A while ago I watched Milk. I really like Sean Penn and was happily watching along. I took a break to prepare food. The phone rang and I talked for a while.
When I went back to watch Milk I discovered that, since I knew how it all unfolded, I didn’t give a shit. I turned it off and did something else.
I do this a lot with TV shows - miss one episode and never watch again. It is less common in the middle of a movie.
Have you done it? Deliberately or by chance?
If I rent a movie, I’ll generally finish watching it. But if I just flick by a movie on TV, I can easily get distracted by something else and not bother finishing it. For instance, I’ve watched bits and pieces of Gladiator and Braveheart, but I’ve never seen the end of either.
I seem to have this problem with Will Ferrell movies, Step Brothers, Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights. Lose interest about half way through and turn off the TV.
I’ve tried watching The Big Lebowski about 4 times, and I always turn it off before it’s over. Sometimes it’s from being too drunk to stay awake, sometimes from boredom.
Had to shut off i am sam halfway through before I vomited. Yech.
I’ve never been able to get all the way through Cassablanca. It bores me to tears.
I’ve also never been able to get all the way through Apocalypse Now, for sme reason. I don’t think it’s boring, but for some reason or another, I always end up falling asleep before the end. I think it’s because all my attempts to watch it have been late at night and it’s a long movie.
Milk for me too, and Gladiator.
Weird I did not like Gladiator, but I love Spartacus, Gods of the Arena.
It took many tries, but I eventually saw the entirety of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Guess what happened the first 4 or 5 times?
I can never get more than a few minutes into Forrest Gump, as I said in the thread about it. Basically, I find the movie either boring or offensive, by turns, and I don’t like Tom Hanks.
I kept trying to watch Brokeback Mountain, and I WANTED to like it, but I think that I know too many real cowboys, and real cowboy culture, for it to sit right with me. Yes, there ARE gay cowboys, and a gay cowboy culture. But I just couldn’t get into this movie.
As for TV shows, I was following White Collar, and enjoying it, but I missed a couple of episodes and lost track. I might rent the series sometime in the future to find out what happened.
I don’t know, the worms ate into your brain?
Well, if your adolescence was as ill-spent as mine … passed out from taking too many drugs? 
b…i…n…g…o!
The Others. Got about 10 minutes in before guessing the “twist,” so I turned it off and confirmed my guess on the internet.
I usually watch a movie straight through, but there were two that I didn’t finish.
The Departed. I got bored after about an hour and turned it off. It was very familiar ground for Scorsese.
Desperately Seeking Susan. I was liking it, but I got interrupted and decided not to bother watching the rest.
I’ve tried a few times to get through Black Hawk Down but can’t seem to follow the disjointed action, which shaved head marine is which, where anyone is at any time, and the motivation behind characters to become sitting ducks.
It becomes a jumbled mess and I give up on it.
Gone with the Wind.
Also Jaws, although I think I’ve finally managed to see enough out-of-order scenes to add up to most, if not all, of the movie.
I started watching Transsiberian the other day and quit somewhere in the middle. It was when Emily Mortimer’s kinda-shady character is lying to Ben Kingsley’s Russian-police-inspector character, and she was so transparently, obviously lying that I lost all sympathy for her, and for Emily Mortimer as an actress, and shut the DVD off right there.
Tons. I have no problem not finishing a book or movie that doesn’t capture my interest.
Most recently:
Mojave Phone Booth
Fifty Dead Men Walking
Forever Strong
Let me see…I know I’ll catch flack for this, but I quit watching Brazil about 10 minutes from the end of the film; I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I’ve been meaning to finish American Beauty for years now, but I don’t think I’ll ever get back to One Hour Photo even though it was pretty good.
I get interrupted a lot watching movies at home, so I still need to finish Stand By Me, Death at a Funeral (2010), and Suck.
Gothic, the Ken Russell movie about Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and John Polidori inventing the archetypes of modern horror whilst on holiday.
One of these days I’ll finish the damn thing.