Shark Tale
The Royal Tenebaums - was advertised as the “comedy of the year” - only film I’ve come close to walking out of in the last couple of years.
Eulogy Good grief that was a stinker. No likeable characters whatsoever. Looked like they phoned it in.
I’m usually pretty good about avoiding bad movies, but a year ago one slipped through the cracks. Troy. The sun rose in the west at least 3 times; a virgin priestess went from thinking she’d be raped by a man to being madly in love/lust with him in about 30 seconds, and the completely mishandled the siege of Troy. Among other things, I think it lasted about 2 months total, including the truce.
Hey, come on! Of course I’ll object to a mishandlede Siege!
I saw the movie in the theater, before there was a series, and I loved it then. It’s much more straight comedy than the series, though, and I loved it because it was so funny. It lacks a lot of the depth that came later, but I think if you try to forget about the series and take it as its own, totally different, thing, it works better.
I still die laughing at the death scene at the end.
arrrgh. arrrgh. arrrgh.
pound pound.
errrrrgh. arrrrrgh. ooooooo.
moanmoanmoan.
Kinsey
&
Closer
let me be the first to name an Academy Award winning film:
Million Dollar Baby… i don’t feel like posting spoiler box so I will avoid the “ending”, but the unexplained plot lines (why the daughter left, why she never reads his letters), the formulaic plot, the not-as-good-as-in-Shawshank-Redemption Morgan Freeman narrative, and those damn horse teeth… oh, right, you can run away and eat pie and it will all be better…
Great movie.
Elektra, which I recently got from Netflix. I really, really wanted to like it, because I’m a huge fan of Jennifer Garner and I want to see her make good, successful movies.
This wasn’t one of them.
It was actually quite a good, intriguing film until it ended. And by “ended”, I don’t mean “wrapped up all the plot points to a satisfying resolution”. I mean “ended”, as in “ahh crap, a windstorm just blew away the last three pages of the script…fuggit, let’s just have everyone wander off or something”.
Oh God, I hated that movie too. I just thought the protagonist was extremely unlikeable (I think I mentioned him in a thread about the most unlikeable movie protagonists.) I hated the way he talked. He wasn’t a “loveable geek.” He was a putz and he acted and sounded like a putz.
Wha…? Two excellent movies there, especially Closer, which will end up being one of the best movies of this year. I’m sure it’ll be on just about every critic’s Top 10 list, and might get a bunch of Oscar noms if people are reminded of it at the end of the year.
I also loved The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tenanbaums. I Heart Wes Anderson.
I’m in the “I hated Napolean Dynamite” camp. I liked Jon Gries though. He got so much credit with me for his Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius that he’d have to be in about a hundred more bad movies before he had a negative balance.
I think that’s a our major problem. The ‘best’ films are seldom entertaining. Uplifting, yes. Heartwarming? Sure. But I’ve turned a corner in my lfe- I go to the movies for pure entertainment now. No deep messages, no subtext, no tear jerking- I want ultraviolence, gratuitous T&A, scares and thrills, and laugh out loud jokes (preferably all in the same movie). A good plot helps, and decent dialog is a must (I’m talking to YOU, George!)
So when confronted with stuff like Lost in Translation, The Life Aquatic, I Heart Huckabees, the Grudge, etc. I just throw up my hands.
As for my most recent bad movies…I nominate
White Noise
Novocaine
Malevolence
Alone in the Dark
Bear in mind, This is recent. I can throw in hundreds more if I must.
-stonebow, horror movie buff still looking for his ‘unHoly Grail’
On the recommendation of someone who knows I occasionally indulge in unspeakably bad movies for the masochistic pleasure of it, I tried to watch Dark Heritage. Low-budget Lovecraft has never been so unwatchably painful and boring.
Words can not express how much I hated Garden State.
Nor how much I loved it, but we’ve gone through this before.
Spielberg’s *War of the Worlds * was a major disappointment. I thought he did a good job of creating a tense, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it atmosphere, and of course the special effects were top notch. The scene where Cruise and his kids are watching the strange lightening come down is particularly effective. But there are just so many holes in the film’s logic! The writing was terrible!!! I felt annoyed almost all the way through the film. All in all, very sloppy work from a man who’s done much better stuff than this.
Except it was released last year, and garnered basically none of those things. Couple of noms for suppoprting actor & actress.
Total boring pretentious piece-O-dung.
Kinsey was worse. It started out all right. Went down hill hard.
Particularly the schmaltzy last 15 minutes with the woman confessing that basically Kinsey saved her life, and then the scene in the woods.
This made the visit to the grave at the end of Saving Private Ryan (the one where the old man asks, “was I good person”) look subtle by comparison.
Batman Begins.
I know most everybody loved it - I was bored the entire time. It’s weird, I love Christian Bale. I did think that Cillian Murphy did a great job - I can’t wait to see his next movie, Red Eye.
The Wedding Date. It was playing on a flight from Seattle to Atlanta.
Oh, I also disliked War of the Worlds. I thought there were a few very good moments (the flaming train) but I hated the ending. I understand this is not the part of the filmmaker since they used the original ending - it was just SO unsatisfying.