I actually love most of the movies that people are listing for one reason or another. And while I get that it's the point of the thread, I do gasp at some movies that people don't like and the reasons why. LOL
I don't have a lot of movies that people adore that I just don't like or don't get: Woody Allen movies - Pretty much any that I have tried to watch are very self loathing and self indulgent, and I get that it's the point of many of these movies, but I just don't get it.
It's a Wonderful Life - I had never seen it and nor had my wife, so one Christmas we bought the DVD cheap and sat down with popcorn to make a night of it. The movie ended, we looked at each other, and realized that neither of us liked it at all. I love black and white movies, so I know that was not the problem. It was just a movie that was in bad need of editing. The beginning seemed to drag on forever and by the time the good part came where we see what the world would be like without him in it, I no longer cared. I have no idea how long the movie actually is, but it felt like 3 or 4 hours with only the last 30 minutes being interesting.
All of the Transformers movies - I am a child of the 80s and Transformers was huge for me (hell, part of my podcast is devoted to covering Transformers). And I have accepted and enjoyed a lot many other versions of the characters over the years, so I know my problem isn't that I can't let go of the G1 stuff (like some people claim is the issue with those of us that love Transformers but can't stand the live action movies). I just can't stand the designs of these characters, the personalities outside of Optimus seem all wrong (and even Optimus' personality in the last movie was all kinds of wrong), the stories don't even work within their own movie continuity, etc. etc. etc. The animated movie from the 80's is the only true Transformers movie still for me until something better comes along.
An awful lot of movies, nearly everything. I'm one of those people that after I've seen a movie once or twice, I never need or want to see it ever again. The majority of our blu-ray/dvd collection is stuff that my wife and kids wanted. I really only go out of my to see a movie in the first place unless it's in my wheelhouse or the wife makes suggests I watch it with her.
I think attitudes have shifted on this one, especially after the director failed to follow it up with anything decent, but years ago a co-worker told me that Donnie Darko would change my life. She told this story of how she and her friends watched it one night, then upon finishing, there was dead silence, until someone said "We need to watch that again", to which they all agreed.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I rented it and found it to be a shitty time travel story that felt like it had been written by a high school student.
And I agree with Scarface. If it was regarded by more people as a camp classic, I could understand it. There are plenty of people who do think that, but it still feels like they're outnumbered by the ones who think it's a classic crime film. Given the talent involved, there's no excuse for how bad parts of it are. Not just things that didn't quite work, but outright bad choices. And Pacino is terrible in it. It's unbelievable that just a few years earlier he was giving subtle, thoughtful performances in films like The Godfather.
Whew! I thought I was the only one underwhelmed by Donnie Darko.
Nope. Not at all, and I bought it, unseen on friends recommendation. Good soundtrack though.
Also, is there anyone who actually likes Scarface? Besides people who think the poster looks cool on a t-shirt under a gold chain with an AK-47 medallion? It's ok, you can admit it with only minimal judgement.
As for me:
All of Christopher Nolan's films
The Matrix
I can never get through Shawshank Redemption.
Psycho, definitely one of Hitchcock's lesser films
Wasn't impressed by Oldboy
I feel like there are tons of movies I dont like that I just assume everybody thinks are terrible, like Transformers, that I never expect people to refer to as beloved.
Whew! I thought I was the only one underwhelmed by Donnie Darko.
Nope. Not at all, and I bought it, unseen on friends recommendation. Good soundtrack though.
Also, is there anyone who actually likes Scarface? Besides people who think the poster looks cool on a t-shirt under a gold chain with an AK-47 medallion? It's ok, you can admit it with only minimal judgement.
As for me:
I can never get through Shawshank Redemption.
Had I continued writing my previous post, Shawshank would have been the next film.
Frank Darabont in general doesn't do much for me. I found Shawshank okay at best, Green Mile tedious, and The Majestic terrible. Okay, Majestic would never qualify as a beloved film, but the other two certainly do.
The only film of his I enjoyed was The Mist, and that's unlike any of his other films.
When I worked at Barnes & Noble about 12 years ago, when Scarface came out on DVD for the millionth time in a special edition, lots of employees and customers bought it. It's fan base has definitely shifted over the years, though. Every few months these people set up a roadside rug shop that I pass on the way home. Every time they have these enormous Scarface and Tupac floor rugs front and center on their display. Whenever my wife asks me to get a nice throw rug for my computer room, I ask her which one of those two she wants me to buy, at which point she drops the subject.
One of the guys I went to film school with pre-ordered Donnie Darko, sight unseen, to have it delivered on its release date. When it didn't arrive on time, he called Amazon and ripped into them, literally screaming over the phone (he had anger issues), and they sent him another one for free by next-day shipping. Of course, he ended up receiving both copies the next day. He was convinced it was going to be so good that it would, I don't know, transform his life somehow. I never heard him bring it up again after that, so I'm guessing that turned out to not be the case.
Whew! I thought I was the only one underwhelmed by Donnie Darko.
Nope. Not at all, and I bought it, unseen on friends recommendation. Good soundtrack though.
Also, is there anyone who actually likes Scarface? Besides people who think the poster looks cool on a t-shirt under a gold chain with an AK-47 medallion? It's ok, you can admit it with only minimal judgement.
As for me:
I can never get through Shawshank Redemption.
Had I continued writing my previous post, Shawshank would have been the next film.
Frank Darabont in general doesn't do much for me. I found Shawshank okay at best, Green Mile tedious, and The Majestic terrible. Okay, Majestic would never qualify as a beloved film, but the other two certainly do.
The only film of his I enjoyed was The Mist, and that's unlike any of his other films.
When I worked at Barnes & Noble about 12 years ago, when Scarface came out on DVD for the millionth time in a special edition, lots of employees and customers bought it. It's fan base has definitely shifted over the years, though. Every few months these people set up a roadside rug shop that I pass on the way home. Every time they have these enormous Scarface and Tupac floor rugs front and center on their display. Whenever my wife asks me to get a nice throw rug for my computer room, I ask her which one of those two she wants me to buy, at which point she drops the subject.
One of the guys I went to film school with pre-ordered Donnie Darko, sight unseen, to have it delivered on its release date. When it didn't arrive on time, he called Amazon and ripped into them, literally screaming over the phone (he had anger issues), and they sent him another one for free by next-day shipping. Of course, he ended up receiving both copies the next day. He was convinced it was going to be so good that it would, I don't know, transform his life somehow. I never heard him bring it up again after that, so I'm guessing that turned out to not be the case.
I think the buried lead in all of this is that the guy was actually able to get someone from Amazon on the phone.
Whew! I thought I was the only one underwhelmed by Donnie Darko.
I didn't care for that movie; it was recommended by my neighbor. I figured it was just something you had to see when it was released. I'm also not a Gyllenhal family fan.
Had my favorite version of Mad World on the soundtrack. And why the hell is Kevin Smith on the DVD commentary?! He's on other people's commentary, movie sets, popping onto his TV show, podcasting; it's no wonder his comic book commitments are placed to the wayside.
Whew! I thought I was the only one underwhelmed by Donnie Darko.
Nope. Not at all, and I bought it, unseen on friends recommendation. Good soundtrack though.
Also, is there anyone who actually likes Scarface? Besides people who think the poster looks cool on a t-shirt under a gold chain with an AK-47 medallion? It's ok, you can admit it with only minimal judgement.
As for me:
I can never get through Shawshank Redemption.
Had I continued writing my previous post, Shawshank would have been the next film.
Frank Darabont in general doesn't do much for me. I found Shawshank okay at best, Green Mile tedious, and The Majestic terrible. Okay, Majestic would never qualify as a beloved film, but the other two certainly do.
The only film of his I enjoyed was The Mist, and that's unlike any of his other films.
When I worked at Barnes & Noble about 12 years ago, when Scarface came out on DVD for the millionth time in a special edition, lots of employees and customers bought it. It's fan base has definitely shifted over the years, though. Every few months these people set up a roadside rug shop that I pass on the way home. Every time they have these enormous Scarface and Tupac floor rugs front and center on their display. Whenever my wife asks me to get a nice throw rug for my computer room, I ask her which one of those two she wants me to buy, at which point she drops the subject.
One of the guys I went to film school with pre-ordered Donnie Darko, sight unseen, to have it delivered on its release date. When it didn't arrive on time, he called Amazon and ripped into them, literally screaming over the phone (he had anger issues), and they sent him another one for free by next-day shipping. Of course, he ended up receiving both copies the next day. He was convinced it was going to be so good that it would, I don't know, transform his life somehow. I never heard him bring it up again after that, so I'm guessing that turned out to not be the case.
I think the buried lead in all of this is that the guy was actually able to get someone from Amazon on the phone.
If anyone was psychotic enough to actually track down an employee to yell at, it was this guy. Belittling minimum wage workers seemed to be a hobby of his. And the worst part is that when he received the movies, and found he didn't like them, he would often throw them away. He claimed at one point to have watched the first episode of The Prisoner, found it wasn't his cup of tea, and then threw away the entire box set. I pitied the poor customer service workers who had to field his calls.
I'm getting off topic, so here's another movie: Dead Poet's Society. My freshman year in college, that was the movie that for some reason the school felt it was essential to see. I'd already seen it and not cared for it, so I skipped the part of orientation that required us to all go see it. I had a friend in high school who went nuts over it, started saying "Carpe diem" all the time, even got a tee-shirt with it printed on it.
I didn't find Robin Williams' teacher inspirational, certainly didn't see him inspiring anyone to love poetry, I just saw him awkwardly forcing his stand-up routine in whenever he could.
And that kid I knew in high school - when I bumped into him ten years later he told me he was having a hard time getting a job because he couldn't find an employer that would provide him with a schedule allowing him to watch reruns of The Wonder Years every day at 1 in the afternoon. So, that day was most definitely not getting seized.
Had my favorite version of Mad World on the soundtrack. And why the hell is Kevin Smith on the DVD commentary?! He's on other people's commentary, movie sets, popping onto his TV show, podcasting; it's no wonder his comic book commitments are placed to the wayside.
Whew! I thought I was the only one underwhelmed by Donnie Darko.
Had my favorite version of Mad World on the soundtrack. And why the hell is Kevin Smith on the DVD commentary?! He's on other people's commentary, movie sets, popping onto his TV show, podcasting; it's no wonder his comic book commitments are placed to the wayside.
M
That's one of those songs that when I hear the original I can't believe it ever sounded different. And I actually like Tears for Fears, but their version of that song is so very, very '80s, and not in a good way. I'm not even a huge fan of the Donnie Darko version, but the arrangement still makes more sense to me than the original.
Also, is there anyone who actually likes Scarface? Besides people who think the poster looks cool on a t-shirt under a gold chain with an AK-47 medallion? It's ok, you can admit it with only minimal judgement
I do enjoy Scarface. It is not as gimmicky as most DePalma films. Pacino is actually subtle in some scenes. It portrays the cocaine drug kingpin stuff so memorably that all scenes from all subsequent similar crime films up to current seem like a rip off. I'm tired of the Cartel angle in all of today's films (The Counsellor, Sabotage, Snitch etc). Scarface seemed revolutionary in that sense. The scene in New York when he goes off the rails was intense. It's not beloved by me but I do like it. I cant speak to why a certain subculture has adopted. I'm out of my league to comment on that.
I got one just brought today on the radio; Field of Dreams. I saw the movie for the first time this past summer. It's a good movie, but I didn't feel the tear jerking at the end. I think it suffers from years of hype.
I got one just brought today on the radio; Field of Dreams. I saw the movie for the first time this past summer. It's a good movie, but I didn't feel the tear jerking at the end. I think it suffers from years of hype.
M
It suffers because you have no heart. NO HEART MATT.
And it was never a tear jerker for me either. Enjoyable and rewatchable, even emotional, but not Old Yeller emotional.
I feel like there are tons of movies I dont like that I just assume everybody thinks are terrible, like Transformers, that I never expect people to refer to as beloved.
I think that I refer to the Transformers as beloved because ticket sales have been huge for all 4 movies, and the latest was the highest yet, so if they are not beloved by many, then ticket sales should show it. Maybe they are just not beloved by many geeks.
I feel like there are tons of movies I dont like that I just assume everybody thinks are terrible, like Transformers, that I never expect people to refer to as beloved.
I think that I refer to the Transformers as beloved because ticket sales have been huge for all 4 movies, and the latest was the highest yet, so if they are not beloved by many, then ticket sales should show it. Maybe they are just not beloved by many geeks.
I have to admit that my co-host and many of my friends are amazed that I dislike the movies, and one of my friends calls the first one his favorite movie ever.
I'm with ya. Thought it was very good, but never made me want to go play catch with my dad or anything.
Yep.
However if my Dad came back as a young ghost and wanted play catch I would probably entertain the idea. I might ask him if we could do something else though like fishing.
I'm with ya. Thought it was very good, but never made me want to go play catch with my dad or anything.
Yep.
However if my Dad came back as a young ghost and wanted play catch I would probably entertain the idea. I might ask him if we could do something else though like fishing.
He crosses over from the etherial plane, battles back from death itself to toss a baseball one last time with his beloved child and you're like, " I don't know Dad...Maybe something else? You wanna go fishin?".
Let me add Charlie Brown & the Great Pumpkin to the list. Turned it on for my daughter & 5 minutes in remember why it's been years since I've watched it. Just not a fan of the Peanuts crew.
Let me add Charlie Brown & the Great Pumpkin to the list. Turned it on for my daughter & 5 minutes in remember why it's been years since I've watched it. Just not a fan of the Peanuts crew.
M
I'm with you on that. Same is true for Winnie the Pooh. Both seem to have every character serving as the archetype for a character flaw (possible exceptions - Roo, Kanga. Snoopy and Woodstock).
Let me add Charlie Brown & the Great Pumpkin to the list. Turned it on for my daughter & 5 minutes in remember why it's been years since I've watched it. Just not a fan of the Peanuts crew.
M
As an adult, I find the Peanuts comic strip far superior to the animated specials that most of us experienced as kids. It was obviously a lot of care went into creating the earlier ones, but they're still rather preachy, and oddly depressing to me for some reason. I guess its the music and the faded look to the animation, they just seem dreary. And once you get past the early ones, you're stuck with the redundant cash-ins ("It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown!" - seriously?)
At its peak, the comic strip was more dark and satirical than people realize. It's filled with children talking like adults going through a mid-life crisis. Although, at a certain point, it becomes just as tame as the animated version, and that's probably what most people recall.
There was a period toward the end where I swear Shultz had either lost his mind or someone was ghost-writing it for him. There was little humor to the strip and it was as if the writing had no form whatsoever.
There was a period toward the end where I swear Shultz had either lost his mind or someone was ghost-writing it for him. There was little humor to the strip and it was as if the writing had no form whatsoever.
Yeah, sometime around the '80s things got surreal. When you get stuff like Snoopy's relatives stopping by for a visit you know it's pretty much gone off the rails. I think they even did a long arc with a full-blown Snoopy family reunion, complete with a car drive to the hotel where it was happening. Even as a kid I remember thinking that was nuts.
By the '90s, you start getting strips with no discernible punchline. By that point I would only stumble across the strip accidentally, and I was often surprised at how random it was.
Personally, I don't let it bother me too much when something lingers past its prime, I figure the good stuff is still good, but for people concerned with that, Schultz probably should have retired 20 years earlier than he did.
It's those 90s strips I'm thinking of. They were more random than Zippy the Pinhead sometimes. I just chalked it up to age because Schultz is a big influence on me. God forbid Barbrabarian run for 40 years, it'll probably be even less coherent! :)
Comments
I don't have a lot of movies that people adore that I just don't like or don't get:
Woody Allen movies - Pretty much any that I have tried to watch are very self loathing and self indulgent, and I get that it's the point of many of these movies, but I just don't get it.
It's a Wonderful Life - I had never seen it and nor had my wife, so one Christmas we bought the DVD cheap and sat down with popcorn to make a night of it. The movie ended, we looked at each other, and realized that neither of us liked it at all. I love black and white movies, so I know that was not the problem. It was just a movie that was in bad need of editing. The beginning seemed to drag on forever and by the time the good part came where we see what the world would be like without him in it, I no longer cared. I have no idea how long the movie actually is, but it felt like 3 or 4 hours with only the last 30 minutes being interesting.
All of the Transformers movies - I am a child of the 80s and Transformers was huge for me (hell, part of my podcast is devoted to covering Transformers). And I have accepted and enjoyed a lot many other versions of the characters over the years, so I know my problem isn't that I can't let go of the G1 stuff (like some people claim is the issue with those of us that love Transformers but can't stand the live action movies). I just can't stand the designs of these characters, the personalities outside of Optimus seem all wrong (and even Optimus' personality in the last movie was all kinds of wrong), the stories don't even work within their own movie continuity, etc. etc. etc. The animated movie from the 80's is the only true Transformers movie still for me until something better comes along.
makessuggests I watch it with her.So, you can imagine my surprise when I rented it and found it to be a shitty time travel story that felt like it had been written by a high school student.
And I agree with Scarface. If it was regarded by more people as a camp classic, I could understand it. There are plenty of people who do think that, but it still feels like they're outnumbered by the ones who think it's a classic crime film. Given the talent involved, there's no excuse for how bad parts of it are. Not just things that didn't quite work, but outright bad choices. And Pacino is terrible in it. It's unbelievable that just a few years earlier he was giving subtle, thoughtful performances in films like The Godfather.
Also, is there anyone who actually likes Scarface? Besides people who think the poster looks cool on a t-shirt under a gold chain with an AK-47 medallion? It's ok, you can admit it with only minimal judgement.
As for me:
All of Christopher Nolan's films
The Matrix
I can never get through Shawshank Redemption.
Psycho, definitely one of Hitchcock's lesser films
Wasn't impressed by Oldboy
I feel like there are tons of movies I dont like that I just assume everybody thinks are terrible, like Transformers, that I never expect people to refer to as beloved.
Frank Darabont in general doesn't do much for me. I found Shawshank okay at best, Green Mile tedious, and The Majestic terrible. Okay, Majestic would never qualify as a beloved film, but the other two certainly do.
The only film of his I enjoyed was The Mist, and that's unlike any of his other films.
When I worked at Barnes & Noble about 12 years ago, when Scarface came out on DVD for the millionth time in a special edition, lots of employees and customers bought it. It's fan base has definitely shifted over the years, though. Every few months these people set up a roadside rug shop that I pass on the way home. Every time they have these enormous Scarface and Tupac floor rugs front and center on their display. Whenever my wife asks me to get a nice throw rug for my computer room, I ask her which one of those two she wants me to buy, at which point she drops the subject.
One of the guys I went to film school with pre-ordered Donnie Darko, sight unseen, to have it delivered on its release date. When it didn't arrive on time, he called Amazon and ripped into them, literally screaming over the phone (he had anger issues), and they sent him another one for free by next-day shipping. Of course, he ended up receiving both copies the next day. He was convinced it was going to be so good that it would, I don't know, transform his life somehow. I never heard him bring it up again after that, so I'm guessing that turned out to not be the case.
Had my favorite version of Mad World on the soundtrack. And why the hell is Kevin Smith on the DVD commentary?! He's on other people's commentary, movie sets, popping onto his TV show, podcasting; it's no wonder his comic book commitments are placed to the wayside.
M
I'm getting off topic, so here's another movie: Dead Poet's Society. My freshman year in college, that was the movie that for some reason the school felt it was essential to see. I'd already seen it and not cared for it, so I skipped the part of orientation that required us to all go see it. I had a friend in high school who went nuts over it, started saying "Carpe diem" all the time, even got a tee-shirt with it printed on it.
I didn't find Robin Williams' teacher inspirational, certainly didn't see him inspiring anyone to love poetry, I just saw him awkwardly forcing his stand-up routine in whenever he could.
And that kid I knew in high school - when I bumped into him ten years later he told me he was having a hard time getting a job because he couldn't find an employer that would provide him with a schedule allowing him to watch reruns of The Wonder Years every day at 1 in the afternoon. So, that day was most definitely not getting seized.
M
And it was never a tear jerker for me either. Enjoyable and rewatchable, even emotional, but not Old Yeller emotional.
However if my Dad came back as a young ghost and wanted play catch I would probably entertain the idea. I might ask him if we could do something else though like fishing.
"fuck it, kid. Nevermind".
Disappears back into the Never Never.
M
At its peak, the comic strip was more dark and satirical than people realize. It's filled with children talking like adults going through a mid-life crisis. Although, at a certain point, it becomes just as tame as the animated version, and that's probably what most people recall.
By the '90s, you start getting strips with no discernible punchline. By that point I would only stumble across the strip accidentally, and I was often surprised at how random it was.
Personally, I don't let it bother me too much when something lingers past its prime, I figure the good stuff is still good, but for people concerned with that, Schultz probably should have retired 20 years earlier than he did.