<p>I think BaT was really about its impact when it first came out. Probably same for Lolita.<br>
Two of the very worst films, for me, are Aguirre Wrath of God (I think I made DH walk out with me, on that one,) and The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. </p>
<p>Movie tastes vary so much. It’s hard to know whether you will like a movie or not, even with access to movie reviews. (Some of our favorites were panned by the critics). That makes me tend to like watching movies at home, where there is no investment in pricey tickets. </p>
<p>Watched X-Men: Days of Future Past, and have to say was a bit disappointed. In my opinion, Origins for Wolverine was good, but I recently watched Edge of Tomorrow. Gotta say, not a big Tom Cruise fan, but this movie was kind of funny and constantly entertaining.</p>
<p>" I loved loved loved Wag The Dog . Wow, someone fell asleep during it but loved Frozen?! Yes, personal tastes are all over the map. "</p>
<p>Yup, I did love Frozen and apparently so did a lot of other people since it is one of the highest grossing movies on record , and I think it IS the highest one for Disney . I watched it on an international flight a few months ago</p>
<p>So glad I had sons and managed to evade all the Disney Princesses!</p>
<p>@Colorado_mom, that’s exactly why we have not seen any movie out for years unless it’s at a $1/$2 movie theatre and I used to be a movie buff. However, my kids have no qualm of spending $20(is that the price now?) to see the latest movie out there.</p>
<p>mathmom, if you liked Metropolitan, you’ll like Barcelona and Last Days of Disco. (I enjoyed all three.) I didn’t go to school with people from that world and it was still a voyeuristic pleasure. Plus, the movies are well written, witty and sly in their observations. </p>
<p>Hated Million Dollar Baby.</p>
<p>A big problem with 2001 is that it’s quite dated. When first released, films that featured space vehicles and space travel were scientifically clueless. Kubrick and Clarke set out to fix that. A consequence is that they dwelled on exterior shots of the space vehicles for a long time. In 1968 it made a kind of sense. Today it seems dull.</p>
<p>Worse, the typical space movie today continues to flout the laws of physics for the sake of cool effects and a more “interesting” story. Viewers today who don’t know any better (almost everyone) will inevitably make comparisons and 2001 will come up short.</p>
<p>And of course the film-processing techniques during the “Beyond” sequence are painful to watch today. I have to put on my nostalgia hat to sit through them. Fortunately, I’m good at that, but younger viewers are less patient.</p>
<p>There are only two movie which all other movies need to be compared and rated: Mary Poppins and Body Heat. Depending on the movie, I proclaim “Well, it was no Mary Poppins” or “Not as good as Body Heat, but good.”</p>
<p>Ooooh, Body Heat. That was a good one.</p>
<p>For those who can endure goofy and the nostalgia hat, look for Dark Star. John Carpenter, Dan O’Bannon- very cheaply done, started while they were film students at USC. (I saw the '74 version, way back then.) Some say it became some inspiration for O’B’s later Alien.</p>
<p>@kataliamom thanks, added to the movie list!</p>
<p>How about Hiroshima Mon Amour? My husband hates it, but I love it. But it’s more of a poem than a novel, if you know what I mean.</p>
<p>For a lover of the Mary Poppins books, the movie was appalling. Body Heat was indeed a good one.</p>
<p>@Consolation I love both the books and the movie in different ways :). </p>
<p>Tastes differ, as can be seen on the list people put up. To what to one person is a great film, others consider a pedantic bore.</p>
<p>I generally love the Coen brothers movies, but I couldn’t stand “A serious man”, it actually made me angry in that it was full of crappy characters and seemed to have no meaning. Critics loved it, though. I loved “No Country for Old Men”, though. </p>
<p>I hate Gone with the Wind, and it isn’t just because of its portrayal of the antebellum South as being this wonderful place with gracious balls and so forth, I found the plot stupid and the characters insipid. Might be the largest grossing movie of all time (adjusted for inflation), or near one of the largest, but ick. </p>
<p>I liked Citizen Kane, but I never quite thought it was all that great,Wells was a brilliant man, but just didn’t do it for me. </p>
<p>Wuthering Heights is another ‘classic’ that drives me to drink, then again, I didn’t like the novel, either…</p>
<p>Then again, I loved “Pirate Radio” which critics didn’t really like, and all the rock afficianadoes were knocking because “they played the Turtles? They played X, and it didn’t come out until 1967, and this was 1966?” I loved it, great music, and a very cute story, and Kenneth Branaugh must have paid them to play the upper class British Twig, plus I also loved Rhys Ilfans, Bill Nighy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. </p>
<p>I thought Saving Private Ryan was a decent film, unlike most of the war films that went before it, it at least tried to be a bit more realistic instead of being either Rah Rah, or over the top anti war. The D Day sequence was well done, and it showed how horrible war is (my father’s comments, who was a WWII combat veteran but didn’t land at D-Day, was they needed smell-o-vision to make it really come home). As far as the mission being impossible, that part isn’t true, there were missions like this. Patton’s son in law was captured, and according to my dad they sent out a platoon to get him back, and there were other cases of this. Sometimes the raids were like the one on a Japanese POW camp in the Phillipines, where the Japanese were planning to kill the POW’s and were saved by a small unit going in and freeing them. </p>
<p>I liked Forrest Gump, until it came to the ending and then I wanted to find Zemeckis and make him eat white castle hamburgers until he burst. If you are going to have a fairy tale, why have the bitter ending? Not to mention that doesn’t happen in the book, it struck me as someone with deep seated issues ‘getting back’ at Jenny for being promiscuous and such…</p>
<p>I never got into the 1980’s baby boomer angst movies, like The Big Chill (the music was great, though), I agree with another poster, John Sayles did a much better job with the topic, but other movies just reminded me of whining. </p>
<p>Never got into the Angst ridden foreign movies, especially many of the Swedish films of Bergman. I went to NYU and had friends who were film majors, and they would drag me to movies like this, and would be in Ecstasy while I would be saying “What the heck…”.On the other hand, one of my favorite movies of all time, Cinema Paradiso, is foreign, and it touched me in many ways, if you haven’t seen it, I think you will like it, it is funny, charming, and also very, very bittersweet, and it comes down in the end to someone who goes after his passion and loses part of himself in the process (and the kid who plays the main character as a boy is amazing…). </p>
<p>Then, of course, there are movies I like that others dismiss. I like Gone in 60 seconds (the Nicolas Cage version), even though it is not exactly grand cinema. One of my favorite silly movies is a movie that came out of the late 60’s, with Paul Newman, “The Secret War of Harry Frigg”. Critics panned it and it doesn’t exactly get high marks, it is a kind of typical WWII caper movie, but it happens to have a lot of actors I like, and it is comic book and bufoonish in some ways, but I still enjoy watching it. I also love “Kelly’s Heroes” in the same vein (though the music is way, way out of whack), again because of the actors in it more than the actual plot.</p>
<p>The movies that always disappointed me were attempts to make Raymond Chandler novels into movies, none of them really did it. Robert Mitchum almost came close, but the problem is they were made when he was much older, had he done it when he was younger, it probably would have worked (unlike Dashiell Hammett, whose books made some damn good movies, including “The Maltese Falcon”.</p>
<p>Two movies I fell in love with as a young person still make me happy, “The African Queen” (with Bogey and Hepburn going at it, can’t miss) and Doctor Strangelove. Way back before there were VCR’s or movie on demand or streaming, my parents would get me up if they were on at 2am (when they tended to play) to watch them. </p>
<p>H and I watched Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate last night. I remarked that I’d only ever seen him in Elmer Gantry and Airport. He said he liked Elmer Gantry, Airport not so much. I Ioved Airport! It was clichéd and melodramatic, but it was also adventurous and entertaining, with one of the greatest opening themes ever. Sometimes you just want to sit and watch and not think too much for a couple of hours - afterward, you’re ready to have your brain engaged again. </p>
<p>You haven’t seen From here to eternity? Or Atlantic City?
<a href=“Movie Reviews - The New York Times”>Movie Reviews - The New York Times;
<p>I loathed, loathed, loathed Napoleon Dynamite. </p>
<p>I fell asleep during The Matrix, much to my boyfriend’s disappointment. </p>
<p>I’m also embarrassed to admit that I was lukewarm about Dead Poets Society. On one hand, I thought they nicely captured the atmosphere of a stuffy private school and love the soundtrack, and the final scene of the film was powerful. On the other hand, I found the crisis of the film not entirely compelling and wasn’t exactly wowed by Robin Williams. </p>
<p>Musicprnt, I don’t love African Queen. I do love Hepburn and Bogey, but I prefer the “style” films that were so great during that era. Have and Have Not or of course Casa Blanca, and Adams Rib or Philadelphia Story, for example. </p>