Never walked out of something I paid for. Mostly because I’m a pretty good judge of what I would like and I only go to movies I’ll enjoy. At least to some extent. I’ve gone to a few stinkers but none that so bad that I’ll walk out on. Pretty much the same with DVDs. I don’t watch anything that I think I might not enjoy. Why bother?
I ejected Natural Born Killers. I don’t think I lasted as long as Crafter_Man did.
Freddy Got Fingered.
I was not even sure what to expect and I am sorry I even placed it in my DVD player.
I’m amazed by how many films I’ve watched multiple times people have walked out on! I own Boogie Nights and I have probably watched it at least 7 or 8 times. I LOVE that movie. (I grant that part of it is that I grew up in LA during the 70s, I’m a pornographer and I’ve done lots of coke with girlfriends in Valley houses, so I do a lot of relating, but even so, I think it’s a fantastic movie.) I just watched Out of Africa for about the 4th time, but actually the first time I’ve watched every single minute. I did find it dull the first time I saw it 20 years ago. I was younger.
Lots of others…just goes to show about the whole to each her own thing…
Where The Buffalo Roam - I know there are a lot of “gonzo” fans out there, but really how many times can you watch a guy say “Nixon” to his dog to get him to attack? What a crappy movie.
I’ve never walked out of a film at the theater… probably because I don’t go to the theater more than once every couple of years! But I did go to see the recent adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I came real, real close to walking out. Man, they sucked the humor out of that movie!
At home, my wife and I can usually get through pretty much anything, even if we have to fast forward through the slow parts. However, Lost in Translation made both of us wish for the sweet, sweet peace of an early death. About half-way through we both turned to each other and said, “What else did we rent? Let’s watch that instead!”
I walked out of Waking Life in the theater. It looked great visually but I felt like I was drowning in pretention.
Now that someone mentioned it, Boogie Nights is another one I’ve turned off on TV. I actually liked what I’d seen, but for some reason it just wasn’t holding my attention that night. I’ve been meaning to give it another try.
I have literally walked out of Freddy Got Fingered, although it was on DVD; it was in my buddy’s dorm room, and I literally walked right out and went back to my room across the hall.
Astroboy14, I’m with you on Lost in Translation. The only reason I stayed awake was because a Vicks vaporizer on the fritz was making loud, annoying noises. Since I didn’t have the alternative of a more interesting dream, I decided to not only stick it out, but try my damnedest to find a plot or an iota of character development. I couldn’t. My movie recommendations are usually big hits with my friends, even when they’re skeptical about them, but for some reason my worst work has been with that one friend in particular. I owe her big after wasting her time on Lost in Translation and The Omega Man this year. Speaking of The Omega Man, the DVD abruptly stopped right after the first time he was captured by the vampire-whatevers, but we foolishly turned it back on and tried again instead of heeding the movie’s plea to stop watching.
Good on you!
Same.
It says they’re a religion that values honesty. I like that in a religion, personally.
I realized how skewed the percentage system was on Rotten Tomatoes the other day when I looked at all the positive reviews for a movie rated 93%, and saw that most of them were actually mixed reviews–things like “it could’ve been an unforgettable movie, but they did this, this and this wrong”.
Love me my Netflix. It allowed me to save myself from any further involvement with:
Labyrinth
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Osterman Weekend
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Hitch
Head: the Monkees
Lewis Black: Unleashed
The only movie I ever paid for and walked out on was Silence of the Lambs, and only because my girlfriend insisted. The final confrontation scene at Buffalo Bill’s house was just too intense for her.
I once attempted to sit through a free screening of The Big Chill and found it the most boring piece of crapola I’d ever endured. Couldn’t make it past the first twenty minutes or so.
Misery. Could see it continuing to be quite ugly. Fortunately, Edward Scissorhands had just started elsewhere in the building.
I think I sat all the way through Moulin Rouge. I say think, because it was so GAWDAWFUL that the only way I could cope was by getting knee-walking drunk throughout the film, so I have very few memories of it from about 1 1/2 hours in. Thank the lord.
My husband and I turned off Sideways. I said “If he sleeps with that poor fat chick, I’m done.” And he did. And I was. I know too many unforgiveable assholes in real life to want to watch movies about them.
It took me several tries to make it all the way through Bloodsucking Freaks. As Lloyd Kaufman put it: “That’s the only movie I feel I might be condemned to Hell just for watching.”
Why all the hatred for Moulin Rouge? I thought it was a great film.
Like a couple of others here, I couldn’t make it through Borat. I got to the scene with the formal dinner, you know, the one where he
returns from the bathroom with a bag of his own feces, and later invites a hooker to the house
and just couldn’t do it anymore. It was funny in parts, but too cringe-inducing. And, assuming that the people at the dinner really were innocent bystanders and not actors, they didn’t deserve that.
Just this weekend, my father-in-law, for reasons known only to him, put Anger Management in the DVD player while everyone else in the room was attempting to read and after we had all answered “No” when he asked if we wanted to watch it. I think I chuckled at the airplane scene and the first scene in the “group”. I might have lasted a couple more minutes, then I went to hide in another room.
Borat. I just don’t get why people find this funny.
The third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Look, Johnny and Bill, no one gives a fuck about your back stories or your mysteries or your sorceries or your lost loves. Just shut up and try to kill each other with swords, OK? That’s what made the first one great.
The only movie I have ever walked out of the theater on was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I have never done acid so I do not know what it is really like but about halfway through I was starting to feel queezy and weird so I left and waited for my friends outside.
Other movies with drugs in them like Requim for a Dream and Trainspotting had no affect on me.
I rarely turn off movies I rent and in fact I can’t think of any right now but I recently bought Gigli because it was on sale at Blockbuster for $2.99. I’m saving it for a special day. I have a feeling I might turn it off.
Only remember ever walking out of one movie, and that was Beyond Borders. The film’s content was pretty disturbing, and I was there with my grandmother. I was totally embarrassed I took her to see this incredibly violent and depressing film, and she kept asking if I was okay, so I figured she wanted to leave. After we left, she told me she would have been just fine, she was only concerned that I wasn’t enjoying the film.
I’ve never quite been able to make it through to the end. It’s too distressing.
And one movie that my mother and I stopped in the VCR when I was about 14 was My Boyfriend’s Back, which was some cheesy teen comedy about a zombie boyfriend that was neither funny nor appropriate to watch with my mother.
Well I can add two more to the list that I’ve just attempted to watch (so much for xmas viewing).
Tried to watch the 1998 version of A midsummer night’s dream but about five minutes in I was very aware of how much I dislike Shakespeare and stopped watching it.
Got half an hour into Venus and was just bored.
Think I’ll read a book…
Funny you should say that. I respect his ability, but there’s something about his work that’s so uncomfortably on-the-mark that I can’t watch The 40 Year Old Virgin all the way through. I felt the same way about Superbad, but was in a theater and stayed through the end. Mortifying memories of my teenaged years, I guess, but it just feels like such emotional sadism at so many points. I was in the mood for lightly raunchy entertainment, and got something else.
Still plan to see Walk Hard, though.
Had I rented it instead of seeing it in a theater, I would have ejected it. But I stayed. I thought it was a pretentious load of horse-shit, but I’m a philistine. 