I’ve seen a good many movies of varying levels of quality. However, I’m of the (possibly naive) opinion that every movie has something of value in it: some individual actor’s performance, however small, or an interesting plot point, or some great visual or shot that you remember, even if the rest of the movie was crap. Does anyone else agree with me, and do you have any little pieces of terrible movies in your head?
I promised myself I’d stop harping on this but…
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
As I’ve said a few times before, this movie sucks the devil’s cock in hell, and watching it in theatres was more than a waste of time; you actually get stupider while you’re watching it. But it’s a great movie to watch on DVD, because you can cut to the good scenes, of which there are five:
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Samwise versus Shelob;
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Eowyn versus the Lord of the Nazgul;
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Pippin’s baleful song as Faramir goes on his doomed charge;
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Theoden rallying the Eorlingas at the Pelennor Fields; and
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Now that I think on it, there’s actually only four worthwhile scenes.
The rest of the movie is a great heaping pile of donkey vomit. And that includes the stories “My friends, you bow to no one” line.
As were we all… :rolleyes:
I don’t know if EVERY film has something worthwhile, but many do, although the something worthwhile can be puny indeed.
Frex, in the erotic thriller “Forbidden zzz,” the chief suspect in a murder mystery a sexually adventurous stud who plays lots of kinky games with various hotties. But then there’s a courtroom scene where a careworn looking middle-aged woman comes on to testify. Turns out she’s his wife, who he was married to happily for a number of years, then developed these kinky interests and “encouraged” her to take them up, too. She did, but he wound up leaving her anyway.
It was an interesting scene in an otherwise scatterbrained Skinamax outing, as the actress who played the wife did a good job, and suddenly the main character had a past and much more of a personality. Sadly, the film never did capitalize on this theme, but went on its scatterbrained way.
The name of the film is “Forbidden Sins.” Meant to edit that in.
RoboCop 2 was mostly a mess, but there is one scene that works. After the main drug kingpin is captured, his ten-year-old sidekick takes over his operation. When the mayor is desperate for money to keep the city from defaulting to OCP, the kid offers to bail him out. (He doesn’t want OCP to take over either.) They meet in a warehouse; the mayor is anxious, fidgety, hat-in-hand, explaining how he can’t be seen to be making a deal with criminals. The kid is across the table, wearing an Armani suit, surrounded by bodyguards, looking every bit the untouchable drug lord, and explaining how he’s a businessman.
It’s exaggerated satire, but it’s also just real enough to be scary. I always thought that scene belonged in a better movie.
The idea of a superhuman entity taking it upon itself to destroy the Earth’s nuclear arsenal is an interesting plot concept which was totally wasted on Superman IV.
This has been previously mentioned here by another poster, but I can’t remember who or in what context.
So, with apologies for not giving due credit, I will nominate this one scene in the TV movie “Something Is Out There:”
The dude is on the ET spaceship trying to destroy it before the bad ET can get off (or something like that)
He says words to the effect: “Don’t you have a self-destruct on this thing?”
The hot alien gal says “What is that?”
He says : “To blow up the ship if you have an emergency!!”
She looks at him like he’s a really slow child, and goes, “Why would we want to do that?”
Priceless. The dialog was better than what I am posting from memory.
In the first James Bond film, the plot got rather ridiculous as the film went on, but there was the one scene in which JB confronts someone who comes in to kill him, unfortunately the killer’s gun is empty. JB notes this with dialog like “That’s a Remington, Dr. —, and you’ve had your six” (or whatever the number of rounds was).
Then he shoots him.
And then, in a fantastic burst of reality forevermore banished from the Bond films, he walks over to the guy and shoots him again, making sure he’s dead!
The basic plot and some of the character-development scenes for some of the characters in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen could be salvaged- it’s a slightly cheesy concept, but no worse than other superhero-type movies. Some of the dialogue, in particular, made me laugh- like when a generic bad guy shoots Dorian Gray a dozen times, leaving his chest full of holes, which magically heal. As Dorian Gray dispatches him, the bad guy asks “What are you?” only to hear Gray respond in a bored voice “Complicated.” And some of the characters are good- Allen Quatermain, Dorian Gray, Prof. Moriarty, and Captain Nemo were all fairly well rendered.
But please don’t try to make Mr. Hyde into a good guy. Give me a break- it defeats the entire purpose of the character. And for the love of God, don’t insult my intelligence by pretending that the canals in Venice are big enough to allow the Nautilus passage, which is shown as easily fifty feet tall and at least one hundred feet long (I’m being extraordinarly conservative in these estimates). Nor give me any crap about Venice in 1900 having any streets long enough, straight enough, and smooth enough for a high-speed car chase.
Queen of The Damned is a terrible, terrible movie…up until the last 45 seconds before the credits. That final scene is fantastic camera work. So my version of the movie is only 45 seconds long.
The 60s Day of the Triffids is a complete botch of blueprint for a superb horror/SF film, but the scene in the airplane is great by any standard.
A series of “meteorites” has made a spectacular display, but, a few hours later, everone who watched them has gone blind (and everyone has watched them). The scene I mean is on an airplane. The passengers have gone blind and the captain is talking to them, keeping them calm. Finally, one little boy asks, “Is the captain blind, too?” He is, of course, and panic ensues. That one line is very chilling.
I always felt Waterworld has a great premise, and even a decent story. The little bit with Captain Hazelwood was priceless. Just get rid of the jetskis, the overabundant white people, and rework some of the technical details (they eat what?) - on and keep the esteemed Mr. Costner at least a hundred miles away from any work related to the movie.
For the awful piece of garbage that was The Phantom Menace, it’s only saving grace was the lightsaber fight between Darth Sidious and the two jedi.
The rest of it is pretty much unwatchable.
Four words:
Give me the ROD!
And I will throw you the whip.
Er…what movie is this from?
Back to the thread topic:
Superman Returns isn’t exactly a bad movie, though I think it was ultimately unsuccessful. The best parts are the two big action sequences: Superman catching the 777 and saving first Metropolis, then Lois and her family. In fact, the movie would have been much more successful, I think, if they’d extended the Metropolis part.
Agree 100%. My son sometimes watches the movie on DVD and I will step in near the end just to watch this part…and then leave again.
Slight threadjack follows:
I both agree and disagree with this. Read the TPB, and -especially- the second one (the superior of the two, if you ask me). It explains that Jeckyl is slowly learning to ‘leash in’ Hyde. However… Well, I won’t spoiler it. Just understand that while Hyde does something -very- ‘justice-worthy’ in the second book, he does so in such a horrific, brutal, and gut-churning way (yet still beautiful, gotta hand the writers that) that he’s definately still a beastial bad-guy.
On a similar note, the TPB makes it -very- clear Mina isn’t a vampire. She’s also the leader of the team and incredibly competent without ‘powers’. The scene with her revealing the bite marks in TPB #2 is amazingly powerful. I must recommend it.
Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.
The only good part of D+D. Said in a stern faux-British accent by the evil sidekick bent on rescuing a Rod of Dragon Control from the protagonists. When I saw it in the theatre me and most of my friends couldn’t help but laughing on and on about it.
Of course, we were laughing at the line rather than with it, but the rest of the movie wasn’t so bad it was good – it was just plain bad.
The scene from Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow where the robots stampede through downtown New York City.
Wow. :eek: