I have to agree with Gone With The Wind, Casablana, Citizen Kane, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Gone with the Wind is about an hour too long and Scarlet O’Hara is loathsome and shallow and deserves every bad thing that happens to her.
Casablanca is just plain boring, and so is Citizen Kane, although I do recognize its importance in film history.
Although Audrey Hepburn is a real hottie, I can’t stand her or Peppard’s characters in Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the same reasons zyzzyva mentioned. Mickey Rooney’s character is so cringeworthy and outright racist by today’s standards it’s hard to believe nobody’s mentioned this yet.
Some of the other titles mentioned so far are among my favorite films. But hey, de Gustibus non est Disputandem
Godfather II. I read numerous times that it was one of the few sequels that eclipsed the original (which I wasn’t wild about either) so I rented it and fell asleep three different times before giving up. And I like gangster movies !
The Graduate. I wasn’t expecting every character in the film to be so intensely unlikable, but I could have handled that. What really caught me by surprise was how they were all so totally boring. Unlikable is okay. Uninteresting is the kiss of death. Crappy movie.
That’s the one I was trying to remember when I came into the thread and settled for The Usual Suspects, which was at least interesting. The Graduate is plain-ass boring.
The Graduate
2001
The Godfather (including sequels)
The Matrix
Titanic
Everything by the Coen brothers (Fargo, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Barton Fink, etc.)
Everything by Oliver Stone (Conan, Platoon, Salvador, Scarface, etc.)
Easy Rider
Dirty Harry
Taxi Driver
Saving Private Ryan
The Shawshank Redemption
I have seen and do like Casablanca, Citzen Kane, The Usual Suspects, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Schindler’s List, and Grave of the Fireflies. I haven’t seen the rest that people have mentioned
Saving Private Ryan: The first 30 minutes are truly great, the violence and blood being a realistic portrayal of the horrors of war. The middle is just a snooze fest. The last third is a stupid, cliched, cartoony battle that is just reveling in violence and blood for its own sake.
Pulp Fiction: One of the worst movies ever made. Nothing redeeming or worthwhile whatsoever. A complete waste of celluloid from beginning to end.
Memento: A disgusting movie about disgusting, worthless people about whom I couldn’t care less. Ooo, it’s told backwards, ooo. And it has a twist ending, ooo. And just how the hell did he remember that he couldn’t remember, anyway?
Lord of the Rings: Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. And I still say that Sam was the true hero, and Frodo was a weak simpleton.
Unforgiven: Shoot, shoot, kill, kill, blood, blood, snore, snore. Someone needed to explain the concept of “plot” to those who made this movie.
Sorry, had to nitpick this. I’m listening to the Scarface soundtrack, so I figure I have to make the correction–Brian DePalma directed Scarface, not Stone.
ETA: Just checked. Oliver Stone did indeed write the screenplay…Not sure if that’s what you meant.
The movie that always jumps to mind when I hear this question is “Gandhi.” I’m inclined to think people praised this movie as great because its SUBJECT was a great man. The movie is cerftainly competently made, and Kingsley’s performance is excellent, but it’s a by-the-numbers biopic in every way that rushes across decades of history, has little dramatic interest, and doesn’t really have anything to say you couldn’t have gotten from the Wikipedia entry on Gandhi.
I’ve also never quite understood the love for “Apocalypse Now,” though that movies seems to be loved mainly by young men so maybe it’s not that widely regarded as great. It’s got all the elements of a great film - great director, great actors, great concept, some truly great scenes and lines - but they just don’t come together for me. Taken as a whole it’s pretentious crap, and the ending is so awesomely pretentious and stupid it makes my eyeballs bleed.
Easy Rider - I guess 1969 was one of those things where you had to be there.
On the Waterfront - I’d always heard that Brando have been a great actor when he was at his peak. Then I saw this and realized he was an over-acting ham even at his best.
The Sting - I watched this for the first time just last week. I liked it but I was amazed by how cheap it looked. Quite frankly it looked like a made-for-TV movie that somehow got Newman and Redford for the leads.
2001- I cannot think of a more boring film. Ever. Watching a spaceship dock for 10 minutes with the Blue Danube playing in the background??? Ugh. Please just shoot me now.
I’m torn. Because on the one hand, I really want to support Sofia Coppola because the mainstream Hollywood industry can use more female directors.
On the other hand, I skipped huge bits of Marie Antoinette (yeah, yeah, very pretty, big whoop, nothing happens), and Lost in Translation left me bored and apathetic–an extreme ‘meh’.
ok, for me anything by Kubrick. Recently saw Gone with the Wind at our local art deco theatre where they do old movies on the big screen once a month, and thought it was lame!
The Graduate Unforgiven ET Platoon Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Never actually saw Driving Miss Daisy, but I thought it was weird that it won while Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing was in theaters.
Re: Gone With the Wind, IMHO the problem is they cut a really important character (Will Benteen), minimized many others (Grandma Fontaine, Scarlett’s parents’ families, other citizens of Atlanta), and basically ignored some fascinating issues Mitchell had raised. There’s a lot of backstory in the book. Pretty dresses and Clark Gable are nice, but not an adequate substitute.
Of course the book is also extremely racist and goes to great lengths to justify slavery. It’s tough to read, but does provide a glimpse of America in the 1930s.
When the book was written. There’s absolutely nothing to suggest a “revisionist” view of slavery, in her telling; it’s just and right and the natural order of things.