Pookon's Ill Cinema - February 2021

Now that I've introduced the idea and laid out the ground rules, I'm not sure what to do with the opening paragraph. I guess I can talk about February. There's not much to this month aside from it being cold outside and there being only 28 days, which gives me 2-3 less days in which to watch movies. I guess when I tally things up at the bottom of the post we'll see if that played a difference in how many movies I was able to watch this month. 

Aside from that the only thing I know is that it snowed a lot this month. So much to the point that I didn't know what to do with it anymore. The only reason that I bring that up is that because my car is parked on a slab next to the garage which is in back of the house along an alley. With little to no yard space and needing to keep the alley open, there is no way to put the snow if it doesn't melt and keeps on accumulating. At some point I gave up on trying to keep a clear path to get my car in and out of the parking spot, so eventually I just gave up and decided not to go anywhere. The only reason that I bring that up is because with no ride and no place to go, I had nothing better to do than to lay back and watch some movies. So that might help the overall numbers. Well, there's nothing left to do but get right into it. Lights, camera, action bitches!

2/01 - Monday

• American Pie 2

2/02 - Tuesday

• The Long Kiss Goodnight
• Groundhog Day
• Groundhog Day (2nd watch of the day)
• Man of the House (1995)

The Long Kiss Goodnight is one of my favorite Christmas movies. Yes, you heard me right. If the movie takes place at Christmas and it is essential to the plot, then it is a Christmas movie. I can't remember if I watched it during the 2020 Christmas season (as I wasn't keeping track), but I sure as hell know I watched and enjoyed the shit out of it today.

With today also being Groundhog Day, one of my annual traditions is to get together with Jenny and Kevin and watch the Bill Murray classic on one of the best holidays of the entire year. I often watch it multiple times on and around this date, which is why it is listed twice. Since Phil Connors keep reliving the same day (*SPOLER ALERT*), I feel like that's a good enough reason to watch it more than once today. Like I needed a reason.

2/03 - Wednesday

• American Wedding
• Kingsman: The Golden Circle

2/04 - Thursday

• American Reunion

2/05 - Friday

• Odd Thomas *

This movie has been on my docket to watch probably since I first heard about it in 2013. I don't know why it took me this long to watch it, but that's kind of the point of this experiment as I'm making a point to watch a handful of "new" movies each month. If you're into ghosts and the paranormal, I suggest giving this a watch. 

2/06 - Saturday

• Just Like Heaven
• Blended *

Blended might have been the worst movie I watched this month and would be a candidate for worst of the year, but I just can't bring myself to put it on either list. And that's because of two things. 1 - I'm a sucker for Adam Sandler. So many of his movies are pretty bad but god damn it do I watch every single one and at least laugh a little bit. And 2 - Terry Crews absolutely steals every scene he is in. I laughed at him more than I do at some entire movies and he singlehandedly saved this movie for me. I would never recommend this or watch it ever again, but I can't say I hated it even though it was terrible.

2/07 - Sunday

• Space Cowboys
• Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

2/08 - Monday

• Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

2/09 - Tuesday

• Shallow Hal
• The Mummy (2017) *

Obviously I watch a lot of movies. You probably knew that about me before I started this blog series. I only say this because these two movies I watched today couldn't be more different in my memory. Shallow Hal is one of those movies that I just adore and would watch if I was flipping through the channels and saw it was on. And there are some scenes in this movie I think about all the time. 

The Mummy (2017) starring Tom Cruise is one of the more forgettable movies I have ever seen. Honestly if not for this list, I don't think I would remember seeing it. It didn't bring anything new to the game (characters, plot, special effects, action sequences, etc.) and was a big disappointment seeing as it was supposed to set up Universal Monsters "Dark Universe" with Russell Crowe's Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde being the connective tissue. But that kind of fizzled out after just one movie and led to the cancelation of some pretty high profile projects (like The Invisible Man with Johnny Depp, The Bride of Frankenstein with Angelina Jolie and Frankenstein with Javier Bardem). File this one under who cares/don't care. 

2/10 - Wednesday

• Beavis & Butthead Do America
• Back to the Future

Beavis & Butthead Do America is a comedic masterpiece and is in my Top 10 movies of all time. It's not even fair how good this movie is yet I never hear anyone talking about it. I think of some of the lines in this movie almost every week and laugh about how hilarious they are.

2/11 - Thursday

• Clifford
• Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie *

I was watching Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie near the end of my work shift and my Roommate (Mom) walked in on me (came home from work) and all I could think to say was, "It's not what it looks like." That was embarrassing because it was what it looked like. 

2/12 - Friday

• The Wedding Singer
• 50 First Dates
• Happy Death Day
• Happy Death Day 2 U

I enjoyed Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2 U so much that I had to show them to Jenny and Andy. And Andy was into them so much that he stayed awake for both movies, which is rare as his bedtime is usually around 1030pm even on the weekends. 

2/13 - Saturday

2/14 - Sunday

• Muppet Treasure Island *
• Grosse Pointe Blank
• The Mask
• The Man Who Knew Too Little

I don't know why it took me this long into my life to watch Muppet Treasure Island. The only reason I can think of is that I was 15 years old when it came out and I was too busy trying to be cool, avoiding kid things like the Muppets and doing adult things instead. I was dumb as a teenager. Never try to be like everyone else. Never try to be cool. Just be yourself. That's what's really cool. I know that now.

2/15 - Monday

• Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

2/16 - Tuesday

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

2/17 - Wednesday

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2/18 - Thursday

• Superman: The Movie
• The Legend of Drunken Master *

2/19 - Friday

• Double Team *

2/20 - Saturday

• Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who! *
• The Peanuts Movie *

I can't say that I was ever a big fan of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. I don't watch the holiday specials (Christmas/Halloween) and I read the comics, just not on a regular basis. This 2015 film wasn't really on my radar but I did intend to watch it some day. And I'm glad that I did because it was such a wholesome, genuinely fun, well done G-rated film that everyone can enjoy. I don't know how else to describe it but to say that it was incredibly refreshing that something like this was made (and made well) in today's world. I would encourage everyone to check out this animated film.

2/21 - Sunday

• John Q

2/22 - Monday

• Big
• Mrs. Doubtfire

2/23 - Tuesday

• Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

2/24 - Wednesday

• Fantastic Four
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

2/25 - Thursday

• Fantastic 4 (2015)
• The Nutty Professor

2/26 - Friday

• The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
• Superman III
• Left Behind (2014 Nicolas Cage) *

2/27 - Saturday

• Left Behind: The Movie (2000 Kirk Cameron) *
• Left Behind II: Tribulation Force *
• Left Behind III: World at War *
• John Wick
• John Wick Chapter 2

I do love me some end of the World/Apocalypse movies, but the Left Behind series? Woof. After watching the Nicolas Cage version first (which was made after these ones), I should have known that it couldn't get any better than that. And was I right. Woof indeed. 

2/28 - Sunday

• Greenland *
• The Quake *

I'm a real sucker for disaster movies. I'll watch any and all of them no matter how good (which is rare) or how bad (which is common) they are. But that's why this last day of February was such a delight. Greenland was a movie I knew I was going to like from when I first saw the preview. I just wasn't going to pay to see it in theaters so I just needed to wait until it arrived on a streaming service. It gave me everything I wanted from an end of the world comet movie.

Last year I watched a Norwegian film from 2015 called The Wave and even though it was subtitled (which is hard for someone like me who has problems paying attention), I thought it was really good. Besides, does the dialogue really matter in a disaster movie? The Quake is a sequel to The Wave and is about an Earthquake instead (although the Wave was caused by an earthquake). If you're into disaster movies and don't mind Norwegians or subtitles, I would say definitely check it out. 

Number of Movies Watched this Month: 56
Most Watched Movie this Month: Groundhog Day (2 times)
Number of New Movies Watched this Month: 15
Best New Movie Watched this Month: The Peanuts Movie
Worst Movie Watched this Month: Left Behind 1-3 (the Kirk Cameron ones)

Number of Movies Watched this Year: 118
Most Watched Movie this Year: Back to the Future (2 times) Groundhog Day (2 times) / Happy Death Day (2 times) / Happy Death Day 2 U (2 times)
Number of New Movies Watched this Year: 33
Best New Movie Watched this Year: The Peanuts Movie
Worst Movie Watched this Year: Left Behind 1-3 (the Kirk Cameron ones)

 - Scott Reck -

pookon.com

twitter.com/pookondotcom

Pookon's Ill Cinema - January 2021

I think I forgot to lay out the ground rules in the first article that I posted. Well I'm not going to go back and edit that one to include them, so I'll just post them here. Movie and documentaries (for the most part) count. TV shows do not, even if the formula is more like a movie (examples of this would be things like The Mandalorian or WandaVision). A documentary counts if it is a stand alone feature length narrative, whereas a multi-episodic formula would not. So keep that in mind for days when I don't watch anything or just watch one movie. Just because it doesn't look like I wasn't watching anything doesn't mean that I wasn't, it just did not qualify for this list. 

Everything during the pandemic is all starting to gel together, but I know at some point I watched every episode of Lost, Seinfeld, Scrubs, Mike Tyson Mysteries, half of Cheers and anything Star Wars and Marvel put out like The Clone Wars cartoon, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If? and Mighty Ducks Game Changers. I'm sure there are some other TV series in there that occupied my time that at this point I cannot remember. Oh, and lest we forget daily viewings of Let's Make a Deal, The Price is Right, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Can't live without my game shows. Once you also start to factor in 162+ (including playoff) baseball games once the Milwaukee Brewers season started, it's a wonder I'm able to watch any movies at all and then sometimes have enough time to watch multiple movies in a day. 

The last time that I checked, there are only 24 hours in a day and one third of that is spent getting ready for sleep, actually sleeping and then getting your shit together after sleep. Which comes to another rule - the movie really just needs to be on in order for me to consider it something I watched. If it is one I am seeing for the first time, I like to devote my full attention to it so I am usually actively paying attention and keep my eyes on the screen (with exceptions of course like checking my phone, looking up casts and trivia on IMDB or fucking around on the internet). But for the movies I have seen many times before, those are usually on in the background as I am working, doing chores and housework or whatever else I do around this joint. So not every movie has me on the couch for the entire run time paying attention to each and every detail. Sometimes it's just on and I'm really doing something else. But since I know the plot, the lines, the characters, etc., I can "watch" it without actually watching it. Does that make sense?

So now that you know the rules, let's get down to the movie watch list. But one last thing in how I am reporting these. I have broken it out by date and listed the movies that I watched. Once of the things I wanted to keep track of is when I watched a new (at least to me) movie, which I have indicated with a * symbol and highlighted in red text. When I feel like it, I'll provide a little commentary or some information about that day or the movies watched on that day. And at the end of the month, I will provide a tally of few noteworthy statistics such as number of movies watched, most watched movie, number of new movies, best new movie and worst movie watched. And I plan on doing this for both the month and the year, which will get pretty interesting as the months roll by. So I guess there is nothing left to do but get into it, so grab some snacks and beverages, settle into your seat, dim the lights and let's watch some movies!

1/01 - Friday

• Back to the Future
• Back to the Future Part II
• Back to the Future Part III

Watching the Back to the Future Trilogy is one of my New Year's traditions. There's something about looking back on your past and trying to fix it so that you have a better future that goes hand in hand with making resolutions. But I don't make New Year's resolutions and instead I just watch my favorite all-time movie trilogy instead. Hell of a way to get the year started.

1/02 - Saturday

• The Final Destination *
• Final Destination 5 *
• Batman Begins
• How to Train Your Dragon 2 *

The Final Destination holds the distinct honor of being my first new movie of 2021. Aside from that, I can't say I remember much about it. 

1/03 - Sunday

• The Dark Knight
• The Dark Knight Returns
• Finding Nemo

1/04 - Monday

• The Avengers
• The Avengers: Age of Ultron
• Captain America: Civil War
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier

1/05 - Tuesday

• Twister
• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
• Flatliners (1990) *

I'm not sure how often this will come up, but every now and then I finally get around to watching a movie for the first time that I should have seen a long time ago. Flatliners isn't a great movie, but with the star power behind it (Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts and director Joel Schumacher) I am surprised it took me 31 years to finally see it.

1/06 - Wednesday

• Speed
• Avengers: Infinity War
• Avengers: Endgame

1/07 - Thursday

• Solo: A Star Wars Story
• Speed 2: Cruise Control *

I love Speed. I love Keanu Reeves. Knowing that he didn't come back for the sequel is what probably (pun intended) steered me away from this movie for so long. But it really wasn't that bad. It just wasn't that good. And I can see why he passed on this movie. Maybe I should have too. Keanu 1, Scott 0. 

1/08 - Friday

• Bad Boys
• Bad Boys 2
• Bad Boys for Life *
• I Am Chris Farley

1/09 - Saturday

• How to Train your Dragon: the Hidden World *
• Poseidon (2006) *
• Live Free or Die Hard (unrated)

1/10 - Sunday

• A Good Day to Die Hard *

I was expecting to hate this movie. And I kind of do if you consider this to be a Die Hard movie. But this isn't a Die Hard movie, this is a Bruce Willis movie. Any connection to Die Hard is on name alone (John and Jack McClane) and some minor references to previous films. If I wasn't such a completionist with movie series, I would totally never watch this again. But if I start a series, I usually end the series. Gross.

1/11 - Monday

It's actually kind of difficult to watch a movie every day, and most days I was watching 3 or 4. I never thought about how many days it would take me to have one where I didn't watch a movie, but I guess today I got my answer.

1/12 - Tuesday

• The Muppets (2011)

1/13 - Wednesday

• Armageddon
• The Rock

There aren't a lot of movies I could watch every day. But if they suddenly made it mandatory and I was forced to pick an action movie, Armageddon or The Rock would be my choice.

1/14 - Thursday

• The Muppets Most Wanted
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Transformers

1/15 - Friday

• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon

1/16 - Saturday

• Transformers: Age of Extinction *

I watched the Transformers cartoon as a kid and absolutely loved the toys. I gave the live action movies a shot when they first came out and then kind of bailed after the 3rd one. I guess I used this as an excuse to finally catch up on the rest of the series. They aren't terrible. I've seen worse.

1/17 - Sunday

• Life (1999) *

1/18 - Monday

• Snowpiercer *

1/19 - Tuesday

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• Krampus *

1/20 - Wednesday

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Transformers: The Last Knight *

1/21 - Thursday

• Happy Death Day *

Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2 U were the first true surprise first watches of my movie year. I think these ended up on my radar from the boys at Binge Media (a movie podcast site I've been listening to for years) and I find that their tastes align with mine, so I usually check out anything they recommend. If you're a fan of time loop movies (think Groundhog Day) and time parallel movies (think Back to the Future II), then you might end up liking these ones.

1/22 - Friday

• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

1/23 - Saturday

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

1/24 - Sunday

• Happy Death Day 2 U *

If you are going to watch Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2 U, I would recommend doing so in the same day or as close to each other as possible. Without spoiling anything, the events of the movies tie into each other very well and best to view the 2nd one while the 1st one is freshly on your mind. 

1/25 - Monday

• Josie and the Pussycats

I don't really believe in "guilty pleasures" as most people would describe it. You shouldn't feel bad for liking something. Who cares? I fucking love Josie and the Pussycats and especially my girl Rachael Leigh Cook. One thing about getting older is that I gives less and less fucks about what people think about me and the things I like. If someone is going to judge me based off of a silly movie with a good looking girls and killer soundtrack, then let them. That's not my problem. That's theirs.

1/26 - Tuesday

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Kingsman: The Secret Service

1/27 - Wednesday

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

1/28 - Thursday

• First Kid
• Freaky Friday (2003) *
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

When I talked about A Good Day to Die Hard, I mentioned being a completionist. You didn't see Die Hard, Die Hard 2 or Die Hard with a Vengeance on this list because I watched them in December 2020 (for Christmas), so they don't qualify for this list. I only mention that because on January 19 I started watching the Harry Potter series, which means that eventually I would watch the remaining movies. Pay attention to that fact because it will come back again throughout the year.

1/29 - Friday

• Bumblebee *

1/30 - Saturday

• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

1/31 - Sunday

• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
• Yesterday

Number of Movies Watched this Month: 62

Most Watched Movie this Month: N/A

Number of New Movies Watched this Month: 18

Best New Movie Watched this Month: Happy Death Day/Happy Death Day 2 U (Tie)

Worst Movie Watched this Month: Freaky Friday (2003)

Number of Movies Watched this Year: 62

Most Watched Movie this Year: N/A

Number of New Movies Watched this Year: 18

Best New Movie Watched this Year: Happy Death Day/Happy Death Day 2 U (Tie)

Worst Movie Watched this Year: Freaky Friday (2003)

 - Scott Reck -

pookon.com

twitter.com/pookondotcom

Pookon's Ill Cinema - 2021 Movies

I've been a movie fan for my entire life. I do reserve times for other sources of media like music, podcasts and TV, but my go to is to set aside a few hours and get lost in a story that I'm seeing for the first time or have seen a million times before. I have made an attempt to catalog and alphabetize how many movies that I "own", and between DVDs, Blu-rays and burned copies, my library easily exceeds 5,000 movies. With the emergence of streaming services in the past few years I've gotten some pushback from people for holding onto physical media, but my project for 2021 taught me that it was entirely necessary for what I was attempting to undertake - keep track of every single movie that I watched this year. This was a crazy idea but something that has been rumbling around in my skull for quite some time. 

The idea stemmed from a throw-away thought about how often I watch a particular film (like Jurassic Park) instead of watching something new (at least to me) because it seems like I always watch the same handful of movies. People speak in hyperbole all of the time. How often have you said, "Oh, that movie? I've seen it a hundred times." But even though I promise you that I have not seen any one movie a hundred times this year, there are a few of them on this list that I can say without a doubt that I have seen a hundred times or more in my life. And since you can't depend on streaming services for availability or picture and sound quality, my collection comes in handy. Because when I'm in the mood for a certain movie, I want to watch it, not try and figure out where to find it online without paying for it or signing up for every single streaming service. I've got my own god damn video store. I am the Last Blockbuster. 

While I did mention that this idea to track my movie watching has been around for a long time, it really didn't get serious until March of 2020 when the Covid-19 Pandemic pretty much just changed everything and shut down the World and our lives as we knew it. Because we were supposed to social distance and everything was canceled (like holiday gatherings, concert and music festivals, sporting events, bars, restaurants and movie theaters), I pretty much stayed home and watched movies by myself. While this was nothing new with my life, it just became more apparent how often it happened. And then in April 2020 I was furloughed from work for what turned out to be 6 months. To this day I still cannot tell you what I did with my time when I was off work and couldn't go anywhere or do anything. I should have done a better job of tracking my life back then. But it did give me the push I needed to finally catalog this ridiculous aspect of my life. And when I went back to work and then started working from home, it gave me the opportunity to put on movies in the background while I did my job, which really allowed the list to grow into the monstrosity that it has become.

By the time I decided to do this I settled on a start date of January 1, 2021 so that I would have an entire year's worth of data. In the end it doesn't really matter, but there's something about quantifying things in a time span that the majority of people recognize as significant just seemed like the right thing to do. So be on the lookout for a month by month breakdown of the movies that I watched this year and a little bit of commentary where I deem it appropriate. I'm curious to see the final results, especially the number of total movies I watched, how many new movies I watched and which movies I watched the most number of times. I'm planning on making this an annual thing, so check back often if you care to see how I wasted my precious life minutes in 2021 and beyond. 2022 is looking to be more of the same, so I do plan on keeping track of my movie watching again, but hopefully the conditions in the World won't suck as much and I'll be out living life instead of watching other people live fictional ones on the big and small screen.

- Scott Reck -

pookon.com
twitter.com/pookondotcom