He was pretty good in Margin Call.
Not movies, but it seems that every studio album the Rolling Stones have released in the last 30 years has been greeted with cries of “return to form” and “Mick and Keef still have it”. They play a few songs off it from their mega tour and it is quickly forgotten.
The Reader was never big. It grossed $34 million domestically and $108 million worldwide. That’s not great for an Oscar winner, I think.
I just watched it a couple months ago for the first time, and it definitely is not a movie with a broad appeal plus it got a lot of mixed reviews despite the performance by Winslet.
I think the situation is even worse than the OP thinks. It’s not just that a lot of movies which were highly regarded when they came out drop in most people’s estimation after a year or so. I think that it takes at least ten years for the general opinion on a film to settle down. I get this idea from the top 250 films webpage on the IMDb website. This isn’t a list of the opinions of average film critics or of average moviegoers. It’s more like the average opinions of hardcore film lovers, the sort that see (at least) dozens of films a year. The IMDb only uses the votes of people who regularly rate many movies so that they can avoid having some group stuff the ballot. The Top 250 webpage has now been going long enough and I’ve been watching it long enough to say that a lot of highly praised films slowly drop on that list over a period of ten years or so. All I can say is that you should realize that many movies that are highly popular and highly rated when they come out will be not be considered nearly as good a decade later:
Definitely. Does no one agree with me about The Big Kahuna and Shrink? Or are those just too obscure, and no one has seen them? If people have seen them and actually dislike them, I would be curious to hear about that because I thought they were fantastic.
I wrote:
> . . . stuff the ballot . . .
I meant:
> . . . stuff the ballot box . . .
Dances With Wolves, simply because, apparently, Kevin Costner is in it. I watched this again recently and once again was riveted throughout. While Costner has made some clunkers (Tin Cup, anybody?), this wasn’t one of them.
I’m sure it’s the Hollywood Hype Machine™ that gets everyone in a tizzy, so much so that those not caught up in it won’t point out flaws for fear of being a Debbie Downer or looking unsophisticated. As the Hollywood Hype Machine™ moves on to the Next Big Thing the people who didn’t like the film feel freer to say so, allowing others to hear contrary opinions.
For example; The Departed is an okay film. Definitely not great and I don’t recall any performances that were extraordinarily good. The dialogue wasn’t great, the acting was so-so, the story was hackneyed and convoluted. Even Jack Nicholson was more like a cartoon character than evil mob boss. It’s still got 93% on rotten tomatoes and almost all of the professional reviews are positive. I appreciate it had all the ingredients for being a classic but most of the scenes were like everyone was on autopilot. I saw nothing original or inspiring.
I agree with you but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. The primary purpose of a movie is to pay for the bread and butter of those who make movies. The vast majority of movies serve their purpose and are quickly forgotten. But every decade of film also has a few movies that rise above the rest and become the movies we identify with a particular era. In many cases the creators of the film don’t recognize the quality of what they’re working on. I’ve heard stories about “Casablanca” and “The Godfather” being considered sub par by their post production crew. “It’s a Wonderful Life” was a box office failure.
There are always movies that get people talking, but if the conversation isn’t interesting then it will quickly die out. If you’re still talking about it after 10 years then it’s something worth paying attention to. We’ve reached that point with movies from the 90’s, the only ones I can remember off the top of my head are really quite good for whatever they’re trying to say. If people are still talking about a movie after 30 years then I’d consider it a true classic.
That gives me an idea for a thread…
Well the plot certainly wasn’t well-crafted. Batman is basically all about grappling hooks. He frequently uses grappling hooks to solve problems one would not traditionally use grappling hooks to solve. But when he’s stuck in that pit with plenty of cordage and bits of metal with which a grappling hook could be fashioned, the idea never occurs to him. Or any of the other prisoners in the pit.
The Honest Trailers The Dark Night Rises is pretty appropriate for this thread.
I agree with you completely about The Departed. I think people got a bit blinded by the excellent director and cast and didn’t want to admit their favorites had produced a work not up to their usual quality.
I largely agree with you, Frazzled. I only want people to remember as they look at the hype for a film when it comes out that many times (and perhaps most times) that film will not be considered to be nearly as good in a decade or so. All I’m saying to be is “Be skeptical about film hype, just like you should be skeptical about anything else.”
Turner Classic Movies showed it a few months ago.
I saw it back in the day (although not in the theater) and wasn’t all that impressed. I couldn’t watch “Good Morning, Vietnam” either, and shut it off after about 30 minutes.
“Snakes on a Plane” was the ultimate Hollywood hype. Has anyone actually seen this?
Yeah, the initial scene in SPR is probably the most realistic depiction of war I have ever seen (and not being a D-Day veteran myself I do think the many D-Day veterans that said it was extremely realistic–to the point of being unpleasant to experience, bear that out.) That is something in and of itself, but the rest of the movie is actually boring. It follows down the same path of movies like The Great Escape or some similar WWII movie but does so in a much less interesting way. I still watch the Great Escape from time to time and it’s probably 40 years old now, I’ve not watched SPR in years.
I do think some of the backlash against Shakespeare in Love is also because of Harvey Weinstein’s involvement. He’s got a curious track record of spending much more than other producers in campaigns to get his movies Oscar wins, and also appears to do really good at that. Some are split on whether they think it’s because he’s produced movies that really should win the Oscar or whether he’s actually really good at gaming the voters and has perverted the process a bit.
Am I the only person who has to be careful while talking about “Saving Private Ryan” because there’s a gay male porno parody called “Shaving Ryan’s Privates”, and I’m tempted to say THAT instead?
:dubious:
How can you not like Fellini?
I watched it on cable. It is an entertaining, ridiculous movie. No one was expecting an Oscar-quality film. All the hype is around the title, and it was the Internet that hyped it, not Hollywood. It is a parody of itself. But that’s ok, because sometimes you just want to watch a really bad disaster movie.
Snakes on a Plane was like the Charlie Sheen madness from a few years back where fun and games on the internet some how fell into real life and suddenly everyone snapped out of it and said, “What was I thinking?”
Absolutely, and it was exactly what I was expecting. Everyone that watched that movie wanted a dumb, ridiculous movie where Sam Jackson yells a lot. Mission accomplished.
All the reviews I heard about Man of Steel and the Dark Knight Rises were “meh” at best immediately upon release. I don’t think the opinions of those movies have soured.