First Time Watches: July 2019
First time watches are a special thing. You rarely know exactly how you’ll feel watching a movie. You go in with expectations, and the movie either exceeds them or doesn’t even hit them. There isn’t usually a time when the movie ends up being exactly what you expect, and you like it exactly the amount that you expected. Upon multiple watches, sure, the watch is likely to hit you exactly as you thought it would. But not on a first time watch.
That’s why I like to single out the first time watches from everything else that I check out in each month. They have a more unique feel than watching something like Paul Blart: Mall Cop for the twelfth time. I write these posts as a way to single out the first time watches. I used to think I would go back to the posts, but I never do. I don’t even know if people read them or like them. I just put them up and I’m done with them.
This post will be covering July 2019. I know, that’s a long time ago. But I fell behind at one point and vowed to catch up. That’s what I’m doing. In July 2019, there were twelve first time watches. One was a comedy special. One was a versus movie that brought two franchises together. There was a wrestling movie and there were two dancing movies. There were superheroes, gators, and old western television shows. It was a month full of fun, and I’m going to have fun writing about the movies. Starting right now.
I was a little bit worried, going into the Spider-Man sequel. First, it was coming off Avengers: Endgame, which pretty much closed out The Avengers saga as we knew it. Second, as much as I enjoyed the previous Spider-Man entry, I had one major issue with it. It kept trying to stack jokes, much to the detriment of the humour. There would be a solid joke that got killed by putting another joke on top of it. Far From Home pulled back from doing that. It let the jokes breathe, which was nice. It also had a good performance from Jake Gyllenhaal, and one of the trippiest sequences in a Marvel film. Oh, and there was the whole loss of Tony Stark side of things, which was a well-done final touch. I liked it.
I didn’t like this one as much. A large chunk of time was spent recapping the movies that came before. That’s all well and good for viewers who only saw one of the franchises, but it was a waste of time for someone who had seen all the previous entries in both franchises. It took away from the time that could have been spent on the crossover’s story. It’s not that Evil Bong or Gingerdead Man were good franchises. The problem was that this one couldn’t even put in the effort to try to get to the low standard of quality those movies had set.
Very much a modern riff on a Wicker Man type of ritualistic scenario. There was enough there, however, to allow Midsommar to stand on its own. The slow burn was captivating, pulling the viewer in and having them live out the scenario for themselves. There was horrifying imagery, characters who were pretty much all dicks and assholes to certain degrees, and an overall feeling of dread. It wasn’t my favourite horror of 2019, but it was a hell of a theatrical experience.
I might have liked this one a little more. It was a simple little horror flick about people stuck in a flooded house with alligators swimming around. It felt like the movie version of a pulp novel, only with horror instead of crime. There’s just something about Alexandre Aja where he makes great water-related flicks. I love when that guy works with water.
Let’s just get it out of the way. Aziz Ansari did some aggressively sexual stuff and had to take some time away from the spotlight. He’s never really come back to it. He made this comedy special after getting into hot water for how aggressive he was with a woman, and it shows. He reflected upon his actions for a small portion of the special in a way that felt sincere. It might not have been because, well, he’s a performer. But it felt sincere. That was enough for me. I’ve always liked his comedy. I probably always will. I just hope he actually learned from his mistakes and grew as a person.
This one starred Emily Ratajkowski and Aaron Paul. It was pretty darn average. So average, in fact, that I don’t remember anything about it. Good or bad, I don’t remember. All I remember is that they were the stars. They were a couple. Someone tried to get between them. That’s about it. The only reason I would ever rewatch this one is just to refresh myself on what it was about.
Soderbergh is one of those directors where I have far too many blindspots in their filmography. Erin Brokovich was one of those, for the longest time. I caught up with it and was blown away. The way the story chugged along, with the great performances supporting it, kept me enthralled through the whole runtime. I wish I had seen it sooner. It easily could have been one of my favourite Soderbergh’s for a much longer time than the year and a half that it has no longer been a blindspot.
This was a movie that truly fell victim to the mid-point syndrome that some movies have. The first half was a messy early-life portion of a biopic that never really gelled. It was fine. I enjoyed it well enough. But the disparate parts never came together. The second half had the vision. It had the focus. It made the entire movie worth the price of admission, though, in my case, the price of admission was the price of buying the used Blu-ray from the local video store. It’s a movie that should be checked out. It’s also a movie that might take some time to get into. It definitely did for me.
I don’t know what it is about Stuber. It’s a dumb movie. I’ll be the first to admit that. I’ll also be the first to admit that it is in no way whatsoever a great movie. But I love it. I love the dumb little action movie that stars Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista. I love the fact that Dave Bautista’s character hasn’t yet recovered from laser eye surgery. I love that Kumail Nanjiani’s sporting goods store boss lives in the store. I love that Betty Gilpin is there to play a love interest who ends up not being the love interest. There’s something about this movie that I just love. I saw it in the theater on my birthday. I bought it on Blu-ray and rewatched it. I’ll probably see it again soon. That’s how it goes.
There’s no way around it. This became my favourite movie of 2019 almost as soon as I saw it. The setting of 1960s Hollywood worked wonders, giving off a nostalgic feel that anyone could connect with. Sure, I was born in 1990, so I don’t have that experiential nostalgia. That doesn’t mean I can’t feel nostalgia for the shows, movies, and music of that era. The giant cast helped, too. And then Quentin Tarantino playing around with history in the way that Quentin Tarantino likes to. It all worked wonders for me, which brought me back to the movie time and time and time again. Few movies hit me so well on first watch that I see them again in theatres. Fewer movies hit me so well that I see them four times in theaters. This hit so well on first watch that I couldn’t help but keep going back.
The prototype to any modern dance flick is Breakin’. At least, from the dance side of things. Obviously Dirty Dancing for the romance. But Breakin’ was part of the reason that dance movies became musicals, with dancing to a song instead of singing with some dance. It had the dance battles that became staples in movies like the Step Up series. The problem was that Breakin’ was boring. Dull characters going through their dull motions. It could have been done better, and many of the movies that followed up on it were.
Guess what? This was a sequel that ended up being far superior to the movie that came before it. It took the blueprint that Breakin’ created and blew it up in the biggest way possible. They were saving the rec centre to save their neighbourhood. Boogaloo Shrimp was dancing on the ceiling. People got hurt. People got paid. It all reached the climax in a giant dance performance at the end to raise enough money to buy back the rec centre. It was as important a movie as any, defining what dance movies could be for generations to come.
With the rec centre saved, July came to a close. I saw twelve movies for the first time. Many of them became favourites. Stuber and Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood will be in my rotation for the foreseeable future. I love them both. It was a month filled with good, with just a little bad to be the exception to the rule. Then I moved onto the next month.
August 2019 had its own fair share of first time watches. Some of them were very, very memorable. Some of them were not so much. I saw Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Wonder Woman, and Hard Ticket to Hawaii for the first time. I checked out Rappin’. Death Tube 2 snuck in there, as did Last Flag Flying. There were many more movies that will get their fair share of discussion in the August 2019 post. That’s for another time.
To finish things off here, I’ve got a few plugs. You can find me on Twitter here and here. I’m on Instagram here, here, and here. I write about Power Rangers and I write about bad movies. If you want to get away from me, check out Jaime Burchardt. Or you can head over to Talk FilmSociety and see what they’ve got going on. They have a podcast about the Star Trek films hosted by Mike Schindler, Diego Crespo, and Marcelo J. Pico. Here’s the episode for Wrath of Khan. Have fun listening to it and have fun in your lives. Until next time!
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