Seriously, those long and drawn out memory sequences were like listening to someone else describe their crazy dream. BORING.
Perhaps you saw Kentucky Fried Movie first, which was vastly superior and of a similar format…
The Simpsons Movie. It did not resonate .
Saw “Dead Man” by Jim Jarmusch. Loved it.
Saw “Ghost Dog” by Jim Jarmusch. Loved it.
I guess it was silly to expect to love “Broken Flowers” by Jim Jarmusch.
Crash.
While i didn’t really expect it to live up to all the Oscar-related hype, i was expecting a good, thoughtful, well-acted movie.
Hated it.
LotR: Return of the King. After slogging through the first two, I haven’t been able to make it through the third awake. This is coming from a person who read the whole series when I was 15 including the Silmarillion.
Rushmore and Lost in Translation, I heard they were smart and quirky which is just what I like. *Rushmore *was contrived and stupid. Lost in Translation had literally nothing happening.
Same here. It f elt like it had the script/production values/sentiments of a Lifetime made for TV movie. I laughed and cried and vomited when I realized I’d been tricked.
I thought the Dark Knight was eh Ok, but…
There was too much Christian Bale growling, the movie wandered where it didn’t need to (Batman going to China and the guy who found out who Batman was are the two big ones), Dent becoming Two Face seemed a little tacked on. It’s common knowledge that it will happen so I waited for it and waited for it, then he becomes bad, then he does bad stuff, then he dies. Then Batman takes the fall for it.
I don’t like the Batsuits so much, as you watch the action scenes, it becomes apparent how restrictive they actually are. They may beat Adam West’s Batgut hanging out during the fights, but they’re a little too much. In the movie, they made sure that in a scene, Batman can’t look around and gets knocked off a truck because of it, so in the next scene he’s back at Wayne Enterprises asking Lucious Fox for a suit with a moveable neck. Check with Stark Industries, they may have one.
The Batmobile is kind of neat, but it doesn’t seem like it should be the Batmobile to me, it should be the Battank or something. And that motorcycle that popped out of it was goofy.
After hearing how Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker was so awesome by just about everyone in the free world, to see him evoke the spirit of French Stuart from 3rd Rock From the Sun for the character just totally blew it for me. I didn’t expect Jack Nicholson or Mark Hammill, but it still just didn’t work.
Despite that, the scene where Joker blows up the hospital and it takes a couple tries to trigger the explosion was tres awesome.
M. Night Shayamalan’s “The Happening” surpassed the level of suckiness that most people on this board predicted. I knew the chances were at least 50/50 that it wouldn’t be all that I was hoping for, but I didn’t expect it to be the pile of dreck that it was, despite all the warnings you folks gave me.
I also think “Milk” was a complete bore and I can’t help but think that politics play a far larger role in it’s popularity than any component of the actual movie, including Mr. Penn whom, I adore.
Gladiator, while I thorougly enjoyed Dark Knight, I was underwhelmed by Batman Begins. I didn’t dislike it; I was just bored. During the big Bat-tank chase sequences, my date mentioned that she was running low on popcorn, so I got, went to the bathroom, carefully washed my hands, and bought her another tub. I just didn’t care what happened next.
**Napoleon Dynamite **. Truly expected to love it. Saw it in the theater and only stayed through the whole thing because my date liked it. I thought it was stupid, stupid, STUPID. Ugh.
Going back a ways, Slapshot. If nothing else the blatant and unending misogyny was a total turnoff, and since I wanted all of the characters to die in a fire, it had no redeeming qualities for me. It was touted as a “black comedy,” but it wasn’t remotely funny or all that black. Just stupid and mean-spirited.
I’m rarely disappointed by Hollywood blockbusters because I expect them to suck - you can’t try to appeal to 12-year-olds through middle-aged people and expect that stuff not to be watered-down mush. There are plenty of critically-acclaimed movies I hated, though:
There Will Be Blood - Like all his films, it only appears deep if you’re shallow. I think the director must have taken notes during his late-night college freshman dorm bullshit sessions and decided to make his films based on those notes.
Slumdog Millionaire - A totally formulaic feel-good movie, except in an “exotic” culture, which I guess made it different enough for most people. Nothing in the movie made me care about the love story, and nearly all of it was as predictable as anything coming out of big-budget Hollywood.
Schindler’s List - Spielberg can’t just let the drama of the situation speak for itself; he has to beat you over the head with the poignance of it all. He’s probably done more damage to the movie industry than anyone in the past 30 years.
Fight Club - Started out good, then went straight into the shitter. The whole Sixth Sense-type reveal was completely unbelievable and would have ruined the movie for me if that hadn’t already been accomplished.
Office Space - Have to agree with others - a good idea that started out promising but was only intermittently funny.
Forrest Gump - A complete glorification of stupidity, and I’m not even talking about the title character.
I can think of three:
Army of Darkness - I really, really liked Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, and I’d heard good things about Army of Darkness, but I was just underwhelmed. Maybe it’s that I watched all three in a row, and the change from so-bad-it’s-good horror to campy skeleton-themed comedy threw me, but I didn’t think it was particularly funny, and it was a disappointing ending to a story I was interested in.
Being John Malkovich - The premise sounded really cool, I love John Cusack, but good god, I couldn’t stand the characters. One of maybe two movies I’ve turned off with disgust and never gone back to. I really just wanted everyone but Malkovich to die and give the movie a happy ending.
Alien - I was expecting cool, sci-fi horror, but I got an hour and a half of stupid decisions and plot holes. It confirmed me in my dislike of Ridley Scott.
Pulp Fiction.
A friend with whom I have a great deal in common RAVED about it and insisted I go see it with him when he went back for the second viewing.
Hated it. Hated it so hard. It’s still on my list of Top 25 worst movies ever filmed in English.
I like violence, profanity and rants. I just hated every second of that steaming turd of a movie.
Transformers- all the robots looked the same… and they were all stupid looking.
Pirates of the Carribbean 2- I really liked the first one. I was excited about the sequel… it sucked. I was so immensely bored during it.
Dracula Dead and Loving It- At the time (early 90s) Mel Brooks was still a comedy master. I loved every one of his movies… I laughed once during the whole movie.
I was surprised at how wasted my life felt while watching The Darjeeling Limited because I like Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson and Adrein Brody.
Snakes On A Plane. Looked like the perfect six pack movie: a tongue-in-cheek homage to crap 70’s disaster movies, with Samuel L. battling snakes on a plane? I mean, how hard could it be? I wasn’t expecting King Lear, but that movie was just mind-numbingly dull: I switched it off after 20 minutes and watched Hot Fuzz again, which is the perfect six pack movie.
Saving Private Ryan. I always like a good WWII movie. The first quarter of the movie, the invasion scenes, were great. Sometimes hard to watch, but great movie-making. I settled in for a great experience.
Then the middle two quarters of the movie almost put me to sleep. Boring, cliched, uninspired, boring, slow, and boring. The last quarter, though, really put that movie into the shitcan. The invasion scenes had blood for a reason. The last quarter had blood just for the sake of blood. And the big surprise about the German they let go was just the stupidest, stupidest, stupidest thing I’ve ever seen this side of “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”.
The movie deserves a new level of suck award because of the incredible wasted potential. I can’t think of any other movie I’ve seen that started out so well and ended up so bad.
Clockwise. Released in 1986 and starred John Cleese. This was three years after Meaning of Life and two years before A Fish Called Wanda, so it had everything going for it. The previews looked good.
For some reason I never saw it in the theaters, but figured I’d eventually see it on TV. The years passed and every now and then I would wonder why it never seemed to be shown. Last year my family rented a house in the Blue Mountains for a week, and the house’s DVD library happened to have a copy. Put the kids to bed one night and Lady Mondegreen and I sat down to finally watch this elusive movie, expecting to laugh ourselves silly.
Now I know why it never seems to be on TV. It is complete and utter crap. There were a couple of good lines in the first 10 minutes, but the rest of it seems to be Cleese exclaiming “Right!” (a la Basil Fawlty) and making a bigger and bigger mess of things. Even the ending was seemingly thrown together without much thought.