The World According to Garp
Out of Africa
Cutting Edge
My dad took me to see an ancient aliens movie, Chariots of the Gods or something like that when I was about 10, and I was scared for years.
Inception
August: Osage County
“Troy, because they changed too much from the book - it’s a timeless classic!”
I agree. Brad Pitt played Achilles as an acrobatic swordsman. In the book fighting Achilles was more like trying to fight a tiger. Achilles overwhelmed his opponents with strength and sheer ferocity. And where were all the gods in the movie? Terrible movie.
I have only walked out of a theater once. I used to work for a tv station and sometimes we would get free tickets to new releases from the sales/advertising team.
I saw a lot of good/great movies for free that way, but also the one I walked out on:
Bad Girls, a western starring Drew Barrymore, Madeline Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson and Andie McDowell as prostitutes palling around, from 1994. I can’t remember what exactly was so terrible, but I just decided I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. I wonder if I would have stayed if I had paid for it?
OK, I’ll play.
Simply bad movies I can watch, and even enjoy. There are a handful of movies, though, that I have had especially bad reactions to.
- The Princess Diaries. The book was a perfectly serviceable bit of B+ YA fiction, and every single change made for the movie -- of which there were many -- was in the service of making it dumber and coarser. Plus, of all the egregious examples of the convention "no one notices the girl is beautiful because she wears glasses," none is more outrageous than this movie's premise that no one ever noticed Anne Hathaway looked like Anne Hathaway until she got contacts and a whole lot of nail polish.
- My Dinner With Andre. It's the all-time favorite movie of one friend. I've rented it four times. I have never remained awake until the end. Ever. (Same with Vanya on 42nd Street.)
- Wings of Desire. This would possibly be the worst, dumbest, most offensively boring movie ever, if it didn't look great and have a couple of scenes in the middle that actually live up to the promise of its premises.
- I don't know how you can choose between Eyes Wide Shut and Vanilla Sky as the most awful pretentious movie starring Tom Cruise. If I had to choose just one, it would be Vanilla Sky. To my taste, making Penelope Cruz unwatchable is a much more significant achievement than doing the same to Nicole Kidman.
- A special circle of Hell is reserved for directors whose work I have really loved making awful films. Bernardo Bertolucci visits that circle with some frequency. Last Tango in Paris, Stealing Beauty, Besieged. Sam Peckinpah, too. Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia is the bottom of the barrel.
As for the rest of you, there are lots of movies I really like that a lot of you all hate. OK, I get it, tastes differ. But someone mentioned Moonrise Kingdom. My wife hates watching movies twice. Generally, she just refuses to do it. In the entire history of cinema, there are maybe five or six movies she has gone so far as to purchase and watch, not just twice, but multiple times. The most recent is Moonrise Kingdom.
Fame (1980). The only reason I sat through the whole thing was my mother sitting next to me.
Fame (2009). Why, oh why, oh why did I sit through this after hating the first one.
The Color of Money (1986). I loved The Hustler, so went expecting that a modern retelling starring Paul Newman would be great. It took me 20 years before I could watch another movie with Tom Cruise in it.
The Natural (1984). A 5’3" 125 lb Robert Redford is supposed to be the best baseball player ever. Then they change Bernard Malamud’s ending, completely destroying the whole point of the book. Heretical.
Anything with Jim Carrey.
Typical guy, I love Tarantino, Coen brothers, and Robert Rodriguez movies.
Mr. B and I really enjoyed Moonrise Kingdom. I noticed that during the show several people walked out of the theater and did not come back.
@ JHS, I am the only person I know that hated Moonrise Kingdom . I was sure I would like it because I really like some of the actors in it, but no….
@movemetoo , I also hated Out of Africa and The World according to Garp.
@ECmotherx2 , I agree with August in Osage County…so depressing and disturbing
“Whiplash (I realize I’m in the distinct minority here).”
Not really, while I loved the performance the actor playing the teacher put on (my S’s former violin teacher would probably see the movie, and say “he is too lenient”…), the movie as a whole bothered me, it seemed to be honest pointless as a whole.
Movies I hated…the original Red Dawn comes to mind, I walked out of the theater with that one, I don’t mind propoganda/paranoia movies, but that was so bad I couldn’t take it
Ghost
Silver Linings Playbook
The Coen Brothers “A serious Man”…I like some of their movies, but that one just left me thinking “WTH?”
Star Trek V (the one directed by Shatner), I can only watch that with the rifftrax soundtrack
Any movie with Hugh Grant in it, what the attraction is with a snuffling dumbbell like him I don’t understand
Leaving Lost Vegas
Any of Woody Allen’s “Serious movies” (on the other hand I loved Midnight in Paris, if just for Kathy Baker playing Gertrude Stein and the guy playing Hemingway)
Any movie version of “The Great Gatsby”
Gattaca
I hate it when someone has to die for a plot device. In America comes to mind - the neighbor across the hall dies of AIDS and its turns out his art became valuable and he left it to our struggling main family because the kids were cute - end of story. Please!!!
Funniest line of the day!
@guidedbywire, the NYT used to have 1-line capsule reviews of movies in its TV listings. This was back when the NY TV stations broadcast about 5 movies, mostly classics, per day. You could have had that job. My all-time favorite pan was of some ill-conceived potboiler set in Ancient Egypt: “Barges down the Nile and sinks.”
=))
Movies that are supposed to be “good” that I hated:
Two English Girls, Truffaut (Only movie of his I ever disliked.)
The Red Desert, Antonioni (or any other movie of his that featured endless shots of Monica Vitti’s expressionless face against various backgrounds that were supposed to be interesting)
Worst movie I ever sat through in a theater:
Mighty Ducks II I’ve never seen a movie more obvious conceived in every detail by desperate marketing guys. Searching around for a villain, lit upon the only country with a small enough market not to worry about offending where they could make the entire team look like Hitler Youth: ICELAND!! Great idea, guys!!! You know those people from Iceland are just brutal. And in another great marketing-driven “creative” decision, when the Ducks lose their mojo, who gets to teach the kids from Minnesota how to REALLY play hockey? Black street kids from LA!!! Great idea guys!!! (Can you imagine a movie in which white suburban kids from Minnesota teach a team of black kids from LA how to REALLY play basketball? No? Oh ye of little faith.)
I forgot about Blue Velvet.
I love all Wes Anderson movies, including Moonrise Kingdom.
I hate Quentin Tarantino movies. Useless, stupid gore and brutality masquerading as “cool.” Pulp Fiction was better than the others.
@musicprnt, I hated Ghost too.
And speaking of sentimental movies, I couldn’t stand the much-beloved *The Notebook/i.
(Also agree about any movie version of The Great Gatsby.)
I don’t mind if someone loves a movie I hate !
AS close as I am to my sister , we often times disagree on movies…she loved " Raising Arizona " , I thought it was terrible…
Another head scratcher with talented actors :
" Joe vs The Volcano "
Birdman. The Matrix. Sexy Beast. I just didn’t “get” these. At all.
I forgot about “Silver Linings Playbook.” I didn’t hate it but I expected much better given all the acclaim it received. I thought it was self-indulgent and sappy.
@Magnetron, The Natural is my all-time most despised film. I also couldn’t stand The Unbearable Lightness of Being or (gasp!) Raiders of the Lost Ark.
My husband loved *My Dinner with Andre *, but I am pretty sure I would hate it.
I kind of liked *Wings of Desire *. I have a fair amount of tolerance for slow arty movies. Love Hiroshima, Mon Amour for example which dh hates.
My husband refused to watch *Pulp Fiction *. I thought it was great, but I haven’t seen any of the other Tarantino movies, mostly because of course dh won’t see them. (He’s very squeamish.)
*Inception * - yep that was one of the stupidest sci-fi movies that I’ve seen in a while.
I don’t think Penelope Cruz can act her way out of a paper bag. I think she made a number of movies a lot worse than they needed to be. (I.e. *Pirates of the Caribbean * or *The Good Shepherd *.) I dislike Nicole Kidman, but I actually haven’t seen her in that much. She was fine in *The Golden Compass * where that pinched cool blonde look worked well as the face of evil.
We recently tried to watch *My Own Private Idaho *, and thought it was unwatchable. I can’t remember why it ended up on a Christmas want list. Since we only watched 10 minutes I can’t count it as hated.
Agree.
Grey Gardens was a dreadful and thoroughly depressing movie–should have slept on the plane instead. I kept waiting for it to get better and happier–never did!
So many movies people list here are ones I love!
That said, here’s my contribution: L’avventura, Antonioni’s “masterpiece.” Saw it in a tiny, stiflingly hot Parisian movie theater. It didn’t help that my French wasn’t good enough at that point to get the full sense of the subtitles. I just groaned in misery while my husband chortled. (At me.) Couldn’t get out of there quickly enough. To this day I think of it as the single worst movie experience of my life.