# Not so great movies you watch for the one great element they have **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 29, 2006, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602 "2006-09-29T13:30:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/41 "2006-09-30T14:04:03Z")
I know **Showgirls** wasn’t terribly well-received, but I’m just a big sucker for glitzy choreography. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/42 "2006-09-30T14:30:07Z")
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke] “High Spirits”–in which an Anglo-Irishman concocts a plan to save Castle Plunkett from foreclosure. He’ll market the place as a haunted castle/hotel & the faithful family retainers (extra droll in that “Irish” way) will dress as ghosts. The plan falls through–but then the actual family ghosts appear. Wackiness ensues. The action drags at time & some of the effects are truly cheesy. BUT: Peter O’Toole, as Peter Plunkett, chews the scenery with great vigor. (Not to discount a very young Liam Neeson. He makes a fine figure of a ghost–especially in the shower scene.) [/QUOTE] Excellent choice, a terrible movie starring Steve Guttenberg and rescued by Peter O’Toole. Actually Peter O’Toole would be my patron saint of this thread. The Movie [Supergirl](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088206/) was dreadful despite the beautiful Helen Slater as Supergirl but Peter O’Toole’s acting made it worth watching the movie. [Creator](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088960/) is a great movie that I love, but it would have been a piece of silly fluff without him. Jim ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/43 "2006-09-30T14:43:22Z")
[QUOTE=Push You Down] …He’s not a bonker’s preacher.. If memory serves he was a cop. [/QUOTE] IIRC he was an EMT. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/44 "2006-09-30T15:22:01Z")
[QUOTE=treis] The first 5 minutes of Full Metal Jacket make an otherwise forgettable movie memorable. [/QUOTE] Shaving their heads? Or, “I am Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, your senior Drill Instructor. From now on, you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be Sir. Do you maggots understand?” “Sir, yes, sir!” I didn’t check but I’m pretty sure that’s the first line of the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/45 "2006-09-30T19:01:54Z")
The Fifth Element. Milla Jovovich versus the Mangalores for what was, it turned out, a case chock full of nothing useful, with opera singing in the background. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/46 "2006-09-30T19:27:13Z")
At the very end of “Manhunter” there’s a really great fight scene where the detective, played by William Peterson, bursts through a wall-sized window and dukes it out with the serial killer, set to “Inna Gadda da Vida.” Very tasty. And “Two Days In The Valley” is totally useless except for the great catfight between Teri Hatcher and Charlize Theron. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/47 "2006-09-30T19:39:31Z")
[QUOTE=Evil Captor] At the very end of “Manhunter” there’s a really great fight scene where the detective, played by William Peterson, bursts through a wall-sized window and dukes it out with the serial killer, set to “Inna Gadda da Vida.” Very tasty. [/quote] Ye gods, man. That’s the worst scene in the movie. Watching it in college I was so annoyed I yanked the VCR out of the wall and threw it out a 12th-story window. Unfortunately I had forgotten that it was neither my VCR nor my window, and it landed on Carmine Raguso, mob scion. You really don’t want to hear what happened next. And “Two Days In The Valley” is totally useless except for the great catfight between Teri Hatcher and Charlize Theron. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![YPOD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e99b99/32.png) [@YPOD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YPOD)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/48 "2006-09-30T22:14:46Z")
The Robobcop Omnicorp commercials. I would buy all their products. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/49 "2006-09-30T22:33:49Z")
_**[Swing Time](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028333/)**_ is a terrible romantic comedy that I suspect wasn’t even funny in 1936. But it has the most sublime Kern/Fields soundtrack and amazing dance routines from Astaire & Rogers. The “Pick Yourself Up” song/dance segment is spine-tinglingly good. And I don’t even like musicals! I’m pleasantly surprised to see that Time magazine included _Swing Time_ in their [All Time Top 100](http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/0,23220,swing_time,00.html), and quite right too. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/50 "2006-09-30T22:40:29Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] Ye gods, man. That’s the worst scene in the movie. Watching it in college I was so annoyed I yanked the VCR out of the wall and threw it out a 12th-story window. [/QUOTE] Then you must admit, it affected you quite powerfully. A powerful scene, eh? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2006, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/51 "2006-09-30T22:47:03Z")
Got another one. In “Carlito’s Way” which I think is a pretty standard mobster melodrama, Carlito spots a beautiful woman practicing ballet in a basement dance studio with a group of other would-be ballerinas and is smitten with her – she obviously represents everything he wants to escape to when he leaves his mobster lifestyle. Later, he goes to a strip club owned by one of his former gangster buddies, and he spots a famliliar dancer onstage with her back to him. She turns around and flings her arms wide, exposing her breasts (and her face) to him and the crowd, and he sees (of course) that it’s his ballerina. Then he stands there looking disappointed as she continues to dance onstage. It’s a nice reiteration of the theme of the movie – Carlito reaches out for a ballerina, and naturally picks the one among them who is also a stripper, thus returning him to his old world. ---
**Author:** ![Satyagrahi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f475e1/32.png) [@Satyagrahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satyagrahi)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2006, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/52 "2006-10-01T03:54:45Z")
A movie not well known in the U.S.: Almadovar’s [Talk To Her](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287467/). Overall, a so-so movie with a murky plot but ONE scene that is burned forever into your retinas. One of the characters is a fan of silent movies and, 3 or 4 times during the course of the movie, there is a short clip from a (simulated) silent movie acting as an allegory for what’s going on in the main movie. One of these clips (featuring Paz Vega before she became known to American audiences) is of a young woman whose fiance becomes the Incredible Shrinking Man. She stands by him but, one night when he is about six inches tall, he finds himself longing for the sexuality he once knew… My wife sat staring with her mouth wide open as I rolled on the floor laughing. If you had asked me before, I would have said that never, NEVER in the history of cinema had anyone thought to put that image on film. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2006, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/53 "2006-10-01T07:14:42Z")
[QUOTE=psiekier] Gary Graham was in an awful sci-fi movie called _[Robot Jox](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/)_. The acting and plot could have used a lot of help, but the robot models were great. Had they the budget to remake this now, it probably would have been all computer generated imagery. [/QUOTE] _Arena_ fits into the same category nicely. _Transformers: The Movie_ for the terrific voice acting- Orson Welles as Unicron, for chrissakes… _Mean Girls_ for Lindsay Lohan’s breasts. Did I just say that? _The Boondock Saints_ just for Willem Dafoe, whose without doubt is the epitome of the cliched “homosexual FBI investigator with a Starbucks addiction” character type. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/54 "2006-10-02T16:10:06Z")
The Cell, pretty much sucks when its in the real world, but the Dream schenes are incredably imaginative. ---
**Author:** ![psiekier](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psiekier/32/116_2.png) [@psiekier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiekier)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2006, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/55 "2006-10-03T14:32:48Z")
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] [Quote=psiekier] Gary Graham was in an awful sci-fi movie called Robot Jox. The acting and plot could have used a lot of help, but the robot models were great. Had they the budget to remake this now, it probably would have been all computer generated imagery. [/quote] Heh. Memories. A good friend of mine stumbled upon that movie back in the day and we backe fans of that wretched film. I kill you dead! [/QUOTE] “You ain’t usin’ my DNA to make no Tubies!” ---
**Author:** ![Mrs.Cake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2acd7d/32.png) [@Mrs.Cake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrs.Cake)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2006, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/56 "2006-10-03T16:43:49Z")
I’ll cheat a little, because there are two elements in **Conan the Barbarian** : the score and Max Von Sydow’s single scene. I so wanted him to be cast as Theoden. He’d already played the character. And of course SW:TPM for the lightsaber duel. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2006, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/57 "2006-10-03T18:50:16Z")
[QUOTE=Mrs. Cake] And of course SW:TPM for the lightsaber duel. [/QUOTE] Aw yeah. Actually, not even the entire duel: right after Kenobi gets through the shield, when he engages with Darth Maul, there’s about four seconds of truly furious swordplay, and then they disengage briefly. In those four seconds, you see everything a lightsaber battle should be: the parrying of weightless blades by warriors who psychically know what move their opponent is about to make. It is beautiful, it is glorious, it is everything I dreamed. That four seconds is so awesome, it almost makes up for the rest of the movie. Almost. Doesn’t make up for the fart joke, though. ---
**Author:** ![ddgryphon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8c91f0/32.png) [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2006, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/58 "2006-10-03T21:13:58Z")
Oddly enough, I thought of Peter O’Toole in Supergirl as well. I’ll add Kevin Spacey in “Superman Returns” apart from his performance, there is nothing about that movie worth seeing a second time. “Cold Mountain” The scenes with Natalie Portman – who it turns out can really act. Nothing else in that movie is worth the time it takes to sit through. Twins is pretty excreble, but for some reason, I’m endeared by Danny DeVito’s character who, no matter what, can’t help being slime. There is a moment though in which he finds out he was an unintended consequence of the process, in essence the “garbage” that was left over after they formed the Ahnold character. It is a brilliant moment for him as an actor and a great bit of writing too. Speaking of Danny DeVito, the movie Renaissance Man is pretty standard fare, however the private reciting the “St. Crispin’s day” Speech always gets me. It is a fantastic moment that, like a greatest hits CD I’d include on a “Best Movie Moments” DVD. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2006, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/59 "2006-10-03T21:18:20Z")
[QUOTE=ddgryphon] Oddly enough, I thought of Peter O’Toole in Supergirl as well. I’ll add Kevin Spacey in “Superman Returns” apart from his performance, there is nothing about that movie worth seeing a second time. [/quote] You must be joking. The airliner rescue sequence rocks; it’s simultaneously the best and worst thing about the movie. ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2006, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602/60 "2006-10-03T22:11:33Z")
[QUOTE=Mrs. Cake] I’ll cheat a little, because there are two elements in **Conan the Barbarian** : the score and Max Von Sydow’s single scene. [/QUOTE] What, no love for camel punching? ☹😃 (And, even better, it gets referenced in the sequel. Paraphrased: “Oh, hey, it’s that camel.” “Huh, so it is. _calls out_ Sorry, man.” _camel spits on Conan_ _CONAN SMASH! \>(_ 😃 😃 :D) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-so-great-movies-you-watch-for-the-one-great-element-they-have/374602.md?page=4)