Ever since 2007, I've had a nice simple system for keeping track of the all the movies I've watched. If I see a movie,
I do a review. Pretty simple, right?
The only problem is, what to do about movies I have only half-watched? That kind of mucks up my simple little system.
Now, for precisely this reason, ever since
I started reviewing movies in 2007, I've tried to make it a rule not to half-watch any movies. If I'm already halfway through a movie, and I get the urge to turn it off, I force myself to finish the movie so that I can give it a complete review. And if I anticipate that I won't be able to finish a whole movie, I try to avoid starting it.
But, some times I end up watching half-a-movie for circumstances outside of my control. For example, recently
I've been substitute teaching, and occasionally the lesson plan is just to show the kids a movie. (This actually doesn't happen often. But it happens occasionally. Maybe once every two weeks or so, the lesson plan will be to put on a movie.)
The class periods are typically about 50 minutes long, so we can't finish the movie in that time. So we only watch half the movie. And despite my policy of not half-watching movies, I'm pretty much stuck, because it's my job to stay in the classroom and supervise the kids while they watch the movie. So, here's a short list of the movies I've half-watched over this past month:
Coco (2017): I watched the first half of this movie a couple weeks ago at one of the schools I was substituting at. I had never seen it before. (I stopped keeping up with
the Disney animated films years ago, and this was a Disney animated film that came out a few years ago.) I only saw the first hour of it, but based on the first hour, I thought it was mildly interesting, but not a must-see. The plot of the film revolves around the Day of the Dead and the afterlife. It was, I thought, an interesting choice to make mortality the focus of a Disney animated film. (Usually when we watch Disney animated films, we want to retreat into a fairy tale world where everyone lives happily ever after, right? Do we want to be constantly reminded of our own mortality when we watch a Disney cartoon?) The themes of the movie also struck me as being heavy handed. This movie is not subtle about it's theme of following your passions even in the face of obstacles. Which makes it very easy to predict how it's going to turn out in the end, even if I didn't see the ending. I mean, I don't know how it's going to happen exactly, but I know that the boy is definitely going to end up pursuing his dream of becoming a musician at the end.
Soul (2020): Another recent Disney animated film that I hadn't seen. (And really don't remember hearing much about for that matter.) This movie is yet another Disney animated film that is about mortality and the afterlife. (What is going on? Is this some sort of trend now?) This movie starts out really slow and boring, but it picks up eventually. It has a number of twists and turns that keep you guessing as to where the plot is going. I saw the first half of this movie 5 times last week. (The lesson plans was to show it to every class.) But as of this writing, I don't know how it ends yet. I may make it a point to watch this movie in full someday, though. By the time I got to the midpoint, I was hooked.
The Killers (1946) This movie is based on a
Hemingway short story, which is why it was assigned viewing for the high school literature class I was substitute teaching. In this case, they had seen the first half of the movie the previous day, so I saw the second half of this movie, but not the beginning. In spite of this, I was eventually able to figure out what was going on and follow the plot. I really liked this movie. Now, granted I've always liked old movies, so someone who doesn't like old movies might have a different opinion. But it had really good acting, really good dialogue, some interesting camera angles, and a lot of twists and turns in the plot. As I watched it, I thought to myself, "This seems like it must be a film noir classic. I'm surprised I've never heard of it before. I thought I knew all the classic film noirs." Well, goes to show I don't know as much as I thought I did.
If I ever get the chance to sit down and watch this movie in full, I will.
...and that's the list, as of now. But I plan to keep this index active going forward. In the future, whenever I half watch a movie (for whatever reason), I'll make a short note of it on this blog, and add it to this index.
The school I was substituting at today had indoor recess due to rain, and another teacher put this on for the kids to watch during recess. I saw the first 20 minutes of it. It looked pretty silly, but also it looked like it had a lot of extended slapstick sequences, that made me think it would be great for my kids. I may put this on for my kids to watch someday.
