I gotta disagree on Starship Troopers – Verhoeven trashed and dumbed-down Heinleib’s book – and to what point? If he wanted to satirize war-mongering and inept command decisions, why not just film The Forever War instead?
(And Just For the Record, I like ST, although for entirely the wrong reasons. But it must have Heinlein rotating in his grave, for lots of reasons. Especially the scientific inaccuracies and the dumbing-down of his carefully thought-out alternate science. )
What Women Want starring Mel Gibson. Great premise (read women’s thoughts), shitty movie.
With regard to American Psycho -
A female director took the script in a different direction than the premise of the book - made Bateman the butt of jokes rather than the suave hero he seems in the book. We laughed at him, not with him. Plus, the film states the whole episode is in his head, none of the killings really took place, which is very different from the book.
But I think both the book & the film have their merits, albeit very different things to differnt people.
Anyone seem the film “Cube”?
How about that for an idea?
Waterworld Great idea - a far-future Earth where dry land is only a myth and people live their lives on the world-wide sea. Horrid movie - totally devoid of logic or consistency. Supposedly it’s been long enough that new life forms have evolved in the sea (as demonstrated by a sea critter encountered in the first few minutes of the movie), and yet things like postcards and crayons can be recovered intact from ruined cities beneath the sea? Oh, and don’t even get me started on the whole Exxon Valdez bullshit…
Actually, that’s one of the first movies I thought of when I saw the title of the thread. Then I decided not to include it because part of what made it so conceptually interesting was its simplicity. (Plus, I kinda like the way they can get away with one basic set – change the lights so the room is a different colour… and hey, it’s a different room!)
The dialogue could have been vastly improved, but if you had a huge budget and fiddled with it too much, it would end up being like House on Haunted Hill or any of the other “we must get out of this house/building/ship full of booby-traps/monsters/aliens before we die!” movies. It wasn’t really a “bad” movie, it was more or less underdeveloped due to budget.
I’ll just second [bThe Running Man**. Damn that could have been much much better
Remember Flatliners, the movie responsible for uniting Keifer and Julia? Very intriguing idea for a movie; What do they find on the other side? How does it affect them when they return? Nope, none of that. Let’s just turn it into a generic scary movie where everyone has to confront their past to make the world all right again.
Larry Cohen is the king of this genre.
I remember Maltin once saying, “As usual, Cohen the producer should have fired Cohen the director and replaced Cohen the writer.”
Take a look at this pedigree. Most are very interesting idea, and all were utter crap:
Idea: soft-core porn film in 3-D. (Well, it sounded great to me.)
Movie: I believe the title was “The Stewardesses.” I’m not sure if this is the 1969 movie listed in the IMDb, but I know I saw it before 1975.
In any case, it was awful. It is on the short list of movies that I really wish I had never seen.
Two movies immediately leapt to mind for me:
Practical Magic
and
Phenomenon
Both could have been truly fascinating and thought provoking and touching. But instead they ended up as braindead Oprah fluff (particularly Practical Magic).
Also, I love time travel stories and movies, and yet have oddly felt no desire to see Just Visiting, Black Knight or Kate and Leopold.