Well thought of movies you can't abide

This came out of a discussion in LJ. What are some movies that are either critically acclaimed or very popular, or all your friends like but you hate? One that comes immediately to my mind was Deer Hunter. It won best picture and I thought it was an unfocused, self indulgent, and boring. When Cimino's next film Heaven's Gate came out everyone felt that way about it. That made me feel a bit better about the taste of everyone else in the world.

Any of the Coen brothers movies, for starters. People always tell me if I don't like them it's because I don't "get" them, but I think I actually just don't like them. Well, except for Hudsucker Proxy.

Also, Sideways. I might've liked that one better if I'd been prepared for how Russian-tragedy, life-as-continued-string-of-suckiness it was.

The list is long...I think my tastes just don't run with the crowd as much as they should. :) The one that comes most easily to mind because I just mentioned it in my movie memey thing, is Meet the Parents. Everyone goes on and on about how damn hilarious it was. I found it alternating between boring as hell and uncomfortably unfunny and couldn't even get through it.

i didn't find it intelligent or revelatory in any way. it just annoyed me.

I totally agree. I could never see what people saw in them.

I hated American Beauty.

I think my friends quoted it around me too much before I saw it. I keep waiting for something to happen..

I actually really liked sideways.

So did most people...hence its inclusion in this topic. :)

hah.
well, I meant it more in the sense of "i'm suprised I did..."

god, napoleon dynamite was so lame.

no it wasn't. GOSH! it was flippin' sweet!

and the only thing lamer than nd is people *quoting* nd. :)

Met fans started wearing Vote for Pedro shirts this year because the Mets traded for Pedro Martinez. I had to explain to my friend that the shirts were a Napolean Dynomite reference. I haven't actually seen the film. The only one I know over 35 that likes it is Skippy.

I saw it once and found it utterly dull, but everyone else seems to think it was brilliant. I don't get it.

I'm with you.

Me too. I didn't find it dull but I found the film ordinary. It was a simplistic "audience movie."

Like I said, I might have liked it better if I'd known what sort of movie it was before I started watching. I was expecting something...well, not comedy, exactly....maybe more along the lines of Garden State. You know, still kind of sad and mellow, but with sympathetic characters and more of a feel-good message.

> I'm with you.

Who are you and what have you done with Andrea? :)

Actually, anything by Wes Anderson. I can see how his films might be enjoyable... I just seem to be chemically unable to enjoy them. I find them boring, depressing and kind of alienating besides.

Also Mr. & Mrs. Smith was about the worst movie I saw this year, and now everyone on my friends list is using quotes from it in their movie quotes quiz. *pouts*

I don't really hate movies. Even horrible movies like 'Soul Plane' I find halarious.

Yeah, I don't know that I don't like Wes Anderson's movies, but I find them very very odd and kind of hard to judge in general. I can't even really say whether I like or dislike them. I've only seen Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, but I thought both were good ideas whose implementations went a little too far into 'unnecessarily bizarre' territory.

She was getting in the way and needed to be dealt with. :)

Ahhh... yeah, I could definitely see that.

I was just handed the movie and told nothing about it... so.... I went in without expectations. :)

oh god, amen.

that movie (zissou) just left me going.... "umm.... okay?"

i loved rushmore and bottle rocket. royal tenenbaums disappointed me so much because it should have been much better.

garden state...speaking of way overrated movies...

Oh man, no way!

How can anyone not love that movie?

well, i thought it captured new jersey and people from new jersey perfectly--if i didn't know better, i would have sworn that most of the actors were in fact my jersey family members. but. other than that, i felt like it was trying way too hard to be our generation's the graduate, and i love the graduate too much to abide poor imitations.

I have one word for you; "plastics."

Buck Henry was a creative force behind The Graduate and Get Smart yet he never seems to get the honor he deserves.

Almost Famous.

I didn't feel it was trying to be anything.
I think that's why I loved it.

But.... I also went into seeing it without having heard anything about it.... so.. perhaps that's a factor.

i'd say that's a factor, because i didn't get around to seeing it until it was on dvd, and after months of everyone on lj twittering over it. which is the main reason i didn't dig pirates of the caribbean, either.

yeah, I could see that.
if overhyped, most things can't stand up.

Ewwwwwwwwwww.

Worst. Film. Ever.

Isn't that the consensus opinion? I didn't think it was well thought of. Il Postino the Italian original is a different story. Or did you mean that?

Nope I mean the Kevin Costner film...

I think the key phrase here is 'Kevin Costner film'.

i'm pretty sure that the postman and waterworld are generally thought of as absolutely terrible.

Lets put it this way. Does anyone here think either of those was a great film or even a good one?

Never saw the postman or wanted to. And I can't say waterworld is necessarily good, but I like it. But I'm a sucker for underwater spookiness so the sunken city stuff really affects me and colors my perception of the whole thing. :)

I know what you are doing. You are testing that whole, "I still like you" thing; aren't you?

Hehehe...no...being honest, unfortunately. :)

You have my condolences but believe it or not I still like you. I just won't watch Waterworld with you.

but there's a difference between 'great film' and 'enjoyable entertainment'. For example, I don't think any of the Harry Potter movies could be considered a 'great film', but I enjoyed them enough to want to watch them again (well, more the last two than the first two, but still).

i.... enjoyed the postman. i was able to get into the awful cheesiness, & i had a soft spot for the plot, as it was based on a david brin short story (it has actually no relation to the film il postino. i couldn't tell if the comment further up was a joke).

I'll be brave. I really enjoyed Waterworld. I thought it was basically Mad Max on the ocean.

Dances With Wolves was unwatchable. What a sappy movie. I wish Stands with a Fist had punched Costner.

bad acting, annoying characters(and not just Jar Jar Binks), confusing plots, obvious CGI effects (which is not so bad in moderation...but when the whole movie looks like was filmed in front of a blue screen? c'mon!).... they had none of the charm of the original three.

most of mall pals are huge fans of Team America. i despise it.
also napoleon dynomite, meet the parents, sin city, some others

team america was somewhat funny, but a rental and a one-time-only viewing movie. i dont really think it's "Well thought of" though :D

I didn't really care for Ferris Bueller's Day Off.� Sure, it had some cute moments, but on the whole, I was thinking "Meh".� My husband was slightly disgusted with me for not digging it.

i think some "series of moments" movies arent as big with some people than others. i'm really into those kinds of movies, which is why i like FBDO and Napoleon Dynamite and the Kevin Smith movies, etc, etc. "because that's all life is, sister. a series of moments." :D

but if you're not, i can see why. it's not like Ferris Bueller was some sort of compelling storyline or life-changing lesson or anything. it didnt like fill you with hope for the future or a swelling of the human spirit. :D

but I thought that "Gladiator" was just a Braveheart rehash in ancient Rome. I was waiting for ole Russell to yell out FREEDOM!!! before he keeled over...It may just be me...*shrugs*

And they both wore skirts.

yeah i didn't really see the big deal about Garden State either. It felt like one bright emo music video after another. Also, Natalie Portman's character annoyed me. I am so sick of movies about some dull and boring guy who is revitalized by a spunky effervescent pixie.

Oh i have so much love for napoleon dynamite. But it wasn't hyped up for me. I think I would have liked it less had I seen it *after* all the hype and people quoting it. But I really thought it was the most honest teen movie. Everyone's bored, high school sucks, there's no glamour. Seriously, I want there to be a Napoleon Dynamite Reader, with critical theory essays in it!

Garden State sucked ass.

Any movie with Jason Lee in it should be exempt from nomination in this category, on account of the fact that Jason Lee fucking rules.

Yeah, it really was a great movie, wasn't it?

No, it was boring and terrible.

That's funny... it said the same thing about you.

;D

Were it possible to perform this maneuver on a movie, I would do it to Garden State.

How about shows?

Sopranos, CSI Miami, The Shield...

There are a lot I don't see what the big deal is all about...but I can abide them to an extent.

CSI anything is just a concept I don't get. And, if I were in charge, there would have been a show on CBS called Everybody Wants To Dropkick Raymond.

See I like Original Recipe CSI. And I don't mind the NY one. But Miami? David Caruso's character is one of the most insufferable pricks ever...I just can't watch it without wanting to do him bodily harm.

As long as we're on the subject of TV personalities that we'd like to hurt, I've got a sectioned rant on public access:

Back in the day, there used to be this guy on channel 3 on the Cape. He ran a comic book store in Falmouth, and he had a show called Talking Comics. He had this thick ghetto-Boston accent, and the show consisted of him holding up a comic, and saying how great it was. "This is Incredible Hulk numbah three fifty foah. It's a great book, you should pick it up. The aaht is wicked pissah. Okay, this is Amazing Spidah-Man numbah..." I'm not kidding, that was the entire content of the show. It went on for half an hour. The first time I ever took Nyquil, I sat down on the couch after taking it, and I knew it had taken effect when Talking Comics started making sense.

Speaking of that particular station, there was a guy who worked at the station and every month, he would hold a meeting where people would just hang out and watch anime (before it was popular) for like 8 hours. Let me just tangentalize, Fushigi Yugi rules. So I used to go to this thing for years, then one day I showed up, and the door was locked, and a note said "The anime club is cancelled permanently". I'm not privy to all the details, but the scuttlebutt I heard was that the guy who ran the thing got busted for having kiddie porn on his work computer. Sick fuck.

Last thing. When Adi and I moved to Mansfield, we took a bit of an interest in this one particular guy who's on public access here. He's an older guy, and his show consists entirely of him taking about local politics, and running down Mr. so-and-so from the Mansfield DPW, who is a liar because he said the DPW only had enough money allocated to them to run eight plows this year, when in reality, if they bought regular gas instead of high-test, they could run all 12 plows! You get the idea. But the reason this guy is remarkable is his choice of shirt. Every week, he has some different bizarre geometric-patterned shirt. It's like Murray on acid. The one time I saw him with a solid color shirt, it was bright purple. On a 65-70 year old wrinkled man with Bob Barkeresque dyed black hair, that is not a good look, let me tell you.

David Caruso . . . can only say . . . two or three . . . words . . . at a time . . . before . . . he has . . . to pause . . . dramatically.

I would say that Caruso went to the William Shatner school of acting if it weren't for the fact that Shatner RULES! Esp. on Boston Legal.

My biggest issue with Caruso is his awkward delivery. You're not Christopher Walken!!! Although Christopher Walken rules, too . . .