I’d like to start the proceedings of the first annual Whatt-Thufuk Film Festival with a brief synopsis of its time honored tradition.
We begin in 1978 in England.
(by the way this is not another I Hate England Thread)
The young and intrepid John Whatt and His best friend, Laureatte Thufuk (Both of which were part owners in one of Wheschire’s most prominent brokerage houses: Detante, Thefuk, and Whatt, which they had inherited after the tragic shooting of their dear fathers)were coming out of a screening of Rosemary’s Baby. They looked to eachother, and simply gasped at the spectacle of inanity which they had just viewed. It was then that they forged the beginnings of the Whatt-Thufuk Film Festival. The festival portrays movies that seem to have a definite purpose, but are executed so poorly as to only confuse and anger the patrons watching with bated breath.
Today I am proud to bring to the SDMB, it’s first Whatt-Thufuck Film Festival! All are encouraged to participate with a listing and/or synopsis of the most inane garbage films, which have been hyped and dressed up as good enjoyable, and indeed intellectual fare.
I shall begin with a overview of Johnny Depp and Roman Polansky’s “The Ninth Gate.”
Johnny Depp plays Closo a hard nosed book dick with a penchant for supernaturality. He chases down three books scribed in part by Lucifer himself, called “The Book of the Nine Gates of the Kingdom of the Shadows.” Or something to that extent. It begins to play out as an intellectual Indiana Jones movie with a supernatural bend. However, Closo finds himself wrapped in a loosely woven, poorly researched plot to bring back the dark Angel himself! The movie then becomes a terrifying thrill ride through some of the world’s scariest libraries and book houses! You’ll thrill as Closo… reads stuff! You’ll gasp at his incredible… researching abilities! Just when you think you cant take anymore… you will witness the slowest, most uneventful car chase EVER FILMED! However, that’s not all… just when the movie gets too exiting to bear… IT ENDS! About a half an hour before it should!
You’ll Laugh
You’ll cry
You’ll nudge the person next to you and ask what the hell just happened!
See the Ninth Gate… but don’t watch it alone, or with an Angelogist such as myself!
Come one, come all, discuss the movies that begged the question… What The Fuck?
“The Last Movie,” Dennis Hopper’s 1971 opus to a dilapidated counterculture and bad drugs. Plot summary:
A film shoot in Peru goes badly wrong when an actor is killed in a stunt, and the unit wrangler, Kansas (Hopper), decides
to give up film-making and stay on in the village, shacking up with local prostitute Maria. But his dreams of an unspoiled existence are interrupted when the local priest asks him to help stop the villagers killing each other by re-enacting scenes from the film for real because they don’t understand movie fakery.
This film defies description. I suppose Hopper is to be congratulated because he took big studio money and marketing and turned in what essentially is an experimental film/home movie. It is also a terrible film. I can only imagine the looks on the faces of the Universal executives as the stumbled out of the screening room, fresh from witnessing Mr. Hopper’s latest cocaine-induced paranoiac sex-fantasy/ultimate-nightmare. At one point in the movie, Hopper actually has words SCRATCHED ONTO THE EMULSION OF THE FILM. Of course, rumors abounded during the production of the film; drugs were plentiful (and procured with money from the film’s budget), hippie-entangled orgies were rampant…it made the “Apocalypse Now” shoot look like a K-Mart commercial. A true cinematic catastrophe.
The winner would have to be ‘Eye of the Beholder’, where Ewan McGregor has an almost patenal need to protect Ashley Judd (even though they are about the same age). Then he harbors some hope of a normal relationship with her in spite of the fact that she is crazed serial-killer. The ending left the entire audience looking to each other for clarification as to a) what happened and b) why did we watch?
I have to nonimate Event Horizon from a few years back. It had a few big-name stars and was sort of pitched to be a hi-brow sort of sci-fi thriller. It starts off promising enough and then about a third of the way through switches into this full-on gore fest, like they switched directors mid-edit and didn’t bother to change the advertising campaign. WTF???
I agree, Ophanim, with your assessment of The Ninth Gate. I watched it just last night and ended up going “Huh? Where’s the rest?” For seven bucks of my money and over two hours of my time, I expected a lot more.
“There are more things you don’t know than there are things that I do know. I despair of the imbalance.” – Dr. Morgenes, The Dragonbone Chair
Mission: Impossible, the non-sensical debacle of a movie with Tom Cruise. The last scene was complete bullshit. I can’t believe anyone actually expected me to believe that the chick would think that skinny, short little Tom Cruise was her husband because he put on a silly latex mask.
Yes, but them libraries scared the living SHIT outta me! I mean… all those books, and even scarier the TOMES!! Ill have nightmares about that movie for years!
A little known movie called Mindwalk (1990)would be my nomination.
Actually it was a pretty good movie (or at least as good as a 90 minute conversation about physics and chemistry can be).
The Whatt-Thufuk-ness come comes from the fact that I saw this at a screening attended by Fritjof Capra, the director. The talk he gave about the movie was one pseudo-intellectual cliche after another and I just didn’t see any of what he was saying in the movie.
Though maybe this makes it more of a nomination for the Whaere-Thufuk (did he get that idea) Film Festival.
Magnolia–it was 3 hours of melodramatic and pointless over-emoting. And I hate Julianne Moore. And I’m sick of seeing Jason Robards die. Ever notice that he is always dying in movies these days? There is another Jason Robards death extravaganza on the TV tomorrow night. I’m not going to watch it, of course, because I know what’s going to happen. He’s gonna die!
And why are they making movies so goshdarn long these days?
Great nominations. I especially like the description of “The Ninth Gate” - makes me want to go see it just for the library stuff. (My sister is a librarian.)
I heartily nominate “Leaving Los Vegas” with Nicolas Cage. For those of you who were lucky enough to miss this flick, I’ll summarize. Nicolas Cage gets depressed (I think his wife and kid die) and decides there’s nothing left to live for, he’ll drink himself to death. He quits (or was it gets fired?) and moves to Las Vegas in a suitcase (full of liquor) to do just that. While in Vegas getting perpetually hammered, he meets a hooker who he latches on to for affection, and helps her deal with an abusive pimp/boyfriend. So she moves in with him - while he continues to drink himself to death. They have sex, he drinks. She goes off to work as a hooker, meeting up with some college boys wanting to get their virgin buddy laid, and get violent on her. He gets drunker. Eventually, he succeeds. Was there a point to this movie? Are we supposed to be sympathetic for a guy who gives up on life and himself and spends all his time hammered? Even his relationship with the hooker is pretty thin. I kinda felt sorry for her, but she could have done so much better. Walked out of that one shaking my head wishing I had the 2 hrs and admission fee back.
I heartily agree with the nominations of Eye Of The Beholder and Event Horizon.
I’d also like to nominate Eyes Wide Shut and The Thin Red Line. These movies are also tied for the catagory Most Overhyped, Pretensious, Boring Crap On Celuloid.
I agree with everything you said… luckily my friend rented it and i didnt know what i was getting into. i think it sucked… i cant believe the critical acclaim it got! hehehe
I have a nomination for the “Video Packaging” category. I saw in a store this weekend an “special anniversary release” of Planet of the Apes. The cover of the video box shows Heston on his knees in front of the Statue of Liberty. Now I know almost everybody has probably already seen this movie, but who decided it would be a good idea to put the ending scene on the box? I wonder what the box on the anniversary release of Soylent Green will say.
Deep Blue (fucking)Sea!! They kill off the only likable character. . .The fucking parrot!!
This was a pitiful rip-off of Jaws. The utter disregard for basic shark physiology alone makes this movie shit. Since when do sharks swim backwards??? This isn’t something you can make a shark with extra intelligence do?? Spielberg wasn’t even corny enough to pretend that Jaws could swim backwards. This movie has no character development, and movies that make you want the main character/s to die are usually crap. All in all, this is a waste of money whether you saw it in a theater or bought it on pay-per-view (as we did, not knowing quite what it was about). Do not see this steaming pile of maggot-infested horse shit, unless of course you want to get a good laugh by making fun of it the whole way through the way we did.
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” --Whitman
The Thin Red Line was a crappy movie. No real plot, all those voice-overs and you didn’t know who was talking, and I didn’t give a rat’s patootie about any of the characters except for Nick Nolte. After about 10 minutes of him screaming and yet still mumbling his lines, all I could think was “Would someone please kill his character!” I would’ve jumped up and applauded if some grenade had one off and split the man in two. Two hours into the moive after they stormed the bunker, people actually got up and walked out because they thought the movie was over. It wasn’t. A torturous hour later it finally ended. The best thing about the whole movie were the comfortable seats at the Grand Theater.
Next on my list is Hanging up. Whoever thought two self-absorbed sisters and a martyr talking on the phone would make a good movie should be fired. This was a cheap movie obviously meant to tug at the heartstrings and it failed miserably. I laughed all of one time.
Work is fine for killin’ time, but it’s a shaky way to make a living.
People are gonna hate me for this, but my nomination is “Matrix”. I thought the movie was fun to watch, but at the end I got up and didn’t think twice, because it was too hard to understand. What the Fuck?
Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them. - Isaac Jaffee
New nomination in the ‘worst movie of the decade’ catagory.
Mission to Mars!!!
Bad sets, bad acting, bad writing, bad directing and plot so full of holes ya coulda used it for a strainer.
It was enjoyable though, the same way Plan 9 from Outer Space’ was enjoyable.