My 80 year old mother cracked a rib, laughing so hard at ‘Borat’. (No, she was not senile, sharp as a razor and loathed fundies and republicans, all her life). She also adored ‘Two and A Half Men’, ‘Family Guy,’ and Joan Rivers, whenever she was on tv.
“Best Movie Evah” that was meh award. Fargo. Very ordinary
Most false advertised movie: Magnolia. There wew no OMG coincidences. Two Days in the Valley and Grand Canyon did this genre so much better
Most Anticipated Movie -> Horrible Movie award. The Force Awakes. I know what you all are saying and you all are wrong.
Although I have been disappointed by many movies, the one with the biggest gap between Positive Expectation and Negative Reality, for me, has to be Avatar. $200 million for a movie and NO budget for a script? Astonishing.
I won’t watch anything with Will Farrell, Adam Sandler, or Jim Carrey in it.
For balance, the movie I was expecting to hate, but ended up enjoying enough that I’ve seen it more than 50 times now… ** Joe vs The Volcano** Brilliant. Every scene is a gem.
All of the Christopher Nolan “Dark Knight” series. I thought they were boring, had plot holes the size of freeway tunnels, and were so dark and humorless that I just didn’t see the point.
“Jurassic Park 2” - I loved the first one, and had extremely high hopes for the second. I was very disappointed.
“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” - I am a huge Harry Potter fan, loved all seven original movies, and I literally fell asleep twice during this one. Boring movie, nonsensical plot, and Johnny Depp was annoying.
I had heard that “Pan’s Labyrinth” was terrific, albeit violent.
It was violent, all right, but not so terrific IMNSHO.
Agree with everyone about 2001. My dad raved about that movie throughout my childhood but I didn’t get a chance to watch it until I was in my late teens when we finally ponied up for satellite TV. I found it the most boring movie I had ever watched. Also agree with the above comments about Will Farrell and Adam Sandler. I’ve always found them incredibly stupid, even when I was a sophomoric idiot myself. Even Elf doesn’t do much for me, and I’m a sucker for Christmas movies.
Agree with the above posters re: all superhero movies. Boring, mindless action sequences. Yawn.
All the Star Wars movies except The Last Jedi. (I once foolishly started a thread on my ambivalence to the Star Wars movies, and the ensuing uproar ended up with Miller of all people pissed at me, two posters pitting each other and pepperlandgirl leaving the board in a huff, never to return. I still feel bad about that.)
Avatar. It’s Dances With Wolves — in space! Racist tripe.
Of course…
I think Waterworld is one of the most entertaining movies I’ve ever seen, so take all the above with a large grain of salt.
Same. Too-serious attempts at a genre that’s inherently silly that couldn’t live up to the gravitas he was trying to create. I can live with the plot holes and suspend disbelief for a film that’s a bit more self aware but the Nolan films were taking themselves too seriously as Very Important Things to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Heh. When Tommy Lee Jones was giving his little monologue at the end of NCfOM, I was so bored I tuned it out as I waited for something more interesting to happen. Then the credits rolled and I thought, ‘well, I guess I should have paid attention as his little speech must have wrapped things up.’ I’ve never gone back to find out what he said. It’s on Netflix and I just can’t be bothered to look at that last two minutes. I just don’t care enough to take the time as no matter what he says, it’s not going to make the rest of the movie at all intersting.
I concur with Inception.
The original 1968 movie The Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Somehow I had never seen this one and saw the more recent one (1999) with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo and thought it was not great but enjoyable. I was really looking forward to seeing the original version, but quit watching probably less than halfway through the movie. It just bored me to tears. I am willing to give it a try sometime in the future if somebody can convince me that the 1968 movie is just slow to get started and will be worth watching until the end.
Well, I’m not sure the point was to make a specific moral or something. It’s about a person who’s amusing and does things we all kind of wish we could do, but is also flawed (like all of us). In fact, regarding Amelie’s guy, that’s completely the central part of the movie: she was completely confident when turning other people’s lives upside-down, but too terrified to follow-through when it came to her own life.
Two movies that were highly rated that I just could not get into:
Anybody remember Out of Africa? I thought it would never end.
My girlfriend and I walked out of Prince of the City because we were bored senseless. That’s the only time I ever walked out of a movie.
I’m glad I’m not the only one.
Characters? CGI was the star of the movie.
Another vote for “The Shape of Water.”
I was bored beyond belief - and all the Oscar buzz it had gotten just baffled me. It was basically a serious version of “Splash” with the roles reversed.
Yeppers.
Thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!
I saw that movie with two friends when it came out in 1983. We all thought it stunk. And then we were stunned by everyone we knew, and everyone we didn’t know as well, saying what a great film it was.
I’m not sure I’ve ever talked IRL with anyone (other than those two friends, who I’ve long since lost touch with) who didn’t think it was good. But to us, it felt like a made-for-TV remake of Secaucus 7, and not a very good one at that.
Exactly. The sort of thing that should be of interest to students of film history, but why should anyone else care?
Or, per the Mad Magazine parody, 201 Minutes of Space Idiocy.
It wasn’t even that good in 1978, but I can’t imagine that it would be the least bit interesting now. It and Tootsie (also mentioned in this thread) would be mostly interesting now as material for a sociology/women’s studies course, as examples of where American gender roles were at in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Anyone mentioned the Lord of the Rings trilogy yet? You’d have to pay me to get me to watch them again.
Thank you for listing all but one that I intended to mention.
My one addition is The Hobbit trilogy, which I wanted to like but couldn’t.
Recently, Annihilation. I went on the strength of some recommendations from friends, but it was extremely pretentious, and it also felt to me like it started nowhere and ended nowhere. The premise is, frankly, dumb, the characters are dumber.
You know how the least-popular part of 2001 is that extended trippy light show that’s supposed to mean something but damned if you know what? Annihilation has one of those too. From what I understand, the novel is even more pretentious; the characters don’t even have names, they’re just “the surveyor”, “the psychologist”, and so on. Because that’s how real people are, just a job with no identity.
Is annoying and has been forever. A surprisingly long career based on tiresome schtick.
I don’t begrudge Melissa McCarthy milking her moment in the sun for all it’s worth, but I was underwhelmed by the first couple films she made and shan’t see another. And Hollywood? There are other funny actresses out there.
Stars that underwhelm me so much I avoid their movies: Will Farrell, Adam Sandler, and Jim Carrey.
Rushmore - Went with three of my “artsy / more intelligent” friends and by the midway point, we were all so bored that we actually walked out of the theater. First and only time I’ve ever done that. Hell, I sat through “The Phantom.”
Gladiator - This is a case of "I waited for a few weeks before going to see it, and by then, it was so over-hyped that there’s no way it could meet the expectations that people had set forth.
“Manchester by the Sea”, and that’s because of Casey Affleck who has my vote as the most mediocre actor ever to win an Academy Award.
Avatar? When it was first released I recommended people go see it in 3D theaters. It was a feast for the eyes. Nothing like that had ever been done in a mass market cinema experience. Yeah, the story is a lame ripoff of Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Yeah the scenes with lots of humans up close in 3D made you feel ill. Still, it was an experience.
The T Rex scene in Jurassic Park, the 3D Michael Jackson music video at Epcot Center when I was 16… Those three are the only times I can think of when visuals just made my jaw drop.