I don’t like it as a sci-fi film. However, if I watch it and think of it as a comedy, I can enjoy it.
The thing is, movies are the most subjective form out there.
If a critic said a song or album was great, chances are you’d check to see who the artist was, and then decide whether you wanted to buy the thing.
If a critic raved about a book, a bestseller, even, you’d likely look at the author and then decide whether a murder mystery or a potboiler is for you.
And if a critic loves a TV program, you decide first whether you like that kind of TV show.
But if a critic says that a particular movie was the best ever made, most people run to the theater. No, don’t give me that look. I’m not saying everyone is a bunch of mindless twits, not at all. Maybe it’s because movies get a lot more hype than any other form, but I think it’s also because different aspects of a movie appeal to different people. That’s why it’s so difficult to recommend a movie to someone, even if you know what they like!
Right on, my brother. Although I usually extend my “you suck!” to people who write the title as anything other than “Seven,” I’ll make an exception here. Sometimes I feel like the only person in the world who recognized this entire movie as pretentious, manipulative tripe with paper-thin characters who exist only to be miserable, be killed, or both.
Speaking of which, my nomination is Dancer in the Dark. Not just a bad movie, but a hateful, manipulative, and predictable one that completely wasted the talents of most of the people involved.
Another vote for Freddy Got Fingered.
Titanic would be a great movie if you could go through and digitally remove the two main characters. After all, the special effects and historical detail were very cool.
But as long as those two twits insist on standing front of every piece of cool scenery trying to convince me to care about their pitiful little love story, I will not watch it again.
Judgmental as I can be about movies, I usually don’t try to write someone off because their taste in flicks, but there are a few exceptions.
Fire Down Below - That inept Steven Segal flick where he’s an EPA agent. Bad all the way around, glaring technical errors, stupid plot, howlingly bad dialogue, Segal failing to hid his gut, and still trying pass himself as a credible action star. I was forced to watch this shit when my buddy rented it trying to get in good with the girl at the video store. She liked it, he liked it, several people I work with liked it. These people all need help.
Erin Brocovitch - Julia Roberts chewing the scenery in an ego-trip movie with a warmed over TV movie-of-the-week script. She might as well have paced in front of the camera for two hours holding up a sign saying, “Give Me My Oscar Now!!!” No, she wasn’t interesting or engaging; just grating and obnoxious. This wasn’t a film, it was a commercial for Julia Roberts. Figure it out already.
Battlefield: Earth - Liking it for non-bad movie or guilty pleasure reasons. A guy at work said he liked the effects and editing style, most people I know found the editing confusing and even nauseating at times. He thought the primative humans learning to fly planes so quickly was only a “minor flaw” in the movie. But he thought Pitch Black was awful. Huh?
I concur. As I get older, I find pettiness in people increasingly irritating. And, to me, few things are more petty (and fascistic) than subjecting one’s relationships with people to a series of artistic litmus tests based upon whether one liked Patch Adams, ** Titanic**, Seven, Dancer in the Dark, or whatever movie you personally loved or loathed with the heat of 10,000 suns. If, in the course of a conversation, a person happens to mention he or she likes a movie I dislike (or vice versa), the most I’d do is to ask why and maybe say I disagree with him or her. Then, I’d let it go. There’s no use getting into a screaming match or physical altercation over something as subjective and relatively insignificant as one’s movie tastes. Life’s too short.
That being said, if someone, after seeing Triumph of the Will, told me, “I was really impressed by that German guy with the funny mustache,” or, after seeing Birth of the Nation said, “That movie really told the truth about African-Americans,” I’d still excuse myself from his presence and back away while avoiding eye contact.
my vote has to go to ‘me,myself and irene’ .
having recently forced myself into watching this pap as part of my disatation research, i fail to see any value there at all…for anyone…ever.
I’ll go out on a REAL limb here and say the entire “Star Wars” canon, with the possible exception of the first movie(yes, I know it’s Episode IV: A new hope). That was the one that I thought was a mildly entertaining little tribute movie to the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials. George Lucas himself admitted that’s what inspired him. But then they made another. And another.
Etc.
I think the acting in all these movies is atrocious(I like Mark Hamill much better as the voice of the Joker). The writing is sub-par, but in the first movie I dismissed it as being typical of the old serials it paid tribute to.
And the worst part is that everybody that I know:
1). LOVES the movies. All of them.
2). Thinks the acting and the writing are Oscar material and the Academy won’t nominate anything because these movies made money.
3).Is otherwise perfectly normal and quite discriminating in their tastes.
Don’t actually tell people that they suck for liking these movies, but I’ve only met about 3 people in my life that don’t care for them. Coincidentally I value these same people’s opinions on most things.
Chris W
" "
–Silent Bob
The only time that movies make me doubt people’s intelligence, (not to mention deem them entirely without taste) when they profess to like them are when they tell me that they like the** Austin Powers** ones. Yeah, I can sort of see how they could be funny after a frontal lobotomy, but…
You rock.
See, elfkin, I would say that people who DON’T like the Austin Powers movies either don’t get the satire, have no sense of humor, or both. But that’s what makes the world interesting.
Jman
Oh relax. No one here really cares, it’s all for fun and to see why people are so passionate towards disliking a certain movie. You may learn they have a good reason for disliking a movie so much, and though it might not sway you to feel the same way, you see it in a new perspective. No one here REALLY thinks you can judge a whole person simply for their love of incredibly bad cinema. Just kidding, “bad cinema” is subjective.
This was NOT to be take that seriously. It’s fun to read. I didn’t mind “Titanic”! Do I care what people say about me for liking it? NO! I invite them to mock me… who cares? If anything I have more respect for them for having that sort of HARMLESS passion. Even some people who have said “I like this movie, I must suck” listed movies they thought people sucked for liking.
You know, where are you people in the threads that bash Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey? There must be SOME people who enjoy their work, (Truman Show was kickass and so was Carrey). Though ripping on actors is admittedly different from ripping on their audiences… who are these people to say certain actors have no talent? Or that they are bad at what they do? Most of them have just seen certain actors in a handful of movies that pretty much have them act the same way they know makes money. It doesn’t matter though, because there are people from the other side of the spectrum that express themselves, and perhaps changes the nay-sayes mind. If not, it’s all in good fun anyways because you know you can’t be WRONG for feeling the way you do about a movie or actor you love.
I tell my best friends they suck all the time, they do the same to me… it truely is out of respect most of the time, beleive it or not.
I agree, this movie made me feel like crap days after viewing. It was so morbid in the end. I’m not talking about blood and guts, just… sad and disturbing.
Dead Alive
This is one of the few movies that I feel have absolutely no redeeming qualities at all. The only possibly defense of this thing is the “camp factor”, but I refuse it even that. How Peter Jackson could have been involved with the both worst (this horrifying excuse for a movie) and best (LOTR) movies ever made is beyond me. Alien abduction perhaps.
:: Resists temptation to rant about Fight Club… ::
I’ve never hated a movie so much that I would dislike a person simply because they found it entertaining. The only movie I can think of where my feelings come even close is Manos: Hands of Fate, which bean_shadow already mentioned. I saw it and thought it was incredibly dull, terribly shot, terribly acted, etc., but I would very, very much like to meet a person who enoyed it. I cannot even imagine what sort of mind would enjoy this movie, and it would be wonderful to find out. So, if you like Manos: Hands of Fate, you don’t suck and I would sincerely like to meet you.
I am pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before (at the top of my lungs in a crowded room somewhere)…
but I cannot fathom why anybody liked “The Matrix”. It is the only movie in my life where I fell asleep in a theatre.
Boring only touches the surface.
[sub][sup]::Waits for every poster on the board to get out the blow torches…::[/sub][/sup]
Also, how could anybody even follow “Traffic”? I was dying to see that movie, and guess what? It blew! Not even good blow either! Just totally blew!! I still don’t know what was going on! Thank God I saw it on video or I’d have demanded my money back. Anybody that likes this movie, please explain why! I’d watch Michael Douglas standing still for two hours, and this movie managed to make me resent him.
You raise an excellent point. I would add this caveat- as well as make a few grammatical corrections- to my post above if I had it to do over.
:: produces flame-thower from nowhere, ignites flamethrower, nods toward SilkyThreat :: 
MyFootsZZZ, I wasn’t accusing you of taking this question seriously. In fact, it appears we probably have a similar attitude toward people who don’t share our opinion on what is a good movie and what isn’t. However, I do think there are some people out there who are maybe a little too intense about their opinions of movies and (especially) music and use them to judge the character of other people. (Of course, nobody here is like that.)
First there was Highlander. A little cheesy and whatnot, but a good movie. There can be only one.
Then there was Highlander 2. The Immortals come from… another planet? And Connor isn’t the last one after all? Uh…
Then there was Highlander 3. Oh, there’s another Immortal sealed in a tomb or something. They must have missed him the first two times…?? There was a hot naked chick though.
Then there was Highlander 4, which fundamentally contradicts every other Highlander in nearly every way and therefore doesn’t exist. Even besides that, it was horribly, unredeemably bad.