh, the 1980s. Why were you the way that you were? You made a bunch of sticker cards of grotesque creations popular enough to warrant a movie and the movie ended up being just as grotesque as the source material, but in a goofy way. It was the heyday of little people in movies, and many of them were utilized in the small stature Garbage Pail Kids characters. There was a romance between a twelve year old kid and a girl who looked twenty, but I think was actually fifteen. There was a random song about working together that came out of nowhere. There was a fashion plot because of course there was. It was the 1980s. I’m pretty sure someone snorted a whole pile of cocaine and wrote this movie. It’s a wild ride. (Just looked it up. Mackenzie Astin was thirteen when it was made and Katie Barberi was fourteen. They looked like six years apart in age.)

Toy Story 4

I remember seeing Toy Story 3 in theaters during my university years. Back when I was trying to become an engineer. There were a bunch of families and university students in the theater all singing You’ve Got a Friend in Me together. That didn’t quite happen with the fourth film, in which a spork came to life as a toy. It was a fitting follow-up to a trilogy that felt like it already had a perfect ending. It was another movie about moving on. It was to Toy Story 3 what Toy Story 2 was to Toy Story. Toy Story was about accepting other people. Toy Story 2 was about feeling accepted. Flip sides of the same coin. Toy Story 3 was about a child letting go of his toys and his childhood. Toy Story 4 was about a toy letting go of his child and the childhood they shared. Flip side again. Toy Story 4 wasn’t as good as what came before it, but it was a nice way to bring the characters back.

Dismissed

I had been watching Riverdale for three seasons at this point. I saw what Cole Sprouse had been doing as an actor. I decided it was only fair to see what Dylan had been up to. This is what he was up to. It wasn’t good. It was a basic thriller about a teacher being threatened by a troubled student and trying to figure out a way to stop that student. Dylan Sprouse was the student. I’ve seen a lot of this sort of stuff over the years and it’s just kind of there. There’s nothing more to say about it.

Yesterday

Perhaps the feel-good movie of 2019. After a worldwide blackout, a failing British musician realized that he was the only person who could remember The Beatles. They had never existed. He decided that he would remake their discography and share their music with a world that never knew them. He also dealt with the guilt of finding superstardom through music he didn’t write. And a relationship that he wanted to happen but couldn’t quite find the time to follow through on. I don’t know. It made me feel good. This will definitely be in my rewatch rotation going forward.

 

June 2019 came to a close on a rather upbeat note. It was a feelgood movie to finish out the month. There were fifteen movies that I saw for the first time. Some of them were movies that I liked. Some of them were movies that I didn’t. And others yet, I’m looking at you Roller Blade, were movies that I completely forgot almost as soon as I saw them. It was an interesting time, overall.

Once that month ended, another one began. With that came many more movies that I watched for the first time. I saw Aziz Ansari’s newest comedy special, Aziz Ansari: Right Now. I watched two Full Moon Features characters come together in Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong. I saw one of my favourite movies of the 2010s, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood. I even saw Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Those were only a few of the things I saw for the first time in July 2019. You’ll have to come back soon to see the rest.

Before you head out, though, I’ve got my usual plugs to give. You can find me on Twitter here and here or on Instagram here and here. I write about Power Rangers and I write the Sunday “Bad” Movies posts. If you don’t want to check my stuff out, fine. But at least check out Jaime Burchardt. He’s a great guy. And there’s always Talk Film Society. They keep writing excellent stuff about movies, and sometimes television. One of their more recent pieces was a review of I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Aaron Hendrix. Give that a read. And with that, I’ll see you next time!