What's the dumbest blockbuster movie you have seen that somehow received high praise?
I'm not saying the worst, otherwise I would need to include the star wars sequels or transformers movies... Just some really dumb movie that somehow got praised.
For me has to be Ready Player One. That movie message is so "uhuh" obvious that is stupid, the whole nerd that saves the world in a thing that otherwise would be useless to know in real life... The so over the top evil gaming corporation. The whole 80s and 90s movies and games references get old after half an hour... And it's so pandering towards the geeks and nerds, they really want the viewer feeling really cool for knowing that is the Shining hallway, or that is a Monty python reference... Or look a GUNDAM! YOU'RE SO COOL FOR COLLECTING THOSE GUN PLA! Look we have also overwatch and halo in the background! You're so cool modern gamer!
Also the obviously attractive "nerd" hacker girl that thinks she's ugly and deformed for having a small hard to see red tint in one side of her pretty face... Cmon man. In no universe anyone would think that actress is ugly.
And the message at the end is so hilarious: Look man, you're cool for getting these references and being a real gamer is cool, but go outside more!
For me, it was A Quiet Place. I found it incredibly dumb and impossible to believe that nobody on the whole of the planet ever considered that these aliens with ultra incredible hearing weren't somehow vulnerable to noise? Just dumb as fuck, especially when you consider that sonic weapons already exist and are used, and sound is routinely used in torture/incarceration scenarios.
Eh, I think of it more in the vein of It Follows. It's not supposed to make sense, it's supposed to be a minigame for the audience to play along with the characters. It lays out a simple set of mechanics and then uses that to build tense dilemmas, giving the audience a chance to think about what they would do in that situation, and what they definitely want to prevent from happening.
I didn't see the second one, though. Heard it wasn't great (no pun intended).
I actually don't mind the premises behind the Death Angels, but the reasoning is pretty weak behind them. They could be defeated easily and the cast would not survive outside of the film's sound design. The rest is just shit occurring for the point of the movie to exist, and its told pretty damn well.
And then they made a sequel. And now a prequel. This didn't need to be a franchise.
Iirc, cochlear implants don't actually produce sounds, but an electro static (?) feedback. So the aliens aren't actually vulnerable to sounds but to that.
The movie probably could have explained that better
I worked on the space shuttle program, and I found Armageddon almost unwatchable. I mean, those things go up with the big solid rockets and an external tank full of hydrogen and oxygen, all of which get jettisoned during launch, then they come down as a glider. But in the movie they're landing on asteroids and taking off again, smashing into things and still flying, etc. (remember how Columbia blew up because of a crack in the leading edge of one wing?). Plus the whole premise of it being easier to teach oil drillers how to be astronauts than to teach astronauts how to be oil drillers is a joke. Every astronaut I've met has been an amazing capable person - many are test pilots with multiple advanced degrees.
I always love the interview with Ben Affleck about Armageddon: "I asked Micheal why it would be easier to train drillers to be astronauts rather than vice versa, and he just responded with 'fuck you.'"
Ha! I hadn't heard that - I'm glad someone involved called him out on it. I mean, I get that the real answer - to that and all my complaints - is that the movie doesn't work otherwise, but it's so annoying.
That's super true. What's worse is that it often turns out to be true of news as well. There have been a few times when I was familiar with events that made the news, and there were always inaccuracies in the articles. It's made me look at articles on events that I'm not familiar with differently; they probably have the same amount of inaccuracies.
I'm software engineering in aerospace, so a lot of computer and space stuff is ruined, which covers a lot of content.
But everyone should smack their heads about Armageddon.
Astronauts brains are too big, their soft womanly hands incapable of drilling. Wearing a spacesuit and floating around a bit is trivial. Only some yeehaw boys and one man who 'tells it like it is' can save us.
That’s why I liked Deep Impact. It went must more (potentially) realistic than Armageddon. But the latter wanted its “common man, that people can relate to, saves the day” trope.
Deep impact is a great movie! Directed by Mimi Leder. She also directed The Peacemaker, a great 90's adventure movie with George Clooney and Nichole Kidman. If you're into that sort of thing.
Because it's easier to put someone in a suite than teach them years of experience of drilling. You might remember that even the experianced driller had trouble. They also send astronauts with them as well to do the astronaut things, not just the driller crew.
The smashing into things thing and still taking off...well the movie was supposed to have a happy end for the remaining crew. It would've still been a happy end to have them die, but this way you get a lovely reunion with the families.
I don't know you, but if you go by questioning plot-armor, you'll have a really hard time to find something to watch.
I don't understand the the thinking that astronauts would be amazing drillers. Drilling is functionally a trade, the education aspect isn't the key factor, it's the experience. The movie actually does a fair job explaining why.
I would have written it so the drilling crew needed to learn to be astronauts and the astronauts needed to learn drilling and send them both up. That way, they would be each other's backups and you get another small story arc out of it.
I never said that being a driller is trivial. Do you think being an astronaut is trivial? That's a pretty intensely technical job, which is why the bar for entry is so insanely high. I would put my money on those folks leaning how to drill better than drillers leaning how to be an astronaut.
I'm sorry but I ADORE Armageddon lol is very emotional and self aware. Is definitely a NO BORING movie and always keeps moving, even when there's no explosions going on. Ben Affleck > Neil Armstrong, I bet he couldn't had reached those 400 feet in time! 💣
Aquaman. the visual effects were ridiculous, the characters were one-dimensional, the soundtrack was...something, and the overall tone was that of a testosterone firehose to the face. i said the eight deadly words about halfway through, and i was thoroughly bored out of my mind despite action scene after action scene after action scene...the only reason why i didn't just get up and leave was because i was watching with a group
My god, even among DC movies, that was such a steaming pile of shit. And so what did they do? They made a sequel.
(Hey, I like DC movies. I really enjoyed The Flash, and I liked the Superman v. Batman, with Batfleck. So for me to say Aquaman was a turd in a punchbowl means something.)
What's weird is it's reportedly one of the highest grossing DC movies of all time, and a lot of people online kept hyping it up after it was released. I almost lost it when Pitbull started playing "Africa" unironically.
Sometimes I wish Hollywood still made lower budget movies, because this felt like it needed a lesser production value. Jason Momoa knew what kind of movie it was.
i fell asleep during that movie multiple times. something i also did when i saw morbius (sadly me sleeping caused me to miss the best scene in that movie, when that one guy starts dancing)
The Purge. They're all dumb as fuck. "No lawz fur wun day. Halps soseyetti."
Yeah no, trust in the government would break the floor and anarchy would reign instead. Not to mention businesses would probably refuse to operate here.
Don't get me stated on how fucking dumb it is that everyone everywhere just immediately turns to murder. Crime isn't something I have a problem with, so when I say I've never committed a murder it's not because the pesky laws are stopping me. I just genuinely don't see the need to kill someone. But no, everyone and their mom is going full zodiac all day all night if it went for laws!
That's a plot point in the prequel one (I've only seen the first one, though) and from one of the trailers I remember seeing, during the very first Purge people were just throwing huge parties and getting all kinds of fucked up, and the people on charge were disappointed because they just wanted people to kill each other.
It was posed as some sort of secret government conspiracy to keep the population/minorities/what have you "in check."
I'm biased but I thought it was pretty clear with portraying Truman as an unambiguously bad guy and Oppenheimer as decent but failing at a critical moment and then regretting it later
I'd been pretty eager to see it. Everyone told me how intense it was, I actually put it off for a little while because I wasn't sure I was in the mood for something really bleak and existential.
Watching it I was like oh okay this is a movie. Not bad but I wouldn't call it an intense experience.
La La Land. Musicals are already on thin ice, but a musical about some arrogant, self obsessed people complaining about how hard it is trying to be (and ultimately succeeding in being) successful?? UGH. Shut it all down.
More importantly, >!they just gave up on their relationship because one of them was leaving the country? For what, less than a year? After all that, they just threw it all away because they didn't want to deal with FaceTime for a couple of months? Bet they felt real fucking dumb when the pandemic hit.!<
Right?! "Oh no we are so brilliant and talented and smoking hot, but the world won't just give us success on a silver platter and now that we made our dreams come true we miss being together".
Gravity isn't a space movie. It's just 2 hours of Sandra Bullock crying and hallucinating. It's probably the second worst movie I've ever seen after Open Water.
And that scene where she can't pull in the non-accelerated astronaut colleague while still being in atmosphere thin enough that he wouldn't fall behind, so he just drifts away through magic
I'm a huge Tarantino fan and enjoyed every single one of his movies, except that one.
Maybe you had to have been in the Hollywood scene at the time to understand the humor, but I was bored out of my mind the whole time and wondered whether he's making fun of the audience and seeing if he can get away with a movie without a real storyline if he just includes his signature foot shots, long conversations about nothing and a massacre at the end.
I think the problem was that half of the movie was a memorial to the victims of the Charles Manson murders and the other half of the movie was about Brad Pitt and DiCaprio, and the two stories had absolutely zero synergy.
I’m a huge Tarantino fan and enjoyed every single one of his movies, except that one.
Are you including Jackie Brown in this assessment? Because that's the one Tarantino film I'd never return to. Bored the shit out of me.
I can see how Once Upon a Time in Hollywood wouldn't do it for a lot of people. The storyline was pretty bloody thin.
From memory, my wife and I had only just recently watched the Aquarius TV series (a few years after it was made) followed by Mindhunter (we were on a true crime kick back then), so the intersection with the Manson murders kept us hooked. Also, Tarantino using the same Aussie actor from Mindhunter to reprise the role of Manson felt like a really cool Easter egg.
But, that's the thing about Tarantino - he's always going to be polarizing. You either love or hate a given piece of his work, I guess.
James Cameron's Titanic. It's marketed as a romantic film, but the moment you start looking at other aspects of the movie, it just seems stupid. The antagonist is so cartoonishly evil, it's a wonder they didn't give him a mustache to twirl.
And then there's the ending. Oh dear lord, the ending. Spoiler warning and all that: at the end of the movie, The Titanic s(t)inks and the passengers try to get to safety. Rose finds a floating door or something to stay afloat and finds Jack swimming in the freezing ocean. Then Jack makes the most non-sensical decision in the entire movie: he sacrifices his own life for no good reason. The plot frames it as a necessary sacrifice, but it totally IS unnecessary, because there was enough room on the stupid door for two people. And then we flash forward to the present, where Rose is old, but still has that gem she wore throughout the movie... and then she tosses it into the ocean. WHY.
Basically the plot boils down to: two young people have a fling on a boat and then the boat sinks. It absolutely did NOT deserve all those academy awards it got that year.
People are STILL bringing up the "there's enough room" arguments?
The movie LITERALLY shows you why it doesn't work. At first they both try to climb on it, but they're too heavy and the stupid thing capsizes. Only then is Jack like "You go take it, Imma good"
Also, Mythbusters tried it and got the same results. 2 people to heavy, 1 ok.
No, the Mythbusters actually proved the door could support two people. At the end James Cameron himself basically throws his hands up, concedes and makes some comment about "whatever, if the script says Jack has to die, Jack is dying."
Rewatch the edpisode if ya don't believe me
It's been a while since I've seen the movie (and have no desire to see it again) and I don't remember the scene as clearly, so that's on me. Throwing away the gem was still colossaly stupid, though.
I was old enough to see the original trilogy re-released with all the bad dumb filler George Lucas thought was necessary to complete his vision.
All the poopy squelchy gross-out CGI was obviously a crass moneygrab, but it seemed like such a reflection of the man himself that I boycotted the prequels when they came out. Then I found Red Letter Media. Fuck the prequels. Fuck that creepy bastard. Han shot only.
Honestly, now that I've watched them more recently I enjoyed them a ton. At least Lucas had an idea of where he wanted to go with it, unlike the shit Disney trilogy.
Oh, yes the special edition re-release ... where all the guns have been replaced by walkie-talkies and the word Wookie has been change to "hair challenged animal".
The Plinkett reviews are probably the best thing that came from the prequels! I must have watched them more often then the actual movies by now.
I think I would agree, though I only watched the sequels once and was so bored I didn't really pay attention. But when the sequels released Starwars was already ruined and I very much expected them to be shit. So I guess they don't feel as bad because they were close to what I expected.
Also I've seen very little praise for them compared to the prequels.
I kind of like them, actually. I know this is a fairly unpopular opinion, so allow me to elaborate:
I grew up with ep IV through VI, as my brother had them on VHS. I was instantly a fan, and I've lost count of how many times I've seen them.
Once I was old enough to be aware of the concept of a story not existing in a vacuum, I started wondering about how ep III ended, and other things, long before I knew they would turn the prequels into movies as well. I was curious about the world building and the star wars universe in general.
And that's what the prequels did for me: They finally answered so many of the questions I had after watching the originals. So it was pretty cool for me to finally see that aspect on the big screen as well.
However, they should've skipped JarJar Binks. And a lot of the world building seemed tacked on as a result of George Lucas realizing he could include anything he wanted thanks to CGI.
And speaking of CGI: Han shot first. I liked the remasters, but they truly fucked ip Han Solo, trying to make him a loveable loner instead of some outlaw who was after a quick buck
And that’s what the prequels did for me: They finally answered so many of the questions I had after watching the originals. So it was pretty cool for me to finally see that aspect on the big screen as well.
But it was terrible worldbuilding that often contradicts the original movies or just doesn't make any sense.
I liked the prequels when they first came out. But I was around 11. And I thought they were great because of the much better lightsaber and spaceship action. I got so many Starwars LEGO sets.
When I rewatched them in my early twenties I was baffled about how bad they were, now having learned to care about storytelling and characters from other shows and movies, the fight- and action scenes weren't really that important and when you don't focus on them, the movies are just so boring and awkward. That wasn't the case when rewatching the OT.
I've recently come to terms with the fact that I guess I've just grown out of Star Wars. When you strip away all of the nostalgia, I don't think any of the originals (or prequels) hold up at all. And the newer ones have just been trash.
I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that I guess I’ve just grown out of Star Wars. When you strip away all of the nostalgia
Very true. Rewatching stuff later with a new perspective certainly changes things.
I don’t think any of the originals (or prequels) hold up at all.
That is where I disagree. THe orginals do hold up, because Starwars was about classic adventure story. The character of Luke Skywalker. The original trilogoy (and there are quality differences between the eopisodes) overall get this right. It's the sort of timless story, just with a spin on it beeing a sci-fi world.
The prequels and sequels completley missed that aspect of basic stoytelling. The OT stands out as a piece of revolutionary cinema, where the prequels are an elaborate ad to sell more Starwars toys.
I'm reliably informed there are people who like Michael Bay's Transformers movies. The most interesting part of the entire series to me was watching a Camaro get into a literal fist fight with a Mustang. Otherwise my memories of the movie were having eye rollingly childish catch phrases boomed down at me, or visuals that are basically just technicolor television snow.
The hilarious thing is that, in the script, Megan Fox's character is actually really interesting and multidimensional. And Bay films her as just some T&A.
No like is the wrong word. I love them. Don't know why thou, they are fucking stupid.
I mean its clearly an ad for the military where cars beat up cars.
Buuuut
Its hilariously epic and very comforting in its shallowness. Normally I am more of a weird indie movie guy. But every time optimus calls out all autobots in the end I cry.
Thor: Love and Thunder felt like it was written by a Disney executive suite after they ran metrics on what test groups laughed at in Taika's other work, then amplified the lulz by 20%, and rewrote it for the 11-16 year old market.
I had already been getting sick of superhero movies, but god damn that one was awful imo. The genre should have ended on a high note and stuck with that. It's a great time to try new, non-super hero movies.
Because the whole "casual super hero start -> personal setback -> bad guy: all your base belong to us -> super hero assembles a team to destroy NYC -> bad guy loses all bases in 40 minutes" plot is very tired.
Man people really liked that movie and i just do not get it. I really like the first guardians movie. It's probably my favourite of all those superhero disney movies. The dialogue is horrible, everyone is trying to be a comedian. They made this pseudo sad ark for rocket, that was so damn cheap. Showing cute animals getting tortured/killed is such a lazy way to make people care. The only good thing about the movies are some of the crazy visuals and that groot wasn't a baby anymore.
Crash the 2004 hit movie not the 1996 Cronenberg Cult-classic.
to elaborate, it was insincere corporate virtue signalling designed specifically to bait the academy awards by using a multi-character parallel storytelling style that is only ever celebrated amongst industry snobs.
a multi-character parallel storytelling style that is only ever celebrated amongst industry snobs
I'm going to agree with caveats here, because some directors who are actual artists do it for the sake of the film and the challenge of it, as opposed to what I'll refer to as "industry types", who do it for the prizes. And some crazy bastards manage to pull it off. Three names come to mind - Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh.
I've never seen "Crash" and never wanted to, from what I've read, the bland yet heavy-handed results onscreen, plus the lazy reflexive accolades, made me view the whole thing with a cynical eye, like you.
In fact, Robert Altman had a thing or two to say about those "industry types", in his triumphant early-90s comeback film "The Player".
Also, do yourself a favor and watch Altman's "Short Cuts", to see parallel storytelling at its' best.
Short Cuts is amazing. Altman changed the game in many ways. I believe he changed the entire way we record dialogue because the way we did it before just didn't work for him.
"In fact, Robert Altman had a thing or two to say about those “industry types”, in his triumphant early-90s comeback film “The Player”.
Also, do yourself a favor and watch Altman’s “Short Cuts”, to see parallel storytelling at its’ best."
Thanks, I'll be sure to check those out. I was a little worried I came off too hot with my take. I won't say it can't be done well, it's just that I've never seen it done well since I first learned about the storytelling style in my intro to film studies course in college.
I like Margot Robbie. I like Ryan Gosling. I like fun movies. But idk, it just didn't really appeal to me, and the plot felt predictable. I don't regret watching it necessarily, but I also have no interest in watching it again.
No, but with all of the hype and excitement around it, I thought there was something extra-special about this movie. Like an interesting/unexpected story.
I'm with halfeatenpotato here. I went into it expecting something that had spawned this whole Barbieheimer thing, and was a billion-Plus-dollar movie that excited the nation for a while.
That's not what I saw. It was hot garbage. It wasn't even fun.
I love the idea, to change the gender and show how it would look if women was the dominant sex
I don't think what they made was plausible. I know, it's barbie, but I don't find this version of "woman power" plausible without it changing the gender expressions. Like, how masculinity and being formed by masculinity being an expression of dominans, and therefore changes how men dress, behave and express themselves would change a lot
Also, this is not a matriarchy, it is a patriarchy but where the women have the power. I've read several books where they flip the sexes, and I've found the concept interesting because it points out how much of our society is formed by the patriarchy, for all genders, which makes a lot of fun and interesting situations
I thought it was fun and I get why it's been so exceedingly popular but they tried a little too hard to make the concept of Barbie and the concept of womanhood out to be the same thing. For a lot of people that really worked and I think that's made it harder to criticize.
There are some really top tier moments though which made it easier to forget and forgive all the boring bits.
While I do agree that it, at times, definitely stepped into 'dumb femminism' as you put it. I also acknowledge that it was a movie and to do a discussion on feminism justice it would require a lot more than 2 hours. So a lot got simplified, sometimes too much. I disagree with you that it was a constant attack towards men. The movie went wayyyyy out of its way to make it clear they were attacking patriarchal systems, not men in general. That's Ken's whole arc, he's suffering under patriarchy too. He just also gets the benefits of the patruarchy while he's suffering. If I had any criticism about the film it was how much it tried to avoid criticizing capitalism and corporate culture's role.
Interstellar: just found it kind of ridiculous, outlandish, in no way believable or connected to anything even theoretically within reality. Pseudo-serious science fiction. Big budget blah.
Inception: I love Nolan but that was big swing and a miss for me. Went in excited, came out wondering where the fuss was all about.
I’ll outright say it. Other than The Prestige and the later Batman movies, Nolan movies have been very disappointing to me. They’re not clever, they’re pretentious. If you ever saw that Netflix movie where the woman dated Keanu Reaves, the part where Keanu asks the chef for a meal the plays with the concept of time is every Christopher Nolan movie in a nutshell. Also, the action sequences in Batman Begins were unnecessarily choppy, and the idea that it was somehow how a bat would see them is just silly.
"My daughter Murph. I keep gettin' older. She stays the same age."
Also, I love how he had a son who just wanted to be a farmer and that meant that Matthew McConaughey's character was justified in being totally emotionally disinterested in him, compared to his genius daughter. Seriously, at a certain point I think Nolan forgot he wrote this guy with two kids. His entire character was defined by his relationship with his daughter. Why even give him a son in the first place?
Cloverfield. It was a monster movie where you barely saw the monster. Instead, we get the story of 4 characters with a camera trying to escape the monster but then going back to rescue their friend and may or may not have been killed by the monster. I don't know, the movie had no beginning or end and yet it managed to spawn a couple of sequels.
I think the mundane perspective and ordinary characters were meant to ground the movie. Most kaiju movies follow elite scientists or squads of soldiers so it's a bit easier to relate to regular people just bumbling around (and a lot cheaper to film). Found footage stuff seems to be real hit or miss for people though. I definitely understand the desire for more spectacle and a more likeable cast.
I think the mundane perspective and ordinary characters were meant to ground the movie. Most kaiju movies follow elite scientists or squads of soldiers so it's a bit easier to relate to regular people just bumbling around (and a lot cheaper to film).
See, this is what got me into the theater for Cloverfield, I wanted this movie. It's a bummer I got it in the form of some particularly jittery found footage. I was hoping for something more akin to those goofy disaster movies, but the disaster is a kaiju; not just in tone, but in how it was shot. As you say, some more spectacle would have gone a long way. That, or to really drill down and get into the "human horror" aspect and maybe make the military/authority figures more antagonistic.
All in all, I guess I'm glad Cloverfield succeeded despite my personal feelings because we got 10 Cloverfield Lane which, while not without problems of its own, I enjoyed much more
Haha yeah goblet of fire was such an odd movie. I don't even remember the books or if it was the same but that movie made no sense.
My favourite part is how they let these kids fight dangerous dragons, one only didn't drown because harry broke the rules. They kept saying how dangerous it was, but then at the end everyone was shocked that cedric died. A dead child in the child murder games? That is crazy
Remember, the movie is based on a book written by a women who didn't had high education and is a book for children... Most things about the universe make no sense.
They were all pretty close to the books except that they cut out a lot of the pointless bickering that kept happening all the time, so I'd blame JK Rowling for those.
I hope the new series being developed is better. The one scene in the entire franchise that I wanted to see was the fight between Bellatrix and Molly. It was a disappointment.
Lucy. I know a lot of people didn't like the ending, but the whole movie was utterly shocking I thought after she took the brain drug or whatever it was
I'm probably going to get some hate for this one, but Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse. The story wasn't as tight as the first movie, they introduced too many new characters to keep up with, and it ended with a setup for the next movie.
Why do both of the Spider-Man animated movies look like they're something like 15 frames per second? It actually made me sort of nauseous to watch them when things were moving around really fast.
I haven’t seen them but it might be a callback to early animation.
To keep costs down and speed up production, cartoons (pre digital animation) would often be animated at around 15 fps, sometimes going as slow as 10 or 12 fps. Each frame was then photographed 2 or 3 times to bring the frame rate up to 24 or 30 fps depending on the media. Robotech, Scooby-Doo, Mighty Max and the original Duck Tales come to mind as examples. Hanna Barbara cartoons were also known for being on the lower end of the spectrum.
Mad Max is amazing for what it is; an apocalyptic film made on a shoestring budget that depicted something that feels prophetic now. You have to look at it and compare it to other films in the 70s; if you look at, for instance, Roger Corman films, it's Oscar-worthy in comparison. When you put it in the genre of ozploitation films, it's solid gold.
It was a product of it's time which is to say that even though it wasn't particularly good, it was representative of the schlocky action sci-fi films one might have seen just a few years earlier during the drive-in Grindhouse era.
I still haven't finished it. So many stars are just unlikable and the pacing (of the half I saw) is just not enough to keep it entertaining enough to overcome the cringey 'just look at how awful everyone in power is' caricatures.
The visuals are great. Is by a mile the best looking batman and probably comic book movie just behind the raimi Spiderman trilogy and I guess Sin City. But yeah the story gets annoying.
I liked that gotham actual felt like gotham. Not just chicago with a gotham sign.
The thing that i found moat annoying were these stupid clues. If i watch a dark riddler movie, i expect some good puzzles and twists, not batman just bumbeling around finding random clues.
I think the worst thing about it is batman doesn't actually solve/do much. I like that him being new/young means he isn't infallible, but I would have liked him to have a win or two.
Frozen was 3 hours worth of movie jammed into 1 and a half hours. So much stuff happens that either didn't need to happen or needed a lot more setup and motivation. I can understand why little kids liked it, I still have no idea why all the young women liked it too.
The sequel was worse: a hackneyed "elements" magic system and a plot that would only work on a much longer time scale. Too much stuff crammed into too little movie.
american beauty. it was everywhere, and everyone seemed to LOVE it. feels like history kinda agrees though since all I hear these days is people making fun of it. guess I’m just ahead of the times.
I swear his latest movie is just the "Emperor's new clothes" test. If you watch the whole thing you failed the test. I managed to stop around 30 mins ish.
For me it was Blade Runner. Everyone always talks about how great the movie is, and man, it was a struggle to get through. The setting was cool and that's about it.
Did you watch the one with Decker's voiceover, or without?
Apparently the common experience is watching it without voiceover first makes it harder to watch. But watching it with voiceover first makes rewatching it without, more interesting. Or something like that.
You may have got me there. It was overhyped. So. Much. Merchandise. It drew people to the cinemas too, at least where I live. I do not remember whether it was actually praised though.
BTW: I hated the sound track. Anything with Puff Daddy or whatever he tries to call himself nowadays should not exist. Most lazy music ever.
The whole premise was that they're in danger and need to get to Canada to be safe (the bad guys don't have passports I guess 🤷), but have to wait just before they cross the border for everyone to show up seemingly for no reason.
They were trying to get to North Dakota initially because that’s where “Eden” is, later Logan is going there to prove to Laura that there is no Eden. Turns out bunch of escaped kids were there and they were planning on going to Canada the next day. Logan gave the impression that Canada won’t really save them (I think I might be remembering this detail wrong).
I think my favorite "recent" superhero movie is the first Guardians of the Galaxy. The whole thing just developed organically and nothing at all felt like filler.
Dark Knight. Heath Ledger's Career defining performance can't save this tortuously paced, boring, dreary, washed out slog of a war on terror metaphor. I hate Christopher Nolan, all of his movies are like this.
The star wars prequels get a lot of hate, but honestly, all of the cracks were beginning to show in Return of the Jedi. 4 and 5 are indisputably good movies, and part of the cinematic canon. Jedi has a lot of small things wrong with it... and also Leah is Luke's sister randomly. This is a Lucasism, and as the people who were capable of standing up to Lucas fell away, and were replaced by people who grew up in star wars. Everything that makes the OT good is present in the prequels, and everything that makes the Prequels... contentious is present in Jedi. For the record, I like the prequels but I think they are flawed in really interesting ways.
Jedi is even in quality with all the prequels and sequels that came after, but has a better rep than it deserves because it stands next to the first (best) two.
return of the jedi is my least favorite, besides rise of skywalker which shit on everything that had been built up. im one of those people that actually enjoyed the last jedi a lot
V for Vendetta. For a movie with both Padme and Palpatine as actors, the movie is just an edgy construct. I'm sure V isn't totally without reason, but bro, you sabotaged a train just because you wanted real butter on toast.
I think that Ready Player One was terribly ported from the book format to the movie. The book went so much more over the top than the movie did, the latter turning down on a lot of nerd aspects. Having said that, different formats need different ways for conveying the same idea. The main character would literally get a "+1 blazing sword" in the book. +1. As if it were an MMO or something.
Having said that, Dune (book and movie) were terrible. The movie felt plagued with references to stuff I didn't get. Only recently did I read the book just to find it was as uninteresting as the movie.
I'll never forget those opera singers singing right to my ears when a ship would land... Now that's a way to startle a person.
On the bright side, reading the book has allowed me not see the second part of the movie.
I never got the dune hype either, book or movie. The latest was fun to watch on the big screen, and the 80's make is awesomely 80's in all its 80's terribleness. But over all it gets a meh from me. And I'm a huge SF nerd.
New one.
3 hours of soulless cash grab capitalyzing on the fact that we had been starved of cinema for 2 years and everyone was so hyped to come back no one wanted to admit the movie was a boring mess of everyone involved sucking his own dick instead of working together for a good product.
I don't want to see the twentieth 4 minutes desert panoramic: it's a fucking desert, we get it can we move on? Or the stupidly intense stares between Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson in random situations: you two are stranded in the desert drinking your own sweat and piss, why are you looking at each other like you're going to fuck?
To me Dune is too big for movies. It should have been a series. We've had two long films and they've cut the book down so far they still barely make sense. The end of Dune two should have been the end of a first season of 8-10 hour long episodes.
Everything everywhere all at once. The hype made this a let down, it wasn't even that good and I love weird thought provoking sci fi. This was just a goofy movie that is forgetable
Oh, I'm so glad you were not a fan. I thought I was the only one. The hype from friends was overwhelming, and I was excited to see it. BUT my wife and I couldn't finish the movie. The idea that she was THE worst version of herself was interesting, but everything else was just absurd.
There Will Be Blood. Wooden acting, almost nothing happens, the soundtrack is earsplitting noise, but everyone loves it because of the "milkshake" meme at the end.
Fuck that movie. Walked out on it halfway through, read about what "happened" afterwards later (spoiler: fucking nothing) and regret nothing.
Mad Max Fury Road. I honestly don't understand how people like it. The storyline is paper thin to the point of being almost missing. I guess the steampunk motif is good if you're into that, but the rest of the movie was just trash.
Sometimes you just want to switch your brain off for a couple hours and watch things go BOOM.
It's something I can totally get behind, although I understand it's not something everyone enjoys
I give the old ones a pass because they were made outside of Hollywood, on tiny budgets, with relatively unknown actors. The new ones cost millions and were full of big names throughout the whole production.
The obviously fast forwarded fight scenes broke this movie for me. I don't even remember the plot because every time there was anything happening on the screen the physics of everything would change.
Dark Knight trilogy. I firmly think between Nolan and Bale, Batman is forever scared. Every version I've seen of Batman sense has been this dark brooding boring character. Oh and that ridiculous voice. "The Batman", kept dark and brooding but at least he was a detective again. But that trilogy was terrible beginning to end. The slight glimmer of hope is Heath Ledger's performance which was great but still not enough to carry a trilogy.
Yeah no. I think you're confused because Batman Begins came out in 2005 which was decades ago.
If you forgot he's actually also known as Bruce Wayne and he knows how to smile and have a good time. Any actually cared about the various villains that he fought against. He used to be a clever detective.
Post Nolan he is has lost a lot of complexity. That complexity of the character offset his serious side when the cowl came on.
Look me dead in the eye and tell me Nolan's Batman is better than BTAS. Or is even in the same ballpark.
It's definitely a movie cut from the same cloth as Catcher in the Rye. You love it as a teenager because you vibe with the main character. Then you grow up and see how self-polluting and obnoxious the character is.
I did love the exchange between Mary McDonnell's character and the fundie lady. "Do you know who Graham Greene is?" "Please, I think we've all seen Bonaza". It has a layer of humor that couldn't have been intentional. The fundie lady is mixing up Graham Greene with Lorne Green, and Mary McDonnell would go on to play the political half of Lorne Green's character in the Battlestar Galactical reboot a few years later.
Isn't that kind of the point of Donnie Darko? Comparing it to The Count of Monte Cristo which did that for me, the Count seems like an amazing badass as a kid but just kind of an ass as an adult; he literally says so at the end of the story, but you gloss over it as a kid. Bringing that back to Donnie Darko, he comes to the conclusion the world is better off without him.
In a thread full of hot takes, you've picked the hottest. I'd expect Lemmy users and people who like The Matrix have a Venn diagram that's just two nested circles.
Well, everyone is wrong sometimes, you just chose today. That film is a masterpiece. And yes they ripped off a bunch of other shit, but they did so with proper style.
And if you watch the matrix today for the first time, everything is cliche and done to death.
The reason for this is that every single action movie after the matrix has copied it. When it released, it blew people away. No one had seen anything like it. I remember going to see it after an event because of how much people wouldn’t stop talking about it. Even overhyped, I was blown away.
I don't think it's dumb but very overrated and not anywhere near as deep as people make it out to be. It's little surprise that "the red pill" had been embraced by so many arrogant people that are pretty ignorant.
Ok no. The matrix, the whole trilogy, it's a damn masterpiece. Misunderstood to the max. I won't bother with a essay because I know haters never move from their place.
Hey, I'm not a hater, at least not in the trolling sense. I just genuinely think it's a poor movie and massively massively overrated. Never saw the sequels as I had zero interest.
I like the matrix series, but the two sequels are far from being masterpieces. The 2nd was a good action set piece, but the 3rd one got a bit up its own ass at times trying to fit all the exposition in with the action scenes.