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I find myself avoiding quite a few fims because I can just tell that they are going to leave me flat. Avatar 2? haven't bothered watching it. - similarly anything from Netflix is viewed with deep sceptisism. I actually quite enjoyed Fury Road - but haven't watched Furiosa yet, as I fear it's going to be poor.
Recent exceptions are Dune 2 - really enjoyed it. Saw it at the cinema - loved every moment, and the new Mission Impossible one. i know some people hate it, but I really enjoyed it.
The film so bad it made me genuinely angry was that Zack Snyder "army of the dead" movie. Just terrible - you could write a film studies thesis on everything wrong with that absolute steaming pile of cinematic manure. A large number of things didn't make any sense at all (and not in a sneering "film critic" way..... they just didn't make any logical sense) - I'm all for suspending reality/switching off you brain for some movies - but this stuff jarred so much it really made the plot impossible to engage with, and there were a significant number of plot points which seemed to just get initiated, and then forgotten about.... "hang on, what happened to xyz?". And not in a way which makes you wonder/leaves it open to interpretation..... it just felt like there were no adults in the editing suite at all. Shite.
Second Gladiator 2.
I wouldn't say dire, but really just a bit crap with a dozen obvious plot holes that just undermine the whole thing. Wasn't even particularly wowed by the fight scenes. And the twin emperors - couldn't stop picturing the Weasley twins. I felt Napoleon was much the same - shouldn't have given Ridley Scott another chance!
People go on about how NCFOM is one of the greatest films of all time. I know its purposefully bleak and its a stylistic thing just to end with no resolution, but I thought it was bobbins.
The whole point of the story is nihilism and pessimism. It's pretty faithful to the book BTW, which is something other films get criticised for deviating from.
The Banshees of Inisherin. I know, I know – I’m a philistine who missed all the clever sub texts, too thick to get it or whatever, but I’ve never watched a bleaker, more joyless, pointless dirge of a film in my life.
100%, I'd had it on my watchlist for ages, loved "In Bruges" but by god I wish I'd never bothered with Inisherin.
I actually quite enjoyed Fury Road – but haven’t watched Furiosa yet, as I fear it’s going to be poor.
It's not as good as Fury Road, but for all that; it's not a bad film (given the genre, and subject matter etc etc) There's still the mad cars, and stupid pointless violence, so y'know, it doesn't stand up to po-faced critical interrogation, but it does what it says on the tin.
I get a lot of hate for this in certain circles but my biggest disappointment of a film:
Le Mans.
Far too arty, poor storyline, lots of poorly shot car action that doesn't actually make them look fast and dangerous, McQueen hogging the whole thing and not even touching on the history of the race etc. Considering it's meant to be a love letter to the event by McQueen it's terrible. Summed up by: man drives fast car in France, crashes.
Well, i rewatched It's A Wonderful Life.
I rescind my earlier 'Best left unwatched' comment.
I still feel I'm watching a different film to everyone else - far from being 'one of the greatest films of all time', IMO it's not Capra's best, or even the best of Capra's 'moral message' films like Mr Smith, Mr Deedes etc (which are sharper and funnier while still managing to cram in plenty of all-american apple pie cringe).
The bit where you see the dystopian alternate reality and find that - horror of horrors! - Mary is not only a dowdy unmarried librarian, but also a speccy four eyes, as though this is the worst fate that could befall a woman is pretty funny though.
Even for the standard level of misanthropy that's rife on here, hating It's A Wonderful life is a whole new level of miserablist
Sorry to question your parsing of my comment there, but i do insist that there's a clear gap between 'not Capra's best film' and 'i hated it'.
I didn't even dislike it, but i do think the hamminess of the final half hour undermines it.
My wife was suscribed to Lovefilms think it became Netflix?
Anyway one of the 100's of films we watched was There Will Be Blood, both of us were hoping the disk would skip or freeze so we could just stop watching it!
I think it was the fact we just found every character utterly unintresting, some films you can't stand the good guy but like the bad ones?
Nope they were all "Meh"
There were a few films like that but this was probably the stand out one that lots of people raved about.
The film so bad it made me genuinely angry was that Zack Snyder
TBH you could have just stopped there. Snyder has a great talent for taking a decent idea, padding it with a lot of arty shots and special effects but not actually creating a plot to fill that time and producing a film that would still be thin on plot at half the length but not nearly as tedious.
Anyway, my contribution is The Dead Don't Die. Tedious and condescending. Christ knows what anyone who signed up for that was thinking.
Wings of Desire - pretentious dialled up to 11 !
Erazorhead - tedious dull and pretentious
whicker Man - boring and laughable, not the effect the director was going for I suspect!
I abandon a fair few modern films, most often because their context is real life but what I'm seeing is unbelievable. I guess I struggle to suspend disbelief.
You could say get a grip it's just entertainment - but there are cracking films out there that you don't need to put your brain in a box to enjoy. And of course there are films were the context isn't real life and I enjoy them more - Sci-Fi, Wallace and Gromit etc.
On the other side of things, and to name a film, I switched off Oppenheimer as nonsense when it started to feel like I'd just spent 10 minutes watching Cillian Murphy watching an explosion while listening to suspenseful music.
Dunkirk and the gliding Spitfire did one also. That made me switch the film off when it was nearly finished.
That chocolate Mrs & Mrs whippy one
I’ve watched all of the Monty Python films and not found anything funny, I’ve really tried but I just don’t get it.
Emma is a film that robbed me of two hours of my life, I’ll always regret that.
Mrs S wanted to watch The Holiday as it’s a top Christmas movie. We both absolutely hated it.
Merry Christmas everyone!!!
Mrs S wanted to watch The Holiday as it’s a top Christmas movie.
The one with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law? We watched that at the weekend. My goodness it was weak. Having just watched another xmas romcom the day before (The Shop on the Corner, with Jimmy Stewart), it really showed up how half-arsed and lacking in gags The Holiday was..
The one with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law? We watched that at the weekend. My goodness it was weak.
I refer my Honourable Friend to the comments posted earlier about Jack Black.
Actually, come to think of it, has Cameron Diaz been in any movies that are worth watching for any reason other than to look at Cameron Diaz ?
Actually, come to think of it, has Cameron Diaz been in any movies that are worth watching for any reason other than to look at Cameron Diaz ?
Vanilla Sky
Being John Malkovich
There's Something About Mary
Remakes of films which may not be absolutely perfect but are nonetheless fine standalone pieces of entertainment; simply buffing them up for today’s audience doesn’t wash. I’m thinking of Get Carter and the Italian Job - leave them as they are.
We watched Ghostbusters for the first time having missed it in our youth.
God that was dire. I mean, I can see the attraction of Sigourney Weaver in a sheet but other than that it was bilge.
We watched Ghostbusters for the first time having missed it in our youth.
God that was dire.
Try Police Academy
Try Police Academy
Or perhaps better advice is don't. 🙂
Deadpool & Wolverine and
Red One
Should both be on this list if not already.
We watched Ghostbusters for the first time having missed it in our youth.
God that was dire.
Ghostbusters is ace. There is however a made-for-TV edit which is heavily censored with whole scenes reshot, losing half of the jokes in the process. Now that is bilge, it's a proper hatchet job.
Call me a heathen, but.....
The Godfather movies. Any of them.
They should have remained iconic cinematography Id never quite got around to seeing. Now I have to confess I didn't enjoy 'em.
I rewatched The Godfather recently and would tend to agree; a lot of the acting was pretty ropey, and the story seemed to be propelled along at a clumsily fast pace.
We rewatched Biggles: Adventure In Time at christmas. May very well be the worst movie ever made. Concept is insane, plot makes no sense, Peter Cushing always feels like he's walked onset from a completely different film with zombies in, transvestite criminal nuns, and Biggles isn't even the main character in his own movie. It has no redeeming features except for the 5 minutes or so of really good creepy post-apocalyptic stuff in the middle, and 2 good jokes, which only serve to make the rest of the film look even worse.
Oh and the soundtrack, my god. "So it's a WW1 period piece right? Sopwith camels, stiff upper lip, tower bridge, that sort of thing? We need DERANGED SOUNDING SYNTHS and ROBOT VOICES and MOTLEY F***IN CRUE". When people who are already quite unwell discover cocaine.
Though to be fair, those jokes...
"Looks like this place was nuked!"
"Nuked? What's that?"
"American slang word. It means... to overeact"
Ha
Saw that was on some random channel a couple of days ago so watched a bit
I remember going to the cinema to see it when it first came out and as a young kid it was obviously great
As an old man, less great
There is a film called Lone Star from the 90s that one of our uni mates (the film buff) pestered us to rent out until we relented.
It is terrible. Nothing happens.
The only amusing thing about it is that it is a non-pron film where the plot* actually revolves around a rusty sheriff's badge.
*The word 'plot' is doing some heavy lifting here.
There is a film called Lone Star from the 90s
It is terrible. Nothing happens.
It's an excellent character driven movie, with a great cast, but it's not an action movie, it doesn't have shootouts, just people talking. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
I'm going to go one further than The Godfather.
Any gangster movie. They're all dire.
Clearly they probably aren't all dire but i have yet to see one all the way through.
They're either really boring, or try to show some complicated juxtaposition of brutal violence combined with complex relationships to try and show the human side... Pfffft just get them deaded mr scriptwriter they're absolute scumbags.
They’re either really boring, or try to show some complicated juxtaposition of brutal violence combined with complex relationships to try and show the human side
Thing is, movies like The Godfather and Mean Streets were considered very innovative when they were released. After that, everyone copied the ideas so now they seem like generic gangster movies, but they are the ones that established the genre conventions. I watched Mean Streets for the first time on a plane a few years back. It's basically like one sub-plot from one episode of The Sopranos stretched out to a full movie. Really well made, great cast, but slow compared to modern stuff.
I’m thinking of Get Carter and the Italian Job – leave them as they are.
I would add "City of Angels" starring Nicholas Cage, a re-make of the excellent Wim Wenders film "Wings of Desire". What did they think you would get when you take all the art out of a long art-house film (not to mention Peter Falk and Berlin (with wall))? Same as taking the gritty North-East out of Get Carter etc.
We watched Ghostbusters for the first time having missed it in our youth.
If you missed it when it was released and have only just watched it for the first time it will look shite. Very much of it's time and at the time it was awesome.
We rewatched Biggles: Adventure In Time at christmas. May very well be the worst movie ever made. Concept is insane, plot makes no sense, Peter Cushing always feels like he’s walked onset from a completely different film with zombies in, transvestite criminal nuns, and Biggles isn’t even the main character in his own movie. It has no redeeming features except for the 5 minutes or so of really good creepy post-apocalyptic stuff in the middle, and 2 good jokes, which only serve to make the rest of the film look even worse.
Oh and the soundtrack, my god. “So it’s a WW1 period piece right? Sopwith camels, stiff upper lip, tower bridge, that sort of thing? We need DERANGED SOUNDING SYNTHS and ROBOT VOICES and MOTLEY F***IN CRUE”.
Well it's a period WW1 piece with time travel back into the 1980's so deranged synth and robot voices were very much the in thing. And Bonny Tyler's Holding Out For A Hero works too. The redeeming features are the flying sequences. No CGI, just thrash a couple of real biplanes around at low level. Fun fact - the plane flown by Biggles also features in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
I mean, yes, it's bad. But I reckon it's verging on so bad it's good.
We watched Ghostbusters for the first time having missed it in our youth.
you utter, utter fool.
Ghostbusters is one of the finest, most rewatchable masterpieces ever committed to celluloid. I cannot even quantify how much joy I’ve gotten watching it over the years. If you have somehow eternally ruined this pleasure for yourself by leaving it so late that you cannot see past the dated special effects and non-ADHD pacing then I genuinely pity you.
Deadpool & Wolverine
I’ll be watching that before Later… on Tuesday evening. I really enjoyed all the Deadpool movies, I’ve seen the trailers for D&W, laughed out loud and I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy the whole thing.
I’ll give my clearly unbiased opinion on New Year’s Day.
I just watched the remake of Whisky galore! I wish I hadn't bothered, actually I wish they hadn't bothered.
And I'm another that hates gangster movies. I watched Goodfellas as part of a deal with Sharon at work- I had to watch Goodfellas and she had to watch Oh brother where art thou. Thats three hours i'll never get back, and she reneged and didn't watch Oh brother so we both lost out there
I would add “City of Angels” starring Nicholas Cage, a re-make of the excellent Wim Wenders film “Wings of Desire”.
I expected to hate it but actually quite liked the romance between Nichola Cage and Meg Ryan.
If you have somehow eternally ruined this pleasure for yourself by leaving it so late that you cannot see past the dated special effects and non-ADHD pacing then I genuinely pity you.
no really it was the lack of any meaningful storyline or interest coupled with the utterly creepy professorial harassment that brought back some unpleasant memories for both my wife and I (not that I suffered it at the time, but witnessing was enough).
on the subject of genre-defining films, alien is also completely ludicrous these days, another I missed first time round but can see it was probably good at the time.
Call me a heathen, but…
Not just you. Coppola's and for that matter, Scorsese's masturbatory glorification of criminals is boarding on fetish. It's just weird