Read upthread: apparently not.
Yes. These movies, as well as any starring the Wayans Brothers. Keenan Ivory Wayans is the only remotely funny Wayans. Damon is funny like a broken clock is right twice a day. The other lesser Wayans suck the funny out of a movie, like a humor vacuum. Case in point: White Girls.
Also the Nicholas Cage action movies. Con Air, 8MM are examples. Horrific films, both of them.
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Forgive the hijack, but thank you, thank you, thank you, for mentioning that movie. I saw it on TV many years ago. I have remembered most of the movie, but came into it after it started, and never saw the name. For many years I’ve been wondering what the name of the movie was. My curiosity is finally satisfied. Thank you.
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So that I’m not just hijacking, but adding something to this thread, I’ll second The Forgotten. I felt fine watching the movie, but after my wife and I left, as I thought about what I just watched, and all the questions and plot holes that came to mind, I actually felt empty. A movie actually made me feel empty inside.
I’ll also add Escape from L.A. to the list. I should have just walked out of that one.
The Avengers. I had to take a cab after seeing that in a theater. It erased my ability to drive.
You know, I think that you are all too negative. So, to inspire some hope in the beautiful art of cinema, I’m going to counteract your examples of stinkers with one of the smartest movies I’ve had the pleasure to watch, the underrated masterpiece “Untraceable” with Diane Lane:
Even though I am not a computer buff, I hate movies that get the technical stuff completely wrong because the writers can’t be arsed to study the subject they are writing about, but this movie got everything right. First off, there’s a killer putting people on complex torture devices that will kill the intended victim when enough people connect to the web page to watch. Just put the web down, you say? Wrong, cleverly the writers tell us that the server is located in Russia, a place that, as everybody knows, has got no law enforcement whatsoever. Actually the FBI won’t even bother in calling the server’s owner and telling him “Dude, like, illegal activity in there” because, with a clever understanding of Russian psychology, they know that any Rusky will be just too happy to let capitalist American dogs die.
Then there’s the brilliant detecting job the FBI makes in that movie, really, really clever stuff: you see, when they are watching the first on line victim, one of the agents, Tom Hank’s son, says something really cryptic, he says, paraphrasing “If that was me, I would blink my location in Morse code”. Now, after he is kidnapped himself, Diane Lane needs just a few hours of watching his friend blinking at regular intervals, the one who said that he would blink in Morse code if he ever was in that position, to make the connection. Wow. I would have needed years of study before making that jump, but I guess that the FBI doesn’t hire fools.
Unfortunately, regardless of Diane Lane’s quickness, Tom Hank’s son dies just when they were translating his last words. Now, somebody who doesn’t know anything about computers would just make the agents “rewind” the movie to get the rest of the message, like that was a videotape or something. Fortunately, the writers are savvy enough to know that it’s impossible to record things from the Internet. Now, that’s good writing.
But you may think that the writers or writer or whatever just knows a lot about computers and FBI protocols but not really anything else: WRONG AGAIN. There’s an impressive knowledge about cars there. You see, a few minutes later, Diane Lane has to enter a car for some reason, and the only way is through the driver’ window. Now, a lot of ignorant people believes wrongly that breaking the glass of a car window is pretty hard, but in the movie they know that you only need to nudge it slightly in the center with your elbow and it will shatter like a cheap glass of champagne.
Absolutely magnificent.
Well… a bunch of little rocks has a much larger surface area than one big rock, so more will burn up in the atmosphere. I think that was the logic there, insomuch as the word “logic” can be applied to the movies in question.
The problem with that notion is that the dumbest elements of the film don’t really have anything to do with the viewpoint of the source novel. The excruciatingly contrived “love” triangle, the faux-Aliens gadding about-- “Hello, Mr. Space Mantis? Your victims are here!”-- these are all well-established, highly generic American cinematic dumbness tropes. So rather than being an insightful satire of Heinlein’s politics, the movie actually reads like a textbook example of how the Hollywood blockbuster machine takes genuinely intelligent source material and dumbs it down into unrecognizability.
Yeah, but all of the kinetic energy still arrives, it’s just transferred to the atmosphere rather than the Earth’s crust. With a small object it might help, but with an asteroid “the size of Texas” I don’t see the benefit.
I watched Not Another Teen Movie.
The next day, I almost failed a maths exam.
My friend got 100%.
I’m blaming the movie.
Have any of you endured the supersonic dumb that is COCKTAIL?
This movie is so stupid I’m not even sure I remember what little plot there was. I do know that I didn’t watch the whole thing, which in itself is some sort of epic drain of something, for when it was released Tom Cruise was still sane, I was in my 20s and IN MAJOR LUST with the boy. So, for me not to watch it merely for the muscle~y eye candy, it had to be bad.
But, as far as I can recall, it was merely about the ultra-boring, mind-numbing lives of bartenders who can flip cups around while they make the drinks. People watch, people clap! People enjoy the talented bartenders! Who are cute! The end.
Seconded. I tried to catch up on the cinemediocrity of Cocktail a couple of years back, when there was apparently nothing else worth watching whatsoever, and couldn’t take more than a few minutes of it. And I’m a major Bryan Brown fan (I own the miniseries A Town Like Alice!).
Here’s another stinker: Speed 2. Saw that baby in the theater. I still like Sandra Bullock and Jason Patric, but together, they didn’t have any charisma or chemistry whatsoever. I think the movie may have gotten a few [golf] claps at the end, but I’m pretty sure those people were just being sarcastic.
There was not the slightest indication Verhoeven understood the political viewpoint of the novel. In fact, I don’t think he even read it.
I thought the whole “It’s a satire” thing came about after the movie bombed and the creator, or producers, or whoever, were trying to save its reputation.
Megaforce, hands down.
Disco-era jumpsuited motorcyclists with fabulous hair save the day.
My favorite line: the cowboy mechanic, the actor of which speaks with the stupidest Texan accent of all time, says of the team brain, “He’s got more degrees than a thermometer!”
Another Gay Movie - Even going in, I expected it to be bad, but not as aggressively stupid as it was.
Somehow I imagine that if, in the spring of 1969, the rioting, rebellious drag queens & gay rights pioneers at Stonewall were shown this movie, and told that this would have been the end result of all their struggles, then all the drag queen would have put on their street clothes, the men would slip wedding bands on their fingers & invent fake wives, the women would put on make-up and frilly dresses, and they would all go on to lead lives of quiet desperation, but thinking confidently to themselves “this way is much better.”
Another vote for Date Movie. Alyson Hannigan must have been blackmailed. It’s the only reason I can think of for her being involved in that dreck.
Hmm… the fact you applied any thought at all regarding procedural steps in the legislative process in the U.S. Congress in regards to this movie says a lot about you. (Or your arrogance).
Most dudes that hate Starship Troopers because it didn’t do a good job of adapting a very good book to the screen. But if you simply look on the film on it’s own, (without thinking of Robert H spinning in his grave) then you see it as a fun SF action film. Where only the commercials made it up to great, the rest was “eh” to “eh+”. Plus boobies, which gives any film an add’l +, or 1/2 star.
Thus Swordfish gets a F+, as it has some fantastic rarely before seen boobies. Heck, they may move it to a D-.
please inform me before you use that rating system again.
You owe me a new monitor, keyboard, and carpet.
Too funny!