Bad: Movies of musicals, e.g. Cats, Evita, Les Mis. I love musicals and want to watch professional singers/dancers, not actors who are also singers/dancers. This does not apply if it is an original musical movie (e.g. Hairspray, Grease, LIttle Shop of Horrors).
Good: Intelligent onversation, intelligent people. intelligent plots.
??
All of these were stage musicals before being made into movies. None of them were original musical movies first (although there were original non-musical movies of Hairspray and Little Shop of Horrors before the stage musicals appeared).
I’m a sucker for good dystopian movies. Terminator, Mad Max, Day After Tomorrow, etc.
Movies where the underdog has their day can make me misty. Most Pixar movies are some form of this. Midnight in Paris and Stardust fit the bill.
I dislike stupid slap-stick comedy movies. Sometimes they work but rarely do.
Yes, why is this so hard to do?
P.S. I corrected your typo…I hope this is not considered illegal editing of a comment.
‘Big’ is a body swap movie and quite good. The only one that’s any good. Hey, did you know there was an alternate ending to that movie?
Instead of changing back to himself as a boy the Tom Hanks character watches ‘14 Going on 30’ on TV.
And then ZOLTAR shows up at his thirteenth birthday party, and turns him into Mark Ruffalo!
(That’s the only ending in my timeline… it sucks here, man. But at least Nelson Muntz didn’t die in prison here.)
I really enjoy movies about professionals doing professional shit. From Apollo 13 to Steve Jobs to Margin Call to Michael Clayton to Moneyball, films which focus on people doing their jobs are a personal favorite.
Hated: films where the goal is to be creative in how people are hurt/tortured/killed. Saw is an obvious example, as are 80s slasher flicks. Just not interested.
Big, and that one episode of Justice League Unlimited where Lex Luthor and the Flash swap minds.
“At least I can learn the Flash’s secret identity!”
(Removes mask and looks in mirror)
“… I have no idea who this is.”
Favorite theme: Somebody decides to do a very, very bad thing that’s going to fix all their problems, and promises themselves that they’ll go back to being a good (or at least not-so-bad) person afterward. It never works out that way. The bad thing doesn’t go as expected, and the aftermath leads to more bad things.
Most hated theme: Fish-out-of-water character lands in an uptight little town, and teaches the straightlaced townspeople about tolerance and/or how to loosen up and have fun. In the process, the town bully gets a comeuppance.
There was an episode of The Avengers (no, the other Avengers) where Steed and Mrs. Peel get their bodies swapped with two quite common enemy agents. Watching Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg act lower class was awesome.
100% to both!
P.S. Michael Clayton is a big favorite of mine. I’ve seen it at least four times, and if it’s playing (on a non-commercial channel) I always stop for it – one of a very few that includes Secrets and Lies and Joy Luck Club.
I remember that one…one of my favs.
Ooo, yeah, that’s a good one. I gave up on Game of Thrones for that reason.
I hate that theme’s photo-negative: successful professional from the big city visits small town, learns how pretentious and overworked they are compared to plain small-town Real Amurrican values, and decides to quit their job and live in the small town. Extra hate points if the successful professional grew up in the small town and chose to leave it for the big city.
There are two themes I really don’t like.
One is (and it’s kind of hard to articulate exactly) the movie where the protagonist or villain has such a complicated and cunning plot that they’ve apparently predicted everyone’s actions several moves out, as if people and things are that predictable and it’s a game of chess or something.
The other is the whole “scrappy underdog gets thrown a bone because he’s pathetic” theme, but spun as “scrappy underdog triumphs despite adversity”. The movie Rudy is the poster child for this. Somehow they spun some runty loser plugging away at Notre Dame despite being too small, slow and stupid to actually make the team, and then the coaches throwing him a pitiful bone in garbage time, as some sort of triumph over adversity. It wasn’t. They let him play because he was the collegiate equivalent of the special needs kid they let score a touchdown in garbage time. It’s all the more wretched because he WASN’T special needs, just some chump who was too stupid to realize when he was out of his league. I suppose the takeaway is “Even if you’re totally outclassed and out of your depth, maybe someone will feel sorry for you and let you play one play when it doesn’t’ count for anything at all.” The guy should be embarrassed to have had that story get out, not proud of it.
As long as you don’t go full Ayn Rand. You never go full Ayn Rand.
I loved Heath Ledger’s Joker portrayal, but the Joker’s extremely complicated plot to bring down Gotham City in ‘The Dark Knight’ is a perfect example of this. For someone who claimed to embrace chaos, he was actually a real planner.
For a novel which preaches self-reliance, most of the protagonists were, in fact, heirs and heiress’s. Of the five main characters only 2 were self-made (Rearden and Galt), and in Hank Rearden’s case, it is never explored how he acquired the capital to begin operations.
Other disliked theme/memes:
Cop partners who are polar opposites in personality/ethnicity who irritate the crap out of each other and everyone else, but solve the crime while committing mayhem that would IRL get them thrown off the force and/or imprisoned. Bonus negative points for having a squad captain who is completely useless except for throwing screaming tantrums.
Movies where the plot centers around hostages who are in terrible peril while the good guys natter and bumble around.
All in all, I’d rather see a tacky Giant Insect movie.*
If I ever go full Ayn Rand, I’ve been replaced by a doppleganger. No, I’m thinking more Un Lun Dun.