The "Classics that didn't work for you" thread got me to thinking about movies that everyone else in the whole world seems to think are the best thing since sliced bread, but just did nothing for me.

For me, one of those movies is Fight Club. To this day, I despair that those are two hours that I will never be getting back. Friends of mine kept telling me "You HAVE to see Fight Club," and made it sound like some sort of meaningful film, when in fact it was really just a bit of M. Night Shyamalan-esque trickery with some violence and bad language thrown in. At least I only borrowed it from one of my friends, so the only thing I lost was those two hours.

So what are some movies that everyone else seemed to gush over, but did nothing for you? These movies don't need to be classics. They also aren't necessarily bad movies, just ones that didn't resonate with you personally in the same way they seemed to resonate with people you know.

Blade Runner (either cut) just never did much for me.

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

The Exorcist - just way too campy. The Ring was still scarier.

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here we go, the world is spinning
when it stops, it's just beginning

sun comes up, we laugh and we cry
sun goes down, and then we all die

Touched by his noodly appendage

Dancer in the Dark.

Could have been something, but in the way it was put I was more annyed than anything else by the movie. Again, the basis of the story could have made a good movie, but not in the way they did it.

The same goes for Rosetta (Belgian price winning movie): on many occasions too long and boring, and the use of hand cameras didn't make me feel too well . Still a price winning movie...

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Speaking of M. Night...

The Sixth Sense...within the first 15 minutes I knew what the ending would be. I spent the rest of the movie "waiting" to be proven right.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

You really need to apply a time frame to your observations. To those of us who saw Exorcist when the real landmarks for scare were Willard (which they were giving away barf bags and had to cut scenes to get rid of an X rating, at the time) and if you were really lucky and campy Texas chainsaw masacre or The Last House on the Left which I hadn't seen, The Exorcsit scared the beejeebus out of ya. Later, Alien was another landmark.

The Ring? The only justice done to the Ring was Scary Movie 3. It was just as terrifying BUT I had a good time watching it.

Hellraiser and the like are just gore, not scary, just gross.

Movie that didn't do it for me? Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane (big snore) Titantic.

All pretentious French, Spanish, Iranian, Brazilian, American, movies, done by "engaged intellectuals", who think that cinema is more than just a mass entertainment.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

I'm generally pleased with most movies I see, I try to find something good out of them, so I can at least justify the time I spent watching them (and the money if it's in the theater.) Because of that, I can't think of may that "just didn't work." Either I find it worth my time, or I absolutely hated it. (Only a few of those come to mind.)

If I had to pick one that didn't work for me, I'd have to ditto Blade Runner. I just saw it for the first time a couple months ago. I had been wanting to see it for years, and then when it was voted "best Sci-Fi movie of all time" by whomever (I'm not sure, but I saw it reported on space.com) I figured I'd better see it. Also, I watched it with my boyfriend, who loves it and is a huge Philip K. Dick fan. So maybe because of all that hype, it just didn't live up to my expectations. I might give it another chance, though. I've heard many people say you have to see it more than once to fully appreciate it, so we'll see.

I look forward to reposting here in case I think of any more!

A movie that I haven't seen but that I know will not work for me:

the remake of "taxi" (NOT "taxi driver"; I really liked that movie btw).

The original was a French movie where a male taxi driver helps catching a gang of male bandits. Funny, mindless action movie. I liked it for what it was worth. No pretention, just good fun.

The remake: exactly the same movie, but now spoken in English and with the male Taxi driver and the bandits replaced by attractive women. Will not work for me! And it's not that I don't like attractive women, but this is just as bad as remakes can get!

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I agree with that one.

Also the 1978 remake of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

All the Micheal Moore-type political documentaries. All of them, not just Micheal Moore.

The thing with both Fight Club and the Shyamalan films is that they have to stand up quite apart from the big twist for you to enjoy your two hours. Personally, I love Fight Club, because beyond all the clever-clever stuff I find it just absolutely hilarious. If you didn't, then I certainly don't blame you for being unimpressed.

The Wizard of Oz for the totally unforgivable move of making Dorothy's adventure turn out to be a dream.

Mind you, I didn't like the songs much either.

Another couple of iffies that I here of, but both worked for me, as did Blade Runner. It was dark, but it was ok it was also an action flick so it's a guy thing.

Outland, my wife liked it because Sean Connery, the only true Bond, was in it. But this was just a modern western like many SciFi movies, ie
Firefly. I won't go into the fact that Firefly is one heck of alot better than anything SciFi on right now, but it's a western and if there is one thing that TV owes it's existance to it's westerns/gameshows and soap operas. Firefly is two of those and one of them isn't a gameshow.

Solaris. Science shouldn't be looked at here, it's not a Sci Fi movie, it's a drama set in an exoctic environment. I hate Clooney though I liked him in this and in O Brother yada yada yada.

Wait, those are movies that DID make it with me. But I here them falling flat for so many others.

Forrest Gump. What an utterly useless, unfunny, boring movie. Lots of Oscars though...

I do like Blade Runner a lot though.

Not classics in any sense, but some of the most popular action movies of the last years are so bad that they deserve a mention as well. I tend to avoid these, but when they are on TV and I'm lazy, I'm willing to give them a chance. Well, never again for 'The Fast and the Furious' and 'Charlie's Angels', both combining bad acting with bad scripts and special effects and stunts that aren't able to put you in any suspension of disbelief...

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I'll second Forrest Gump as not living up to the hype.

Also Pink Floyd's The Wall. Maybe if I'd taken a little bit of what the filmmakers were taking...

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

I've seen a few bad movies that are generally agreed to be bad, but the only two that I go against the grain on are Blade Runner and American Beauty. The latter left such a bad taste in my mouth that I snuck into the theater showing Galaxy Quest in order to get it out.

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I second the Oscar winner American Beauty, even though I never saw it. The rest of my family all saw it and hated it, so I knew I would, sharing their taste. They all wondered, is there something wrong with people who like a movie filled with such unpleasantness?

Agree with the chorus on Blade Runner. I have a generic class of movie called Man runs round in dark high-tech post-apocalyptic environment with gun that goes zap, and Blade Runner was just one of them. My film-buff mates looked at me incredulously, and said "but, this was the original Man-runs-round-in-...etc." It didn't sway me.

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"We need rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Well, I loved Amercian Beauty.

*Shrug* If that makes me wrong, so be it. I've know that I wasn't quite right for a while.

I guess I'm easy to please. The only movie listed here (that I've seen) that I didn't like was Blade Runner. And that was after I loved Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

Saw Brothers Grimm last night. That didn't scratch me where I itched.

Anything by Kubric. I just don't get why people care.

The Monty Python films. I love the TV show, but the movies just... I donno.

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You can't take the sky from me.

Just to buck the trend I loved Blade Runner. Pink Floyd too. :P

Someone mentioned Solaris but the recent remake has nothing on the original from the 1970s. I saw it during a film festival. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I will agree about Fight Club not being very good. I saw it and wondered why everyone thought it was a great movie.

I liked Fargo but I could see why many people wouldn't like it.

I found that about one person in eight hated Fellowship of the Ring. The movie either grabbed you in the first 20 minutes or you were in for a looooong night. I loved it.

I didn't think The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was a great movie even though it is a 'classic' Western.

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"I found that about one person in eight hated Fellowship of the Ring. The movie either grabbed you in the first 20 minutes or you were in for a looooong night. I loved it."

I must be the one in 8. 'Hate' isn't the right word but more of 'The movie is okay'. I like a good story or plot more than special effects. The old Dr. Who and the Prisoner were the best science fiction on TV even though I swear one of the robots on Dr. Who once used a garbage can for a head.

Titanic won an Oscar...a total bore, couldn't wait for the ship to sink.

Shakespeare in Love won an Oscar...I was underwhelmed.

I agree Pink Floyd: The Wall was a disappointment.

A lot of people liked the The Sixth Sense, but I wasn't that impressed or scared. That kid annoyed me.

I wonder what movies you're thinking of. Cinema is or can be more than mass entertainment, thankfully! It is an art form and is open to interpretation.

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Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

I think what he means is the kind of film, where you're supposed to "get" it, and if you don't "understand it's deeper meaning" you're an idiot

Thankfully I haven't ssen many movies like that.

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here we go, the world is spinning
when it stops, it's just beginning

sun comes up, we laugh and we cry
sun goes down, and then we all die

Touched by his noodly appendage

what I truly, truly hated about it (and so did Margaret Hamilton, the woman who played the witch) was that they changed the colour of the slippers. I wrote a poem in college that referred to silver slippers, and one of my English professors corrected me! now, any time I see anything having to do with Wizard of Oz that shows silver slippers, I get very, very excited, in no small part because whoever-it-was chose authenticity over what everyone "knows" is right.

I found Forrest Gump much funnier when my friend Marty and I decided to start MST3King it. to this day, I could probably go up to Marty and say, "because I have no life" (what he said after Forrest "just kept on runnin'") and make him laugh so hard he'd shoot carbonated beverages out of his nose.

I remember not liking Citizen Kane, but that was a long time ago, so I was probably just too young for it.

Titanic won quite a lot of Oscars. I've never seen it. I hate the song. I'm not all-fired fond of Leonardo DiCaprio. I wish they'd made a true story, not stuck in a fictional one. and besides, I know how it ends.

I love American Beauty, though. likewise Shakespeare in Love. then again, I own The Crying Game and rewatch it every now and again, so perhaps my taste is not entirely reliable.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I had to watch Citizen Kane several times to really appreciate it and understand why it's such a venerable film. At first I thought it was boring, but I watched it in parts so many times, I found it more compelling each time around. It's been a while since I've taken out that tape.

My sister can't stand DiCaprio, and won't bother watching a movie with him in it. Sometimes an actor can totally cloud (kill) one's opinion of a movie. I prefer movies these days with lesser-known actors.

American Beauty was good (though not Oscar, in my opinion), I particularly resented SIL, because it won over The Insider, a very well-crafted film, and the The Crying Game was a good one.

I love movies, but I have never watched Gone With the Wind. I haven't even felt compelled to.

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Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

Have you ever heard of a certain Glauber Rocha? Well, he´s the kind of "engaged intellectual" I´m talking about. He´s considered a kind of Brazilian Fritz Lang. His movies? A collection of incomprehensible ego trips made with public money. A great movie maker... :roll:

Glad to see you around again. :wink:

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

Plan 9 From Outer Space... #-o

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Feynman
>~~~~<
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Nobody has mentioned Artificial Intelligence, A.I. I can't think of another movie that I looked forward to so much but found so ... boring. Jude Law's performance was worth seeing, I guess.

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There's room for all God's little creatures -
right next to the mashed potatoes

I could go on about this all day, and frequently have. But fear not, I'll be brief.

Titanic - utter, utter rubbish. Intensely dull.
The Return Of The King - I'm a fully paid up, card carrying (and long standing) member of the Tolkien Society, and have been reading Lord Of The Rings at least once a year since I was 6 years old (27 years ago). However, for the films I pretended these books - a large part of my life - never existed and judged them on their own merits as stand alone projects. I thought they got progressively worse, and I think the last one is the most disappointing film of all time. As stated, this is not from a "book purist" perspective, there are just too many honest film making problems and mistakes, not to mention an atrocious level of dumbing down. Very poor film making indeed. If required, I could elaborate with far more detail than almost anybody would bother reading.
A.I. - not sure if it's a classic, as such, but came to me highly recommended. I should just have re-read Pinoccio. Apart from anything else, it wouldn't have taken as long.
Gladiator - don't know where to start, so won't.

I also don't like pretty much anything starring Tom Hanks that's not one of his early comedies - this includes Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump and that one I can't remember the name of where he's a hitman. I did like Castaway, though, very much.