Posted on 09/28/2005 9:11:34 AM PDT by pabianice
Movie theater revenues are down 10% in the past three years because of home video technology and because movie quality has objectively continued to decline. We Freepers occasionally review a movie here for fun and to warn others not to waste their money.
So, for a change of pace, let's discuss really bad movies we've seen for one reason or another. I propose three classes of bad movie:
Class 1. A bad movie you sit through because of peer pressure
Class 2. A really bad movie you force yourself to watch because, darn it, you paid for it!
Class 3. Horrifyingly bad movies you simply leave, dragging yourself up the aisle with your arms because your legs have gone numb from shock.
Examples:
Class 1: "The Incredible Lightness of Being" -- stupifyingly bad writing and performances, polished off by a plot involving a serial adulterer physician ruining the lives of all around him for his own sexual gratification – won numerous awards in Europe
Class 2: "The Strawberry Statement" -- I still remember the poster: "The Vibes Were Good, but the Times Were Bad" -- horrifyingly bad performances around a story of beautiful, gentle hippies going to college in San Francisco and lovingly protesting the Vietnam War, only to have the experience ruined by Cylon-like police in riot gear gassing and clubbing them to death during a sit-in for peace; also includes some of the worst dehumanization of women ever portrayed on the screen
"Coming Home" -- what can you say about a movie with Jane Fonda that tells the tale of a maimed vet coming home from the Illegal Vietnam War on Terror to win the heart of a military officer's wife who realizes that her Marine husband is actually a monster (who's also lousy in bed, of course) and so leaves him for the maimed (but good in bed despite the loss of most of his appendages) and virtuous war-protesting vet; movie ends with Marine drowning self by walking into the ocean to atone for his evil acts of national defense
“War of the Worlds” (2005) – This is one big mess of a movie; Aliens have already visited Earth in the distant past to leave their Tripods but then wait until we have atomic weapons and armies before they decide to come back and wipe us out; they arrive at nearly the speed of light in capsules that burrow underground and would be instantly vaporized by the impact; they need human blood to fertilize their Martian Kudzu (“Soilent Red is People!”); it never occurs to the Martians that they need to get flu shots before invading another planet; as the aliens sicken, they conveniently lower their shields so as to be suddenly defenseless against anti-tank rockets; the list is almost endless; the 1954 movie was far superior
"Getting Straight" -- yet another Vietnam vet comes home to attend college and is faced with a school faculty who are all repressed homosexuals and psychotics who determine to drive him out of college; he's saved by heroine who encourages him to Stiock it To the Man!; story ends with the vet kissing his male teacher on the mouth, creating a riot on campus, and then having sex with the heroine on the staircase as the riot and tear gas swill about them in a wonderful collage of color and self-congratulation -- ah!
Class 3: "The Happy Hooker" -- no plot, no production, no acting, but lots of frontal nudity and smashed beds
"Darling" -- critically acclaimed piece of crap about a beautiful, talented, rich woman with the IQ of an end table struggling to make her way in a world of rich men who throw themselves at her feet and take her to fabulous vacation spots
Special Category – What Would Have Been Good Movies But Ruined by One Bad Scene: “A Few Good Men” – Very entertaining story about good and evil in uniform ruined in the courtroom climax, when LTJG Caffee says to the colonel: “I’m a Navy officer, and you are under arrest, you son of a bitch!” Those last five gratuitous words by a screenwriter clueless about the military instantly makes Caffee guilty of disrespect towards a superior officer (a court martial offense) and lower him to Jessup’s level
I, and several others, didn't go see it because we thought it was a horror flick.
Same reason I never saw it. Maybe I'll check it out.
Mark
It was sacreligious, vulgar, and obscene.
Now, I love Mel Brooks and I love "South Park" which are also sacreligious, vulgar and obscene, why did I hate "Life of Brian"?
thinks hard....
Ummm...Brits can't do Jewish humor?
"I Heart Huckabees" reminded me of "Zardoz", a movie where the director is basically laughing at the audience because they're too stupid not to take any of it seriously. I think in bothe movies the directors kept saying "Let's put this in... they'll never swallow this one" and yet most movie goers did.
Or something like that.
I've only left one movie, and it was the original "Alien." It wasn't because it was bad... I just couldn't take the tension. I was watching the movie late at night, and the theater was a real "Big Screen," and there couldn't have been more than about 10 people in the theater. When the cat jumps out of the locker, and Harry Dean Stanton's character buys it, well, that was all she wrote! I had had enough!
That movie's not all that hard to watch on TV, but on a really big screen, in the dark, it was the scariest and most tension filled movie I had ever seen.
Mark
Bruce Campbell for president of the Academy of Arts and Sciences!
Mark
That would be "Plan 9 from Outer Space." You can see that movie being made in the Tim Burton movie, "Ed Wood!"
That's a wonderful movie.
Mark
"Summersby" with Jodie Foster and Richard Gere fits this category as well. One of the best lines about that movie I ever heard was, "That's the most uncomfortable kiss since Jodie Foster and Richard Gere in Summersby!"
Mark
"Summersby" with Jodie Foster and Richard Gere fits this category as well. One of the best lines about that movie I ever heard was, "That's the most uncomfortable kiss since Jodie Foster and Richard Gere in Summersby!"
Mark
"To End All Wars"
Thanks for the recommendation.
Good, Bad, I'm the one with the gun!
Mark
"XXX State of the Union" feat. Ice Cube = SUX.
"Reds"
Three hours glamorizing communism, starring Warren Betty. Pick a class, any class.
I have to disagree with you, "The Man with the Screaming Brain" is better on technically points and Bruce Campbell not only starred in it, he wrote and directed it on a shoe string budget no less. ;D
Class three: Kingdom of Heaven... The PC crap of a movie about the crusades
The single worst blockbuster ever made was Top Gun. That movie not only sucked to high heaven, it was preposterously unbelievable.
What I will do is point out that only twice in the movie is Jesus portrayed:
The first being when the 3 wise men realize they have given their gifts to the wrong child in the wrong manger (Brian) and run to the manger next door where obviously something of a very miraculous nature is taking place.
The second is where you see Jesus in the distance giving the Sermon on the Mount and the people on the very fringe can't hear him.
"Oh, the meek! He said blessed are the meek! That's nice that they're gettin' something. They have a hell of a time."
I do remember reading an interview with one of the Python's (I think it was Michael Palin) where he basically said that they were very sensitive about the having any laughs at The Lord's expense.
Bill Paxton, "We're on the express elevator to Hell, going down." (BEST SCI-FI MOVIE QUOTE EVER)
When Day After Tomorrow came out in the theaters, you will remember there were all the cries of "psuedo-science" and it not being realistic. I figured that the movie for the most part probably wouldn't even try to give a scientific explanation to what was happening, or dealt with it in abstract terms.
I have taken one class in Oceanography as a requirement and from that i could say the movie's rationality was so utterly absurd i couldn't help but laugh the whole way through it. Its one thing if leading experts can debunk the science of the movie, but anyone with the most limited scientific knowledge of weather could see they were pulling it straight outta their a@@! (Arctic water downwells, and even if it didn't how would COLD water create a Hurricane?[That Freezes everything in its path???]) They should have just cut out all the scenes of the scientific explanations on the editor's cut and make it like nobody knew what was going on.
Then of course there was the archetypical Republican politician, played by none other than Dick Cheney himself! As Ann Coulter says, Hollywood has a cast of actors that soley play roles of evil high school football coaches and Republican politicians.
Sorry, your post gave me a flash back to the absurdity of it all.
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