Another vote for Prometheus. I wanted so badly to love that movie and pretty much did the first time I saw it. Repeated viewings made me like it less and less but damn…the visuals sure are great.
That movie makes perfect sense if you see it completely stoned.
I haven’t seen it for years but from what I remember I agree, it was well done.
… Not to mention a title that brings out the “heh, heh” inner Beavis & Butthead in everyone who doesn’t do Shakespeare references. (Also of course, in some who do.)
Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” would have been pretty dull stuff without the freaky visuals.
Ultraviolet. Yes, the plot makes dick all sense. Yes, the acting is terrible, nevermind the dialogue. But dude, she’s got hair & clothes that change colour at will, a hammerspace arsenal AND a bike with a gravity switch. Also, gun kata.
Read the OP an composed my reply and then read the thread and still have to say Copollas trainwreck of Dracula. I saw it in the company of a bunch of fellow Lit Geeks.
Over beer and wings after we agreed it was visually stunning and Winona Ryder is cute as hell, the story was shit.
Yeah, Sucker Punch is definitely in my “How could you fuck this up?” short list. I do not excuse it, or Prometheus, for the creators’ stunning displays of incompetence.
Sucker Punch: A movie about hot women in sexy clothes going to fantasy worlds.
Prometheus: A movie about people who aren’t complete imbeciles encountering alien life for the first time.
That’s not fucking difficult, is it?
Funny, I feel exactly the opposite. Some thought-provoking dialogue, but the visuals quite literally made me want to barf.
Titanic. Stupid love story, but oh, the costumes! I’d kill for Kate Winslet’s wardrobe in that film.
I thought Life Of Pi was pretty unremarkable except for the visuals. But I’d have to agree, Avatar wins the category hands down. I tried to watch it on TV sometime after seeing it in IMAX 3D, and it was damned near unwatchable. You’d think that if you have something on the order of half a billion dollars to spend on making a movie, you could at least spring for a decent screenwriter or two…
I agree, and I feel the same way about “2012” with John Cusack - I love post-apocalyptic movies, but these two are so disappointing. I’ll still watch them for the visuals - they both have some very cool stuff going on.
Hero was a wuxia film with a fairly hohum if mildly disturbingly nationalistic plot but goddamn was that movie pretty.
In the famous yellow forest fight scene, every single leaf was hand picked and graded by flawlessness.
In the lake fight scene, filming could only be done for 2 hours every day because Zhang Yimou insisted the lake had to be perfectly still.
The youtube clips don’t really do it justice, it’s a movie that begs to be watched in HD.
Gotta disagree - I thought it was a wonderful story and told exceptionally well.
That being said it is also pretty as hell.
The Underworld movies.
Aeon Flux
Chronicles of Riddick
I agree that Dracula is beautiful, but I can’t fault it’s narrative problems because they come from it being pretty faithful to the source material - something almost nothing else bothered with.
I’m with Shalmanese - Hero had about ten minutes of plot but it was absolutely beautiful to watch.
James Cameron is the king of this category, between Titanic and Avatar.
Well you are half right. I agree with you that the visuals make Bram Stoker’s Dracula worth watching. All of the scenes at Dracula’s castle are just beautifully shot. However, it is a crappy movie. Bad acting, bad dialogue, bad everything except visuals.
I would put Cloud Atlas in this category. The visuals were stunning but I didn’t think the movie held together at all.
Of course, they actually did that, and in the same year; “All is Lost,” starring Robert Redford. It’s “Gravity” at sea.
The thing is, it IS a compelling movie. Done right, “can a lone person survive” can make for a hell of a movie, whether in space or on the ocean.