But people rave about it.

That was my first thought. I hate that movie to the extent that I have never been able to finish it.
Definitely my candidate for most overrated movie of all time.

I posted here about LA a few weeks ago. I was told it was great. Its not. Its pretty awful, with some good performances.

But then, I hate romantic comedies in general and those taking place at Christmas in particular.

Rocky beating Network for best picture always bothered me.

I presume I need to read the book to get the full impact. Many movie adaptations of novels suffer from that. Often the movie reviews are written from the perspective of someone familiar with the books. YMMV.

I saw it in the theater when it first came out, I admit I had been smoking some hash before I went in. I thought the story was pretty muddled. I know there are people who love it so I shouldn’t say anything I guess.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is similar, it's too slow-paced to watch again and again.

Actually, if you watch it today, you'll be surprised by how well the special effects were done, especially when you consider when it was made. Years before GGI.

2010: The Year We Make Contact

If you haven't, you really should check it out.

It's a great film.

The first is brilliant and provides an epic view of life in the universe. It is one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.

But the series goes down hill from there.

2010 is a decent novel although the "ghost" of David Bowman adds a mystical layer to what had been a strictly scientific tale. The film is far inferior to the novel, in my opinion, even though Roy Scheider is one of my all-time favorite actors, (narration is ALWAYS a poor substitute for active story-telling).

2061 goes even further into weirdness but nothing tops his final novel in the series, 3001. Guess what they find floating in deep space? Frank Poole's body which has been floating in deep space for a thousand years! Incredibly, he is re-animated and brought back to life. He's rehabilitated and studies to get up to speed in the advanced new world. Then he goes back to Europa and figures out how to block a computer program left behind by the aliens who seeded intelligent life on Earth, (remember the ape scene in 2001?). Bowman's "ghost" teams up with Poole to inject the virus into the alien system which destroys all of the monoliths. As they calculate where the aliens came from they determine that Earth has 400 years to prepare for the aliens' return when they will supposedly destroy humanity because we've grown into an evil force.

Okay.

Perhaps because I didn't see it when it first came out, but a couple of years later. The opening bit with men in gorilla suits was dumb. Later on, it did foretell, sort of, the demise of Pan Am as it should a nearly empty passenger craft. As for the demented computer, the less said the better.

The original story it's based on, "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke is excellent.

It just went too far

with known psycho Anthony Hopkins using his criminal insight into wrapped thinking to solve a crime. But Hopkins knows who did it! Wow. Really great solution. That's really using the brain powers.

I know. No one else on earth agrees with me.

The FBI would not likely solicit the aid of a convicted serial killer on a case simply because he was brilliant. When Starling met with Lecter, she didn't realize he had inside knowledge of Buffalo Bill. The fact that he did was just a lucky break and frankly unlikely. So, the whole setup of the movie is a bit of a jumble.

I like it by the way.

Okay so I’m in the Army in the field in Germany. We were in the staging area situation so we could go to one of two theaters showing different movies. We went to see this not knowing anything about it. On the poster I see some familiar eyes. Is that Jodie Foster? Remember she’d stop making movies for about 10 years.

The first scene with Hannibal - they’ve set him up as this monster (which he is) but when she turns the corner and we see Hopkins for the first time I sat up straight in my seat and let out a OH GOD! or something like that. This guy was a proper English gentleman which made it scarier.

THEN the tuck scene in the mirror at the end. I’m in a huge movie theater with red blooded American Army soldiers- they FREAKED OUT. Hats were thrown in the air, guys actually screamed, and more than few ran out of the theater. I was cracking up at their reaction.

I probably have seen 75-100 movies in my life. Few stand the test of time.

Last edited Sun Dec 15, 2024, 09:45 AM - Edit history (1)

Scarlett is just too obnoxious for me.

The Ten Commandments is really a bad film. Totally overproduced overacted and just bad. My daughter watched it for the first time not too many years ago ago and was shocked that everyone was white. They were basically mostly Jewish too which I always took as a statement.

John Wayne did not appear in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, but he did appear in the 1965 film The Greatest Story Ever Told, which was shown on TCM as part of an Easter family-film celebration:

... I thought it was good, but was expecting a masterpiece (as it's often described).

Goodfellas was so much better!

It helps to be Italian, I guess. But the acting was tremendous. From Brando to Pacino (!!) to Caan to even Diane Keaton.

Tremendous movie.

I guess I need to see Goodfellas, though I'd hate to have anything take down Godfather a notch.

Some felt this Star Wars represented a return to form and got the sequel trilogy back on track after the debacle that was the prequel trilogy. For me I saw the problems right away:

1) Rey is a weak "Mary Sue" character and her gritty arc on Jakku seemed to be rebooting Luke's origin story on Tatooine.
2) Han Solo and Chewbacca seem to be paying fan service. It's unlikely and unimaginative that after 30 years they would still be palling around in the same clothes running the same scams.
3) Star Wars always had great protagonists, even the prequels. Now we have the whiny Kylo Ren who is easily defeated by Rey and is a sorry excuse for a Sith. Snoke is a joke.
4) The robot BB-8 is running around with a secret map. Where have I seen this before? R2D2 was more loveable for some reason.
5) There's another Death Star and it destroys rebel planets...again *yawn*
6) The Death Star is destroyed by exploiting another serious design flaw. Really?

I don’t get it.

If you were, you would get it.

It seemed it was constantly building to a payoff it just never gave. That viewing experience reminded me of watching Dr. Zhivago: I watched the whole thing to get that?

Especially those set our own present day reality.

I do all I can to avoid them now.

Horror is another movie genre I find intolerable.

I'll take Barbie over Oppenheimer any day.

Boring!

I actually love Martin Scorsese and Quentin Taratino, but I thought "Pulp Fiction" was overrated, and I thought "Wolf of Wall Street" was problematic right down to the core issue of whether that person's life merited spending $100 million to make a film about it. Everybody I know likes (not loves) that movie. But I don't know who the intended audience is, or what the point of that film is.

I don't think "Pulp Fiction" is bad by any means--just way, way overrated. Give me "Kill Bill" or "Inglorious Basterds" over that one any day.

Re: "Ghostbusters." Actually quite a few of the comedies made in the 80s by anyone having even peripheral involvement with that circle of SNL folks--Aykroyd in particular (nothing against Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, etc...) were a mixed bag. There was a new idea in Hollywood called "High Concept," and people with power were making deals to do movies on the basis of a clever one-line premise. Cocaine was also everywhere, which I think damaged the judgment of a lot of people. But for every good film ("Blues Brothers", "National Lampoon's Vacation", "Beverly Hills Cop" ) there were three or four "Spies Like Us," "Twilight Zone: The Movie," or "Best Defense" (that unwatchable Eddie Murphy disaster) or the ghastly "Beverly Hills Cop 2."

A lot of times the premise was clever, but in the execution the writers got lazy, especially in those third acts. "Ghostbusters" was IMO a great premise, a good first act that sort of dribbles off into lazy writing.

As much of a fan as I am of Bill Murray and Ramis “Ghostbusters” had two jokes in it. Dickless and stay puff marshmallow man (which must be a regional thing). I really didn’t understand what all the hoopla was about. BTW Huey Lewis sued Ray Parker Jr over the song. Apparently it’s just like “I want a new drug” I don’t get it but Huey win the suit.

Wolf - I didn’t get it. Way too much F bombs. I don’t know that I finished it. Based on Jordan Belfort’s actual life. His cell mate in Federal minimum security prison loved his stories and said he should write a book. Tommy Chong was doing 9 months for selling paraphernalia on line. He told Belfort his first draft read too much like Tom Wolfe so he redid it.

We are racking our brains on what 80’s movie we recently watched. It was way worse than I remembered and, as you said, it had the looks of cocaine all over it.

I ended up yelling "Sink, sink, damn it!" at the TV screen. They dragged out the sinking way too long. It's good that I wasn't in a movie theater.

That was so bad I started rooting for the Japanese half way through it THEN Baldwin showed up as Doolittle and I realized we had another 30 minutes at least to sit through.

Although I must admit, some of Sandler's more recent serious roles have been pretty decent.

I never saw so much hype for a complete shoulder shrug of a movie in my life.

Agree with the op on Ghostbusters. I saw it as an adult, so maybe it makes a more indelible impression if you see it at 8 years of age.

As a Stooges fan, I almost started crying in the theater. Horrible, horrible film.

...willing suspension of disbelief.

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