To Kill a Mockingbird never did anything for me. I just don’t get why people wax rhapsotic about that movie.
ET - The scene that got me was when the kid wouldn’t dissect the frog and let it go free. Since when do grade-schoolers do dissection? Much less on live frogs?
Fargo - Yes, I get back comedy. I just don’t like this movie. Add to that everything else by the Cohen brothers.
Shrek - I still wonder why it won the Oscar over Monsters Inc..
Did ET bring it back to life somehow? I haven’t seen it but once, back when it was in theaters the first time, so maybe I’m confused.
:eek:
Shawshank Redemption
Lethal Weapon 2,3,and 4
Sideways
Star Wars (all)
Men in Black 2
Shrek 2
Spider Man 2
Alien: Resurrection
SR, was about revenge and stealing, not redemption. LW, was about, “jumping the shark”. Side, was just plain boring (as in I couldn’t care what happened next, I just wanted out of the theater). SW, never got into any of them. MiB, another “jumping the shark”. S2, too witty to be for children, too lame to be for adults. SM2, another “jumping the shark”. A:R, can’t decide this one (“jumping the shark”, contractual nonsense, or other).
I will admit I have never walked out on a movie, and no, I do not hate sci-fi, children’s movies, or any genre in paticular. The OP was about movies YOU/I hate, that others touted as good or better than others. My list could go on as I also watch foreign (Non USA) films as well, this is my short short list of recent(ish) crap.
And no, I do not hate sequels…I thought Aliens was better than the first.
Movies everyone likes that I hated:
Lord of the Rings: A lot of dramatic music and art direction with no substance behind it.
To Kill a Mockingbird: I didn’t think of it until Southpaw mentioned it, but I thought the movie didn’t live up to the book at all.
End of Evangelion (anime): I had a few roommates who thought this was the most thought-provoking movie ever, but it was too artsy for me, like it was trying way too hard to look like it had a deep underlying message if you could decipher it.
Movies that aren’t bad but are horribly overrated:
Raising Arizona
Princess Bride
The Breakfast Club
Ferris Beuller’s Day Off
Pulp Fiction (and I loved Kill Bill)
Boondock Saints
Dead Man Walking: so damn smug in its assurance that you would agree with it that the death penalty was barbarous. Me, I was rooting for the worthless piece of shit that Sean Penn played to be put up against a wall and shot, with Susan Sarandon’s smirking nun alongside him.
Oh, I get it. Ha ha! Good one!
Well, going through them…
My reaction to Forrest Gump: If I wanted to watch real life for three hours, I can just sit on my back porch. Why should I want to watch some guy live the most made up life ever just for the sake of getting a big ‘And that’s life’? I know what life is, thank you, and it didn’t require me to go to Vietnam, catch Nickson at it, and marry a woman with AIDS. I just turned on the news.
Coen Brothers: Two hours of making fun of how stupid rural/vietnam vets/anarchists/rich people/whoever are. Sure your stories might be good, but still fuck you. Yeah, people have intrinsicacies that can be annoying or “quaint” to your world view, but frankly I just think that revelling in for your own amusement is just being an ass.
Shawshank Redemption: ? I’m not sure I ever saw a point in the movie. Guy goes to a jail, runs around for two hours as he is chased by some guys who want to rape him, while crying to Morgan Freeman about how he is really really innocent. …well okay? Where is the story? The character doesn’t advance, he wasn’t a bad guy he wasn’t weak and strengthened up to the rapist dudes but rather stayed at about the same level for the length of the movie, and who cares if he gets free? He was innocent. The whole movie seemed to have very little point beyond showing how awful life would be for a white collar guy in jail–well great, but “WASPs in Jail” isn’t a real reason for a movie going experience.
The Matrix: Well most of the cool scenes, and the entire feel of the film, was stolen from Oshii Mamoru’s Ghost in the Shell, which I had already seen. So watching them again just wasn’t the rush it was to American audiences. And then I though that they entirely wasted their story. They had a whole “other” world that they could introduce over the course of the movie, letting hints through one by one to build up to some sort of amazing revelation. But instead they just hand us the whole Matrix backstory on a platter fifteen minutes into the movie and leave us with nothing else but action sequences for the rest of the film. All of which–as said–I had already seen elsewhere.
The Godfather: Guy enters into the mafia and does “bad things.” This was a suprise? I guess I’m just not nice enough a person to be impressed by leaving horse heads in people’s sheets or killing your own brother. Otherwise the movies are just watching a family going about it’s life for six hours…which like Forrest Gump, I get enough of without going to a movie theater.
Brazil: Dunno. I think it was like 1984 done with neon-lights and girls in feathers. It just didn’t jive for me. Everything else by Gilliam I’ve been fine with.
Silence of the Lambs: I can come up with darker, smarter, scarier, and most importantly more realistic psychos than Thomas Harris can. Simply, Anthony Hopkins, rather than scaring me, just made me think of all the ways that his character was infeasible given human psychology.
The original Star Wars: Eh, it was nice action ride I guess.
That’s funny. My problem with the Hopkins character is that by being a smart and scary psycho murderer he isn’t realistic at all. When I think of serial murderers I think of pathetic specimens like Jeffrey Dahmer.
Well, true. But one still could come up with such a fellow and have it realistic. I’m sure the one doctor who ran the Hotel of Death in Chicago was no mental slouch.
There’s a movie I absolutely despise that some people seem to think is the greatest movie ever made, and that’s Donnie Darko. People seem to think I hated it because I didn’t understand it. Not true. I hated it because it was awful.
Another vote for Pulp Fiction. I thought it STUNK.
And may I add The Village? It had a decent premise, but was very poorly excecuted.
Wedding Crashers. Didn’t hate it but don’t see what all the hype is about.
Definitely some very funny scenes, but as a movie, I didn’t think it held together very well. I watched the “uncorked” version instead of the original version so maybe that was the problem. There’s a scene very early in the movie that goes on for what seemed to be hours–cutting back and forth among various receptions where they’re getting their pictures taken with the couples, and eating cake, and drinking champagne, ad nauseum. It was like the director wasn’t sure we got the premise of the movie, even though there was a deadly dull expository scene early on where Vince Vaughn explained exactly what the premise was. I also thought the character played by the dude from Alias was so over the top that it just irritated me.
When Harry Fucked Sally
Aside from the fake orgasm scene, this movie makes me want to take a cruise missile to the television. If there’s an actress I hate more than Gwyneth Paltrow, it may be Meg Ryan. Two bleeding hours of Meg’s treacly America’s Sweetheart schtick while Billy Crystal does the only fucking thing he knows how to do (which is be Billy Crystal, the insufferably smug neo-Borcht-belt smartalec) in her vicinity, and I want to scream “God damn you all to heeelllllll”…
What, no hatred for Moulin Rouge?
Withnail and I is, in a word, shit. It isn’t funny. At all.
Gone With The Wind
The Big Lebowski
American Beauty
Sin City
Anything by Kevin Smith
Anything by Quentin Tarantino
I just saw this too, only it was the original version. I was similarly underwhelmed. Several of the supporting characters were too over the top, including the boyfriend and the artist brother.
I love Moulin Rouge, while readily acknowledging it’s not for all tastes. It’s far from a perfect movie, but it’s unique. The story is thin, none of the characters is fleshed out, John Leguizamo and Jim Broadbent are underused, and yet… and yet… Baz Luhrman creates a kaleidoscope of color, light, sound and costumes that I just find exhiliarating. It’s an assault on the senses, and I can understand and respect the opinions of others who absolutely hate the movie.