Posted on 03/21/2011 8:46:19 PM PDT by winstonwolf33
“I clicked back to the 20 list — “Lost in Translation.”
1.5 or 2 hours of my life I want back.”
Your opinion is refuted by 2 facts: Bill Murray, and Scarlett Johansson’s behind in nearly see-thru panties. Heck, they could make a movie with only those 2 things in it and it would be better than 9/10 flicks coming out nowadays.
2001 is also an important for those of us who remember what other movies looked like at the time it was released. I suspect that many of its critics are young and lump it in with all of the space flicks that they have seen, having no knowledge of how much that later films owe to 2001.
Agree, Blade Runner is a great movie.
I can see both sides of the argument about PF. My take is that there are really two types of movies, and you have to judge them separately. There are “films”, which try to be serious works of cinema, and aught to be judged on that standard, and then there are “flicks”, which are really just for entertainment, and judging them on artistic merits is just silly.
By that standard, I’d say Pulp Fiction is a great FLICK, but not a great FILM. It’s got some artistry to it, so a lot of people try to judge it like a film, but even the title itself betrays that it is just titillating exploitation entertainment. If you buy a pulp novel, you don’t expect Shakespeare, so when you watch Pulp Fiction you shouldn’t expect high art either.
Totally agree with you on 2001. I couldn’t disagree with the message of the film more, but I have to admit the film is a masterpiece. Ironically, Kubrick intentionally dulled his message when he made the end sequence overly ambiguous, so most casual viewers who haven’t read the novel don’t get the Nietzsche message.
I never get how Empire is better than Jedi:
1) 3 battles going on at once, interdependent
2) Luke swinging that green blade on Tatooine
3) Vader turns on the Emperor
4) Luke alone with both Yoda then Leia, both deftly done
Ok, so the Ewoks are cuddly for the kiddies. Dare I say you can live with it?
I kind of liked FARGO, actually — in fact, I was obsessed with it for a while. I enjoyed TITANIC, in spite of the lousy script. Maybe I’m a sucker for period pieces.
I agree with the author about 2001, GRADUATE, and ET. All overrated. ET was plain stupid. 2001 left me scratching my head, wondering, “Huh?” And GRADUATE was morally bankrupt. For that reason I absolutely do not want to see AMERICAN BEAUTY.
I think “Patch Adams” was the most overrated movie of all time. And the worst movie of all time too.
Self Ping
3 films on the list I really liked. Oh well. One person’s opinion.
Who is this Ben Shapiro anyhow?
Actually he is a conservative writer for Heritage. He just needs to keep talking politics and keep his opinions on movies to himself. Don’t be too harsh on his as he really is a good conservative.
I agree with most of the picks (Titanic was a pedestrian love story inserted into an extraordinarily well-executed disaster movie; and L.A. Confidential should have taken the Best Picture Oscar that year, hands down)
Usual Suspects I disagree with. I thought it was very clever, even though I did have it figured out early on. As for the complaint about the lack of clues, the most obvious one came early on; that Kevin Spacey’s character had no reason to be collected in with the rest of the group.
Also disagree on The Matrix and 2001. When I read the initial treatment of The Matrix, I couldn’t make much sense out of it, but saw the concept as a cross between Johnny Mnemonic and Tron, which - given their box office performances - seemed like a really bad idea. When I finally read the script, just before it was released, I saw its potential and did enjoy the final product (the sequels are a waste of time, though).
2001 just comes down to taste, I suppose, but I find it enthralling in spite of its pace.
A couple that I’d add to the list are The Searchers and Boondock Saints. I should probably watch The Searchers again, but I just remember that, when I first saw it some years back, I didn’t see what was supposed to make it stand above any number of other John Wayne movies.
Though the underlying premise wasn’t bad, Boondock Saints was absurdly juvenile in its writing and execution, not to mention downright embarrassing for Willem Dafoe.
Another addition would be The Spy Who Loved Me, a James Bond movie loved by non-Bond fans, but many true Bond fans were saw trouble coming when the line “get me Agent Triple-X” was uttered. It was as if we’d stumbled into the lost Matt Helm movie. As it is, it’s a lame remake of You Only Live Twice.
I’m bound to get flamed for this, but I’ll add Red Dawn to the overrated list. As a staunch conservative and action movie lover, I wanted to like it. Oh, how I wanted to like it. But the approach was so incredibly simple-minded, cartoonish, and loaded with over-the-top macho nonsense, that I just felt my intelligence insulted too many times to allow me to get into the “us vs. them” vibe that I was looking forward to.
1) Harold and Maude
2) The Color Purple
3) Billy Jack
Watch them back-to-back-to-back for a triple puke-a-thon!
And now some real chestnuts I love, but never see mentioned on movie threads:
1) A Patch of Blue (With Sidney Poitier, and I can't recall the actress who plays the blind girl. Shelly Winters is great as the nearly sociopathic mother)
2) The Mountain (Another great Tracy/Hepburn classic)
3) The Edge of the City (Yeah, Sidney Poitier again)
Thanks for reminding me about Annie Hall. That was the last Woody Allen movie I liked, and as I left the theater, I turned to a friend and said “Best Picture,” a prediction that came true.
I also agree with the placement of Raging Bull on the list. Impossible to like a movie when the “hero” is a dirtbag (worse in real life, apparently, than even the movie shows).
Agree with you on Deer Hunter. I thought, “man this guy needs to learn how to edit,” so I essentially saw Heaven’s Gate coming. Ironically, I actually liked Heaven’s Gate.
Why would you consider The Hot Rock overrated? As far as I can tell, it doesn’t have enough of a reputation to warrant it. Granted, it’s a weak adaptation of a terrific novel, but most people have probably never even heard of it.
I am proud to say that I have not seen any one of those three “crappy” movies you listed.
Hollywood long ago lost the great talents who knew how to write with subtlety or elegance. The overpaid creeps who turn out movies like Pulp Fiction are destroying Western civilization. Or maybe they are just the symptoms of a declining culture. Ah, well.
Anybody here ever see the original Lady Killers, or The Wrong Box?
Pretty bad analysis. He doesn’t understand how audacious “Some Like It Hot” was at the time it was made. It really pushed boundaries: transvestism, homosexuality, impotence - even gay marriage! And, of course, Marilyn at her most luminous. He lost me on that one; and it doesn’t take a genuis to realize how bad a movie “Titanic” is...
So, he’s got no background in film history. I didn’t like it when a truly nasty theatre critic (Frank Rich) became a political columnist and I’m not crazy that a political science major is now a film critic. As Jackie Mason says: IT’S NOT HIS FIELD!
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