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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsAny movies that were suggested to as great but when you saw them they sucked?
I swear my friends are turning into devout philistines. Either that or I've evolved into an aloof snob. There's a few I know that any and every damned movie they gush about, and damn near demand I see, is gonna suck.
-- 'Borat'
I should have been suspicious when this one person was just babbling and gushing about how "Its SO funny!" and when I asked why she just said, Well it's just, I dunno....Funny!". Now she's not the most articulate sort so I just chalked her lack of specifics up to that and put it in my Netflix queue. It was beyond inane. I know humor, and that aint humor. I thought it just started slowly and then would build up: It didn't. I ejected the disc after 45 or 50 minutes I just couldn't take any more.
-- 'Pearl Harbor'
This one I did sit all the way through but even with prodigious use of the fast forward button ( through all the stupid romance bullshit designed to pull the drama queen crowd ) it was still the most part 2 hours of my life I'll never get back. I found decent CGI but infernally annoying historical inaccuracies in the dialog and situations and syrupy jingoism. Goddammit! I was hoping for a 'Tora Tora Tora' with modern effects, not a "Rom-Com" with aircraft dogfights. What really struck me was when I confronted the person who suggested this: The parts he liked the most; were the ones that turned me off the most. The gratuitous jingoistic bullshit. I mentioned the gross inaccuracies and was met with his pat answer: "Yeah It's just a movie". "Yeah, and it fucking sucked". My pat answer.
-- 'Taken'
This one suggested by two people. It must be good. Another friend and a girl I'm currently dating and pitching woo too. Billed by them as the ultimate cinematic masterpiece. No, it's the worst movie I ever saw. I mean it. Note to producer and director: If you must absolutely have a formulaic good vs bad jingoistic plot, at least make the "good guys" less revolting. I don't know how they did it, but I came to despise the daughter and her friend from the get-go, and the protagonist's character more as the movie went on.
The last is more of an after the fact thing. In the breakroom at work during lunch/dinner I have to suffer through whatever everyone else wants to watch on the TV in there, and so I get out-voted 15 to 1. ( My vote is to turn the damned thing off and eat in peace and quiet after working the previous 4 hours in a very noisy environment ) but for whatever reason I have to sit through LOUD episodes of 'Two and a half men'. Now everyone plays this up as the best thing on TV. Typical sitcom one-liner BS. My face muscles ache from rolling my eyes and scoffing and the sum total of all the mirth I was able to sweep up in one pile after being subjected to like 29 or so episodes was about 2.63 half-hearted chuckles.
Anyway, I'm eager to hear yours and I'm sure among those will be others I noted but haven't yet come to my mind.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)The Royal Tennenbaums...
I could go on but I've already probably stepped on somebody's favorite.
I just have strange taste in movies I guess.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)'The Royal Tennenbaums' was one of them. I like the Coen Bros movies but I just couldn't get in to this one.
cemaphonic
(4,138 posts)My wife hates every Wes Anderson movie except the Royal Tennebaums, which baffles me since they're all so similar in style and tone.
Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)but I completely agree with you that they are all so similar in style and tone.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)pipi_k
(21,020 posts)I thought it was totally pointless, lame, and a huge waste of time.
Texasgal
(17,045 posts)Avatar-
Really?
Independence Day-
Again.. REALLY?
That stupid wine movie, I cannot even remember what it was called, It was horrible though.
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)Gidney N Cloyd
(19,835 posts)Rhiannon12866
(205,401 posts)My friend and I intended to see another movie, but it was gone, so we saw "Sideways" instead.
LeftofObama
(4,243 posts)When that movie came out I was standing behind a woman and heard her say it was so good she was going to see it again to see if there was anything she missed the first time. It seemed to be all the rage when it came out, so I went to the theater to see it. OMG! There's a couple hours of my life I'll never get back! What a complete waste of my time! Horrible!
kaiden
(1,314 posts)Huge giant-ass space ship hovering over LA and Viveca Fox goes to work like nothing happening? Jeebus.
One of my worst movies: Blair Witch Project.
NRaleighLiberal
(60,014 posts)Our tastes tend to run quite counter to the court of public opinion and in inverse relationship to the box office take!
NV Whino
(20,886 posts)I even re watched these things after a decent enterval to see what I was missing.
Nope. Still shit.
There are movies I simply refuse to see. Titanic and Pearl Harbor being among them.
Texasgal
(17,045 posts)Titanic... UGH. I agree.
"Titanic" was about 3 hours too long
Wouldn't see it again if someone paid me.
Gidney N Cloyd
(19,835 posts)gvstn
(2,805 posts)DiCapprio looked like a little punk boy and Winslet looked like a grown sophisticated woman. Zero chemistry. Totally unbelievable "love" story. And way too long for no pay off. Definitely one to skip.
NV Whino
(20,886 posts)His high point was what's Eating Gilbert Grape?
callous taoboy
(4,585 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)NV Whino
(20,886 posts)Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)I didn't get Shorty or anything else about that movie.
NV Whino
(20,886 posts)When I bought my first DVD player they offered a couple of free DVDs. Get Shorty was one of them. I said no thanks.
Graybeard
(6,996 posts)Hitchcock was a total failure. What was Anthony Hopkins thinking?
OZ: The Great and Powerful was neither. And here's a
***SPECIAL BULLETIN***...James Franco can't act.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer demonstrated that no matter how much
money you can throw into a project, if you start with a stupid premise you
have a stupid movie.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was totally trite and terribly
unwatchable.
.So many more
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)but, Abe Lincoln: Vampire Slayer was based on the best-selling novel of the same name.
rrneck
(17,671 posts)They lined up down the street to see that bullshit. 109 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
nolabear
(41,963 posts)RAMTHA, for Chrissake???
Flaxbee
(13,661 posts)didn't, but wanted to. was afraid I'd hurt my foot if I kicked the wall.
mucifer
(23,544 posts)Sweet Freedom
(3,995 posts)There's Something About Mary and Pretty Woman.
Paulie
(8,462 posts)Don't care that it won an Oscar it's pure crap.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)...the opposite of personality traits that I enjoy. I don't even know if that makes sense because I hated/despised the film so much I even hate myself for watching the fucking thing. I still, to this day...beat myself with a hammer each morning and slam my fingers in the door to remind myself not to ever, ever be within 37 miles of the film.
And you know what?..Let's all go out into the woods without SHIT to use ..like a knife...or something PLUS..when we are scared to death that Something is going to kill us all AND it's dark....I have a wonderful idea. LET'S ALL GO TO FUCKING SLEEP...HELL YEA !!...that's the thing to do. If there IS a Hell (I don't think there is)...The Devil will be smacking his lips when he sees me.
Welcome..Bluejazz...heh..heh...guess what you're going to do for 50 trillion years.?
kaiden
(1,314 posts)and no place to go but down. Stupid movie.
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)ahhhhhh...
Chan790
(20,176 posts)What a tired cliched piece of film.
bobclark86
(1,415 posts)You hate Miami Vice (the show), too? How about Star Trek and the Rockford Files? Those old, tired, cliched messes, those!
Oh, wait. They're not a cliche. They're what everyone ripped off to get the cliche.
Chan790
(20,176 posts)But no, I mean Casablanca was trite and tired when it was made...really transparently borrowing elements from previous literary works, including most obviously (but not limited to) the war novels of Hemingway, Remarque, Trumbo and Pasternak. It's a shitty melange of virtually every prominent novel written in the last third of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century on the subject of love and loss in a war zone, wholly devoid of original content.
I know plagarism is the highest form of flattery but total emulation can never be greatness in its own right.
Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)Rhiannon12866
(205,401 posts)Sorry...
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)hopemountain
(3,919 posts)predictable, preachy, hackneyed, and boring.
raccoon
(31,111 posts)B Calm
(28,762 posts)sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)I despised everything about that movie but the character played by Robin Williams just about made me sick every time he opened his mouth.
All that bullshit Psych 101 babble he spewed at Hunting was infuriating.
Iggo
(47,552 posts)Nope.
Jeff In Milwaukee
(13,992 posts)After about thirty minutes, I was rooting for the witch.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)so much hype in the run-up to the movie - and the trailer looked great. But, the movie was a letdown when compared to the hype.
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)I usually love his stuff. It received lots of good reviews on the imdb site, with a decent 7 rating. I waited to see it on TV and was very disappointed. I couldn't get into the storyline despite giving it three viewings (because I should like this type of film, being a science fiction, horror, and fantasy buff). I gave it a 3 because the cinematography was good. I'm probably out of sync with a lot of movie fans here as I loved Blair Witch for its old school atmospheric horror where the danger is just suggested, adored The Conversation, and The Matrix is one of my all-time favs.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Squinch
(50,949 posts)people who didn't like it any more than I did, but who thought they were supposed to like it, all said that if you didn't like it you didn't understand it.
That was one baaaaaaaaaaaaad movie.
WorseBeforeBetter
(11,441 posts)opiate69
(10,129 posts)The first one was excellent, and I had been under the impression that the sequel was highly regarded as one of the only sequels that was allegedly "better than the original".. but I couldn't sit through more than about 45 minutes of it.. terrible writing, acting, directing, etc... gah..
Dash87
(3,220 posts)Every cliche in the book and boring. What's so good about it?
DFW
(54,384 posts)I think we were supposed to pity the noble dad who saved his daughter in spite of the fact that she didn't deserve it. If my daughter were like her, I'd tell her to have a good time learning Albanian and Arabic and go on with my card game. OK, maybe not quite, but the actress playing the role certainly didn't inspire me to cheer Neeson on to risk his ass to save her.
My vote is a "classic" French film from 1961. Sadly, I should have known to ask my parents first if they knew of it (they did). But I was a self-assured college kid who no longer needed to ask his parent about every little thing, so I didn't, and just went to see this French classic: "L'Année dernière à Marienbad" (Last Year At Marienbad)
A somber "mood" piece where the director deserved 25 years to life for making the audience wait for 1½ hours, thinking, " well SOMETHING has to happen in this stupid film," and nothing ever does. Groundhog Day without a plot or a laugh--or ANYTHING!!!
After kicking myself for wasting an evening, I called my parents to ask them if they had ever seen the film, and if so, would they please tell me what I missed. Film enthusiasts themselves, they asked me with incredulity if I had sat through the whole thing. I said I did indeed. They laughed and said I was a better man than they (Gunga Din), because they walked out after about a third of the way through (and already the third repetition of the same scene over and over again). This film made Groundhog Day seem like stream of consciousness by comparison.
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)with a plot and storyline. It's not meant as a means to entertain an audience and sell popcorn. It's a series of scenes strung together as things of the moment, like a series of photographs or sculptures. It's an example of "chosisme" ("thingism" where there is a very intricate and almost mathematical structure to the assembled images as separate things that only make sense once you note the order in which they're presented. It's pretty opaque and it's not trying to transmit a concept of story or character through the images but the images themselves (the things) are their own concept. As an entertainment type of film with a story it seems absurd. As an experiment in a different way of looking at an assemblage of images in a certain order on the screen it's pretty interesting. It's a film interested in exploring what a film is and it shouldn't be viewed without that forewarning. The director, Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote an interesting and challenging novel, La Jalousie that I read in college that was also an exploration into the technique of storytelling and what really happened in the story being told.
DFW
(54,384 posts)Still, after the guy won for the 47th time, it got tedious. If I want art films with a mood, I'll watch Bergman (chacun à son goût). A lighter, more tongue in cheek version of that kind of film was tried in "Trans Europ Express" with Trintignant. Tarantino used the "assemblage of images" technique in Pulp Fiction, too. I wasn't blown away by those two films either.
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)We studied it at UCLA film school. It literally tried to detach itself from narrative films like Bergman that you mention. It is miles away from what Tarrantino did in Pulp Fiction as he was trying to tell a story. Its succession of images followed an ordered structure unto itself such as (I'm trying to remember after more than 20 years) the man next to a physical object like the fountain is repeated as the structure expands and then diminishes to the same man next to a wall. The people and objects create relationships that repeat and must be deciphered to see the structure. You are not going to get what it's about if you try to compare it to any narrative film. It's about a structure of successive images that don't pretend to be symbols that refer to anything else such as people or events. Words in a novel are symbols that refer to people and things in the real world. Images in a film fulfill the same role. But in Marienbad its visual images are not symbolic but are things unto themselves, like words can be sonic "things" in poetry. The way poetry can be opaque and the words lose their symbolic reference to any world outside the poem, so too are the filmic images of things in Marienbad. I don't doubt that you were bored; it wasn't made to entertain. If the idea is that each image on the screen doesn't relate to a coherent storyline or narrative, then do you just have a random meaningless succession of images that don't relate to anything? Robbe-Grillet instead sought to provide his own internal structure, composing a different structure where the succession of images related to each other with great precision. A man walking down a staircase in the beginning of the film and then looking at statues of lions was later expanded with those same images but something else in between (I can't recall the structure underlying the film but you get the idea). Images following each other repeat, then later get played backwards, get interspersed with something else, but in a definite overarching structure of the succession of images. Robbe-Grillet was experimenting with a film not based on a typical narrative storyline where the images convey meanings in the real world (like words in a book) but where images create their own relationships to each other like words in some poems, where words becomes simply sounds with their own values and images their own things unto themselves.
greatauntoftriplets
(175,735 posts)Cast people who can actually sing!!!
bigwillq
(72,790 posts)I agree. I thought it was awful. Russell Crowe also made me walk out.
It was so long and boring.
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)thought the movie was unbelievably bad and we couldn't help but make fun of them singing every single word to each other.
greatauntoftriplets
(175,735 posts)I'd seen it multiple times on stage in London and in Chicago. I love the PBS 25th anniversary version (the one with Alfie Boe) and even own the DVD. The movie was just bad, though I know people who loved it.
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)singing dialogue became so monotonous and "sing/songy" it was crazy bad. Remember how they flushed out the dictator (was it Noriega?) by playing music over and over. that's how I would classify the film. Harsh, huh
greatauntoftriplets
(175,735 posts)and have seen it on stage multiple times. Go figure.
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)MuseRider
(34,109 posts)I am a musician and frequently have to play selections from it when we do pops concerts with guest singers. I have seen the play, but like Titanic, Les Mis became a popular "MUST see" so I never bothered. Some of the music is OK, I can be OK with that but when I saw that cast (I had almost talked myself into needing to see it) all thoughts of going were gone.
I actually do not mind when a character is done by an excellent actor and has a small singing part that is bad but not intolerable. Major parts with major vocal requirements should NEVER go to someone because they are pretty, handsome, popular or a decent actor who can't sing but as long as the public tolerates it and swallows it up it will continue.
I so totally agree with you but have been shunned by friends when the discussion moves to movies because of this, lol. I do have better things to talk about.
greatauntoftriplets
(175,735 posts)I also hated Titanic. Kept rooting for the damned ship to sink and put me out of my misery.
MuseRider
(34,109 posts)I still have not seen that one and hopefully I will always be able to avoid it. People around here were having Titanic parties. The claim of seeing it 7 or more times brought on squeals from some people I know. It was all I could do to keep my eyes from rolling all the way around in my skull.
greatauntoftriplets
(175,735 posts)Sometimes I think they think I'm BSing them about hating it. But I'm not, it was that boring! I saw it on video some years ago and the people in the store where I rented it (a mom-pop-and-sons place) told me that I'd hate it. They were correct. I didn't have high expectations because of the hype.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)warrprayer
(4,734 posts)Wolf Frankula
(3,601 posts)and nobody else. The wife was not a Rocky and Bullwinkle fan, she hated the movie. I was. I enjoyed.
But the cartoon was much better.
Wolf
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)except that nobody told me it was great. I was told it was a WW2 romance movie with Pearl Harbor thrown in there. The reviews were generally mediocre for the movie as well, so I had low expectations.
I never saw Borat. Thought Taken was a decent action thriller.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)The only movie I've walked out of, not even halfway through.
mainer
(12,022 posts)Hated it and didn't finish it.
pink-o
(4,056 posts)...and I like Christopher Nolan. Loved Memento. But Inception was just obscure and boring. When that van hung on the bridge ready to fall for at least 10 minutes thru useless cutaways, I was cheering for them to just drop to their watery death and put ME outta my misery!
rbnyc
(17,045 posts)I cannot say enough bad things about Imceprion.
I also love so many people involved in the movie, but it just failed on every level.
It overexplained the clear and obvious and completely lacked imagination, which was such a painful thing to watch unfold within such a limitless premise.
It's dreamscape. You can really do anything. And we culminate in some arctic chase scene like we are in an especially bad James Bond movie. OMG.
Myrina
(12,296 posts)I'm sure I'll think of more as the afternoon wanders on ...
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Reclusive redneck lives in a boat in a tree (it got there in a flood).
Recluse loves a girl in town. Recluse sends her notes about how much he loves her but it ain't gonna work out. Notes sent through two little boys who befriend him. No, this is NOT "Stand by Me".
Ugly rednecks on the Mississippi full of empty philosophizing and parents scaring the children if they ask questions or say anything.
Nothing happens for two hours. I never thought I would be so glad to see a shootout! Finally, something happens!
======
Also, Million Dollar Baby. I cannot give a shit about a woman (or man) who beats other women up and attempts to kill them in her job. She got what she deserved by ending up dying because another woman mortally injured her. Also, she was talking in the hospital with a trach tube. Gimme a break!
Any gangster or professional criminal movie. Silence of the Lambs, Godfather series, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Fargo (except for the mildly amusing cop Frances McDormand)--the same endless theme of men (and women especially) as murder & assault victims.
Can't be bothered to give a shit about immoral murderers. I don't think violence alone is entertaining. Same thing with the newer Batman movies. Can't give a shit about endless violence & threats of violence with no emotional connections with characters. Real world violence is much grosser than movie violence and I don't want to see either one.
I have watched historical movies like Schindler's List that show violence in time of war and show us how evil normal people can be and murder can be planned and executed by paper shufflers who see nothing wrong in patriotically following orders. That's a teaching opportunity.
Couldn't watch Alien on TV. Yuck. No way I want to see a slimy snake. I avoid horror and violent movies because I will have nightmares.
hunter
(38,312 posts)Not even Schindler's List.
My nightmares don't need any more material to work with.
IrishEyes
(3,275 posts)That is just off the top of my head. There are probably more films.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)Identity Theft
I tend to like Jason Bateman and remember him from shows in the 80s. Most of the movies he is in are great, but the script for this one was just pure garbage. I'm not sure how I got through it with out getting a pair of scissors and poking my eyeballs out.
I can't remember the name of the others. Most of the time I get them free so if I hit a few bad once it's no big deal.
KG
(28,751 posts)Paper Roses
(7,473 posts)BarbaRosa
(2,684 posts)All I got was Johnny Depp doing a bad Keith Richards.
Orrex
(63,212 posts)LIES! LIES! LIES!
If anyone told you that film was great, you should sever all ties with that person.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)And it wasn't just "Yeah it was a great movie, see it". He was gushing and raving about it, waving his arms and using gestures too. It was all very heartfelt to him, and like I said, the parts that really moved him the most were the parts I absolutely hated most. He got real pissed off at me when I told him it totally sucked, like I was being too much of a hair splitting snob. No shit.
He never was much of a critical thinker ( mentally lazy but not stupid IMO ) and was always a first class philistine movie taste-wise. Both he and his wife moved from center to right politically ( and I moved left ) and so relations are strained somewhat due to that, but we go way way back and have other common interests.
FloridaJudy
(9,465 posts)I'll give you the acting, the sets and the costumes were entertaining. But the music was excruciating, and it was a friggin' musical. After 20 minutes I was praying the composer would take up an obsessive non-musical hobby, like, say, scrap-booking.
It was the same two or three melodies repeated over and over and over and over..until I wanted to scream. This sums it up.
Taverner
(55,476 posts)we can do it
(12,185 posts)distantearlywarning
(4,475 posts)Apparently I was the only person in America who didn't like that movie. I just found every character in it to be completely unlikeable. I wanted to punch every one of them in the face at various points during the film. Have no idea what the moral of the story was supposed to be, either. Two hours wasted that I'll never get back. I was completely mystified by all the good reviews that film got. And I think it even won an Oscar or something. Were other people watching the same movie I was????
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)I stopped going to the movies about two years ago because I seemed to fundamentally disagree with movie critics about what constitutes good.
Now, I just catch them on the premium channels when they come out.
-- The whole 'Batman' reboot series
Heath Ledger was a mix between Doc Brown from Back to the Future and a bad copy of Jack Nicholson. The last two movies? Too dark, too slow, too long, poor cinematography.
-- The 'Star Trek' reboots
Free clue to JJ Abrams: Lense Flair != your penis. You can touch your penis all you like, lay off the freaking lense flair. And.. you screwed with cannon- bad juju.
-- Lots of Michael Bay: Transformers, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Amityville Horror, Miami Vice
Thanks for leaving a bad taste in my mouth when remembering things from my childhood, Mike!
-- 'Avatar'
Gah. I so wanted to like this movie. I can enjoy the visuals, just don't ask me to suspend disbelief due to the gaping plot holes.
Initech
(100,076 posts)I just watched "Into Darkness" last night and thought it was pretty amazing. But then again I'm not the type of movie / TV show watcher that reads too much into plot holes.
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)There are a few that aren't totally terrible- the italian job, ocean's eleven.
Most just make me smash my head into the screen (Cabin in the Woods*, The Thing).
*I know Cabin isn't a remake, but an 'homage' / attempt to 'revitalize' the genre.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)petronius
(26,602 posts)Probably others that I (luckily) can't recall right now...
Initech
(100,076 posts)They all follow the exact same fucking formula and there's absolutely no variation among any of them. Artist / sports figure / musician / actor / etc. has troubled child hood. Artist starts making music and making the big money that comes with it. Artist meets the woman/man of their dreams. Then they fall apart to drugs and alcohol and nearly ruin their lives. Then they go to rehab and somehow going to rehab and cleaning up makes their lives better. and the demons of their past magically get exorcized. I can think of about 100 bio pics that have this same formula. Can they make movies about real life people that don't follow this formula?
That's why I loved "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox" story - it was a direct parody of "Walk The Line" - a movie that followed this exact formula to a T, and had some very obvious and not so subtle times when it pointed out the comparisons between the two movies.
jmowreader
(50,557 posts)Without totally pissing off the absolutists who live, breathe and sleep Tolkien, there's no way to fix them.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)On the other hand, I rarely watch movies anymore because 95% are really bad. It has always been this way, though. Very few intelligent and original films are made in any given year.
I'm a film school graduate, too, and used to work in the industry, though I left it long ago. It is ironic, in a way, that I no longer have an interest.
Mass media doesn't aim very high.
rbnyc
(17,045 posts)...a good local independent community cinema on your area?
only the big chain cinemas.