- Dark Knight
- Inception
- Seven Samurai
ALL movies are fantasies, in that by their very nature, being a film, they are not ‘real’. So no need to point out the obvious, Captain.
Titanic used real life historical events to hang a fantasy on, that worked for me. For one thing, although Rose knew the designer of the ship, she’s not the one who steered it into the iceberg. Jack may have saved a character’s life, but at least the life he saved wasn’t of the guy who ordered the ship to go full speed, ironically causing the sinking.
That’s my problem with Forrest Gump. It wasn’t enough to have him in the periphery of these historic moments(fantastic but believable), the moments had to feature him prominently(completely unbelievable).
There were parts that were pretty good. His pointless running across the US? Yeah, I can buy that. Idiots following him for no particular reason? Yeah that too. Overall though it sucked.
But the point of having a gormless idiot like Forrest at the centre of these events is that we experience them through the eyes of someone who has no preconceptions about any of them. It’s a conceit and you have to buy into it for the film to work (and I admit that I don’t, entirely) but I’m not sure that that makes it a bad film.
You’re fucking crazy
I picture Kelly Wand reading this thread and laughing and laughing. Because it seems to have had his desired result ;).
No, NOT all movies are fantasies, when using the word the way most everybody else does. Forrest Gump clearly does not take place in “real” reality. Criticizing a movie that’s intentionally surreal for not being realistic is, frankly, a bit dim.
Okay, I browsed the whole IMDB top 250 and could not find one movie to really hate.
That is kind of awesome, because I HATE “Lost in Translation” and I am happy to see that the good readers of IMDB so not have it in their top 250.
What a huge let down rhis movie is. Here is my huge, dirty crush from “Ghost World”, acting like a vacuous (sp?) fool. She has to be one of the only philosophy majors that has never had a philisophical thought in her life! “Ooh, it’s a temple…I wonder why I feel nothing…” Who the fuck cares! I love Bill Murray, but Scarlet really sunk this one for me.
1 and 3 are two of my all time favorite movies. i liked inception. what movies do you hate that i never saw?
i’ve posted this in like 3 separate qt3 threads about “classic” movies people hate:
glengarry glen ross
one decent speech by alec baldwin and then:
the leads are weak
you need the good leads to make a sale
the glengarry leads are the good leads, these leads are shit
fuck you
goto 10
some of the greatest actors ever and i hated the characters and was annoyed by the way they kept repeating themselves over and over. when i was watching this for the first time with my sis and brother-in-law at their house, i went to get a glass of water to take a break from the movie. i made sure to take my time, slowly drained my glass, then slowly walked back down. my brother-in-law had paused the movie. i was pissed.
I went down the whole IMDB 250 and found exactly three movies that I can say I hated. I don’t think The Diving Bell and the Butterfly counts as a “movie everyone likes” though, so I’ll just list the other two.
The Wizard of Oz: I appreciate the Technicolor whiz-bang being amazing at the time and the importance of the movie in film history, but I think that it does not hold up in any way whatsoever. It’s a struggle to pick out any convincingly-delivered lines of dialogue. That may be missing the point of the movie, but I don’t care. It makes me cringe.
A Streetcar Named Desire: This is more because I hate the source material and think Blanche DuBois is one of the most insufferable characters in fiction. Since Stanley also crosses the Moral Event Horizon, I just can’t root for anyone in this film.
Also, Home Alone. Everything about this movie’s creepy and annoying, starting with the fact that these dumb rich white fucks have so many bland interchangeable kids, they don’t even notice one (the only loudmouth one, at that) is missing even after they’re all on a plane for 10 hours? & Kevin’s favorite movie is some film noir thing instead of some cartoon or gizmo-making show that highlights how to make boobytraps? FUCK THAT.
Inevitable Jaden Smith remake entering pre-production…now. Correction: now.
It had the desired result the moment Tom and Michowski said they hated the topic. All this is gravy.
The American Dream: prosperity commensurate with your retardation.
Holy shit.
Other than that, it’s pretty easy to go by the arbitrary standards set forth here (and satisfying!).
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The Shawshank Redemption: just because it’s the closest thing Stephen King has written to an ending doesn’t make it a good story. It’s the reason why the idea of the magic black person character foil is a running joke, and that’s not a comment that laughs “with” the movie. Morgan Freeman has managed to do shittier cash in roles (again, in Stephen King catastrophes like Dreamcatcher), but it’s notable how much mileage he gets out of his wise look and aw shucks tone. I’m not sure at what point one is supposed to empathize with the ludicrously contrived main character. It’s the flaws that make leads interesting, but being boring to watch (as opposed to simply being a character whose defining trait is being boring but not boring to watch, very different things) is not a good choice. This is a good one to contrast with the Stand as how not to salvage his writing.
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Schindler’s List: The most interesting parts of the film are the ones with Fiennes, and I wish he had done that in a movi. I side with Kate Winslet’s metacritique of Holocaust films in Extras, tongue-in-cheek as it was. While I’ve like what Spielberg does in other controversial areas (most recently Munich) and I don’t think there’s something inherently commercial and sentimental about his films (Jaws!, goddamnit) it’s just not a movie I can get into. The strange conceit of the bookkeeper and the industrialist is probably the weakest part of the film, and I suppose being unable to get what depth that brings to the table the rest of it will be beyond me as well. I feel like this is a movie I only ever finished out of a bizarre feeling that I’d be disrespecting the subject matter by quitting it early. While I can’t lay that guilt trip squarely at his feet, the blame’s got to go somewhere. Also, bonus points for the use of color on the girl’s dress: what was intended to provide the less observant in the audience with a marker for obvious tragedies unfolding simply serves as a useful reminder of how strange the whole grayscale approach to the movie really is. Are we in a semi-documentary? Is it more a fable-like reflection on a fictionalized version of Schindler? Is it just supposed to convey serious business?
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Life is Beautiful: Sticking to the going down the list format (and obviously skipping movies I would never bother to see, eg Toy Stories, since I have no Koontzian ability to confirm my preconceived notions at range), I once again land on a much worse example than anything Schindler could do to offend. It’s because of this movie that I forgive Gladiator all of its excesses: you can do whatever you want, so long as you include Roman horsemen trampling that kid (obviously my tolerance threshold for the personas of child actors is a bit lower than that for actual children). I’m annoyed that Benigni’s emotionally fraudulent stunt was so widely received as anything but the betrayal of comedy-in-tragedy films. Find him a trampling role in Ridley Scott film, soon.
I don’t really hate them, but all three LOTR movies? I’d say the first gets a mention somewhere in the top 250 for the achievement it represented at the time and the scope of the fantasy that was brought to life. There was nothing particularly wrong with the others other than unwillingness to edit down the theatrical releases for people who don’t cheer for individual factions and have elven fantasy archery leagues, but the spectacle alone in the sequels is not enough to carry them into the top ones for me.
This may not change anything, but a lot of the appeal of the experience for me was less in the actual events and more in the tone and choice of language, especially in the flashback sequences. The casual racism of the father at the dinner table was particularly striking, and the use of prison rape, while visually horrifying, was not necessarily as gimmicky as it might seem to a foreign audience given that it is practically an accepted part of punishment to mainstream America and a hilarious joke factory to boot. Finally, I thought the whole way that Ed Norton handled everything down to the relationship with his brother (and vice versa, to a lesser extent) made for an interesting reflection on manhood, bullshit machismo, and violence at the fringes of society and throughout it. Again, there were many words that I’ve heard in different contexts minus the Naziism, and it made an impact. In retrospect, it’s easy to pick apart what I didn’t like about it, and I doubt it would be in my top films. But I think the movie’s there in part because of that “time and place” function for capturing the America of Rodney King in a reasonably compelling manner. Plus, who knew Fairuza Balk had one role she was perfect for?
Although I don’t find the inability to empathize with characters directly as important a defect as an inability to find them interesting (whether emotionally or like a bug under a microscope, if need be), this link and that site are great. Thanks!
I’ve watched Dr Stranglove but I’m still not entirely enamored with Kubrick as the quintessential American Auteur so many have made him out to be, although I did like Full Metal Jacket.
He’s cold. His movies are cold. There’s technical expertise in the shots and some great cinematography in the movies, but ultimately they are cold. I single out the Shining as an example because, for a psyhological horror thriller, all I can feel watching it is how Kubrick is manipulating me to feel psychological horror. I’m looking at the wizard behind the curtain as it were.
I watched it during my university days as well, when I was still a young and impressionable pretentious douchebag.
The Shining never really gave us a reason to care about what happens to Jack Nicholson’s character. Like John mentions above, he start out crazy and just ends up crazier. He and Shelly duvall had no chemistry in their scenes that it was almost like they were in two different movies. I understand that it was a facet of the Kubrick’s directing style which doesn’t endear me to the movie anymore. I didn’t like the idea that the final act devolve into all sort of unexplained weirdness, with Kubrick pulling out ghosts, and scenes from our of nowhere. What happened to the black guy, how did Jack get out of the freezer, what was that with the picture.
Overall, I got the sense that Kubrick didn’t really care about the characters in the film, that he was just there to put them through some elaborate house of horror film he constructed. It wasn’t entertaining to me. Cinematography can only carry a film so far.
I should have added American Beauty to the list as well, but that’s a film I try not to discuss. It’s a million dollar budget student film. Bah!
- Titanic. Maybe I just hate it because of how popular it was and all the stupidity that followed in it’s wake, but still.
- Saving private Ryan: a great scene at the start, a nice combat sequence at the end, bullshit in between.
- Amores perros. Fuck that movie.
The Godfather - Wonderful camera work but what the fuck is this movie about? It can’t be the mob, that’s more distorted and romanticized than a Hollywood gladiator flick. Familial bonds and their baggage? Nope, everyone’s in for mindless fratricide. The doom of obligation? Not with these kinds of cheap opportunities. My best guess is that it’s all about the stylized murdering, which I must admit, is supremely stylized.
The Prestige - Yes, yes a gripping tale of egos and devastates everyone in it’s path, but hold on a minute, why does Michael Cane’s character end up the most villainous in the movie? Come to think of it the only ones that seem to wrestle with any morality are the two leads. Everyone else is just a fuckwit douchebag compared to these semi-fuckwit douchebags.
Slumdog Millionaire - Maybe it would have been better as a musical?
Oh crap. We’re all trapped in an elevator together, aren’t we?
-xtien
“Folks do me a favor. Keep your hands off each other.”
Absolutely, that’s Kubrick’s most notable quality. He was a great director not despite but because of that clinical view IMO.
Anyway, those IMDB Top 250 have a lot of entries that I haven’t seen, not being a monocled film connoisseur, and even more that I neither especially like nor dislike, so I’ll just pick the topmost that caught my eye:
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Pulp Fiction – Tarantino doesn’t make films, he makes conceited caricatures of films.
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Casablanca – Simplistic war propaganda in a stylish film noir wrapping.
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Departed – How anyone can prefer this crude clone to the splendid original?