BS: Movies to avoid

Subject: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 10:37 AM

"Howl"
with James Franco

Worlds Greatest Dad
with Robin Williams

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 10:51 AM

Jaws 3, I watched it last night specifically intending for it to send me to sleep. It worked a charm.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 10:56 AM

Any Jaws but the original.
Any Rocky but the first.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Amergin
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 10:59 AM

Voyage of the Dawn Treader...it really pissed me off how they ruined a great story.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:01 AM

HAPPINESS ~~ award after award and the most obnoxious film EVER...

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:07 AM

The one with Will Smith?

Yeah!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:40 AM

Poster appears to be Donuel

---

Cars 2. It is not even close to other Pixar movies.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:43 AM

Toy Story 3 was excellent.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:07 PM

Having this list is fine...I've seen none of them...some I've not even heard of. But better yet would be a brief reason why your choices should be avoided.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:14 PM

Perhaps it would.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:19 PM

The Tamarind Tree. It stars two of my betes noir, Omar and Julie.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:22 PM

ANY movie directed by the idiot who directed Independence Day, Armageddon, and several other blockbuster films of the past decade or so. His most recent abomination in CGI overkill and vacant plot and terrible acting was "2012", soon to be invalidated, I trust, by the arrival of the actual year. No matter what happens, I doubt it will be half as bad as the movie. ;-)

I haven't seen those comedies about a family called "the Fokkers". I'm guessing I haven't missed much, right?

Regarding the Rocky films...the first one was darned good. The others declined gradually, getting worse and worse as they went, but I'd say that the very last one actually was a bit of an improvement over the 2 that preceded it.

I saw a joke poster once of the movie "Rocky XXIII". He was about 110 years old, emaciated and whitehaired, in a wheelchair, wearing boxing gloves and shorts, and still tryin' to "go the distance".

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:27 PM

ANY movie directed by the idiot who directed Independence Day, Armageddon, and several other blockbuster films of the past decade or so.

His films are vapid but...
Nothing he did was anywhere near as bad as the toxic sludge mentioned in my first posts.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:28 PM

Oh dear. I hate to admit it but I loved Independence Day and Armageddon. Disaster movies are like candy to me. Can't get enough of them.
Of course, if you are looking for award winning acting...stay away from the falling buildings.


Recently saw Song Catcher and seriously considered suicide about half way through it. My god what a mess.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:34 PM

You're probably right, Jack. ;-) Fortunately, I have avoided the aforementioned toxic sludge entirely, this due only to the fortunate purchase of a Ktel Toxic Sludge Detector that I acquired many years ago. It is designed to enable one to track down and home in on rare Ktel albums in bargain bins, but I use it instead to warn me away from REALLY bad movies. It makes a sort of Godzilla screech sound when nearing any commercial outlet where such a movie is playing...and the screech intensifies with proximity to the point of sale.

I somehow missed Song Catcher too. But it hasn't played anywhere around here...for some reason....

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:39 PM

I enjoyed song catcher. It was not a great story but the music an photography were good.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 02:00 PM

Most of them, sadly.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:00 PM

Any film with either Robin Williams or Julia Roberts in it should be avoided like the plague!

Also any 'rom com' films involving 'big name' Hollywood stars - i.e. Robin Williams (natch!), Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro, Whoopi Goldberg etc., etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:09 PM

How about a romantic comedy starring Robin Williams, Julia Roberts AND Barbra Streisand? ...with cameo appearances by Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro AND Whoopi Goldberg!

And what about some more Woody Allen films about existential despair and 21st century malaise and hypocrisy in Manhattan? Anyone dying to see one of those?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: goatfell
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:13 PM

any film with Jim Carrey

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:50 PM

"Songcatcher" is a beautiful motion picture compared to box-office smash "Kick Ass."

Doubt me at your own risk.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:52 PM

EXCEPT this Jim Carrey film, goatfell: "Man In The Moon"

I recommend it most highly. If you don't like it, you deserve to be cast into the 7 pits of hell, dismembered, and gnawed upon by famished shrews! ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:53 PM

"The Green Berets" with John Wayne.
"Barbarella" with Jane Fonda.
Anything with Woody Allen.
Almost all porn films.
Anything labeled an "Art Film."
Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet".

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 05:18 PM

Off the top of my head....

Apocalypse Now (Redux) - the worst movie in the world; Apocalypse Now being the best!

Herzog's Nosferatu - Sub-Hammer schlock made worse by the lovely opening sequence.

Witchfinder General - the other Folk Horrow film, watched it a month back on holiday in darkest Herefordshire thinking it couldn't be as bad as I remembered it. It was. Worse. Much worse.

Brassed Off - We have a great tradition of home-grown films (Shane Meadows etc.) of which this is a pale and paltry parody.

Full Monty - Ditto.

Four Weddings and a Funeral - Or Four Funerals and a Cemetery as an old mate once called it. It's not that I hate Andie MacDowell (okay, I hate The Smile, but her performance in Groundhog Day is actually quite enjoyable) but in this smugfest even the excellent Charlotte Coleman gets swamped by the excessive goo.   

The Passion of the Christ - the worst story ever told? Quite possibly. Stick with the Last Temptation.

The Life of Brian - I saw it the week it came out and I've been trying to like it ever since; all the more iksome as I'm a huge Python fan & Holy Grail is among my all time favourites.

The Matrix Revolutions - What went wrong?

AVP Requiem - So bad it's actually a work of pure genius; I've got the special edition on DVD.

It's A Wonderful Life - No. It's a very overrated film. Loved my millions, hated by one.

Musicals - Every Single One of Them (Apart from The Wicker Man) - The cinematographic genre from hell.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 05:38 PM

Was "Sweeney Todd" a musical? I liked it. Generally I can't stand them.

I too usually find Andie McDowell hard to take for some reason...but I liked her in Groundhog Day and in Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan.

I've never seen The Full Monty or Matrix Revolutions or The Passion of the Christ...or 4 Weddings and a Funeral.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 05:48 PM

"How about a romantic comedy starring Robin Williams, Julia Roberts AND Barbra Streisand? ...with cameo appearances by Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro AND Whoopi Goldberg!"

NOOOOOOO!!!!! The horror! The horror!!

LH, how could you be so cruel? Not Barbara Streisand!! Oh please, NOOOOOOO!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 05:51 PM

Heh! Heh! Heh! (eeevil cackling laughter)

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: saulgoldie
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 06:13 PM

"Musicals - Every Single One of Them (Apart from The Wicker Man) - The cinematographic genre from hell."

Sorry, Suibhne. With all due respect, you are wrong, wrong, wrong, and quintuple WRONG, here! Too many excellent musicals to list. (OKlahoma, West Side Story, Music Man, Sound of Music, just for starters. C'mon!) But there are many that are well worth the watching. Perhaps you were forced when young to watch a bad musical on your birthday when you really wanted a party with a pirate clown???

Saul

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: ranger1
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 06:19 PM

Valhalla Rising. It couldn't make up its mind as to what kind of a movie it wanted to be - ultra-violent gorefest one second, attempted art house film the next. There's a lot more, but then I'd have to dredge up memories of it, which is more effort than this film was worth.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Amergin
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 07:40 PM

Human Centipede...boring, shockingly boring, and pointless....I only watched it because of South Park.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Skivee
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 09:08 PM

I sorta like Julia Roberts. I know opinions vary. That being said, "Eat, Pray, Love" had me praying for death by the 158th hour. The scripts was written by someone who may have had the original book described to them...badly.
We turned the movie off before the ending. My friend read a couple of excerpts from the book, later. All the clever and interesting had been wrung out of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:46 PM

Avatar ..... remember that one? At the time it was declared by audiences everywhere as the greatest movie ever made ..... I truly believe most people who agreed with that declaration were in a temporary state of insanity induced it's primitive technical effects of 3-D .... yeah 3-D, whatever happened that moronic idea .... seems to me it makes it's rounds in Hollywood about every 50 years or so.

3-D ..... House on Haunted Hill(1959) ..... Avatar (2009) .... go get your special 3-D glasses kids and a bucket of popcorn.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:47 PM

Battle of Los Angeles

IT comes straight out of the DOD.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 12:09 AM

I absolutely loved Avatar...and NOT because of the 3D which was utterly inconsequential to me. The first theatre I saw it in didn't have the 3D feature, and the movie looked better without it. I later saw it in a bigger place with the 3D. Still wonderful, but not as good as without the 3D, because the colors look quite a bit better with no 3D.

I've rarely seen any movie in my life that I liked better than Avatar, because it presented a visually gorgeous world, a marvelously beautiful alien race, a marvelously worthy philosophy of life held by that race, and it showed for all the world what our own evil empire is really up to every day, everywhere it goes, exploiting natural resources, regimenting and enslaving people to serve it mindlessly, and creating ugliness and waste and death and pollution wherever its big giant technological foot lands. the evil empire being the big military-industrial machine that our taxes pay for every day of our lives.

That movie had many good and powerful messages in it, messages that humanity ought to heed before this planet is totally trashed. The Na'avi as shown in the film were our far better selves, the real gems of humanity that lie mostly hidden in people, the highest potential in all of us, and there's almost nothing in the corrupt society we presently live in to encourage our better selves to come forth...except whatever wisdom we can find in in the inner silence of our own hearts.

Nope, I wasn't in a temporary state of insanity when I loved that movie, Number 6. It's our military-industrial society that is in a temporary...or a permanent state of insanity, and it's criminally insane. The Na'avi were everything we could be, should be, and CAN be...if we just had the courage and the vision to do it.

Guess why it didn't win best picture that year? Because it was a direct philosophical repudiation of our entire present military-industrial aggressor civilization, that's why, and they couldn't let THAT message win "Best Picture" in imperial Amerika. No sir. They had foreign wars to fight, so they gave Best Picture to a film about an American bomb disposal expert in the "War on Terror". Just what Dr Goebbels would have done, I expect. Fascists don't like ideas such as were presented in Avatar. Those ideas are a complete rejection of all that Fascists stand for...and the Fascists lost out in Avatar. For once!

Thank you, James Cameron.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Janie
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 12:19 AM

The Original or the remake of True Grit.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:56 AM

Right, LH, you've asked for it! MERYL STREEP!! Ha! Serves you right, that's all I can say ...

Anyway I recently watched a truly, truly awful film from about 20 years ago. It was called 'The Limey' and starred (I think)Terence Stamp. It was about an English gangster who goes to America ... for some reason which escapes me. In one scene he gets beaten up by some American gangsters, who after giving him a thorough pounding, throw him out into the street. THEN, and only then, do we discover that he's carrying a gun (which the American gangsters have failed to notice) and he goes back into the establishment from which he's been ejected and shoots his assailants!

In another scene some criminal or other has a house on top of a hill and there is a road spiralling round the hill to the bottom. TS shoots someone in the house and then is involved in a car chase and shootout down the spiral road. In the meantime the house owner calls the cops who drive up the spiral road and FAIL TO NOTICE the shootout happening half way up!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 04:31 AM

OKlahoma, West Side Story, Music Man, Sound of Music, just for starters.

Thing is, I love MUSIC too much to have any sympathy for MUSICALS at all. Childhood? Yeah, my mother was very hung up on WSS for reasons that were very personal to her (so at least I got the reference to Officer Krupke in Curb Your Enthusiasm) but she went about it with quiet dignity and never enforced it. Like I say, The Wicker Man is an exception because the musical sequences are an integral part of the fascistic volkish subversions being portrayed. And it didn't start life as a STAGE SHOW - which is another genre that fills me with dread dark fear. Other exceptions include The Four Marx Brothers films - such as The Cocoanuts which a) is a musical (at a stretch, though it does contain the Monkey-Doodle-Doo sequence which is the perfect expression of 20s exotic modernism) and b) was orginally a stage show. However, in this life there MUST be exceptions, and (despite the occasional flash of comedic genius) we'll never see the likes of The Marx Brothers again. Still, one wonders how they would have fared in the TV age (and I don't count Deputy Seraph) rather than the Vaudeville era which honed the comedic genius that translated so readily to celluloid.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Max Johnson
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 05:38 AM

'Taken'. Because it's crap.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 06:37 AM

As a fan of most of the fantasy genre I can put up with most things but 'Ator the Fighting Eagle' takes some beating in the B movie stakes!

I also like superhero films as a sub-genre of the above and round about the worst ever must be Catwoman with Halle Berry.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 07:00 AM

Anything that announces it is in 3D which really means in cinemaspeak is that it has no decent script and the acting is average, one of the reasons why I am not in too much of a hurry to see Harry Potter. Most of the teen flicks. The original Wicker Man is overated I think, it was made late 60s early 70s? So it can be excused for not having too many effects but the acting was pretty wooden although the gyrating dance by Brit Eckland is worth looking at for a laugh.

Movies that I really have to avoid not because they are particularly bad is anything that has an animal being hurt. I just can't watch and off it goes, I just can't.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 07:10 AM

Avatar in IMAX in 3D, was by far the best cinematic experience I have ever had. The colors, effects and graphics were great. It had elements stolen from a lot of other movies. But they were all James Cameron movies! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 08:25 AM

Donnie Darko the Director's Cut - totally destroys the magic of Donnie Darko
The World According to Garp - what an appallingly smug little pain in the arse of a film

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 08:35 AM

I loved Garp when it first played. But I suspect that, like most Irving works, it will not have aged well.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 02:49 PM

Everything with Charlton Heston in it.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: PoppaGator
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:32 PM

I disliked all musicals from earliest childhood until well into my 30s, for the same all-too-familiar reasons that everyone else mentions. My wife, with whom I have always agreed about most other sibjects, was always a big fan, and eventually I came to understand her point of view. I now can enjoy all the best-remembered musical classics (Fred-and-Ginger, anything with Gene Kelly, Gigi, etc., etc.); the bonus is that, to me, many of these older films are completely NEW, since I avoided them like the plague throughout the first half of my life...

Then, there are the more recent rock-era musical films. I enjoy all those late-50s-early-60s "exploitation" films like "Rock Around the Clock," "The Girl Can't Help It," even "Hootenanny Hoot"... And who will say a bad word about "Hard Day's Night"? Or even the not-quite-so-wonderful "Help"?

One of my very favorite recent-ish musical films is "That Thing You Do," the story of a "one-hit wonder" band, set in the mid-60s. Tom Hanks produced the film, appears in a supporting role, and has a number of songwriting credits for the score. And it's the songwriting that is so impressive in this film; the cental characters get to go on one of those all-star bus tours with a number of other acts signed with the same record company, and they all perform ~ we hear original songs that sound just like real hits in a wide variety of pop/rock subgenres: there's a soulful girl-group, an aging solo girl singer, a lounge-singer Bobby Darin type, and then of course our heroes, who have accidentally stumbled upon a "Beatlesque" sound. There's even a subplot that involves some nice mellow West Coast jazz.

Get the long version, or "director's cut," or whatever they call it. I saw it in the theater, and again when it first came out on cable TV. A year or two later, flipping through channels, I caught it about a half-hour in and suddenly saw scenes I had never witnessed before. A new version, about 20-25 minutes longer, had been released on DVD and to the cable stations. Some of the added-back-in material is story/exposition, but a lot of it is simply more music. Well worth it to seek out the improved longer version if you're motivated to watch this for the first time.

And oh yeah, one more thing: this is NOT one of those musicals where people inexplicably burst into song in the midst of conversation (which is a common criticism of "musical-comedy" plays and films). The film is about performing musicians, and ALL the songs are shown to us in the context of performance or rehearsal ~ in other words, "realistic."

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:39 PM

'Saw' in 3D. We had to run out after 3 mins, shook all the way home. Horrible!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: EBarnacle
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:45 PM

One of the things Lady Hillary and I do is work as background in various movie productions. Based on what we have seen so far, we strongly recommend the coming [note I did not write upcoming] movie by Sascha Baron Cohen. In it he manages to make people act stupidly again. That was the only scene we were part of but I suspect the remainder of the film will be just as bad, just as his other "works" are.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:57 PM

Little Hawk asked:

Was "Sweeney Todd" a musical? I liked it. Generally I can't stand them.

Sweeney Todd, as a STAGE

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 04:30 PM

I don't mind Meryl Streep, Shimrod...but I don't think I want to see her in a musical. ;-)

Sacha Baron Cohen I find hard to evaluate. He varies from tasteless to excruciatingly funny. I can't sort it out, but he can be very amusing and wickely satirical at times. I loved some of the scenes in the recent "Bruno", but the general public seems to have been a little too uncomfortable with what he was showing them to really go for that movie. He rattled their cages most effectively. That is something I can appreciate about his work. He's good at exposing hypocrisy and stupidity where it calmly dwells in everyday stuff that most people take for granted.

As for "Taken", yeah, that was crap all right. But the fact that Liam Neeson was the protagonist made it watchable. The man really has presence. He was way too good for that movie.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Ron Davies
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 10:45 PM

"I love music too much..." to like musicals.

Translation: "I have narrow tastes. Particularly don't like anything romantic--which most musicals are. Also I consider myself above corny humor.   I prefer bitter satire which reflects my nihilistic world view."

Look, it's--obviously--de gustibus.    Some of us have wide-ranging tastes--which include musicals.   And some musicals even have somewhat sophisticated humor.

It was just a slight tipoff when the poster said he liked virtually no musicals onstage either.

If this is wrong, he can tell us a few romantic comedies he likes-- in any form.

It's also likely the poster is not a singer.   Good singers tend to enjoy musicals--especially those from the "Golden Age of musicals"---which of course is now over.   One reason we like them is that the songs are often so much fun to sing.


But "I love music too much" won't wash.

Now the real question is does the poster just enjoy being an agent provocateur.   Of course not. Perish the thought.

I wonder how that would fit in "Gigi":    "I enjoy being an agent provocateur."