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.
I've seen this movie once before (in its entirety) back when I was young, so this is actually a rewatch. (Or rather a half-rewatch).
I saw this movie when I was around 10 years old, on the Disney channel. (Back in the 1980s, the Disney Channel reran a lot of old Disney movies.) I remember I really wanted to like it, because the commercials for it (which ran on the Disney channel) made it look really fun--a fantasy story about Leprechauns and Ireland--but the actual movie itself was very slow paced and hard to sit through.
Recently, however, my children have become obsessed with leprechauns after learning about them during their first Saint Patrick's Day here in the U.S. And so I was trying to think what children's movies contain leprechauns, and this is the only one I could think of.
My kids lasted only 30 minutes before they got bored. Which was about what I expected, quite frankly.
Although I don't remember the plot of the movie in detail, the feel of the movie (or at least the first 30 minute of it) was pretty much as I remembered it. It's got great scenery, a good looking cast, great acting, and you really want to like this movie, but... the plot just moves too slowly to be interesting.
It's also notable for starring Sean Connery before he became famous for being James Bond.
This is yet another movie I half-watched because I was substitute teaching, and the teacher let this movie as the lesson plan.
I showed the first 55 minutes of this movie 3 times to 3 different classes. I never saw the second half of this movie.
I had actually been familiar with this movie before. I'd been vaguelly interested in the history of McDonalds ever since I learned in high school that the franchise started out as just one hamburger restaurant opened by the McDonald Brothers.
After this movie came out, I watched a few Youtube reviews of it--one by History Buffs, and one by The Cynical Historian. So I was familiar with the general premise.
My thoughts after half-watching it: the story is vaguelly interesting, but not compelling interesting. (I suspect the second half of the movie, in which Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers come into more conflict, was probably more interesting than the first half, which is just setting up that conflict. But I'd have to watch the entire movie before I said for certain.)
Furthermore, the movie moves at a very slow pace. To be fair, the movie is intentionally designed to be a slow-burn, so you can't really fault it for doing what it sets out to do. Although when I watched the first 55 minutes for the 2nd and 3rd time, I had the opportunity to observe that the editing is not very tight. The camera lingers on the scene 2 or 3 seconds after the dialogue finishes. The pacing of the movie could easily have been tightened up without really losing any of the story if someone had wanted to, but I guess the director didn't want to.
Between the story being only mildly interesting, and the film moving at a slow pace, it was a hard sell for the 8th grade students, and all 3 classes of 8th graders that I showed this movie to were visibly bored. Still, it was mildly interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing the whole thing one day.
Once again, you can blame substitute teaching for this one. I was substitute teaching today, and the lesson plan was to resume playing this movie. The students had already seen the first 12 minutes yesterday, so I played it from 12 minutes to the 48 minute marker. And I had to do this 4 times in 4 classes today, so by the end of the day I was well acquainted with those 40 minutes.
This is a movie I've already seen. (I saw it in the theaters when it originally came out.) So it was another rewatch, or half-rewatch.
Although I didn't rewatch the whole thing (I missed the first 12 minutes, and the whole second half of the movie), it did strike me that the movie is operating on a few different levels.
1) It's a philosophical movie--the old "What if our reality was just a simulation?" hypothetical
2) It's a commentary on reality TV
3) It's a comedy
4) It's a suspense movie--as Truman keeps trying to escape his reality, and as he keeps getting thwarted, you get sucked into the suspense of "Will he be able to get out this time?"
It works realitively well on all of these levels. The suspense scenes work great. The humor is good.
It is, however, a bit repetitive, especially in the beginning. The first 50 minutes of the movie are essentially Truman discovering that his reality is manufactured. And then discovering it again. And then discovering it again. (He seems to realize fairly early on in the movie what is going on, but then the movie just has scene after scene of him rediscovering this.)
The movie is also completely unrealistic, even if you grant its premise. (Even if you grant that society would tolerate a TV show making a prisoner of someone like this, and even if you grant that the show has the budget to do all the things that they do, there were still a lot of scenes were I didn't believe that this is a realistic portrayal of how people would actually act in this situation.) So as you're watching this movie, you have to constantly shut down that voice in your head that keeps saying, "But real people wouldn't act like that."
This was one of Jim Carrey's first serious roles, and he plays it mostly well, but he's still a little bit over the top in some scenes. Would this movie have been better served with a different lead actor?
It also occured to me (on the 3rd time watching) that this movie might also be operating as a commentary about how difficult it is sometimes to escape from your hometown and get out into the wider world.
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