I agree completely. It may be in a “science fiction” setting, but it’s a horror movie.
To me, the element that made it so brilliant was the timing. Kingpengvin touched on this in his post, but I’ll offer an example. (forgive me if I have the details wrong. It’s been forever since I’ve seen it.) At one point, the Tom Skerrit character was descending a ladder. You knew the alien was going to get him at the bottom. You get tenser and tenser as he goes down. His feet are on the ground. Boom…wait. The alien didn’t get him. He looks around. You relax. He’s safe. BOOM! The alien gets him! :eek:
The movie did stuff like that all the way through. It didn’t just spring the scary stuff when you weren’t expecting it. It sprang the scary stuff when you were sure it wouldn’t happen.
What happened was cut from the theatrical print, but can be seen on the DVD:
Skerritt is seen plastered to the wall in the landing gear section of the ship. He’s been “impregnated” by the alien. Ripley shows up and he begs her to kill him. She does.
in what may be a controversial offering, I nominate Million Dollar Baby.
[rant]
there were so many weak plot lines in this film… we never know why his daughter refuses to open his letters, what happened in their relationship, or if she is even alive… Clint’s character is a vapid man with little commitment to his friends, and he basically walks out on his closest friend in a selfish escape that really has no explanation… to eat pie in a diner? oh, we should assume he bought the place, puhlease! friggin right-to-die euthanasia bullshit story masquerading as a boxing film… the portrayal of a C1/C2 quad was totally unrealistic, and they should be ashamed for inaccurate medical fact writing… the not-as-good-as-in-Shawshank-Redemption Morgan Freeman narrative, and those damn horse teeth… oh, right, I can run away and eat pie and it will all be better…
[/rant]
The problem with this sort of thread is it prompts people to respond to defend a movie they like. I am sometimes tempted to do so myself.
Having said that, I’m sure there will be people wanting to defend Donnie Darko. But for me it was one of the biggest steaming piles of dull that I have ever seen.
I think the thread is veering off its original aim. We’re not talking about bad movies, we’re talking about stupid movies. You may have disliked Donnie Darko, but I doubt you’d call it stupid.
Couldn’t find the link but this is the text (my bolding)
Never mind the Alien’s unexplained increase in mass in Alien, in this film the Aliens go from egg/face-hugger to chest-burster to full size in minutes.
Honestly, folks, I watched BIO once at a friend’s house a few years ago (for two hours, in 1960?), and all I remember is that despite having Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku in cheerleading outfits the whole movie, I still hated it. Can’t remember specifics any more, and I’m not ready to give it another shot yet.
I’m surprised that no one has nominated The Net, one of Sandra Bullock’s more forgettable efforts.
All through the movie the bad guys are busy removing all trace of poor Sandra’s existence from computer databases, so that she has no drivers license, credit cards, etc., but at the very end she uploads a virus from a floppy disc to the bad guys’ computer, and all of her missing records are instantly returned.
Where’s that pukey smiley when you really need it?
I don’t see that as a problem. That’s what makes this an interesting discussion instead of an exercise in list-making. It’s only a problem when people go overboard in attacking and defending their favorite movies and directors.
Troy: Give Bring it On another try. I thought it would be idiotic, myself, but it’s actually become a favorite. Why? I dunno. It’s still a movie about cheerleaders. But it cracks me up every time.
I will admit I’ve gone from hating to loving a movie- Mars Attacks!, to be specific. But I’ve also watched others and had my previous opinions confirmed.
They’re cartoon characters. The director cast those actors very carefully, specifically because they ARE cartoon characters. He uses bad actors intentionally sometimes, just like John Waters does. Even Hitchcock sometimes very carefully chose stiff, polished, unemotive actresses when he was going for an archetype rather than an authentic human being. (Tippi Hedren? Doris Day? Kim Novak?)
In order for *ST *to work as a fake propaganda film, it’s very important that the actors are exactly the kind of actors you’d find in a REAL propaganda film. Think of those silly educational films some of us had to watch as kids, which were very similar stylistically to some of the WWII-era propaganda films the director was riffing on. Stiff, *bad *actors, more convincing as cardboard cutouts than as actual human beings.
The novel it was based on was not a comedy; some fans of the novel are offended that the director of the movie seemed to be laughing at Heinlein. Which he was, so they have a right to be offended. Fans of the novel went to the movie expecting to re-experience what they loved about the book, but instead found themselves being rudely raspberried by the director.
Although, to be fair, I’m way better at telling you why I DO like the movie than I would be at telling you why someone else DOESN’T like it. Just distilling past discussions. In any case, there’s no accounting for first impressions. There are plenty of movies that I was just in the wrong frame of mind when I saw them, or something, and they just hit me wrong. Movies that I’m “supposed” to like, but for whatever reasons of personal taste, just don’t.
House of 10,000 Corpses was both bad and stupid. I watched it to the end waiting for something, anything worthwhile to happen. I like silly slasher flicks but this wasn’t even good at that.
Twaddle even by the standards of someone casually interested in military action. The supposedly sophisticated warriors in this sci-fi future don’t seem to understand basic principles of cover or fire-and-movement – and the entire Bug horde would have been defeated by a couple of mortar squads, if anyone in the future understood artillery.
