IMDb Top 250 you think are TRULY crap

Cafe Society
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For example, I really don’t like The Shawshank Redemption, but I don’t consider it to be crap. Crap as in, How did this movie get to be Top 250 popular–it sucks!

Here are mine, however. Tell us yours.

#20. Goodfellas
My good friend and I saw this on video not long after it came out. He was a movie buff too, and our reaction was to laugh at this thing, considering it incompetent and retarded. Never did we suspect that this thing would have supporters over the long term. Just a stupid, stupid movie.

#27. The Silence of the Lambs
I never understood the appeal of the Hannibal character, which meant there was probably no way to like this stinker. Depressing but also really dumb. Self-important tripe.

#39. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Not well acted at all by Jim Carrey. Another movie that is trying to be all brainin and original, when its best material had already been done to death by pulp sci-fi back in the 1960s. I was surprised even to see this one on the list. Blech.

#63. Reservoir Dogs
Fucking retarded! Mr. Blond, Mr. Pink, Mr. Bullshit. Pulp Fiction is about the only QT movie I can stand, and I don’t really like it either. His vision of how things work in the world is simply infantile.

#74. The Departed
Scorsese has pretty much the same problem here: I didn’t by his cussed-filled version of coppery for a second. Seemed overwrought and fake. JN sucked in this film. Another I was surprised to see on the list.

#84. Forrest Gump
How did this piece of shit get on the list! God, I’ve always hated this movie.

#96. Kill Bill
Another QT retardation. I actually am a fan of bad martial arts movies, and QT utterly fails to capture anything good about them. I did enjoy that the battle with the ball and chain; that’s about the best I can say about this degraded piece of garbage. I have no earthly idea about what the critics saw in this. Also, anything related to Japan in this movie is utterly laughable if you understand Japanese, which I do. (I didn’t see part 2, so I can’t trash it here.)

#213. Scarface
I just saw this two days ago and laughed my ass off! Pacino is fucking ridiculous with that accent and the downturned mouth and all that crap–haw haw! Had fuckin’ DePalma made this as a comedy, I’d probably loved it. But this has some of the worst music EVER in a movie. Horrible 80s clothes, crap characters, and just–oh man, what a dumb dumb flick!

There are plenty of other films in the Top 250 that I’m not a big fan of. There are also many that I haven’t seen. On the other hand, many of my favorites are there. But the above eight films really, truly don’t belong there. I think.

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Is this a joke?

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Similar sentiment here. I was attracted by the title, but I can’t play this game. Sorry.

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I thought there were rules against drunk posting… :wink:

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I think this thread has potential.

#8 Pulp Fiction

What kind of incoherent garbage is this? Filled with inconsequential talk about hamburgers and whatnot. And the scene where they drive over a bump and shoot this guy. Is that supposed to be funny? I was surprised to even see the movie on the list.

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Chacun a son goute .

I disagree with the OP’s choices, personally, but everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. In that spirit, I actually found a few of my own:

29. It’s a Wonderful Life – I know I probably stand alone here, but, Og help me, I hate the crap out of this movie. It’s cloying, sappy, overly sentimental–everything I detest in a film.

60. The Shining – I’ve posted on this before. BO-RINGGGGG!

115. The Sixth Sense – Besides the fact that I figured out the end within the first 15 minutes and that M Night Shyamalan gives new meaning to the term “hack”…well, that about covers it, don’t it?

183. 12 Monkeys – An incomprehensible mess of the first (or should that be last?) magnitude.

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I agree. I’m not squeamish by any means, but the scene where Travolta accidentally shoots the guy who’s sitting in the back of their car in the head did it for me.

Incidentally, I don’t like QT much either. He comes across as extremely creepy and neurotic any time I’ve seen him, and he annoys the hell out of me for it.

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I thought I was the only one.

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Yeah, not a good movie, but not one that made me ill.

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You think Scarface is a good movie? Are you posting drunk?

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  1. I hated Casablanca. I know that’s an unpopular opinion, but… I was very bored by it. I wouldn’t say it’s “truly crap” but I don’t get what everyone loves so much about it.

  2. I also have grown to hate It’s a Wonderful Life. Partly because I’ve seen it too many times and partly because it’s sappy. Same for A Christmas Story, except that I’m not really sure why I don’t like the latter… I just don’t.

  3. Batman Begins? I wouldn’t say it’s a BAD movie, but why is it in the top 250?

  4. Amadeus. Again, not necessarily a bad movie, but I can’t stand it. It’s so obnoxious.
    And about 80% of those, I haven’t seen.

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The movie list breaks four ways for me: seen it and liked it; in the movie equivalent of the “to be read” pile for books; seen it and thought it was crap; and in the the “I plan to **not ** watch this movie ever” pile.

In the latter category falls well, pretty much any Quentin Tarantino movie, and pretty much any movie about the mafia. For whatever reason, the latter seems to hold great fascination for American pop culture, something which I’ve never understood.

In the seen, but didn’t like category: the aforementioned Forrest Gump, and also The Graduate (though I loved the soundtrack). Oh and I thought that Arsenic and Old Lace fell apart in the third act. I also think that the play version of it does, so I won’t really blame that on the movie.

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Truly crap? Wow, that’s hard. While some of the movies in the top 250 definitely don’t deserve that distinction, just about all of them have at least some redeeming characteristics, and I don’t think I’d call any of them “crap”. Perhaps having suffered through Manos: the Hands of Fate has altered my definition of true crap.

Anyway, here’s a few I don’t think belong on the list:

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: I love Wallace and Gromit, and I thought this movie was a lot of fun, but does it really deserve to be in the top 250?

Walk the Line: A solid, entertaining movie with some good performances, but ultimately just another biopic about a troubled musician and his struggles with drug abuse. My mind is already starting to confuse it with “Ray”, and I doubt I’ll remember much about either picture in a few years.

Gladiator: Ugh. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a great movie.

The Green Mile: I don’t get this one either. I saw it in the theater, I liked it well enough, but I just don’t think it’s classic material.

V for Vendetta: I got bored and stopped watching halfway through. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood.

Forrest Gump: Cute, but way, way overrated.

Requiem for a Dream: Technically well made, but the “drugs are EEEVIL” message is overly simplistic and about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

American Beauty: I seem to be the only person who didn’t care much for this one. I understand why people like it, but it rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. I love the score by Thomas Newman though.

Citizen Cane: Just kidding. :wink:

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: I’m not a Tolkien fan. What can I say?

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It’s not a favorite of mine, but it does have its moments. And I think it’s a little silly to denounce it based partly on the “Horrible 80s clothes.” Cause, ya know, it was made in the 80s.

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The only one I’d even consider classifying as total crap is Crash. Waaayyyy too heavy-handed for my tastes. Unpleasant viewing.

All of the others on the list that I’ve seen were at least decent.
Also, I do want to congratulate Aeschines for having a really terrible list in his OP.

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I’ll second you on Crash and add Gone with the Wind. People treat it like it’s a thing to be worshipped, but I hate every frame.

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There are a couple of things about the IMDb Top 250 list which it’s useful to know before you judge how good the list is. The first is that you should ignore the ratings of any film any more recent than, say, 1998. It takes at least five or ten years for a film to “settle down” in its popular and critical ratings. I’ve been looking at the ratings of films in the IMDb list for years now, and, quite consistently, popular films get high ratings when they come out and slowly drift down the list as time goes on. More rarely, a film doesn’t get appreciated when it was first distributed and rises a little in the ratings. Even more rarely, an old film (from pre-IMDb days) gets rediscovered and eventually makes it into the Top 250 list. You should consider any film on the list made since 1998 as being a recent film that hasn’t been around long enough yet to be judged against other films. This is about 20% to 25% of the films on the Top 250 list.

A second thing is that every list I’ve ever seen of “great films you should see” or “great films that are underappreciated” is quirky. For years now I’ve been looking at hundreds of lists like this, from books, magazines, websites, personal recommendations, and other assorted forms. These lists are usually the selections of a single person or a small number of persons, but occasionally they are surveys of large groups. Every single one of them is a little bit weird. About 20% of the list will consist of films I’ve heard of that don’t have that much critical or popular support. About 70% of the list will consist of pretty standard critical or popular favorites. About 5% of the list will consist of films that I’ve never heard of before (and they have to be pretty obscure for me to have never heard of them) or which I have at least never heard anyone praise before.

In some sense, it’s the films that I’ve never heard before that interest me most on these lists. There are still a lot of excellent films out there that don’t have much critical or popular support. The IMDb Top 250 list is, in this sense, one of the less interesting lists to look at. Not only does it tend to overrate recent films, but it has less obscure but interesting films than most such lists. The only exception to this is that occasionally it will include a foreign film that is extremely popular in the country where it was made but which isn’t well known in the U.S.

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Lord of the Rings and anything Star Wars.

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I’m gonna love this game.

#20 - Goodfellas: Not “truly crap” but so overrated that I think it deserves a mention. The first hour was interesting and looked like it was leading to something good, but I was bored to tears after that.

#33 - American Beauty: Ham-handed. I loved it when it came out and I was 18 years old but it fell to pieces on repeat viewings. Any adult who thinks this movie is profound probably doesn’t get out much.

#37 - Taxi Driver: ZZZZzzzzz - ! Huh? I don’t want to use the word ‘hate’ - because they are talented - but I personally do not care for DeNiro or Scorsese at all. That said, I watched this movie with an open mind and still hated it.

#39 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: I agree with the OP on this one, except I think Jim Carrey actually did a pretty good job. It’s just that a good performance cannot save a bad movie. And wasn’t this one of those “pseudo-indies” (studio films made to look and feel indie) that were all the rage a few years back? Those were all crap, IMO.

#74: The Departed: Another one that wasn’t exactly crap, but does not deserve to be on any top lists in my opinion. My biggest complaint was that there was nothing that made this a particularly good film. None of the acting was great, there was no consistent and memorable aesthetic, there was no great score. I think this would’ve worked better as a book, and I think it would’ve been regarded as a pretty mediocre one.

#100 - The Incredibles: Not exactly dreadful, but nothing more than a decent way to kill 2 hours. This movie should have a 6.5/10 at best.

#111 - Crash: See what I said about American Beauty, except I was older when this came out and I saw it for the ham-handed crap it was right off the bat. I lost all respect for the Oscars when this won. I heard two women at work talking about it one day and one of them said, “it really makes you think.” I wanted to say, “if that movie makes you think then you’ve had your brain set to OFF for a long time!”

#112 - Finding Nemo: See what I said about The Incredibles except this one was a lot more boring. I could not figure out where all the hype surrounding this barely lukewarm snoozefest came from.

#136 - Gladiator: A guy whom I really respected went to see this in the theatre when it came out and cried. Then I saw it and lost a little bit of respect for him.

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Tarantino has to be the most pretentious director I’ve ever seen. “Infantile” is a good
description of RD, and I frankly don’t get the love for Kill Bill at all. I guess I prefer
to have characters who are real people and not just walking symbols.