The Full Monty - yeah it has a slightly amusing one joke premise… about telemovie quality… im glad people seem to have gotten over it and its not on tv 5 times a year…
I think hard working men striving to survive being passed over by a new economy is a bit more than a slightly amusing one joke premise.
Regarding Silence of the Lambs, I find the criticism regarding Buffalo Bill unfounded. Yes, if he was a normal murderer, he was just shot Clarice and been done with it. But he’s not. He’s psycho-sexual killer. Her fear is what is getting him off. Why do people torture for days on end to just kill them at the end? For the thrill, for the rush. If he shot her right away, he’d get no rush. He wants to see her scared for her life.
Buffalo Bill is far more realistic than Lecter, which is the way the story is supposed to be. Bill is a tedious boring none too bright sexually motivated serial killer, while Lecter kills for a loftier reasons.
What are the other problems? Bullets Over Broadway was the film that basically returned Woody to audiences again after his domestic problems. Film was nominated for 7 oscars, and rightfully so. It might be my favourite of his.
I enjoy westerns. They are not often made these days and the genre is heavily overshadowed by the giants of the past: The Wild Ones, the Clint Eastwood icons such as High Plains Drifter, and The Magnificent Seven et al.
I put off watching 3:10 To Yuma for a long time but kept coming across it in lists of recommended movies so finally succumbed a few weeks ago. It was a disappointment.
To be honest my problem was with Russel Crowe playing the lead bad guy. Crowe is an ordinary actor with limited scope but in the right part does a fine job. Gladiator is good and he shows talent with A Beautiful Mind. Why oh why couldn’t he have brought subtlety to Yuma?
Probably this is one of those movies where his name was more important (in box office terms) than the story being told. Such a shame.
Wasn’t there a thread on this?
Inception - like The Matrix for the next decade, with less special effects. And why exactly is Leonardo Dicaprio’s character the best man for the job? What skills does he have?
The Dark Knight - someone said the Hong Kong scene cost a lot to film, so I paid special attention to it the second time I watched. How? All he does is jump out of a building.
Do you mean the one based on the comic books or the one based on the 1960s British TV show? If the latter, I thought that one was awful, and I like the series. Seemed like no one involved in that production had any clue about the characters or their world.
I agree about No Country For Old Men, but loved There Will Be Blood.
I also hated The Avengers.
I saw it in a theater during the first run. It invented the “Cyberpunk” look before there was even much Cyberpunk literature. Yes, it’s rich…
But I’m willing to forgive a lot for good art direction. I’m sure Amadeus was more “meaningful” on stage, where the made-up history could be appreciated as parable or allegory or whatever. But I didn’t mind; Prague was beautiful & that really was Mozart’s music…
Lawrence of Arabia is another one that’s impossible to appreciate from seeing it on TV; I saw it in the first run, twice. (Of course, I saw Easy Rider on its first run, too–being exactly the target audience. Never much cared to see it again.)
Heading over to the other thread. It’s more interesting to see what other people like!
I’d be interested in hearing the opinions of Blade Runner compared to the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” While the general outline of the story is the same. The characters and their motivations are completely different. Though you could argue that the overarching theme about “What is human?” is the same, how they got to that point is by going in polar opposite directions. I’d be interested if anyone opinion of the movie changed after reading the book, despite their obvious differences.
Might be a question for a separate thread though.
For what its worth, Philip K. Dick liked what he saw of the movie before he died, though he likely was just referring to the set design and concept as much as the story.
I’m gonna bang this drum again. I’ve said it before in other threads, I’ll say it again.
Anyone who is complaining that a particular movie “isn’t all that…” who has only seen on TV (cable DVD, pay-per-view, Blue-Ray, whatever), well, sorry - you didn’t really see the movie.
The experience of seeing a movie on the big screen in a darkened theater is not to be discounted in measuring the enjoyment of a film.
Carry on.
What size screen you see it on won’t help boring characters, draggy pace, tedious dialogue…
it just didn’t register with me.. the other problems were pretty much my gripe with the transfer.
The Usual Suspects.
First of all it was so slow and dull it put me to sleep, second of all, when I woke up I said, “please tell me Keyser Soze wasn’t that little guy.” UGH. I can see enjoying the performances but people claimed to enjoy it for the startling surprise of the Keyser Soze reveal. How anyone could find that movie anything but predictable is a mystery to me.
Similarly, the ending of Se7en was extremely, extremely obvious and telegraphed from 2,000 miles away. The movie as a whole was extremely disturbing, but the ending was just plain bad.
I have to second your idea about Seven. Very overrated, not scary, mostly gross-out, and YES I saw that ending coming a mile away.
My Dinner With Andre. No, not because it’s “just two guys sitting at a table talking.” Because I don’t want to hear these two guys talking. The premise is good, but the execution makes me want to smack them both.
I know this is just an opinion thing, but your opinion is wrong.
Any** Batman **film.
**The Princess Bride **(heard so much about it but am at a loss how it is so popular)
**Napoleon Dynamite **(five minutes into it and I prayed someone would brutually smash Napoleon over the head with a bat. Stupid stupid movie.
8 1/2 - So awful I only made it 1/3 in before turning it off.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Gahan Wilson wrote about having seen the original 1831 Bela Lugosi Dracula on a big screen, and how efective it was. I’ve only seen it on a TV screen, and often a pretty small one, at that.
(although, to my credit, I’ve seen lots of older films on Big Screens – the silents Phantom of the Opera, Metropolis, Peter Pan, Napoleon, and many others. But not Drac.)
I hated Napoleon Dynamite. It was a Christmas gift and for some reason I feel honor-bound to finish such gifts, be they books, movies, whatever. This was just painful. I started a thread asking for help in shaping a way of answering the: *So what did you think *question without lying. Many of the answers were quite amusing.