Your point is well taken, Jab1. 
I have known for years that it is really impossible to trasnslate meanings exactly from one language to another. (Cf. Matthew 5:22, where Jesus actually uses a four-letter word (raka) to make a point, in the Sermon on the Mount.
I don’t think anyone is telling you to go out and put yourself into a situation where your hypersensitivity will cause you to be extremely uncomfortable. What I have said throughout, and I believe others are attempting to say, is that while your hypersensitivity to certain movies or scenes prevents you from seeing most or even a few movies, it doesn’t mean you can reasonably tell us why you hate these movies when all you’ve seen are either snippets or other people’s reivews of them. It seems impossible to me, and to many other people, that you can reasonable construct a rational criticims of a movie that you’ve never seen, and will never see, based on a 300 word review by a professional movie critic.
I told you in an earlier post that your reliance on ‘snippets’ was leading you astray in reference to the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I did not urge you to go see the movie and thus subject yourself to an hour and a half of unrelenting torment. I simply pointed out that your interpretation was not only flawed but based on second hand information that carried the original reviewers own preconceptions.
Most of the examples of movies or scenes that bother you are movies that you haven’t even seen. You use the reviews or other people’s interpretation of the film as the basis of your complaint, instead of familiarizing yourself with the original material. I am not urging you to see these movies, knowing how painful it is for you to sit through many movies. I don’t pretend to understand why this is so, but if it is, I acept it. My problem arises from the fact that you are complaining about particular scenes, taken out of a context about which you know nothing, because you haven’t seen the movie itself. I find it annoying and frustrating that you feel qualified to determine the artistic merit of a particular scene based on a quick view or review of that movie.
To Ankh_Too: I find your approach refreshing, though it’s obvious that we don’t see eye to eye on what is desireable in movies.
In the last movie I went to see, The Believers, there’s a short shot of a cat whose head has been cut off. The audience’s (including mine) audible reaction was mild disgust.
For the sake of argument–and I must emphasize that I did not walk out on this movie–suppose that the sight of a decaptitated cat were to trigger a nauseous reaction in me? Wouldn’t I be justified in heading for the exit (if not the restroom) and calling it a day?
I sense that the opponents I’ve encountered in this thread leave me two choices:
- Watch movies, either in a movie house or some time later on video, and don’t criticize them.
- Don’t watch movies, don’t rent videos, don’t watch Roger Ebert or any other critic, say nothing about movies, don’t add movie threads to the SDMB.
These sound extreme, I admit, but I an hard put to muster any other choices.
–dougie_monty
Everything I’ve always aimed to be… refreshing. Maybe I can do stunt work as a feminine deoderant spray for extra pocket money.
dougie, you’re missing my point, again. You’re justified in walking out of any movie, for any reason. That’s the joy of having free will. You’re even justified in decrying the scene that caused you such discomfort. I haven’t taken any exception to the movies you’ve watched that bothered you to such a degree. I have taken exception to the complainst about movies you have not seen. If the decapitated cat was the defining moment of The Believers, then you should make that the basis of your critique of the movie. However, don’t be offended when the vast majority of other people get the urge to metaphorically smack you in the back of the head and say that you’ve missed the entire point. You are more than welcome to your opinions, but people are going to take exeption to them and try to point out what they consider to be flaws in your assertions.
Again, I think you’re missing the thrust of what most people are saying. If you want your complaints and criticisms of a movie to be taken seriously, you must at least make the effort to watch it. If you watch the movie and then tell us what you don’t like, people might take exception to your viewpoint, but I doubt they will say that you aren’t justified in presenting your opinion. Threads about the value, importance, concept, plot, charaters and artistic merit about movies are strewn throughout SDMB, in several different forums, depending on the thrust of the thread. Go ahead, feel free do add your opinion to any of them or start your own. But make sure that your opinion is an informed opinion. Why should the standards for movie criticism be any lower than other threads. If you have something germaine to contribute, you will be welcome to do so. Bear in midn that you expose your opinions to the input and consideration of others, just as everyone else’s are.
I find your reliance upon third party reports about movies as the basis for your complaints to be intellectually dishonest. If you haven’t seen it, you cannot intelligently comment upon the movie. As an example, I’ve never seen Fight Club, I’ve only seen various threads about the movie on this message board. I personally have no desire to see it, given the information that I’ve gleaned from other posters. The premise doesn’t appeal to me. But the fact that I’ve read dozens of posts about the movie doesn’t make me qualified to give my opinion of the movie itself. I haven’t seen it and cannot comment intelligently upon either the premise or the execution of the film.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you see the movie in question before asking people to take your assertions seriously. Several people have pointed out that a number of scenes that disturb you are taken completely out of context. Perhaps the context doesn’t mater to you. That’s, of course, your right to feel that the image is inherently too disturbing to be artistically valid. But bear in mind that, for many people, disturbing images can have artistic merit, particularly when dealing with difficult or painful subjects. If you are not comfortable viewing these images or scenes, that’s fine. I don’t think anyone has the idea to force you to watch them if you don’t wish to do so. But if you do decide to refrain from seeing the movie, I don’t understand how you think you are then able to post your opinions about the merits of the movie.
Jab & Ankh- thanks for saying what I am simply tired of repeating, though I must say you were probably much more eloquent than I.
If I am going to express what I say is a legitimate opinion on something, I had better know something about it, and should probably have a measure of experience with it.
You are perfectly welcome to say something like, “Based on the trailer I saw, I don’t think this film is for me” or “I trust Ebert’s judgement on this one, I think I’ll pass.” But don’t make judgements on films you haven’t seen, or statements about an industry with which you very little experience. It makes you sound stupid.
I have read the replies by EJsGirl and Ankh_Too, and others, and your point is well taken. (I can make a parallel to court procedure, in which–as people like Judge Judy have emphasized time and again–that hearsay is inadmissible, inasmuch as the third party is not present to say what the oerson testifying was not aware of.)
All the same, I doubt that the only way to make a proper appraisal of a movie is to go see it, or even wait six months or so and see it on video. I prefer to ‘look before I leap’, that is, to get other information before I go.
Somehow I can’t see the waste of shelling out X dollars for a movie, and within half an hour deciding it is so lacking in appeal I may lose my temper, and I walk out, thus wasting my money. (Many of these movies, such as the Indiana Jones series, Independence Day, and Pretty Woman, we have here at home on video. But I will not view them. I have even bluntly told some people I know that, given the choice between the two, I would rather be deaf and blind than go to the movies.
Case in point: Many years ago the movie Some Like It Hot was scheduled as a Saturday night movie. My Mom and my younger brother were there to watch it. Before it aired, all I knew about it was the title, and a caricature I had seen, drawn by Al Hirschfeld, of Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, and Tony Curtis, with the two men in dresses and ogling Marilyn. (I even asked my Mom not to tell me anything at all about the movie, before it came on; I wanted to make my own appraisal.) The story line of the movie was simple: Two down-and-out musicians happen to witness the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, so to hide from the mob they don women’s clothing and escape to Miami with an all-girl band. (Joe E. Brown’s classic dialogue with Jack Lemmon at the end is priceless! 
)
However, the scenes with the mobsters–as vital to the story line as they were–were larded with violence, threat of violence, and a wink-and-snicker attitude about organized crime.
Now I must also point out that Back to the Future is the only movie, of those I’ve criticized, that I walked out on, as described above. I did sit through The Believers, Little Shop of Horrors, and others, through to the bitter end. There are a number of other movies I have not seen, having been forewarned; any of them could have incited a reaction on my part that could have been embarrassing, or worse:
Gandhi–main character thrown off train (although he paid for the trip) by bigoted conductor. (Yes, I know about apartheid in South Africa as early as 1893; my point is that this scene seemed unnecessarily prolonged.)
Blues Brothers–Aykroyd’s and Belushi’s characters drive a car through a shopping mall, killing people and wrecking the place. (I saw part of this when I went on the tour at Universal Studios about a year later. Supposedly they were on a “mission from God,” though that phrase appended to a movie ending with such a scene suggests it was added by an atheist.)
American Graffiti–policeman humiliated, and patrol car destroyed; this is “comedy.”
Independence Day–alien weaponry destroys the White House; this movie came out about the same time that the National Rifle Association vowed to ‘clean Clinton’s clock’ and a miscreant actually fired on the White House.
I appreciate the comments of other Dopers who have told me, for example, that in Stripes, Bill Murray does not pull a knife; and in Airplane!, the little girl on the gurney does not die.
Considering, however, that most people do enjoy these things while the incidents turn me off, I sense I am the odd one out and I would be better off deaf and blind. 
I sense that I have been slipping and sliding around a spicific point I tried to make in this thread, and irritating other Dopers by repeating certain things, or implying that I didn’t read someone’s counter-argument, was, I assure everybody, not what I had in mind.
The mention of Gandhi and other movies in that last posting was not meant so much as a general criticism of those movies, let alone an implication of the poor taste of those who did go see them, as a specific criticism of this scene or that incident in the movie, because I sensed the movie might have been better without it.
Was it necessary for Aykroyd and Belushi in *Blues Brothers, * for example, to go on that wild ride at the end? Does it do anything for the story line?
dougie, every post you make in this thread makes me doubt your sanity. I am not joking. You are one of the most sensitive people I have ever met. Sensitivity is a virtue, don’t get me wrong, but when carried to the extreme, it makes it difficult, if not impossible for a person to function in society. You need a thicker skin, man.
Sorry, but that IS the only way. There is no other way to do it. You MUST see a movie in order to get a credible opinion of it. There is no way around this rule.
We ALL do that, to some degree. But, when WE go to a movie, it’s with the understanding that some of the information we got beforehand was inaccurate. Caveat emptor, buyer beware. Besides, you ARE aware that if you don’t like a movie you can get your ticket money back, aren’t you? It’s just like returning a piece of merchandise back to the store if you aren’t satisfied with it.
Good grief! Except for Pretty Woman, those are practically children’s movies! If you objected on artistic grounds, I’d understand, but you’ve made it clear you object based on violence and immorality.
How do you know, if you never actually saw it?
No one was killed in the shopping mall sequence. It was physical comedy a la The Three Stooges, The Keystone Kops, Our Gang, and the like. No one ever got killed in those comedies either. The “mission from God” line was a joke. See how wrong you can be about a movie if you don’t actually see it?
And very funny comedy at that. One of the long-standing traditions of comedy is “Humiliation (or Defiance) of Authority.” It’s been around for thousands of years.
So you interpret that scene as the filmmakers urging their customers to go blow up the White House? SHEESH!
Get help, dougie, get lots and lots of help. I mean that.
I have a feeling that this will sail right over your head, but I’ll give it a try.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock was once asked how he could justify the violence of the shower scene in his movie Psycho. Hitch was said to ask the interviewer, how could he justify the opening scene of Hiroshima, Mon Amor, in which two characters are seen in a naked embrace?
The interviewer replied that the scene was vital to the integrity of the film. “So was the shower scene in Psycho,” said Hitchcock.
Do you see, dougie? Sometimes, an uncomfortable moment (of any kind) is necessary.
PS- It breaks my heart that the only part of an incredible movie like Ghandi that you may have seen is one early scene.
To EJsGirl: I have no doubt that Gandhi, for example, involved considerably more than him being thrown off a train. In fact I find it hard to believe that nobody tried to make a movie–or even write a book, and surely there are probably many of them–about Mohandas K. Gandhi’s life; he was truly one of the most outstanding figures of the 20th Century. I don’t argue with that. And I know Ben Kingsley won an Oscar for Best Actor for that movie. The train incident in the movie just pushed me past the limit of tolerance and, given this limit, I decided not to see how much more I could, in a masochistic fashion, test my temper.
As for the movies we have at home, there are a great many others–including Armistad and Schindler’s List–that are not “children’s movies,” by your description. I just don’t recall the titles offhand.
Considering that American Graffiti and Smokey and the Bandit came out in 1975 (about the same time), within a year or so after Nixon’s resignation, I sense that the moviemakers decided to exploit a ‘popular hostility toward law and government’ (the Italian word for this is mafia) that arose in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the fact that Nixon pretty much got away with it. In this category, too, is Breaker, Breaker, which pretty much consisted of snickering truckers, linked together with citizen’s band radios, gleefully and dispassionately flattening anything and everything that got in their way. (I have known and seen enough responsible truckers to know this is not the norm.)
As for Indepenmdence Day, you inferred, apparently, that I was claiming a link between the real-world incidents and the attack on the White House in the movie. I was not. I meant that it was in extremely bad taste to distribute such a movie with such a thing as the insane gunman–or the NRA’s reckless threat–on people’s minds.
I thank EJsGirl for pointing out that it is possible to get a refund for a movie that I considered unsatisfactory. In the 15 years or so between the time I started grade school and the last movie our family went to together, nobody–no relative or movie-house employee–told me about that. I might have even been able to get my money back when I walked out oni Back to the Future!! To have known this then instead of later…
I don’t know about that–after the plane lands and they put her in the ambulance, it drives offscreen towards the right and then can be heard crashing.
Anyhow, dougie, I suggest in all seriousness that if you want to go to the movies, you get your reviews at http://www.screenit.com. They give reviews for parents, and provide each specific instance in the film of various events under the categories of Drug/Alcohol Use, Violence, Blood/Gore, Profanity, Disrespectful/Bad Attitude, and Sex/Nudity.
Actually, I did that.
Christ with a popcorn bucket, you’re older than I am and you didn’t know that?!?!?!
You really don’t get out much, do you?
:shakes head in amazement and disbelief:
BTW, pldennison: A website like that enables people who LIKE “Sex/Nudity” (for example) to pick out the movies they wanna see.
Okay… we’ll try this one more time. Reading a review or critique is a very common way to decide whether or not the film might interest you enough to sit through it. I’d guess that 90% or more of the people who go to movies do so after reading, seeing or hearing a review, even if it’s as informal and brief as their best friend saying “Oh, man, you’ve got to go see this movie! It’s the best thing in the world since sliced bread.” If that’s how you choose the movies you view, more power to you, you’re one of millions.
However, it is not a basis for your own review or critique of, or even complaints about that movie. Since you haven’t seen it, you have no knowledge about the movie itself, you know only what someone else has told you. you have no more right to complain about a movie you haven’t seen than the idiots who described Kevin Smith’s film Dogma as blasphemous without ever having watched it. If they had actually bothered to see it, I would have at least listened to their comments, although I would have disagreed with them.
To be honest, dougie, if you state that you haven’t seen the movie, I don’t bother paying much attention to your specific complaints about the movie. (Unless of course it’s the type of egregious error you maid that caused me to post in the first place.) You bring up the idea of hearsay (from a faux TV court show, this should be a warning sign) and then completely dismiss the implications. It really boggles the mind.
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That’s fine, dougie. You have every right to decide whether or not to see one movie or another for whatever reason makes sense to you, no matter how many other people disagree with you. But, to then turn around and criticize these movies for something you haven’t actually guaranteed to piss off people. If you want people to pay attention to what you say and take it seriously, you must demonstrate that you have at least a passing familiarity with the subject matter. Second hand reviews and “gossip” about the movie in question will not cut it. Don’t tell use “I understand what you’re saying.” then come back with the same sort of thing that got you intellectually and logically spanked the first time around.
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You say you haven’t seen the movie in one breath and then turn around and say that it “seems unnecessarily prolonged”. Had you actually watched the movie, I might feel the urge to debate the merits of your argument. As the situation stands, I simply say to myself that you have no clue about the movie and drop the whole subject.
There are days you make me despair the possibility of ever reaching you dougie. Never having seen the movie, you have absolutely no understanding of it, and that fact is very obvious to those of us who have watched the film. Again, you’ve based your entire opinion of the movie on an amusement park ride. Did you ever pause to consider the fact that they aren’t necessarily the most accurate interpretation of a movie? They are designed to make an exciting ride and incorporate some tenuous tie-in to the movie as a way of improving revenues through marketing.
Well, the movie sucks rocks, I can tell you that much. As far as the rest of your theory, get your goddamn facts correct and then maybe we’ll take you seriously. The idiot with the SKS semiautomatic rifle occurred on October 29, 1994, while Independence Day (ID4) was released on July 3, 1996, almost 16 months later. The comment by Wayne LaPierre about “cleaning Clinton’s clock” was made in May of 1995, seven months after the shooting incident and eleven months before the release of ID4. Your idea of “about the same time” is ridiculous. If you don’t want to watch the movie, fine. Don’t. No one is twisting your arm, least of all me. I hate the flick. It’s right up there with Armageddon on my list of all time worst big-budget “science fiction” (and I use that term in it’s broadest possible sense) movie. But don’t rationalize your decision with some idiotic theory that has no basis in fact.
Ankh, you are way too patient. This never goes anywhere.
And jab1- it may not be a question of dougie just needing a thicker skin because he is too sensitive. Early on in this thread, dougie said that he is schizophrenic, which impairs his ability to differentiate reality from fiction. Thus, he has on several occasions been “forced” to run out of a theatre if a film is too intense or upsets him.
However, that was really never the point. I admit that I said something along the lines of “Let’s tie him down & make him watch Trainspotting”, but I was being a sarcastic bitch. No-one (that I recall) has said to him, “Go ahead and watch these film regardless of your mental condition and the harm it might cause you.” What we HAVE said is “Base your opinions on facts so you don’t sound so stupid.”
This is apparently beyond dougie’s reach. Yes, it’s a scary thing. And he will NEVER get it.
It’s true. OK, so I had the dates wrong when I associated Independence Day with the actual news items about the NRA and the mad gunman. I admit it, I got it wrong. Mea culpa.
o:o:o:o:o:o
I was still appalled when I saw commercials for the movie, showing the attack on the White House. (I saw the old sci-fi movie War of the Worlds–three times–and I sure wasn’t thrilled with the attack on the Los Angeles City Hall! (among other things.)
I agree that you bring up an important point with which I have no problem. I must point out, however, the very movie–Back to the Future–that I walked out on, was recommended to me not by an ad I saw, or a review (even by Ebert & Siskel), but by the family of a girl I went to high school with, and is herself flourishing in the entertainment industry. I have been rather close to the immediate family; three have since died and I attended all the funerals. (I was even a pallbearer at her mother’s funeral 11 years later. ) I had a considerable respect for the parents, who were quite worldly and intellectual. (Likewise the daughter and sons.)
The parents were quite delighted with the movie; all five had gone to see it and enjoyed it. It would stand to reason that, as much of a friend of the family as I was, they would want me to know about it too. And I went almost immediately. It was only after the story began unfolding that I sensed so strongly that, despite the recommendation, not of a professional movie critic, but of a family I had known and respected for 20 years, I elected to leave, and I still think it was the wisest thing I could do. And I really felt embarrassed with myself when I told them, when I saw them a week or so later, that it did NOT appeal to me.
As for other movies, such as Gandhi and Blues Brothers, I did see the specific scenes I mentioned–remember, I took the tour at Universal Studios, where Blues Brothers was made.
All in all, I regret making generalizations about movies, or the discretion of people who do go to see them, but I stand by my insistence that this element or that of any particular movie repelled me. And, well, how many straws does it take to break a camel’s back?
Say was you see fit to say about my appraisals of movies, but you are out of line with that remark about my gleaning legal information from a “faux TV show.” That is not where I learned about what hearsay is. I learned about it from a course called Civil and Criminal Evidence, taught at El Camino College, Torrance, CA 90506, in Spring 1986 by Peter J. Mirich, attorney (now a Superior Court judge). If you care to look in a public law library you will find hearsay defined in West’s California Annotated Codes, and Judge Judy (though her judicial experience was exclusively in the state of New York) duly applies this principle of California law.
And while we are on the subject I would appreciate it if you practice what you preach–specifically, that I am wrong to demean people (if I haven’t gotten this wrong as well) for what movies they see. Color me paranoid, but by the above-quoted remark I sense that you are impugning my taste for what I see on TV. Since you, like EJsGirl and others, have clearly endeavored to present a strong rebuttal to me, with points that are ostensibly well-based, the remark is unworthy of you and I am insulted.
But some people like car chases and thrill in the movie’s climax, which was (IIRC) once the longest movie car chase scene ever (that may have changed, lots of movies contain car chase scenes whether they’re germaine to the plot or not). Speaking of which, in this case it is. And the line about the “mission from God” was not tacked on by an atheist, either. The plot (again, IIRC, it’s been a few years since I’ve watched this film) is driven by the fact that the Catholic school the Blues Brothers attended as children (or was it an orphanage?) is about to be shut down because it can’t pay its bills. Jake Blues, fresh out of prison, is looking to make amends for the life he’s led and, during a church service, feels the call to save the school/orphanage. So they try to put together a concert to raise money to pay the bills/mortage/whatever. The car chase comes at the end as they are racing to beat the clock to get the money to the bank before it forecloses and they are being pursued by everyone they’ve offended, swindled, etc., along the way, including a country music band, neo-nazis, the police, and so on.
They’re trying to save a religious organization, but along the way they get their money through some dishonest means. Do the ends justify the means? That is up to you to decide. But, again, you’ve based your judgment of the movie on a tagline (one that does apply to the plot), and a car chase scene (the best part of the movie for some).
It is like a live action cartoon. The police, nazis, etc., in this movie are no more hurt or humiliated than Bugs Bunny sitting in a stew pot. The actors portraying them take off their costumes and go home at the end of the day safe and sound, just like Bugs’ animators and voice actors. No one was killed in the shopping mall scene, in real life or in the movie. The property damaged probably belonged to the movie studio anyway. They cleaned it up and used it again for another movie. No skin off their nose. The revenue from the movie more than makes up for it. Feeling sorry for the “shoppers” in the mall or the “store owners” makes as much sense as feeling sorry for Daffy Duck getting his beak blown off by a shotgun. Mel Blanc, the main Warner Bros. voice actor, went home and had dinner with his wife and kids, face intact, just like the actors in the mall scene. The rest of us, who would never dare to drive through a mall or offend the police, thrill in seeing something that never could happen. It’s make-believe. Everything really is all right.
Humiliation does serve an important part in movies. We feel for Ghandi because of the pain he suffered. It sets up the motivation for his later actions and makes his victory all the sweeter. Likewise, we cheer when the antagonist, the “bad guy,” gets his cumuppance or his just deserts (I probably misspelled both of those). He humiliates the protaganist so we feel for him and root for the underdog, then he gets what he’s got coming to him in the end. It’s definitely not real life–when was the last time you really saw the school bully or the pushy witch get what they had coming to them? It’s called a happy ending. That’s what makes the movies fun, living out what can’t happen in real life, whether it’s the car chase scene, the bully falling in a mud puddle, or the villian getting pumped full of lead. We’d cry foul if these things didn’t happen in the movies (unless you’re into those artsy things where everyone dies in the end ;)). But in the end it’s all as real as the cartoons, the funny books, or the Three Stooges. Hell, I’ve always hated the Stooges because they’re so violent for no good reason. It’s not funny. But it’s all a matter of perspective.
I still wish this thread would be shut down before it gets any more embarrassing.
Why am I flogging a dead horse when there are so many more deserving peo…er… things to flog?
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Fine, be appalled. You’re allowed to be appalled at just about anything, simply bear in mind that it has nothing to do with facts as you presented them, that was the only point I had.
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And, as has been pointed out, your interpretation of the Blues Brothers scene was factually incorrect. I’m sure we could go round and round the rosebush on your artistic interpretation of the train scene in Gandhi. Of course, artistic merit is completely subjective, and is a completely different discussion.
Personally, I have no problems with you saying something about the movies you’ve actually seen, even a movie that causes you to walk out of early. My one complaint is when you make statements about a movie you haven’t seen. And no, an iolated review or clip of a scene, to my mind, is not a sufficient basis upon which to criticize an entire movie.
In the first place, I called it a “faux court TV show”, which it manifestly is. And, if you would read the relevant sentence of your original post, I think you, and most others, would agree that it’s hardly a stretch to interpret it the way I did. Since it’s apparently not true, I stand corrected, but I don’t feel at all badly in making that comment in the first place. I doubt that many people here would consider a television show of this nature a suitable source for learning accurate legal concepts. Given the academic setting in which you learned about the concept, you probably have a better understanding that do I. But it wasn’t obvious from your original statement.
Well, if you’re insulted, I’m sure you’ll get over it at some point. I was not denigrating you for the shows that you watch, simply questioning the wisdom of using a show devoted to entertainment as a fundamental source of legal advice. Perhaps we should get out that crayon and start coloring.
First off–please excuse my absence: I had urgent commitments that kept me away from computers for almost a week.
I am more than happy to clear something up, especially if I phrased something awkwardly–no surprise there.
I have sort of an apprehension towards movies, in particular those made since the MPAA discarded the Hays Office Production Code in the late 1960s.
In any case, there are a number of movies that have appealed to me, but since the current rating code was instituted there were only three: Amadeus, Silent Movie and Young Frankenstein.
But before the code went into effect there were quite a few, some of which I have on video:
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
The Caine Mutiny
12 Angry Men
It’s a Wonderful Life
Around the World in 80 Days
And several of the Marx Brothers movies. That there are “negative” scenes and incidents in these movies I will not dispute, but they did not color the whole movie enough to turn me off, as the movies hereinbefore mentioned have done.
Perhaps all movies, TV shows, novels, plays, what have you, have the “negative” elements, which have not invariably overridden whatever other appeal the movies, or products of other media, might have had for me.
In some other movies the presence of such elements has not usually been so overriding:
Dog of Flanders (1964): Nello’s grandfather (Donald Crisp) dies in his sleep, while sitting in a chair posing for Nello’s charcoal-drawn portrait. The part that irked me was that, just after the funeral, the greedy moneylender left Nello homeless; but the boy did land on his feet, later on.
The Andromeda Strain: an undisputed thriller. The entire story line had a negative connotation, by dint of the virus, or whatever, invading earth; I was concerned near the end, when the hero of the story had to evade deadly cosmic rays, climbing inside a tower, racing against time and the bombardment of the rays to defeat the strain in its last stand.
Mighty Joe Young (1949): Again, some “bad guys” intervened, but what they did actually brought the situation–the gorilla’s homesickness and hatred for performing–to a head. Some drunks plied Joe with whiskey and touched a lighted cigarette to his skin, causing him to go wild and wreck the place. (Nothing said in the courtroom about punishing the drunk, however. But Joe redeems himself with his rescues at the burning orphanage.)
I could go on and on with this, but from the last reply I am certain that the Teeming Millions have just about had enough.
But I have a point her I consider important, and one which Ankh_Too, EJsGirl, and others may want to ponder, or at least provide a suitable answer for:
In 1993, Spielberg’s movie Jurassic Park was ballyhooed fully in the broadcast and print media. I made no plans to see it, of course, and would have been content to ignore it altogether. But the matter was dropped squarely in my lap by a supervisor at the place I was working–I’ll call him Victor–when quite a few of the employees had seen it and liked it. Victor asked me if I had and I plainly said, “No, I’m not interested.” He had enough character not to rag me or jeer me because I had not chosen to see Jurassic Park, but I dread the hard sell some people impose on their co-workers, relatives, and friends, which would connote some weirdness on my part for not going along with the crowd. I have enough civility not to bite the head off someone who asks me, or walk away without a word. I would be content to have a way to answer those who want me to see a movie, without appearing rude or weird to them. That doesn’t seem too much to ask…