Don’t Jesus Christ people take theology courses?
ducks to avoid rotten tomato
Movies I find overrated:
Gattaca
Alien
Aliens
Highlander
I also tried to watch Blade Runner once, but couldn’t remotely get into it.
Exactly what I would have said. I saw it in a theater a few years ago during the rerelease, and while I can appreciate it for the groundbreaking filmmaking epic it was, Scarlett O’Hara has to be the most unsympathetic “heroine” I have ever seen.
“As Good As It Gets” is my other choice. I’ve been told others found it hilarious, I just found it weird and boring. I used to be a Jack Nicholson fan, but now he seems to play nothing but “Creepy Old Guy” roles.
I fourth or fifth Magnolia. While many of the individual characters were interesting, and I’m a fan of John C. Reilly and Julianne Moore, I couldn’t help but feel I was watching Todd Solondz’s Happiness Lite.
Same way I felt aboutAmerican Beauty, which was still a refreshing change from the usual dreck but felt like Blue Velvet for the masses.
Good Will Hunting. Well. The fact that it was even considered by the Academy… Right up there with My Cousin Vinny, I guess. Yeah, it’s got some cute (though slightly abusive) boys in it, but between it and Titanic, I’d say a group of pre-teen girls has secretly taken over the Oscars.
Hmm. How can Swindler’s Lisp not be overrated, UNLESS it’s the best film ever? Isn’t that the schtick? Richard Dreyfuss at the Oscars: “This film isn’t just about history; this film is history.”
Me: “Ack, barf.”
That reminded me of something one of the smartest women I have ever met (my thesis supervisor, heh!) said concerning Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth, which appeared in England at about the same time. She thought that Elizabeth, for all its pretentions to historical accuracy, actually offended her more than Shakespeare…, because the latter movie wasn’t trying to be serious, whereas Elizabeth was. I remember her, too, ranting about historical inaccuracies in Elizabeth. (I can’t recall what they were now…I suppose I’ll have to e-mail her. But many of them involved the “rivalry” between Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots.)
I can see what she’s trying to get at. I can appreciate a film that plays fast and loose with the facts, like Charles Laughton’s Henry VIII, a lot more than a deadly-serious historical pic that still manages to get most things wrong. I don’t think Shakespeare in Love was Oscar-worthy (then again, how many recent Oscar-winners have been?), but at the very least it did try to hint early on in the film that it was going to be tongue-in-cheek. The Bard getting psychoanalyzed? Surely your prof must have cottoned on that the film was going to be a spoof at that point.
Now, if you want to talk about an Oscar-winning film from the 90’s that was deadly serious about “historical accuracy” but still managed to muck up everything, try Titanic on for size. Yeech!
Gone With the Wind: I know Scarlett is supposed to be a whiny self-absorbed ninny, but I could not sympathize with her character at all and that ruined the movie for me. What did Rhett see in her? I think Vivian Leigh was far better in A Streetcar Named Desire.
The Princess Bride: Yeah, it has many funny parts and it’s cute but I’m not terribly excited about this movie. It probably didn’t help that I saw it the first time a year ago after hearing the hype about it for years and years. Personally, I feel William Goldman has written far better movies.
I also agree with those that said Shrek. I found it hilarious the first time I saw it because it was different. But I came to dislike it more and more as the hype surrounded it. The turning point came when the Academy made a whole new award for Best Animated Feature simply because of this movie. If they felt the need to make this catagory, they could have done it with better animatied movies in the past.
Punch Drunk Love. It has an 80% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes, but it was so slow moving that the first 45 minutes felt more like three hours had passed. The rest went faster, since I didn’t bother watching any more.
Eyes Wide Shut. This was the biggest, longest, most pointless piece of horse dookie I’ve ever had to endure watching.
Ghost.
The anime film * Metropolis * doesn’t have anything to do with Fritz Lang’s silent film of the same title. Lang does beat you over the head with his message, but then films in the silent era were seldom noted for their subtlety, and that was pretty much the way films were made back then. I agree that the story doesn’t really make much sense, but the stream of images is brilliant and mesmerizing, somewhat like Kubrick’s * 2001. * Lang’s * Metropolis * is one of my favorite flicks, particularly Moroder’s jazzed up, modernized version, and I don’t generally care for silent films.
The original Stars Wars trilogy is entertaining when you first see it but doesn’t bear up under repeated viewing. I am utterly baffled why it has become a quasi-religious cult.
Kubrick’s * Clockwork Orange * is a “not bad, just okay” film that was wildly overpraised by the critics when it was first released. Apparently everybody in elite film circles wanted to be in on the latest greatest thing and got carried away. You’d have thought it was the greatest movie of all time judging by nothing but the reviews.
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Pulp Fiction: * freakin’ unwatchable. Some well directed scenes strung together with some not-so-well directed scenes, none of which coalesce into a coherent story. Even if there had been an intelligible plot, many scenes go on much, much too long, which would have destroyed the pacing. Just another case of the desire to be hip and on the cutting edge depriving people of common sense (much like * Clockwork Orange * ).
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Independence Day: * Lots of fun during a first viewing if you’re very careful not to actually think about it. Like Star Wars, it doesn’t bear up to repeated viewing very well. You end up with a “what in the world did I ever see in that?” feeling. Much overpraised by critics.
Glad to see Saving Private Ryan get so much mention. The only time in living memory that I felt the Academy got it right was when it picked the innovative and brilliant Shakespeare in Love over this festering pack of regurgitated cliches.
Well, okay, it wasn’t all that bad, but it completely blew it’s wad on Omaha Beach. The rest of the film was strictly mediocre. Nothing in there that hadn’t been done by John Wayne forty years earlier.
No, actually the Academy got it wrong as usual that year. Saving Private Ryan was and continues to be the best war movie ever made.
And Shakespeare in Love is better than any war movie I’ve ever seen.
To be fair, the Academy didn’t create the “best animated movie” award specifically for Shrek – it just happened to be eligible the first year that it was on the ballot. But you’re right that it didn’t deserve the Oscar; Monsters Inc. was the better movie by far.
Shrek was, to be fair, a fun movie, but it was fun because it was frivolous and trendy; the movie didn’t have an emotional center (unlike the afformentioned Monsters Inc.), and Shrek’s supposed theme of tolerance was undercut by all the “Lord Farquad is shot” jokes.
Prediction: In ten years, the people who loved Shrek will be wincing at how dated it is.
Er, “Lord Farquad is short”. :smack:
How could I have forgotten this? I agree completely. It’s not bad, it’s just not all that great.
The novella, OTOH, is quite good.
Fair enough. If you dislike war movies, that’s your prerogative. However, I wouldn’t say The Godfather was overrated simply because I very much dislike mob movies. It’s just not my thing.
Jerry Maguire–IMO, the worst movie ever.
Also…
Benny and Joon–the only movie I’ve ever walked out of the theater on.
I never said I disliked war movies. I love war movies. Some of my favorite movies are war movies. Shakespeare in Love is still better than all of 'em.