Overrated Movies

[Guest LooseCannon]

The reason Kane gets so much praise is because Welles did some virtuoso camera work in there. In terms of camera angles, lighting, shots, perspective, deep focus photography, it has everything. It has every type of shot you can imagine, and yet this doesn't detract from the story, which was told in a non-chronological fashion and was one of the first movies to do so. But primarily what is impressive about the film is the fact that Welles was the first person to use all of these catechniques in one film, and he did so successfully. I'm not even sure if that feat has been duplicated since. Anyway, I'll admit this movie bores me to tears, but I understand the praise that it gets.

[Guest Steve J. Rogers]

Return of The Jedi: Probably the weakest of the original Trilogy. Gets too many points for being overly comercial. Yes I understand thats the POINT but too much of this reeked of trying to see toys (Ewoks, I'm looking RIGHT AT YOU!)

 

Pearl Harbor: I put this on, simply because it was overhyped as a WWII definitive piece that would stand with other war movies, when its not even a war movie. HAD they said "This is the Gone With The Wind for WWII" THEN I could understand, but they didn't, they chose to try to get every memeber of "The Greatest Generation" in to see this film (much in the way Saving Private Ryan did as well) instead of marketing it like a normal big budget love story.

 

Titanic: At least this was given the "Its Gone With The Wind On The Titanic" sell so I can't blame them for that, what I can blame them for is it being plodding, half baked and creating the Leo DiCrapio Legend that he so does NOT deserve.

 

Gone With The Wind: Okay people will flame me for this, but it boils down to this, did it NEED to be so overbudgeted? Did it NEED the overhype? No it did NOT! Sure its a classic film, Vivian Leigh is stunning and Gable at the peak of his powers but still, this movie gets more publicity for its touching the romance novella reading public in ways that created an audience for Titanic and Pearl Harbor

 

Casablanca: Humphrey and Ingrid MADE this film, I'm sorry, two lesser actors and this gets filed in the also-ran category of good films of its day. Sure you can say that about just about every great film ever made but here the writing is SO damn predictable and SO damn overated and it had become SO damned cliched over the years

[Guest El Satanico]

creating the Leo DiCrapio Legend that he so does NOT deserve.

Well he was a decent-good actor BEFORE Titanic. It just happens that when he became a star he forgot how to act.

[Guest Lethargic]

I did a column on this couple of years ago and got so friggin flamed. haha

 

Apocolypse Now

Seven

Slience of the Lambs

Blair Witch Project

Taxi Driver

EVERYTHING by the Coen Brothers EXCEPT Big Lebowski

 

I wish I could remember the rest I had on there.

[Guest godthedog]

good call on 'casablanca', i forgot about that one.

 

i think charles foster kane is a fascinating character. easily one of the most complex characters ever: his hubris, his charm, his materialism, his wasted greatness...the transformation from the brash idealistic young man to the sheltered, unknowable recluse is amazing, it makes the entire movie.

 

probably my favorite moment is near the end, after he's turned into such a bitter old man who's almost impossible to empathize with, he says to susan in the most subtlely pleading voice, "please don't go." orson welles's best talent was his voice, & he knew how to suggest entire characters with little nuances of it. the way it's spoken tells in 3 words how deep his loneliness in life is & how deeply he regrets the things he did to try to be loved. then of course he fucks it up & says "you can't do this to me." then he destroys the bedroom in one of the greatest scenes EVER.

 

granted, welles topped himself later with even BETTER characters (hank quinlan from 'touch of evil', harry lime and falstaff), but i don't think kane's characterization suffers at all. if anything, it's a little too deep & makes the other characters seem a little shallow & functional in comparison.

 

damn you, now you got me wanting to watch it again, even though i rented the dvd a week ago.

[Guest LooseCannon]

Casablanca: Humphrey and Ingrid MADE this film, I'm sorry, two lesser actors and this gets filed in the also-ran category of good films of its day. Sure you can say that about just about every great film ever made but here the writing is SO damn predictable and SO damn overated and it had become SO damned cliched over the years

I disgree with everything you said about this movie. Especially that it became cliched over the years. Something doesn't become a cliche. If you're suggesting other movies copied off of it to the point that elements of it are now rudimentary, than the movie was influential, not cliched. While Bogart and Bergman are both great actors, I just can not agree that that the writing detracted from this film. Predictable? I don't think the film revolves around plot twists, no. The story is a vehicle to display the complexity of the characters, to emphasize the heroicism, courage, and sacrifice of all of the characters not just Bogart at that incredible moment when he puts Bergman on the plane with Lazlo, to focus the point that "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." When has the bittersweet ending been such a fixture in American cinema that you could call this predictable?

 

If Casablanca was like the typical movie, Bogart and Bergman would escape on the plane after avoiding a hail of gunfire. There would be no beautiful friendship. Who knows what would have happened to Victor Laszlo, but he wouldn't have gotten the girl. One of the things that makes Casablanca unique is that it stays true to itself without giving in to crowd-pleasing tactics and the "they all live happily ever after" ending. It fucking amazes me that a "commercial" movie could be made with such depth and meaning, and it underscores the shallowness of the tripe like Saving Private Ryan, and Titanic that we get spoon fed today. Every fucking person on the planet could be in perfect agreement that this was the greatest fucking movie ever made, and I still couldn't agree with you that this movie is overrated. If anything it's cinematography is underrated. It's not gaudy. It doesn't draw attention to itself. It is solid craftsmanship though that more than serves its purpose. Rewatch the scene where the Bergman walks into the bar and asks the piano player to play that one song, and Bogart bursts out of the back angrily saying "I thought I told you to never play that song." The camera work for those shots is spectacular, and only on subsequent viewings can you appreciate how it accentuates the resentment and anger over their lost love to the point that you can actually feel it.

 

If you don't enjoy the movie that's fine. It's a difference of opinion, and I don't mean to jump down your throat or anything, but this is one of the best movies ever made, and I can't stand by and watch someone call it overrated without giving it my best defense.

[Guest godthedog]

****************spoiler*************************

 

 

 

 

 

 

i was never a big fan of 'casablanca'. when rick shot major strausser at the end, i was like "what the hell?" after that i had no empathy for him & all my enjoyment of the movie just went away. i can understand the motivation and all, but he just stopped being a likable character to me after that.

[Guest Incandenza]

While Bogart and Bergman are both great actors

 

I've never understood why anyone thinks Bogart was a good--much less great--actor. Same for John Wayne; merely having a distinct persona doesn't necessarily mean you can act.

[Guest LooseCannon]

Please refrain from comparing John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart. Thank you.

[Guest Incandenza]

No, I think I'll keep on.

 

Both Bogart and Wayne possessed very little range, and while they both had personality, neither appealed to me on the level to get me to buy into their performances.

[Guest godthedog]

i'm with incandenza on this one, bogart never impressed me much as an actor. he had some things he could do very well (mainly act cool), but beyond that it got murky. witness his monologue at the end of 'the maltese falcon'. all he does is stare in front of him, acting like he's trying to emote something. it doesn't work.

[Guest LooseCannon]

It's not like Bogart played the exact same character in every movie as one might like to imply, though he certainly achieved an iconic status that he was unable to shake. But even if he did, that character was at the very least a three dimensional character capable of emotional range, and more difficult to pull off than you might think. Most other actors would need to rely on the writing to pull that character off. Bogart could do it with his mannerisms and expression alone, if need be. The only film where Wayne ever even approached the complexity that Bogart displayed routinely is The Searchers, and frankly Wayne's attempts were a bit underwhelming, though good enough not to ruin an otherwise fairly decent movie.

 

I'll retract the great actor line, I used it for rhetorical effect, anyway. But please do not compare Bogart to Wayne. There are impressionable posters around here who look up to you, and I'd hate to see them parroting such a mockery as if it were the truth.

[Guest LooseCannon]

i'm with incandenza on this one, bogart never impressed me much as an actor. he had some things he could do very well (mainly act cool), but beyond that it got murky. witness his monologue at the end of 'the maltese falcon'. all he does is stare in front of him, acting like he's trying to emote something. it doesn't work.

I haven't seen that one. Though I saw a fairly unfunny parody of it once.

[Guest WrestlingDeacon]

I don't think I understand the complexities of Bogie to defend him, but attacking John Wayne draws me out. First a list of films where Wayne gives good acting performances that shows his range and talents:

The Shootist

The Searchers

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence

Trouble Along the Way

The Quiet Man

Rio Grande

Sands of Iwo Jima

Red River

Fort Apache

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

Pittsburgh

 

The second thing you have to consider is that John Wayne is not a real person. He is a character created, developed and fine tuned over the years by Marion Morrison. And in that, he's one of the greatest, most loved and most iconic characters ever created. However, Morrison was a very lazy actor although he did have talent, and he would revert to the John Wayne persona without a director to properly push him. This can clearly be seen in most of his later work such as Cahill, US Marshal and Chisum. I admit that Wayne was not someone like Paul Newman who could pull a great performance out of his ass no matter the circumstance, he needed the proper director like Howard Hawks or John Ford goading him and the right material.

 

What Wayne was most deft at was tweaking elements of the Wayne character and persona to create more full bodied performances that would surprise people and get them to examine the complexities of the character and film at hand. Although the cynical could simply look at Red River and say that's just "evil John Wayne" and look at the Quiet Man and say that's just "romantic John Wayne," that's still giving him credit for being able to stretch to some extent outside of his standard persona which most dismiss as being flat and one note.

 

Although there were times where Wayne showcased a full range of emotions and talents in movies and very important scenes. He does a lot with just a look and body language to get over his determination and silent rage against the Indians who kidnapped his niece in the Searchers, best exemplified in the "turning of the earth" monologue and when Ethan and Martin are checking people at the fort and when Debbie meets them over the sand dunes. In the Shootist he gives the perfect performance of a dying man trying his best to hold onto his dignity and finish his life the way he always lived it despite himself, best exemplified in the scenes with the journalist, the old hooker, the shooting lesson with Ron Howard and the climatic shootout. His emotional breakdown in the "home, sweet home" scene from The Man who Shot Liberty Valence should be the last straw for anyone who says he couldn't act and I consider his performance in the Searchers to be one of the ten best acting performances of all time.

 

Wayne was certainly not an all around actor, but he was very good at what he did and fit a specific mold that he virtually created for himself. You couldn't get a John Wayne-type, you had to get John Wayne, there was nobody else. The John Wayne icon has become such a myth and legend that it's hard for people to look past what has been said and to see the solid actor underneath.

[Guest J*ingus]

Bogart played a limited range, true, but it wasn't the same guy over and over. His characters in The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, are often spoken of as if they were the exact same person, despite the fact that Bogart did a lot of subtle things to make them two completely different characters. Same thing with John Wayne; watch Stagecoach, Red River, and The Searchers to get a range of how much he could actually do with the few things he did.

 

Anyway, most overrated:

 

A Clockwork Orange: I HATED this movie. It completely reversed and betrayed the meaning of the original novel, was very gimmicky in its direction, was poorly acted in spots, and had a horrible "hero" and message in general.

 

Natural Born Killers: see above. Quentin Tarantino wrote the original script, but ended up hating the final product so much that he had his credit changed to "Story by" instead. I agree with him. Amoral drug-addled tripe which worships evil serial killers as cool fuck-da-man antiheroes under the masquerade of "satire".

 

The Exorcist: didn't scare me at all, I found it kinda boring.

 

Full Metal Jacket: don't get me wrong, the training scenes do indeed rule the earth. But once they get to Vietnam, the whole movie just dies and rots before your very eyes.

 

Gladiator: Spartacus ripoff with lousy CGI special effects that played very fast and loose with historical facts. Best picture my ass.

 

Scream: Kevin Williamson is to horror what Kevin Smith was to comedy, except a hundred times worse. Lame in-jokes, bullshit writing, a boring heroine, and a general mean-spirited tone all sunk this movie for me. And oh yeah, they killed off all the cool characters and left the annoying bitches alive. Thanks, Wes.

 

Chasing Amy: in my opinion, viable evidence that Smith should never attempt a "serious" film ever again.

 

Pearl Harbor: deserves all the bashing that unfairly went to better films like Saving Private Ryan and Titanic, a completely worthless pile of sentimental slop that doesn't even have the balls to show its own gore effects without a digital effect to blur it all away.

 

City Lights: I don't get Chaplin, and haven't liked most of his stuff that I've seen (The Gold Rush being a notable exception). This is his most praised movie, and for most of it, I just didn't care. You'll laugh, you'll cry, but I yawned.

 

The Shining: didn't scare me one bit, except for the last fifteen seconds or so. I've never undestood why people always considered it so terrifying. Completely murdered King's quality book, as well.

 

Braveheart: a decent action movie, but completely ignores the facts about what really happened, and goes on way too long.

 

A.I.: I've never understood why this, maybe the worst movie Spielberg has ever made, got even one single positive review, much less the droves that pronounced it to be deep, innovative, visionary, and all those other adjectives used by movie critics who've never read an actual sci-fi story in their damn lives.

 

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: painfully obvious and heavy-handed, with Wayne sleepwalking through his part and Stewert shouting out his. Not anywhere near the best work of anyone involved.

 

The Doom Generation: I call it overrated because someone, somewhere actually thought it was a good idea to make and release this movie.

 

Gummo: ditto.

 

That's all for now, I might be back for more later.

[Guest LooseCannon]

Chasing Amy: in my opinion, viable evidence that Smith should never attempt a "serious" film ever again.  

I agree completely.

 

Pearl Harbor: deserves all the bashing that unfairly went to better films like Saving Private Ryan and Titanic, a completely worthless pile of sentimental slop that doesn't even have the balls to show its own gore effects without a digital effect to blur it all away.

 

My problem with calling this movie overrated is that I've never encountered anyone, no matter how stupid they seemed, either in print or in person, who didn't feel exactly the same way. I wouldn't even call Titanic all that overrated. The backlash against that movie has been swift and decisive, if only way too late.

 

Wrestling Deacon: Just so you don't think I'm no-selling a post you put some thought and effort into, I'll accept your points with some minor quibbles. But I'll leave the debate as is.

[Guest cabbageboy]

If you want to discuss people being limited in range, you can talk about anyone. There are very few actors who played all sorts of roles that were outside of their usual niche. Charles Laughton could do English monarchs, the Hunchback, or Rembrandt. Paul Muni could do scientists, gangsters, and Chinese peasants.

 

Speaking of Muni, he was the man in the old Scarface. Now if you wanna talk shitty overrated movies I will say the newer Scarface with Pacino. I am perplexed as to why that movie is so well liked....the original was about half as long, tells the SAME story for the most part, and also has a lot of people getting killed.

 

Heh, I probably infuriated Dames for saying that.

[Guest chirs3]

On The Waterfront was pretty blah, I thought, but it won quite a few awards (oddly enough, it won awards for pretty much everything but sound, which was the worst part of it).

 

Then there's Ghost World... ugh...

 

And I somewhat agree with whoever mentioned The Exorcist on their list... I liked it, but it wasn't really all that scary.

[Guest razazteca]

Gummo was one of those movies where you ask yourself WTF was that, the director had a vision, one that is well different than the traditional film, I am not sure if it was intended to be a faux-documentry-drama or what. Either way it had a message and a very disturbing one at that.

 

Overrated maybe but misunderstood

[Guest godthedog]

how could 'gummo' be overrated? there were like 2 people who liked it.

[Guest El Satanico]

:throws stale bread and variety meats at chirs: That's for your continued dislike of Ghost World.

 

Now get out of here before I mock you again.

[Guest J*ingus]

I know a couple of people who knew Harmony Korine and worked on and around Gummo, and the general impression I got was that he's a complete psycho who really has no idea what he's doing. A male friend of mine talked with Korine about auditioning for his next movie, and one of the very first questions he was asked was "How far are you willing to go with nudity?" Not exactly promising.

 

A few more overrated flicks:

 

Se7en: not a bad movie, but underneath it all, a standard thriller with better craftsmanship than usual, and not deserving all the "Serious Cinema" praised that was ladled upon it.

 

Silence of the Lambs: ditto.

 

The Game: speaking of David Fincher, I can't believe how many people loved this movie. (I guess nobody has seen The Stunt Man these days.) A completely predictable plot leads you to an inevitable ending; for chrissakes, they TOLD you the entire plot right up front, why was anyone fooled?

 

The Matrix: explain this to me: a movie contains a scene in which a couple of computer nerds (dressed in black trenchcoats) use machine guns and explosives to kill dozens of more or less innocent people, including police officers. Less than a year later, the Columbine massacre occurs. Am I the first one to make this connection? (And I'm not even bringing up the part where an aircraft gets crashed into a skyscraper.)

 

Queen Margot: one evil woman makes everyone's life hell, despite several of her victims being able to stop her at any time. Right. People dying horrible screaming deaths from poison gets old after the fifth or sixth time. And can anyone else think of a movie where the romantic lead's demise takes place completely offscreen?

 

The Magnificent Ambersons: okay, a lot of the fault with this one can be attributed to the studio, who chopped the movie up like hamburger and stuck on a new happy ending. But still, let's face it, this is a disjointed mess, and in no way deserves all the four-star ratings that every movie critic heaps upon it.

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: let me start out this one by saying that every "colorful character heals the patients of a mental ward" is complete bullshit. Broken human minds can't be put back together that easily, and I refuse to like any movie which tries to con people into believing otherwise. But even so, I never got into this one. Everyone was too damn nice; McMurphy seemed to tame to have ever been locked up, and Nurse Ratched seemed fragile and completely lacking in menace. A disservice to the original novel.

 

Apocalypse Now Redux: the original A.N. is one of my all-time favorite movies, but this was a sterling example of just why some footage is left on the cutting room floor. The most egregious example being the French Plantation scenes, where the movie stops dead for half a fucking hour, killing the pace just prior to the final act, for no conceivable reason. Coppola did used to know what he was doing, crap like Jack aside.

 

The Mask of Zorro: Hopkins is asleep, Banderas looks confused, Zeta-Jones just wants desperately to become a new star, and the other people are quickly forgotten. The action was boring, the writing was weird, and the whole thing was way too long.

 

Halloween: great horror movie, but not "***** Best of All Time" kind of thing that some make it out to be.

 

Ikiru: starts out well enough, with Takashi Shimura giving his usual fine performance, but it slows down and loses its way somewhere in the middle. We watch him suffer, and suffer, and suffer some more, with no happiness in site. It rapidly turns into one of the most depressing films ever made.

 

Elizabeth: Geoffery Rush is good, and Cate Blanchett is excellent, and even this idiot movie can't change that. But oh boy does it suck otherwise. (Didn't Joseph Fiennes ever stop the costume designer and mention "Hey, these clothes are identical to what I wore in Shakespeare In Love a few months back"?) And how about that badass priest assassin villain, who is quickly (and easily) captured, with a look on his face like a kid who's been caught in the cookie jar and is about to be spanked.

 

The Piano: never before have I seen a movie where I just wanted ALL of the characters to die. I hated the woman, I hated her husband, I hated her daughter, and I even hated Harvey Keitel (now THAT is an accomplishment). I didn't empathize or sympathize with any of them for one second, and was very glad when the movie was over. And oh yeah, why did she write a note to a guy she knows to be illiterate?

 

The Messenger: why did anyone like this movie? Why does anyone think that Milla Jovavich can act?

 

Resident Evil: ditto. (And the special effects sucked, too.)

 

The Truman Show: sentimental slop, with Jim Carrey doing a mildly toned-down version of the exact same performance that he's done in all his other movies. Plenty of plot holes, too. (Was still better than The Majestic, though.)

 

The Empire Strikes Back: I've never understood why people consider this one so head-and-shoulders above the other movies, especially A New Hope. Because of the depressing non-ending, maybe? Hell if I know.

 

Friday: if yet another one of my friends starts quoting this damn movie to me, I might scream. It's not a horrible little stoner flick, but it veers wildly back and forth between broad slapstick humor, contrived violence, and "serious" drama. And a little bit of Chris Tucker goes a DAMN long way.

 

Mission Impossible 2: John Woo's worst movie in years, in which he apparently finally accomplished his dream of directing a cartoon with live actors. Are Woo's cliches (double handguns, male bonding, flying doves) starting to bug the hell out of anyone else?

 

The Killer: speaking of which. Is a decent flick, but is nowhere near Woo's best film (Hard-Boiled, Face/Off, and the last half hour of Better Tomorrow 2 all easily piss upon it) as is so often claimed.

 

The Evil Dead: kinda creepy, but nowhere near as good a film as the sequel, and downright offensive at times (the tree-rape scene...).

 

Dances With Wolves: I hate Kevin Costner, and think he's possibly the single worst actor to ever somehow become a movie star. (Yes, I include Keanu Reeves in that statement.) That's all.

 

Hamlet (1996): I love The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. I can't get enough of this play. I own eight different versions of it. I want to shoot it myself, one day. But why oh why does everyone seem to love Kenneth Branagh's bizarre, shouting, scenery-chewing, over the top and off the other side overacting in this film? While he's advising the Players to not "saw the air" with their gestures, he's committing that very infraction himself. And this waving and bellowing goes on for four hours. I wanted a Dramamine patch after the halfway point. Not to mention that Branagh couldn't direct "scary" or "action" scenes to save his damn life. The stunt casting hurts the film, as Jack Lemmon, Gerard Depardieu, and Robin Williams all seem rather lost. And finally, goddamn Branagh fucking BLINKS HIS EYES when he's "dead" and being carried away at the end. Hello, nobody thought of saying "Cut! Take two"?!

[Guest Flyboy]

Ep. 3 better have an awesome payoff. I'm hoping for a *really* dark movie.

Ep. 3 will be awesome... no doubt about it.

[Guest Bosstones Fan]

Call me crazy if you want, but I consider Training Day to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen, yet it seems to be loved by most everyone else.

 

I don't get it. There is absolutely no point to that movie.

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

I know not many people praise either of these two, but they are *the* two worst movies that I have ever seen in my life, and if I don't hear other say the same, they are giving this shit way too much credit:

 

1) Bio-Dome

 

2) American Pie 2 (Won't even dignify it with a II)

[Guest chirs3]

explain this to me: a movie contains a scene in which a couple of computer nerds (dressed in black trenchcoats) use machine guns and explosives to kill dozens of more or less innocent people, including police officers. Less than a year later, the Columbine massacre occurs. Am I the first one to make this connection?

 

Oh come on.

 

First off, they were innocent police officers who, at any moment, could have become Agents. Would you have taken that chance?

 

And second... well, the whole "Movies make kids kill people" debate should probably be in a seperate folder, but let me just say if you think a movie scene caused Columbine, you need help.

[Guest El Satanico]

1) Bio-Dome

 

2) American Pie 2 (Won't even dignify it with a II)

1) Why would you even bother putting Bio-Dome in an overrated movies thread? A handful of people that may actually love it compared to the majority that recognizes it for what it is doesn't make make a movie overrated.

 

2) American Pie should've been mentioned here. More people claim the original to be the best movie of the two, so that would make the original highly overrated. Part 2 which is actually a decent comedy compared to the bloody awful original doesn't get nearly as much praise as the original.

[Guest bps "The Truth" 21]

Jaws

ET

Jaws

Fight Club

Jaws

JAws

and Jaws

[Guest J*ingus]

First off, they were innocent police officers who, at any moment, could have become Agents. Would you have taken that chance?

But hey, the writers set that up, the movie didn't have to be that way. (And that created plot holes as well; why didn't the Agents just assume the bodies of the first cops who went in to arrest Trinity, for example?)

 

And second... well, the whole "Movies make kids kill people" debate should probably be in a seperate folder, but let me just say if you think a movie scene caused Columbine, you need help.

 

No I don't think it caused Columbine, and I actually dislike the movie for other reasons. But I find it strange that there was never any backlash against it.

[Guest bps "The Truth" 21]

Kevin Costner rules!