I agree on Brazil, which I really want to like because I agree with what Gilliam was trying to say. Strongly agree. But man, the movie is just bad. It looks terrible, like vomit on the screen, the pacing is bad, the acting choices don’t make sense in parts, the editing is bad, the cinematography is amateur. I’ve watched it a few times, and I want to like it, but it is a great idea made into a really terrible film. Honestly it looks like a feature length Sweded film.
As mentioned upthread, The Usual Suspects. I really liked it until the retarded “twist”. That ruins the movie. It is basically the same as ending a film with the main character waking up and it all being a dream. It made the whole story bullshit.
Raging Bull. The main character is a disgusting bore, the pace is slow as molasses, the non-linear editing is just confusing, and the photography is too brightly lit. But then, I’m not member of the Scorsese Cult.
I don’t understand the love for “Godfather Part II”. The first one is pretty good. “Goodfellas” is a great mob picture. But the two times I saw “Part II” back in the 1970s, I was unimpressed.
Same thing with “Carnal Knowledge”. And “Fargo”. And “Brazil”. “Gladiator” was disappointing although I liked the re-enactment of the “Battle of Zama” that went wrong.
Count me in as a “Gosford Park” hater. Altman made his actors talk over each other in a lot of his movies, but in this one it just got out of hand. I had to watch it with the subtitles on because I couldn’t pull apart what the hell everyone was saying.
I’ve never even heard of Gosford Park. Sounds like I’m not missing much.
I’d say Scarface. I watched it awhile back. It was alright, but certainly not worth decades of fanwank that it gets.
There Will Be Blood. I turned it off halfway through the climactic oil rig explosion scene. The music sounded like a concert performance done by 5th graders. I mean really, if fire and earth shattering kabooms can’t keep my interest in a movie, it’s pretty awful.
Yeah, I agree with that one, too. I actually thought it was really awesome for a while (as a dumb college student) and really wanted to understand it and all. I’m staring to think my love of David Lynch was just a phase. I don’t know what I saw in it.
EvilTOJ, Gosford Park is a good movie, but it doesn’t appeal to most of the population. It’s about a murder that takes place at an English manor house during a weekend hunting party in the 30s. Though it’s not really a murder mystery, exactly–the focus is on the characters and the whole hierarchy/class system. Very Upstairs, Downstairs. Lots of characters, lots of dialogue that you have to pay attention to. It’s not an easy movie to like, but it’s really brilliant, IMO.
Wow. That is really condescending, don’t you think? You seem to be saying that if you didn’t enjoy Gosford Park it’s because you are too dumb (or possibly just too ignorant) to follow it.
ETA: I’m not trying to pick a fight with you FS, I just think it’s possible to understand the movie and still not like it. Put me in that category.
I didn’t mean to come off as condescending. Just that if you go into it wanting a fun murder mystery, you’re not going to get anything out of it, since that’s not really the point of the show.
We didn’t have a clue what it was about. The extent of the research was, ‘‘Oh, this movie has Tom Cruise. He’s a decent actor, let’s go see that.’’ Eyes Wide Shut sounds like it could be one of his action drama movies, like Minority Report. I mean, it wasn’t called Secret Orgy Movie or anything.
Since neither of us are complete prudes, we kept watching the movie, thinking it might be moving toward some kind of meaning. Still, it was very embarrassing. On the way out of the theater, my Mom whispered, ‘‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’’
Yeah–Twin Peaks was fun and, in retrospect, an intimation of how great serial television could be. Eraserhead was so depressing–I couldn’t watch it a second time…
Agree that Gosford Park is really an analysis of the British class system more than any other single thing but also this…
amazing Helen Mirren role; par for the course but still…
the young Clive Owen really good as the young Clive Owen.
vintage Richard Grant in the bitchiest scene ever captured on celluloid.
Jeremy Northam singing: who knew?
Maggie Smith. Period.
Emily Watson fleshing out the role of a maid really nicely (pun partly intended)
and all this with Robert Altman directing in that gracious style of his–a great movie to watch while digesting your Thanksgiving dinner now that I think of it–and, yes, an awesome diagnosis of an almost doomed-to-extinction class system in pre-war Britain.
Though compare it to Joseph Losey’s The Servant (1963) just for fun (while digesting your pumpkin pie, maybe?)
If you read the actual reviews…they were not hugely positive. the 92% seems to come from the movie meeting their threshhold of not getting tomatoed so almost all critics gave it an ok rating…which resulted in 92%
