Favorite First Time Watches of 2024

(dec 22 2024)

2024 was a pretty busy year for me. I made a whole feature (more on that soon). 2023 was my year of rest and relaxation and deep clinical depression so I watched around 350 movies. 2024 I actually left my bed everyday so the number’s more like ~210. Hopefully next year I can bring it down to 150 and get a life. Here’s for employment and finding a hobby outside of media consumption.

Beastie Boys (2008)

Ha Jung Woo is my favorite actor. I find him so adorable. If he was born in America he woulda been a handyman or a mechanic. And he’d still be sexy as fuck. He’s never been the prettiest amongst his crop of Korean leading men. But he’s always been the rawest. He just knows how to be. He’s exactly the same in every role but somehow every role he plays is wildly different from each other. He’s like water. If water had a big head and lots of acne scars. If water was your most average Korean man except with that 2% of magical movie star juice that separates him from the rest.

Beastie Boys might be his best work. He plays a male host who cons his way through life. He sleeps with a bunch of girls who are all also hostesses/sex workers. He plays a diabolical motherfucker who is not a real man. He’s a liar, a cheater, a woman beater, a narcissist, a gutless soulless bitchmade evil motherfucker. He’s pathetic.

And the more you watch him the more you’re convinced that maybe you can fix him. Maybe he will pay you back this time, and maybe he won’t just blow all your money on gambling. Maybe he’s right, maybe every single woman he’s ever been with were all psychos. Maybe he can be saved. Maybe you’re just the woman who can save him.

And that’s how he gets you.

Murder Death Koreatown (2020)

I’m afraid that my brain is all scrambled up. Not even from a specific substance or an incident or nothing. it just is. From being. People don’t even doom scroll anymore because that implies some sort of choice. Like you’re doing the doom scrolling, you’re choosing to do that. Nowadays it feels more like doom doom. You don’t do the doom doom, it comes for you.

I think this movie explains this feeling so much better than I possibly could. It’s about a crazy person trying to solve a murder case or something but it devolves into something much harder to comprehend. He tries to make sense of something but fails to do everything. It’s a scary time. And Koreatown is just the right kind of setting to tell this story. It’s always so busy there. So loud. Drives a man insane.

Nightmare Alley (1947)

For the 10th anniversary of its release, Collider did a special screening of Pacific Rim on IMAX 3D sometime last year. It was a one night only intimate screening with around only 30 tickets. And the tickets were not for sale. Collider did a contest, where you had to whore out some personal story about how much the movie means to you for a chance to win a ticket. And I fucking won 2. I told them how my dad passed away and one of the last movies he took me to was Pacific Rim. I had to call him the very next day to make sure I didn’t jinx him into dying or something. I didn’t really feel bad about lying to win those tickets, cuz how else do you out-Pacific Rim fan an entire city? You had to stand out. What I was worried about was if other people also went the dead parents/relative route. Then it becomes a matter of semantics. Did your elderly grandfather take you to watch Pacific Rim? He was gonna die anyway, right. Or, say, was it your mother who was a single mother of 3 and a recovering opioid addict who died in a tragic car accident on your way back from the movies and the only reason she got distracted from the road was because you couldn’t shut the fuck up about how much you wish you saw more of Coyote Tango in the movie (that’s the Japanese jaeger btw). I know you think you killed her but YOU DID. You so did, and no amount of alcohol or religion or meditation will ever help you forget that. Your father will never forgive you for what you did to her. Even though he left the family 15 years ago doesn’t mean he stopped caring for her. You monster. You fucking kaiju.

Oh and here’s a ticket, enjoy :)

The theater was full of the most elite autistic people in the city of Los Angeles I had ever seen assembled. It was fucking incredible. I love Pacific Rim so so so so so much. And for the first time in my life I was surrounded by people who seemed to love that movie more than I did. It was such an awesome time. Pacific Rim was never released on 3D before, only IMAX. So this was truly a once in a lifetime experience. They also did a QNA with GDT after the screening, which was also awesome. He’s a big man. He looks so adorable. He’s a true gentleman and a lover of movies. I’ve always been a huge fan. Even if that makes me a normie (it does).

I’m getting distracted here. Anyways I always liked Nightmare Alley (2021) and have been meaning to watch the 47 version and it was awesome, didn’t realize how many things GDT lifted one for one from the original. It’s an evil movie. Every scene reinforces how everything’s gonna go terrible for everyone.

I think watching Pacific Rim on IMAX 3D was my single greatest movie going experience. That’s a little embarrassing to admit.

Red Dawn (1984)

My living room was shot up while I was watching this with my lady. There was a shootout right outside my house and we caught a stray bullet. It went through the wooden window frame and went through one wall, got stuck inside the second wall. The bullet’s still here because my landlord never bothered to take it out, she just patched it up. I don’t remember much from the movie because we had really hot post-dodging a literal bullet sex afterwards, but I think the movie was cool. I almost died while watching it!

Bitter Moon (1992)

Emmanuelle Seigner is sooooooooo gd sexy in this movie. When she pour milk all over her tits I almost stared licking my fucking laptop screen. Good stuff.

But can you imagine being married to Roman Polanski?

Baby Boy (2001)

I am not black so I didn’t have BET growing up. Matter fact I don’t think it’s a race issue as much as it’s a nationality issue. Because growing up I didn’t have any American cable. I was in Korea. I was watching EBS and Tooniverse. Anyways I just learned that this is one of those movies that they play on BET all the time so people are kinda tired of? I think that’s a shame because this movie rules. Tyrese is very charismatic. And he’s very sexy. Plus he’s just the right kind of pathetic. It appeals to something maternal in you, something primal, something deep in your female DNA. It sounds like I’m into boys that are a little pathetic with it. Who else can relate?

But the whole time watching it I couldn’t stop imagining Tupac in the role instead of Tyrese. Probably even charismatic-er. Even sexier. Maybe not as pathetic? Tupac’s constantly present in the movie tho. Both literally (Tyrese’s character has a giant Tupac mural in his bedroom), and spiritually - it’s a story about stunted black male adulthood, written specifically for a superstar who passed at the age of 25. That was probably going to be a very different movie. But we’ll never know.

Taraji was great and so was Ving and so was miss AJ Johnson. Snoop Dogg is not the best actor. His best role might be when he played that crippled crack dealer in Training Day. He was great in that. Not as much in this. But he’s funny.

I think this might be my favorite John Singleton. I had the luxury of watching Boyz in da hood on the beach of CANNES in 2019 during CANNES FILM FESTIVAL because I got to go to CANNES before, did I tell you that I’ve been to CANNES?? You know like the film festival???

Anyways Cleopatra Singleton gave a little speech before the screening. It had been just over a month since his passing. He was supposed to be there originally. It premiered there in 1991. The french didn’t really appreciate when me and my buddy Skye was yelling RICKYYYYYYY at the end but who cares about the french right. Rest in peace the goat. What an unmeasurable legacy he’s leaving behind. Should I give Snowfall a try?

Wish (2009)

Some real deep cut here. Wish is a 2009 indie autofiction from one of my other favorite Korean leading men Jung Woo. Which is very confusing because the other guy’s name is also Jung Woo. But this Jung Woo has no family name like HA or CHOI or LEE or whatever. It’s just Jung Woo. Like Tyrese. Or Tupac!

He wrote and starred in the movie about his not so model upbringing. He was a little hoodrat you see. He used to skip classes rob other kids and catch fades left and right. And in Korea that’s a big no no. Actors get canceled all the time for much lesser crimes. Koreans don’t want ratchet celebrities. Koreans don’t want any celebrities that aren’t exactly like every other celebrities. Sometimes I wonder if I have enough dirt on me for Koreans to cancel me, then I remember that I could never be a celebrity in Korea anyways because my face is too long. Another W for me.

Anyways. Instead of deny defend depose his past, Jung Woo made a painfully personal movie out of it. An energetic, hilarious, and moving coming of age movie. Kinda movie that makes you want to give the main character a big hug. I loved his character because, well, he was a little pathetic with it.

Good luck finding a link with English sub!
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Oh and my favorite 2024 movie was Red Rooms. 10/10

Today i thought about killing You...

(dec 14 2024)

i contemplated

things white people love

one woman plays unpacking the millennial plight

puppy play dates

pitbull pup named World Gobbler

don’t worry she don’t bite

but if she did it may or may not kill you

today i seriously thought about killing you

i contemplated

things black guys love

monkey D Luffy

system of a down

going to shibuya

things white people love

don’t touch my hair ~

things white people love

upsetting prophet mohammad

the third amendment

the Cut magazine

finding a sublet in Mexico City

things mexicans love

dave’s hot chicken

draeko the ruler

why am i incapable of forming a single full thought?

things tristian tate love

fucking johnny walker

that night? sipping the fucking johnny walker in the war room by myself with him chilling

why? i studied bro.

things hack writers love

over generalizing

listicles

stealing jokes from twitter

things insert ethnic group love

food

respecting our elders

bro we insert ethnic group love doing that

today i thought about killing you

i contemplated

there’s a man in my walls

and he’s listening to me right now

i wonder if he’s insert ethnic group

things the man in my walls love

food

respecting our elders

brooo i do love doing that

who said that?

who sent you here?

are you single?

does it get cold in my walls?

do you have any Christmas plans?

do you smell good?

things white people love

Aesop hand cream

asap rocky

things guys on hinge say they love about me

my hamburger helper tattoo

my smile

my butt

my butt

my butt

things i love

i don’t even know anymore

today i thought about killing you.

i contemplated.

I don’t actually dislike Ben Stiller it’s all a bit

(june 14 2024)

There’s a brief Hugh Jackman cameo in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. He plays himself, playing King Arthur in a stage production of Camelot. Sir Lancelot, recently made sentient from a magical stone tablet, breaks into the theater and joins Arthur on stage. He expects his sire to greet him as such. But Arthur is no Arthur, he’s simply an actor playing the role. “Buddy, this is all just pretend.” Jackman as Arthur tells Lancelot, who by this point, is having a violent existential crisis. “None of this is real”.

I remember this very clearly because it was right around then when I finally registered how drunk I had gotten off of the green apple BeatBox. The beverage was disgusting, but it was appropriate. I needed to get very drunk very fast. I had a long brutal night ahead of myself. 5 more Ben Stiller movies I had to get through, and it was only 6pm.

I’m still not sure why I decided to do that on a Saturday afternoon. A subtle homage to the degeneracy of the pandemic perhaps. Wasting your time was so much more fun when the rest of the world was joining in.

I didn’t really expect a Night at the Museum movie to be so lore heavy. Lots of mystical ancient Egyptian words being thrown around. Not enough jokes. I think Ben Stiller was embarrassed to be in this. Lifeless in every scene. Apparently the sentiment was shared by the entire cast, a movie full of actors who think they’re well beyond this kinda stuff. All except for the monkey, who shocked me with her nuanced performance.

In college my thesis professor told me a story about Ben Stiller. How he helped Stiller shoot a skit that ended up landing him a gig on SNL, his first big breakout. A cheap parody of a Scorsese film the Color of Money. And apparently Stiller was such an entitled nepo-baby piece of shit, overworking his unpaid cast and crew going full Kubrick, that my professor got into a fistfight with him? Which supposedly is why he’s blacklisted by “the big comedy” to this day. I’ve always had a suspicion that Stiller was up to no good. I was taught to distrust anyone who can’t pick a lane. My professor’s story is most certainly fake. But it was good enough for me. From that point on my beef with Stiller was personal. That was 4 years ago.

4 whole years ago. Crazy. Time flies even when you’re not having fun. Los Angeles in the middle of the pandemic was a special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Most likely it didn’t. But there was madness in any direction at any hour. The People’s Coalition reclaimed Round Two Hollywood. The owner of Tenants was guillotined. There was a universal sense that whatever we were doing, it must’ve been right. Because we were fighting for something. Or something like that.

Right around when the LAPD found a dead 18 year old inside a homeless encampment in Echo Park, is when the wave finally broke and rolled back. She was an honors student from Oceanside, “met and fell in with the wrong crowd at a protest” her mother said. Died of an overdose. What followed was one of the largest police actions in LA history, and hundreds of new cameras being installed. Out with the old and evil, in with the new and something much, much worse. At least the boomers stopped Vietnam before rendering themselves useless. We learned how to coexist with our war. We were simply playing pretend, to no effect.

Permanent Midnight is a 1998 addiction drama that offers nothing new. Every actor has the impulse to drop 30 pounds and play a junkie piece of shit to get taken seriously. But who’d want to watch a movie where Derrick Zoolander sticks a dirty heroin needle up his neck while his infant child sits next to him. Out of boredom I started doing research on Ben Stiller to make sure there wasn’t any Hollywood sex pest thing he had done that I forgot about. Not that I wish anyone to be a molester, it’d just make my prejudice that much more valid. Sadly he’s never touched anyone inappropriately.

What the fuck is Walter Mitty? Who is Ben Stiller? A real artist with integrity or star of Dodgeball? Is he Man or is he Beast?

I tried watching Meet the Parents on Roku TV via Hulu but it required a separate Showtime plus add on. None of those things sound real. And I was not going to pay 4.99 to watch Meet the Parents. So instead I put on Tropic Thunder.

Disliking someone becomes much more complicated when they’re responsible for something so meaningful. I was 8 when I first saw this movie, in a hotel room with my brother on a family vacation while our parents were out gambling. They returned in bone chilling silence, something clearly went terribly wrong. But my brother and I - we kept watching the movie. Everything was fine as long as Jack Black kept getting kicked in his balls and Tom Cruise danced to Ludacris.

It’s easily Stiller’s best work, maybe his only meaningful work. A movie about hacks and has-beens, about actors who could not get taken seriously no matter how hard they tried. An interrogation of the very idea of pretending. There’s a scene where Robert Downey Jr is in a yellowface on top of a blackface. This is a story about what’s real and what’s not.

I could not tell you one meaningful thing about the Meyerowitz Stories because by then I was very intoxicated. I started watching lesbian porn on my laptop just to keep myself awake. I do remember Adam Sandler being effortlessly charming.

And by the time I got to Reality Bites I was busy pleasuring myself.

It was around 5:30 in the morning when I finished my 6 movie Ben Stiller marathon. I had learned nothing new. My anger towards Stiller now extended far beyond, to the entire Gen X population. My head was spinning and my [REDACTED]. An inexplicable wave of sadness came to me. I wanted to call my mother and confess what a phony I had become. Not the most ideal way to start your Sunday.

When I said earlier that every single actor in the third Night at the Museum movie was phoning it in, that’s everyone besides Robin Williams, returning as President Theodore Roosevelt. In what would be his final film appearance before his tragic death, Williams delivers such a tender and loving performance that feels grossly out of place. The film ends with him, alongside all the other museum exhibits returning to their still, lifeless ways. Shenanigans no more. Magic was dead, so was the franchise.

“It’s time for your next adventure” Teddy Roosevelt says. Repositioning himself one final time before his consciousness ceases to exist.

“I have no idea what I’m gonna do tomorrow” Stupid fucking Ben Stiller says. No idea why he’s the one getting consoled and not the other way around.

And, Robin Williams says, “How exciting”.

Tee Park

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