I saw Caddyshack for the first time as an adult. Maybe you have to be a pre-teen or teen to think it’s a good movie. Or a funny one. I don’t think I laughed once. The two-second completely random topless flash near the end didn’t redeem it at all, it just made everything more pointless. There were some promising scenes, but the whole movie felt like a 5 minute gag that was pasted onto other 5 minute gags in an attempt to make a film.
Crash (2004) was utter shit. Boring, preachy, pretentious. The soundtrack is nice though. I have no idea how this pile won anything.
I’m going to agree with this one. I like the film. It’s a good film. But the fact that it consistently ranks at the top of lists of the best movies ever surprises me. I just don’t see what makes Shawshank stand out from a host of other good movies. I thought it was a well done film, but nothing really special.
> I’ve never seen the movie but I am a researcher in one of the fields John Nash
> revolutionized. He is a paranoid schizophrenic and spent decades in and out of
> psychiatric hospitals into which he was involuntarily committed. He has had
> enormous mental health struggles. And he also proved some of the most
> fundamental mathematical results of my discipline when he was in fucking grad
> school. I cannot overstate just how important his contributions are.
>
> I know Nash quibbled with some factual issues in his biography and the film on
> which it was based, but in broad outline, it is quite true.
Yes, vaguely in broad outline it comes close, but pretty much every detail is utterly wrong. Have you read the book A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar on which it’s based? There are enormous changes, many of which I would describe as typical attempts to fit his life into standard Hollywood patterns. It would another thread to explain many of the changes. We’ve already done several such threads on the SDMB. I don’t see any reason to derail this thread just to discuss one movie.
I agree with Some Like it Hot. I really enjoyed One,Two,Three and The Apartment by Wilder but this one just didn’t do it for me. I didn’t care for Tootsie either so perhaps it’s just that I don’t find cross-dressing comedies particularly funny.
Three films that are considered Towering Masterpieces by many critics which didn’t impress me:
Vertigo
The Searchers
2001
I absolutely hated Aliens even though most people thought it was as good if not better than Alien. (Saw it very recently, all 4 of them back to back more or less).
I saw 2001 recently on video. It’s a great movie to see and then talk about all night in a coffee shop, but it’s not a great movie. 2001 needs serious editing. The same Kubrick who made a jump cut that covers 4 million years could not trim 1 minute from any of a half-dozen long dull sequences? Ugh. Many of the scenes are iconic, but still not a great flick. On the gripping hand, my daughter thought the model-based traveling matte special effects looked better than CGI.
+1 on this. I’ve mentioned that I actually teach the film in a college course on wildly misleading film versions of history. My primary objection (which I agree we should take to a different thread if you want to dispute this point) is that the theme of the movie (as explicitly stated in “Nash”'s non-existent Nobel speech) is “Love,” and how specifically Alicia Nash’s steadfast love saved Nash, not the medication or the counseling, or medicial science in general --just steadfast love of one loving spouse to another. Which would have been great, if the actual Alicia hadn’t divorced the poor bastard, or he if he hadn’t been arrested for having gay sex in a men’s public toilet, or fathered children with the women he cheated on Alicia with. Ron Howard will spend eternities in Hell for misleading people like this, assuming that film directors don’t just go to Hell automatically.
Caddyshack – I’ve never understood the love for this film
Avatar – I’ve never fely like buying this on DVD. The visuals are GREAT, but the plot, though straightforward, is too damned obvious and wish-fulfilling and a rip-off of the cartoon Ferngully, fer cryin’ out loud.
Gaslight – I have to admit that this one has never worked for me at all. Even given the context and the time, I always felt that Ingrid Bergman’s character was a wimp. She should’ve at least walked out on Charles Boyer. She really shoulda bashed his head in. The comeuppance at the end is pretty weak.
Wag the Dog - It was about a president staging a phony war in a movie studio to distract voters from his shortcomings. It was completely unrealistic, DESPITE coming out about the same time the whole Clinton-Lewinsky thing was happening.
I didn’t like “Avatar” either (my husband did). Granted, the visuals ARE quite impressive, but that doesn’t come anywhere near making up for cardboard-cutout “characters” or a cliche-storm plot slamming the viewer in the face with the “humans are evil vermin” anvil.
Then don’t derail the thread. salinqmind was skeptical that a paranoid schizophrenic could be such an important academic. As a result he/she (?) couldn’t even buy into the premise of the film. This skepticism is unmerited. That’s all I am saying here.
Over- and under-rating movies is entirely subjective, YMMV, usual disclaimers apply, BUT calling Alien a “stupid, stupid film” speaks volumes more about you than the movie itself
pulp fiction - yes its stylistic… no i didnt like the “style”
bladerunner - looks good, but not a lot of depth
moneyball - started off ok… but became less interesting and i found it very annoying.
as i said to someone recently, my new policy is to only watch movies that other people think suck, im not having a good strke rate lately finding decent things.
