Entertainment For Lively Minds
Films with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever
*There will be spoilers*
I watched Kill List.
What compels a film-maker to make a film like this? You set up a cast of characters who are all quite (if not, extremely) difficult to warm to. So, there is no one that the audience can side with. If you do have a character of some warmth - Michael Smiley (Tyers, from Spaced) - they must die. Hideously, if possible.
It included some vague hints of a mystery. There was a section of dialogue which promised a twist but failed to deliver in any kind of authentic way. I think Stephanie Zacharek over at MovieLine is right on the money when she says, "Wheatley drops enough unnerving bread crumbs in the first two-thirds to leave you wondering where the hell he’s headed, and even the big finale should be satisfying enough: It just belongs to a different movie, and it’s unsettling in a way that doesn’t feel earned. The conclusion of Kill List would be more unsettling if the subtle gradation of clues leading up to it didn’t raise so many unanswered questions, just for the hell of it. A mysteriously infected hand, instances of people thanking other people for things they haven’t even done yet – those could have been superb little macabre touches, if only they’d been woven more tightly into the narrative and not just left dangling like shabby hangnails. By the time Kill List jumps off the deep end into occulty weirdness, it’s almost too late for shock value. The ending is designed to make us recoil in horror. But you might be left wondering why you’d bothered with any of it in the first place."
There is a reverberating pointlessness.
The French film Martyrs is another case in point: Set up a beautiful, compassionate, strong female lead, and then skin her alive.
I'm not talking about Great films you NEVER want to see again, and I'm not talking about REALLY crap films, I'm talking about films that leave you...empty.
I know it is subjective. If you liked Kill List (or Martyrs) perhaps you could defend it.
Any other examples of films with no redeeming qualities?
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Deuce Bigalow: European
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.
I had to ask my then housemates to turn it off. There was *nothing* about it that warranted 90 minutes of my life. Or theirs.
Anything with Bruce Willis in
Bald man wears a vest, fights everybody, grins cheekily, the end.
So...
...have they finally made that Rab C. Nesbitt movie, then?
Hang on, I'm getting Rab mixed up with Gregor Fisher's other great creation the Baldy Man.
Saw - the franchise
I believe there are seven of the Saw movies. I've only seen parts of the first two and they left me cold.
I suppose they are the kind of thing that appeals to teenage boys these days, but I found no redeeming qualities in them at all.
Far, far too many to mention.
My problem is that my experience of film is judged from the cinematic high-point of watching Star Wars as a hyper-excited eleven year old.
All my concepts of just how good the film was going to be were surpassed by several orders of magnitude.
And, really, it's been downhill from there.
My time is now valuable to me. If I'm going to pay money to sit in a darkened room and be entertained for an hour or two, I had better be entertained properly. Fuck your 3-D glasses. Stick your hyperkinetic jump-cuts up your arse. A pox on your crude, lumpen CGI which is there only to ease the transition to video game which is, of course, where the profit lies.
Films were once made with care and love.
They were released sparingly. To watch them was a treat.
The medium has been diluted to a quite staggering degree.
Popcorn marketing devices. Pure and simple.
No they weren't
During this 'golden age' they were churning out stuff like The Toolbox Murders, Cannibal Ferox and The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant.
The Hunters
Last week I watched a film that set a new benchmark for dull - The Hunters (http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1591504/)
Nothing happened at all in the first 45 minutes, which I spent trying to work out whether the film was meant to be set in America or Europe.
I don't know if it is a redeeming feature, but the main location was brilliant and beautifully shot but that just made it worse as it made me wonder what would have resulted if the basic idea had been filmed in that location by somebody who had a bloody clue about writing a script.
MAke a note of the title for next Christmas and buy it for somebody you hate.
Tricky one ...
... because it's useful to be able to understand why and how a film fails. So there's something to be learned from even the irredeemably bad, because they make the great shine even brighter. I had great hopes for A.I., because Kubrick was once on board, but watching it shows why Spielberg (for all his populist qualities) will never make a great movie, and why Kubrick bailed. A.I. is enjoyed by a lot of people, so it must have redeeming qualities, but any movie where the "hero" finishes up in bed with his mother needs taking a beady-eyed squint at. Spielberg, the Pinocchio of film-making, desperately wants to be a real boy, and make real movies, and be cuddled. He's E.T. with A.I.
George Lucas and Spielberg are responsible for a lot of movies I'd categorise as irredeemably bad, but it's unarguable they saved Hollywood (killing off the sublime run of great seventies' movies in the process and replacing it with popcorn culture - so, er, thanks for that).
Before I get the inevitable accustaions of being an elitist snob ("it's all opinion, mate" "Kubrick's an over-rated bore, fact" etc.), I'm writing this because Spielberg and Lucas have always failed to give me what they're supposed to - entertainment. Taxi Driver: entertaining, provocative, grown-up movie. Star Wars: kid's movie I fell asleep to. Irredeemably bad.
Not every movie can be Drive, but when a Drive does reach the screen, it seems miraculous now. There's room for everything, of course, but popcorn does take up more space than its nutritional value warrants.
Have you seen Jurassic Park?
It's ace
If it doesn't have Doug McClure in it
it's not a dinosaur movie.
A lawyer
Gets bitten in half while he's taking a dump.
Really?
Again. Really? American Graffiti? Jaws? Jurassic Park? Raiders of the Lost Ark? None of these films have any redeeming features at all?
I think ...
we're having a communication breakdown here, something futzed with either the broadcast or the receiver. "Yes" or "no" answers to your question are equally valid, so pick one.
While I'm here - the great seventies movies all made money at the box office. They were all popular. Kubrick wasn't funded by a grant from the Smithsonian. The difference between "good" and "great" is worth observing, as is the difference between a bucket of popcorn and a meal.
?
"Yes" or "no" answers to your question are equally valid, so pick one."
Nope, sorry Burt but you've lost me there ;-)
You say that it is worth observing the difference between "good" and "great" - what is it? Nevertheless I'm more interested in you clarifying your definition of irredeemably awful.
Don't forget, most commercial films (like any "product") are generally made with an audience in mind (yes, even the Artificial Eye and other worthy indie releases) or written to adhere to or subvert genre rules which are only appreciated by audiences aware of the conventions. To dismiss them as awful is maybe missing the point. They just weren't aimed at you in the first place.
But that said, the output of Michael Bay is beyond redemption.
Okay, Eddie! *cracks knuckles*
Any film which gives innocent entertainment to millions is redeemed right there. Spielberg/Lucas make films that give pleasure to millions. They don't aim for "art", or significance, their business is getting people into movie theatres. They want everybody to buy a ticket. They're not making movies for a niche market, they're making movies for mass consumption, for Everyman. Which means they're making movies for me! Only I think they stink. I think they aim too low. We're being fed popcorn instead of meals.
I don't see anything pretentious about art. I like it when people aim high, regardless of the result. That's where the (he)art lies, in the aim, in the intent. Spielberg is an absolutely shameless (and highly skilled) manipulator, and that's how I feel when I'm watching his work - manipulated. I like both Duel and THX 1138, Jaws and American Graffiti less so, and it's downhill all the way from there.
I'm not against popcorn entertainment, and enjoy it when it's well done. I thought the latest Mission Impossible was an absolute blast. I loved the last Die More Harderer Again movie. They're both ridiculous, unashamed, and unselfconsciously artistic.
It's all subjective, "only opinion" and so forth, but it's how you express your opinion that matters, not what it is. So, as film-makers, I find Spielberg and Lucas (amongst others) awful, for the lowest common denominator they reduce us to, for turning film into a juvenile medium, for not recognising art if he came up and introduced himself in the lobby.
It's a shame not liking Spielberg/Lucas makes me seem like a grouch and a snob. But there you go. It's what I am.
(I just downloaded Kill List. I found this - SNIP - on Something Awful:
"Every once in a while a film will do something I absolutely love, which is play its cards close to its vest. Recently, viewers seem to need to know what's going on right up front, to the point where they openly mock films for trying something out of left field. My fear is that Kill List may be destined to become one of those films. Above all else, this is a subtle film, one that doesn't make its plot known until it becomes absolutely necessary. Not knowing this helps make it all the more chilling as we slowly start to piece together exactly what kind of film we're watching."
- sounds interesting!)
Art / Mass entertainment.
Not at all sure if this is entirely relevant to this thread, but I love the paintings of Jack Vettriano.
I wouldnt know an old master if it bit my bum.
Give me the singing butler any day.
I really enjoyed Kill List
I'll write something later if I have time. And I'll happily defend the first two Saw films.
Special effects
Are groundbreaking special effects enough to hang a film on? I don't think so. In which case I nominate The Matrix. Without the spinny round special effects nothing really happens and after about half an hour I'm not sure if I cared if it did.
Another film I'm a bit baffled by is Saving Private Ryan. It may well be brilliant after the first ten minutes but I didn't get that far. Why would a filmmaker make the viewer want to turn it off even before the story has started? Seems a bit pointless. I wonder if there are actually any instances of any straight to DVD films that have a deliberately appalling first 15 minutes and then is blank for the rest of the film on the assumption that nobody would make it that far!
Matrix 2
The first seemed fresh and left a number of questions unanswered. Which were covered in matrix 2 but the answers weren't any good. Have since tried to watch 1 which is now forever tainted by 2.
And 3 of course
When they realised they only had 10 mins of actual story left to do, so let's fill it up with two hours of metal machines fighting each other. That'll work. And get Whoopi Goldberg to do the 'I woke up and it was all a dream' cheat at the end too.
Solaris
The original Tarkovsky version has a long pointless section consisting of POV shots from a car driving around Tokyo roads - the story has it that Tarkovsky was hoping the state censors would get bored and pass the film without seeing the rest of it.
Hey!
That's my favourite bit.
Aha!
This explains so much about all of Tarkovsky's films!
If I had been a Soviet censor all of his films would have had subversive endings. *loud snoring*
Hostel
The precise point at which I realised I never wanted to see another Eli Roth movie.
I left the cinema depressed at the thought that several dozen of my fellow human beings must have spent hundreds of hours and several million dollars producing such a hateful artefact. God awful.
Sucker Punch is nearly as bad, mind. Pretty ladies nearly get raped, pretty ladies do sexy dancing, pretty ladies kill zombies in their underwear. Repeat for 90 minutes. Such a total lack of respect for its own audience. And you don't even get to see the sexy dancing (I kid).
On the basis of this week, I'll also add Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. God I'd love to punch that obnoxious kid. Extremely Overwrought and Incredibly Melodramatic is more like it.
"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"
I'd not heard of it until you mentioned it just there: after reading he plot summary on Wikipedia, I have absolutely no intention of spending any time on what appears to be a cynically-contrived, convoluted piece of emotional blackmail.
Hostel
Couldn't agree more, and I've never actually seen it. Just a review (plus amusingly unpleasant full page still) in "Unc*t" was enought to prove to me that:
a) I'm old enough to have found the red line in my psyche, and the vile concept of "torture porn" is it. Up with this we shall not put, as a wise man once said;
b) "Unc*t" was full of shit. Why was I still buying it? I stopped
c) Sadly, I was listening to the Flaming Lips' "At War With The Mystics" while I was reading the above, and it's forever tainted by association. I actually can't listen to the Lips now.
Classic "sleep on it" response...
So, I bashed out this question last thing at night (as you can see from the time-stamp), and for some reason, I woke up in the morning a little bit more chilled about the whole thing.
Perhaps films like this serve a useful purpose by getting the viewer to question why they react in the way that they do. Okay, I'm sure Ben Wheatley did not consciously construct dialogue that simply does not work in the grand scheme of the story - it might have just been an error, or a sloppy piece of writing - but, in the end, there is a piece of art that provoked a reaction, even if that reaction is emptiness.
What was it about it that made be feel empty? What was it about the arguing couple and their high decibel sweary attacks in front of the seven-year-old? Is it important for me to have a character to relate to? Do I want my entertainment to have a happy ending? etc etc. All relevant questions to make the ninety minutes not a waste of time. It's not just the time, it's the emotional investment - it's good to turn that into a positive, too.
Good points roryks
"it's the emotional investment" - exactly - which prompts me to wonder which is worse:
- a film where you're not given any reason to invest any emotional interest or attention in the first place, or
- a film where you invest your emotions and interest, only to have these dashed cynically and unthinkingly by the film-makers?
I suspect the latter, which means that a film with no redeeming features isn't as bad as a film which shows promise but ultimately fails (eg "Hidden", "Seven"). On paper this may seem counter-intuitive, but I think it's correct.
Interestingly, your comment that "there is a piece of art that provoked a reaction, even if that reaction is emptiness" is a pretty good summary of Throbbing Gristle's musical manifesto!
Genuinely interested
In where you thought 'Seven' failed.
Note perfect for me and a film with a twist that you'll happily research is always to be treasured.
Good question - it's to do with the OP's comments
about treatment of characters.
OK, hands up, I can see the technical redeeming features: it has a very satisfyingly creepy & evil feel, and some of the ideas are startlingly unexpected.
But in the end it just seems to be a film about one guy being stupendously horrendous to other people. The End. I've watched a lot of horror films which don't leave me that way (eg Carpenter's The Thing, The Shining, Ring, Quatermass & The Pit), because they acknowledged the characters' humanity in one way or another (sorry - bit pretentious, but you know what I mean?).
Whereas I have no intention of watching Seven again because it doesn't give me anything I can't get just reading a newspaper, ie a depressing view of the worst excesses of humanity's inhumanity to humanity.
I don't doubt the abilities of those involved, or the "ideas" it raises, but (like "Peeping Tom") it just seems to me to be conveniently hypocritical way to castigate the loathsome whilst trying to derive entertainment from their activities. (Sorry - pretentious again - I'll stop now!)
Good answer
At the time of its release 'Seven' was noticeably bleak, as was the world it existed in. In the subsequent years, bleak and downbeat have become much more desirable qualities for a film wanting to be commercial with an edge. Simultaneously, the real world became bleaker than we ever could have imagined and now looking back 20 years, 'Seven' could be seen as GroundZero for the likes of Hostel and Saw.
Which is a shame. Because at the time, it was much better than that.
For the record, I thought Kill List was excellent, but it's not a film I could see myself watching again and again.
7even
Thought this film successfully introduced us to violence as porn, or porn as violence.
No redeeming qualities whatsoever. No basis in reality - just racking up the sensations for titillation purposes.
Probably best forgotten.
Violence?
As serial killer movies go, it's fairly unviolent.
For Violence as Porn, see Sin City. Wafer-thin plot links extreme, bloody violence.
I liked "KIll List" a lot.
And started a thread on it back when it was released.
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/kill-list-the-movie-no-spoliers
If you want a film with no heart, just look at "Sex And The City 2".
oops
Thanks, Grant. I'll nip over there and take a look.
Calm down, now!
I'm not saying it is now cosily nestled at the number one spot in my top-ten of favourite films, but I found this analysis extremely helpful: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1788391/board/nest/192918630?d=193178885&p=1...
Somebody might need to open a thread entitled, "Films you hated at first, but after a more reasoned approach it turned out they were saying something profound" or something. I'm a little bit too red-of-face to start it at the moment.
It's understandable
that in our current cinematic culture everything is about the surface rather than the subtext. That the filmmaker might have an agenda and message beyond the Speilbergian simplistic is increasingly rare.
Eli Roth and Tarantino have nothing to say IMO.
When I first saw KL I walked out realizing that I'd HAVE to see it again as there was more going on than initially met the eye.
I feel the same way about the cartoon Despicable Me. Check out
http://www.scribd.com/MarketBOB/d/34161723-Despicable-Me-Movie-Review
For "more than meets the eye"
you can't go deeper than Eyes Wide Shut. For starters, in the first few seconds, we see the title card, three words of four letters (3/4), and hear a waltz (3/4), and it was framed by Kubrick at 4:3 aspect ratio, so, 3/4. That's US he's talking about - our eyes are wide shut - we're staring at the screen but seeing nothing. There's not a frame in this movie, not a line spoken, that's empty of significance. You can (many do) say it's still a shit movie, but that's the reaction of someone who only knows how to text, on reading Shakespeare.
Look for the eye on Tom Cruise's back!
Agreed
There are some fairly extreme readings of EWS...
http://kentroversypapers.blogspot.com/2006/03/eyes-wide-shut-occult-symb...
But, you really do get a sense that Kubrick weaved an awful lot into every frame.
I defy anyone
to find even the minutest shred of anything worthwhile in Transformers 2 or Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3. Mind-boggling nonsense from start to finish.
I went to see
Transformers 2 at the cinema.
It's about four hours long. In what felt like the third hour, the voice of a small boy piped up, clearly audible to the entire theatre, and here's what he said:
"Mummy, please make it stop."
Quite.
I could barely get through
the first Pirates of the Caribbean. Given its hype and popularity, I was amazed at how completely unentertaining I found it to be. You couldn't have paid me to see 2 or 3.
As for Transformers, I can barely stand to watch the previews of movies of this type which seems to be about 50% of what's made today. But that may just be because those movies seem to be made for young males and I'm neither young nor male so what do I know.
I love all the Pirates of the Caribbean films
They're just really good fun.
Sky Movies
Pirates 4: On Stranger Turds
I fell asleep while watching my recorded version last night. Unfortunately I awoke before the end. I love the original ride though.
Good contracts
Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom must have brilliant lawyers to write contracts that kept them in Pirates 2 & 3, when all anyone wanted was more Johnny Depp. 1 had it's moments (all Captain Jack), and 4 was fine for a family movie.
Hmm...
Somebody elsewhere mentions Matrix 2 & 3 - also films which rendered the first one unwatchable. The only way to do it is by sticking with the first movie and refusing to believe the second two even exist.
I quite enjoyed the first Transformers. Yeah, it was a Michael Bay wham-bam-thankyou-mam movie, but there was enough subtlety thrown in to render it rather quaint. Along comes number 2 (and I mean number 2) and the studio says, "What were all the quirky funny bits that the audience loved from the first movie? Well, let's take them and put them through the frickin' meat grinder!" So now Sam's "Mom" is a runaway embarrassment, and we don't get one, but two Jar Jar Binks autobots, and John Turturro is twitty to the nth degree.
They should all be thoroughly ashamed of themselves rolling around in their piles of lolly.
Obviously
Peter's Friends, Moulin Rouge and Absolute Beginners are all dreadful.
My mileage does vary
I like the first 2. Never seen AB.
Gregory's Two Girls
Gregory's Girl is amongst my all time favourites however the follow up within Gregory returning to his school as a teacher is quite possibly the worst film ever made.
Gregory's Two Girls
Thought I was pretty up on Films.I've never heard of it.,Of course,I have to see it now.
Archipelago
I know it was critically well liked but I thought it was like watching paint dry, which, incidentally, you actually do during one scene.
On this subject...Roeg...boring...how?
I watched a Nic Roeg film recently with absolutely no redeeming qualities. Well nearly. As he was failing to get any of his projects funded (I'm guessing) he took the studio shilling to make Castaway. Two hours of Amanda Donohue and Ollie Reed in the buff. The story is....they go to a desert island for a year. They don't always get on. That's it. Just about. There are a few nice shots of fish, and Frances Barber has a 5-minute cameo as a nun. But jesus it's poor on just about every level except the scenery. There is absolutely no need to see it ever again. Idly wikipediaing it went downhill even further for Nic sadly after that. Now do need to see Eureka and Track 29 again though....just to be sure.
Still
Its better than Chattanooga ChooChoo
Too many Adam Sandler films
I think it may have been Billy Madison I saw. It was awful.
Date Movie
I caught the first 10 minutes on tv. I'm not easily offended but I get really tetchy if the jokes are to do with ladies body sizes. This was offensive on that scale and unfunny on every other.
Click
An Adam Sandler movie, about an architect who can change the future by clicking a TV remote. In Sandler's world, though, an 'architect' is an affable bluecollar meathead who spends all week making little plastic models of buildings, then comes home and drinks beer on the couch watching baseball in a very non-architecty suburban house. That sort of sums up the problem with movies now for me - they're so afraid to offend any potential audience by being too highbrow that they end up looking like they were made by and for 11 year old boys. Though I believe someone in Michigan recently sued the makers of 'Drive' because it didn't have enough carchases for his taste, so maybe they're right.
Click
The sound of an Adam Sandler movie being turned off
Modern films
in general seem a bit of a disappointment and lacking in intelligent thought, apart from the infrequent exception. I recently watched a movie '500 Days' starring Zooey (pronounced Zoe apparently) Deschanel and a male lead (the young chap from 3rd Rock from the Sun). Unfortunately he can't act (could nobody spot this in a screen test ?), the entire production: plot, script, characterisation, was contrived, formulaic, superficial and vacuous even for what was meant to be a commercial rom-com, yet probably millions was spent financing it. I wished I had spent the time doing my laundry.
I remember going to see 'Hidden' at the cinema, rave reviews left, right and centre. One of the most pretentious, dreadful films I have ever seen. I wanted to ask for a refund.
Eveyone in film should be made to watch the films of Ernst Lubitch and Billy Wilder and learn a thing or two.
Totally agree about "Hidden"
I watched it on DVD one night, and the ending so infuriated me I "had" to get up and go online to check if I'd missed anything.
How a film with such talented people and a good set-up, could land up being a pretentious disgrace, is almost beyond me.
Totally Disagree about Hidden
Along with The Wire its one of the DVDS I press into friends hands with 'you must watch this'. Yes, its French and arty. But its a great film.
I disagree
Some very good films last year.
Source Code; Rise of the Planet of the Apes; We Need to Talk About Kevin; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Black Swan; The Guard; Harry Potter 7/2; Bridesmaids; The Artist; Kill List
No matter...
...how good a director is - and Billy Wilder directed some of the best films made in Hollywood during the classic studio system era (Sunset Boulevard, The Lost Weekend, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment) - almost every director made at least one turkey. Avanti (1972), with Jack Lemmon and, er, Juliet Mills, is Wilder's turkey. No redeeming features whatsoever. We usually give a movie ten, maybe twenty minutes before we give up but we were so mesmerised by the car crash awfulness of this steaming pile of ordure that we stuck with it for almost an hour before turning to each other to wonder what we were doing. It reminded me of those directors like recent Woody Allen, I'm afraid, who "do" some country and/or period that has become something of a myth (Carnaby Street, swinging sixties, for example) and turn out some patronising tosh that bears no relation whatever to the reality. Why Juliet Mills? Why indeed...unremittingly awful
Avanti
... excellent choice. There's not a scene in it that shouldn't have been left on the cutting-room floor. But (and it's a big one) it has no effect on his status as one of the truly great film-makers.
Burt...
...interesting how some directors' reputations aren't stained by the occasional clunker, while others' never recover. I can still watch classic-period Woody Allen and AI - which admittedly had some redeeming qualities - doesn't affect my views on Kubrick. Off-topic, I know, but I haven't seen the remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but we've just finished the BBC originals. I thought Tinker Tailor was good until we watched Smiley's People and realised we'd never see its like again. Suffused with melancholy, wonderfully acted, directed, photographed and scripted and like The Artist, as near perfect as you would hope
The BBC "Tinker"
is definitive. It gets everything right. I can't read the book (just onto my third re-reading) without visualising the actors and the sets of the BBC mini-series. Alec Guinness is impeccable. The series followed the book far more closely than the recent movie, and the length allowed the depth. I watched the Gary Oldman movie with a growing sense of frustration at its success. I was open to a different take, and different interpretations, but this was something else entirely - only the names remain. Way too many enigmatic silences from Oldman (where Smiley is almost chatty in the book - talking is what he does) and set pieces either invented or omitted or changed completely, to no effect. Why have Jim Prideaux shot in an arcade? The forest at night, the hunting soldiers, is much more dramatic and cinematic - why change it? The corny chess set lingered over in Control's apartment, totally invented, completely spurious ... I could go on. And have.
I don't know if it's irredeemably awful, but it's certainly pretty damn awful.
Difficult...
...to comment on the Oldman version without having seeing it (I'm aware that that doesn't usually prevent me) but my partner, who has seen it, remarked that Oldman seems to think that he can channel Guinness by constantly fiddling with his glasses, which doesn't quite get there. Remakes, eh? Why? I'm struggling to identify a reamke which surpasses the original. Breathless? Please! On Guinness talking, I love the way he answers questions - he doesn't, or he is opaque, or he is gnomic or he thinks about it for so long that you think his heart has stopped. Sublime series - both of them, but for me, Smiley's People is the one
The post Jaws world
Who was it who observed that after 'Jaws', the cinemas became filled with B-quality kids movies ostensibly for adults? Once film producer accountants realised the point is to break even and maybe profit on the opening weekend and DVD sales before folks realise it's crap, it went a bit pear-shaped. But there are still plenty of good films - just go for old ones you haven't seen, indies, and foreign stuff to supplement the occasional good Hollywood product that comes along.
If you haven't already,
get Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood" out of the library.
Jaws....
....is my own personal book-end for 'Oh, right, now everything is c**p.'
(I have a pop album from 1972, which shall remain nameless, that serves the same purpose.)
There are exceptions, but not many, and the advice stated elsewhere of seeing pre-Jaws films, indie stuff and/or non-Hollywood product is spot on.
A great book
I'd also recommend Tom Shone's "Blockbuster" and Ryan Gilbey's "It Don't Worry Me". Both cover similar ground to Biskind. The best genre study I've ever read (and just republished with loads of additional material) is the mighty Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies.
a couple of brutal movies
the question was about films that leave you empty.
Try "Eden Lake" and "Wolf Creek", both witless, violent, nihilist with tragicm, depressing endings. This sort of stuff is pointless cinema in my view.
"Funny Games" comes close but its got validity because Hanecke is poking fun at Hollywood endings, which gets him off the hook for me.
Sweet Sixteen
Utterly shite. Summary: life is violent and depressing. Trying to make it better is pointless.
I'll tell you what would make life better. Inventing a time machine and preventing Sweet Sixteen from ever being made.
Hotel
Mike Figgis' postmodern malarky, in which a set of Hollywood B listers (David Schwimmer, Selma Hayek, Burt Reynolds etc.) improvise a surreal murder-mystery in an Italian hotel whilst also acting out the plot of John Webster's Jacobean classic 'The Duchess of Malfi'. I can appreciate experimental films, and so came prepared to be provoked, but this is aimless, hammy, pretentious and boring.
It has been an education.
Very interesting to publish a post with a theme like this one, and then watch film titles surface that you actually found quite enjoyable.
Puts things in much needed perspective. Shoulda been obvious, really.
If Kill List
is the nadir of film-making, then we're living in a golden age.
Redletter media
If anyone hasn't had the pleasure of watching someone take the terrible 'The Phantom Menace' apart (and the other 2 prequels) then watch this. It isn't a 'straight' review so you may have to put up with the weird serial killer persona the reviewer puts on but its very incisive.
I suppose you have to give a fig about the original films but it would be a good lesson to filmmakers on how to structure a film.
Carry On Emmanuelle
Whats that sound?
Its the sound of the Carry On barrel being severely scraped.
Carry On Behind & Carry On England are pretty low in the Carry On rankings, but they are better than this steaming pile of ....
The Carry On Legacy is tainted by this effort (in fact it pisses all over it)
I'm prepared to say that even Carry On Columbus is better than this film (just)
So it's not just me then?
Good call - the Carry On films are (IMHO) neither steaming piles of trash, nor ironic masterpieces: they are genuinely entertaining unintellectual slices of cinematic pleasure (if you like that sort of thing).
"Behind" was OK, I thought, but "England" was garbage, I agree.
But there's an assumption on this thread
that horror films should be structured around (or feature) a sympathetic protagonist. A lot of films do, but there's more than one way to structure a narrative.
Take the following films:
* Psycho
* The Wicker Man
* The Shining
Psycho broke a lot of rules of film-making and probably originated the modern horror film. The lead character, Marion Crane, is dead after about 20 minutes and is at best morally ambiguous (she has made off with a sack of money). Norman Bates is a victim of his own insanity, but isn't sympathetic either.
Jack Torrance is an average Joe who's sent into a horrific decline by an evil environment; we don't really sympathise with him but are fascinated by his descent into madness. Sgt Howie is a self-righteous God-botherer and again, the interest is in watching a foreign environment slowly conspire against him.
Kill List just takes this to an extreme. Jay is a family man (kind of), but he's not likeable. But again, the interest is trying to work out what the hell is happening around him and in the quite extreme tangents the plot takes.
It's not just horror films
where we think we need a likeable protagonist, it's movies in general. The argument being, we have to care about the character to care about what happens to him. There are so many good/great movies that are exceptions to this rule it seems as if dislikeability/neutrality is becoming the rule when you get stuck into the list.
A recent shock entry into the irredeemably bad movie list is Descendants, the George Clooney mood-piece that seems like a bin to throw Oscars in. The Cloonster plays a "lawyer with problems" (where's that velociraptor when you need him?), living in a beautiful home on Hawaii. There's a spoken narrative introduction that lasts about thirteen hours, where he enlists our sympathy for his prahblems. To throw his twinkly yet moody likeability into sharp relief, we're then presented with a cast of characters so teeth-gratingly annoying as to warrant a new Oscar category. The movie isn't 100% irredeemably awful, though, because there's an (unintentionally) hilarious scene of George running. He runs like he acts.
Dead Beat Descendants
Dreary, dreary film. And no mention of Milo going to college.
Back to the original point of this thread...
...can I nominate Another Year by Mike Leigh. What an absolute waste of time and effort. Tedious, smug, dull, cliched and uneventful. If challenged, I would find it impossible to find anything good to say about it. Honestly, the only entertainment I got from it was noticing that one of the characters drained his wine glass in a close-up only to have it miraculously become full again when he put it down on the table in a wider shot.
Mike Leigh
My favourite film director, bar none. I love almost everything he's done and was happy to wallow in the uncomfortable, sometimes disturbing, two hours of embarrassment and misery that was Another Year.
BTW, there is a quite obscure music reference in Another Year which I picked up on. At one point the characters Tom and Gerri reminisce about attending the 1968 Isle Of Wight Festival and seeing the band Plastic Penny.
Now, it's true that one-hit wonders* Plastic Penny did appear at the 1968 IOW Festival, but they were a little-known pop/psych band who played way down a bill that featured (among others): Fairport Convention, Jefferson Airplane, Pretty Things, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, The Move and Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Ironically, the August 1968 IOW concert was Plastic Penny's final concert, after which they disbanded. Although a couple of the members did go on to bigger things (eg the drummer Nigel Olsson joined Elton John's band).
By making such an esoteric reference, I wonder if Mike Leigh was having a little joke with us, perhaps?
*their only hit was Everything I Am which charted in early 1968
Spot on Bamber...
...I watched Another Year on DVD and found it very boring. I also saw a bit of a film yesterday called something like "A Tall Dark Stranger" (not sure of the exact title?). It seemed to be a rom-com and had some decent actors on the bill, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Anna Friel(!).
It had a nauseating American voice over and was concerned with the love lives of upper middle class types living in London. The acting is woeful. It's not funny and I'm not sure how you're supposed to relate to any of the characters. I got to about 40 minutes before turning it off.
Agree with the Adam Sandler comments above as well. I thought Happy Gilmore was a great film but there's been a decline in quality since then. He's just released one where he plays two characters (one male, one female), don't think I'll be watching that one.
One other film related question. How does Nicolas Cage keep getting work?
Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie
I remember reading a review once that claimed that "Yu-Gi-Oh - the Movie" was the worst film ever made - basically a hideous, infantile 90-minute animé advert. I must admit that I haven't seen the film in question, but I'm sort of prepared to take the reviewer's word for it.
The Squeeze
I saw this gangster film mentioned in previous editions of The Word as a gritty thriller which deserved re-assessment. It doesn't. It's a nasty, cheap little exploitation flick from the fag end of the seventies, and pretty misogynistic to boot.
Hmmm ...
.
Unrelentingly bleak
Two words,'The Grey'.
redeeming qualities... none whatsoever.
May I offer...
1. any film by Stanley Kubrick, made after 1959.
2. The Tree of life.
3. the Tree of life.
Ben Wheatley discusses
...Spoilers, Killers, and the Theories of 'Kill List'.
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/interview-ben-wheatley-kill-li...