Bashing someone’s choice of a movie they admit to liking in a thread about liking movies that snobs dislike?
I haven’t seen these for a good while, but they were both very popular at my household. Long Kiss Goodnight is underrated.
I halfway agree with you there - the Hugh Grant/Alan Rickman/Emma Thompson/Bill Nighy/Liam Neeson portions of the movie are good-to-excellent; everything else is crap.
Fifth Element
Beetlejuice
Heavens Gate
I like them. But Chis Christoferson is the most wooden actor of all time.
It’s fashionable to dislike Beetlejuice?
My thoughts, too. I don’t know that it’s considered great art but I think most people think it’s fun and enjoyable. Even if they don’t like it, I don’t know any “snobs” going out of their way to look down on Beetlejuice.
Also shouldn’t the thread title be “What Popular Movies Are Fashionable to Dislike But You Don’t”?
Personally, I thought The Dark Knight was disjointed, shallow, and trying to beat the viewer over the head with its message. The Burton/Keaton portrayal of Batman was a lot more subtle and humanistic in many ways, especially since he didn’t go to great length or spend valuable story and character development time to try to rationalize how and why Batman had such equipment and means available to him.
Stranger
Nope, I never watched it because I loathed the book.
It’s perfectly fine that he likes the film and I’m not bashing his choice to do so.
But to assert that Postman lovers constitute a silent majority is, well, delusional. And this thread has more than enough of that already. 
:d&r:
I’m a little confused. Weren’t Titanic, Forest Gump, and Dances Wolves massively popular, hugely grossing, Acadamy Award winning films?
I actually like all the Matrix movies more or less equally. At least I don’t think the second and third film are any stupider than the first. The second film had one of the best car chases ever (even though by necessesity a lot of it was CGI).
Starship Troopers.
Any film by Michael Bay.
Well, we are talking about movie snobs–popular doesn’t always equal good.
Okay, I get it. Big box-office success…that’s the important part!..makes it fashionable to blast it on this site (not the bigtime critics), but you enjoyed it anyway. Or I, rather, in this case.
Actually a pretty interesting subject, and I have a couple that definitely qualify:
Return of the Jedi
EVERY single discussion I’ve seen anywhere about this movie has absolutely raked it over the coals (and of course most of them affirmed The Empire Strikes Back as the most super awesome bestest Star Wars evern by a million billion parsecs).
I loved it. Both when I saw it for the first time and the final unedited version on VHS.
Okay, here’s what you need to understand (and Mr. Lucas has mentioned this himself a number of times): The first movie is the beginning, ESB is the middle, and RotJ is the end. That’s how it works… ESB has to be dark, both to show that the Empire is still a major threat even after losing their greatest weapon and to set up Luke’s confrontation with destiny…in other words, so there’d be a POINT to a third movie!
And seriously, what’s wrong with it? A tense confrontation with the sinister Jabba, every bit as dangerous as the Emperor himself. A desperate fight against hopeless odds to save Han, the unlikely champion of the rebellion. An awkward meeting with the backward Ewoks, who fight like demons when faced with the evil of the Empire. (Aside: WHAT is so horrible about the Ewoks? Yeah, they’re cute, they were made to sell merchandise. And R2D2 wasn’t? Especially after Attack of the Clones, where the friggin’ 10-second Wookie shot made it clear that you didn’t miss a thing.) And of course, the final confrontation on the Emperor’s ship, where the actions of three men have a greater impact on the war and the fate of the Empire than a hundred Star Destroyers. If you weren’t moved by this, you weren’t paying attention.
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
I don’t think this was well-received here; the consensus, anyway, was that it was grossly inferior to Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was a rollicking movie, and after repeated viewings, I have yet to find one single grossly objectionable thing. (Okay, the way Donovan got skeletonized was pretty gruesome, but no worse than the other major character deaths.) In particular, I think the relationship between Indy and his father was handled beatifully. They bicker, they grumble, they get on each others cases, but deep down, they truly care for each other, and they end up saving each other’s lives. I never gave a damn about a minor schlub like Dr. Brody, so I wasn’t bothered by his turning into a schmuck. Bottom line, if you like a super-tough hero overcoming impossible odds and learning what true victory is, you’ll like it.
[Note: I’d like to include Temple of Doom, which had lots of great action and, as someone mentioned earlier, was the only movie where Indy defeats the evil completely of his own accord, but I could not…could not…COULD. NOT. stand Willie. You want a prissy spoiled brat, fine, but making her shriek and scream and whine for the entire goddam movie was the stupidest screenwriting decision I’ve seen in her life. (Kate Capshaw herself was flabbergasted by the number of times she saw “and then she screams”, never a good sign.) It’s the one IJ movie I could never watch more than once for that one reasion.]
Re. Titanic: I think it’s sad how seemingly everyone’s afraid of using terms like “mediocre”, “lightweight”, “disappointing”, or “missed opportunity” these days. I was impressed by a lot of things about this movie. The workings of the massive ship, the costuming, the shipboard activities, the inescapable class divisions, and of course the plight of all the passengers who could not reach a lifeboat. All of which was shot to hell the moment that tedious love triangle came barrelling in. (Special mention of Caledon Hockley here, who was butchered nearly as badly as Willie. He was painful to watch.) As far as I’m concerned using one of the grandest movie backdrops in history for a soppy romance was a sellout a thousand times worse than anything Lucas got from the Ewoks. What’s worse is that whenever the movie can tear itself away from them, you can see real drama. The stuffy first-classers’ thinly-veiled contempt for new money. The hymn singers praying for a safe journey. The workers who desperately want to save the ship and are told that it’s impossible. The poor mother who can do nothing but sing her children to sleep and make their deaths peaceful. The captain who accepts and pays the ultimate price for his foolishness.
If this was the point of the movie…the broad spectrum of humanity, their motivations, and how they react to a horrific crisis…I’d include it, hands down.
GameHat - I’m kinda surprised you said 300, as I don’t recall this one being blasted here (or anywhere). You can look for my review on IMDB if you like. I think “Fighting good, stuff tacked on not good - 5/10” sums it up nicely. Didn’t see any racism.
Shakespeare in Love - slight, but totally well-crafted.
Little Miss Sunshine - same
American Beauty - sure it’s a little shallow, but again I go with the well-crafted
Right – and it’s the opposite of pretentious to bash TRL for its artsy lack of any understanding of basic cause-and-effect or human behavior.
You’re free to like it for your own reasons, of course, although I have trouble imagining any reasons not based on its arty/snobby (i.e. pretentious) reputation – but please don’t think anyone is being trendy or fancy in expressing disappointment that large sections of the movie actively make no goddamned sense at all, even as commentary on war.
Here’s a link to a previous post of mine highlighting only one scene – multiple completely stupid, nonsensical things happen in that scene.
All of The Thin Red Line is filled with that sort of disrespect for the viewer. Some of it arguably falls within the purview of “director’s choice,” like when he shows that the AWOL soldier at the beginning got picked up by American forces and what follows is minute after minute of pensive smoking, when of course the interesting part of the story is HOW was he picked up – did the friendly natives out him, for his own good or out of fear? Did he turn himself in to spare them being questioned? Was he spotted? HOW did the interesting tension inherent in the setup get resolved? We’ll never know, because Malick isn’t interested in human beings, he’s interested in how cigarette smoke looks in air currents.
Later, during battle scenes, Americans and Japanese run past each other within the frame, not interacting, as if they don’t see each other. But it’s not a commentary on how fear gives us tunnel vision, or on individuals turning a blind eye to the enemy so they are not complicit in killing – it appears to be simply bad editing.
There’s a scene where an American has a Japanese prisoner at gunpoint – the prisoner is on his knees, flinching in humiliation and fear, and the American stands before him, rifle leveled. Will he shoot, and dehumanize himself, or will he try to make his way out of the battle encumbered by this prisoner? Neither, of course. A gunshot rings out off-camera, and the American falls dead. The Japanese soldier is still on his knees, apparently unarmed – did the shot come from somewhere else? Another American, shooting his fellow to save the prisoner? A Japanese sniper? The start of a new banzai charge? Does the former prisoner try to flee back to his unit? Do the other Americans notice the shot or the prisoner at all? No, they appear to be ignorant of anything happening and they were standing right there. What DOES happen? We’ll never know, because Malick loses interest in the puzzle he’s set up, and the camera turns away to show more meaningless running around.
Throughout the movie, characters begin speaking moodily in a voice-over, and the camera pans slowly around and you see a different character is actually talking than the one the camera’s been lingering on, requiring the viewer to constantly go back and readjust his or her memory of who said what. It quickly becomes difficult to track who feels what way or who said what, even if one cares deeply – but Malick hasn’t allowed us to identify with the characters at all, partly because we’re no longer sure which one is which, or who said/thought/voiced-over what as the gorgeous tropical sun set.
Several times a character insists that something occur and then it never does, nor does anyone appear to be avoiding it – it’s more like the dialogue was forgotten or never even understood in the first place. It doesn’t appear to be an intentional comment on the meaninglessness of war, or the difficulty of organizing humans under stress; it looks more like Malick couldn’t be arsed to follow through on any logical sequence of actions.
The whole movie seems like watching a regular movie while blasted out of one’s mind on cold medication – there’s the same distance from actual caring, the same inability to follow the plot, the same question to one’s self: “Why don’t I turn this off and concentrate on being sick and bored? Maybe I’ll pass out.”
It’s not pretentiousness that leads us to dislike The Tin Red Line. It’s consciousness.
.
The Postman was on the other day. I sat down and watched the whole thing, again. I even cried a little bit.
Do you know how bad it was? Up until the very end of the movie, I was sure that Adrian Brody and Ben Chaplin were the same character. Think about it - the actors sort of look alike, they were dressed alike (obviously), and no effort was made to give them distinct personalities. It was only when one of them (Brody? Chaplin?) died did I realize that they weren’t a single character who had gone AWOL because his wife had left him. If every other actor in the film hadn’t been famous at the time, I probably would have gotten more characters mixed up.
The John Cusak action sequence was decent, though. Only good scene in the movie.
Wait… I meant Ben Chaplin and James Caviezel.
Kind of proves my point, huh?
Your description inadvertently reminds me quite well of why and how much I like The Thin Red Line. Your consciousness is not universal. That you think it is is where you cross the line into pretentiousness.
No, but the laws of physics, and cause-and-effect, and to some extent human nature, are.
Go read my link and explain what’s cool about watching characters emerge from a line of trees and, moments later, turn back and look at the same treeline and exclaim, “we can’t go through there!” What works for your consciousness about the rookies being afraid to leave the danger zone and go back to safety? What’s pretentious about finding it baffling that men standing in waist-deep running water would say “we can’t stay here!” as if they would, under any circumstances, do so? Who camps part way across a river?
And then, while being shelled, they proceed to actually stay there, soaking wet, risking getting killed, rather than taking cover in the dense nearby woods? What statement is the director making?
When they agree to go back along the wire they’ve trailed behind them. and then inexplicably go at right angles to the path that you’ve seen them travel, what do you think is the plain, straightforward, unpretentious message? You know, a straight-up guy thing you can express without being a snob?
Your sense of movie continuity, motion from one scene to the next, and characterization in general are not as superior as you think they are.
Also, it is possible to see a forest, not just trees. EVERY movie has continuity flaws. No exceptions.
No, I’m not interested in arguing with you. It would be pointless.