The Films I Like the Least That Most Seem to Love - Movies & TV

NJ

Gender: Male

Age: 24

Location: WA

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Tell you what, I'll throw my own hat in the ring:

The Night of the Hunter.

I actually love that one... By the two-thirds mark (when they start floating down the river), I was wondering how it could keep going, when it felt like it should be wrapping up. But the cinematography during that section was breathtaking, and the last third ended up pushing the film into great territory, in my mind.

As I said, I think Breathless is a great movie objectively, I just find it really boring. Stupid straight people talking naively about love for 3/4 of a film, though thematically rich, is tedious. The other 1/4 where they actually do stuff is nice, I guess.

Also, it's definitely overshadowed by another greater (and "cooler") foreign film from that year.

Hayden

Location: Vietnam

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Also, it's definitely overshadowed by another greater (and "cooler") foreign film from that year.

1960's great.

Le Trou
La Dolce Vita
L'Avventura
The Apartment
The Naked Island
Letter Never Sent
Psycho
Two Women
The Bad Sleep Well
Testament of Orpheus
The White Dove
Purple At Noon

All very cool. If you're talking about any of the top three there, you definitely have an argument.

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That's fine and good, but what's your major gripe with it?

And I'll post my troubles with Night Of The Hunter later... they aren't too detailed, buuuuut let's say I feel like everyone's taking loony pills.
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CA Dreamin

Gender: Male

Location: LA

^^^1960 was an excellent year for cinema. Don't forget Peeping Tom, Eyes Without a Face, Rocco and his Brothers, Elmer Gantry, and Shoot the Piano Player.

I also have a few beloved films I like to throw shit on, but first I want to hear out this Night of the Hunter thing.
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NJ

Gender: Male

Age: 24

Location: WA

Quote:

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1960's great.

Le Trou
La Dolce Vita
L'Avventura
The Apartment
The Naked Island
Letter Never Sent
Psycho
Two Women
The Bad Sleep Well
Testament of Orpheus
The White Dove
Purple At Noon

All very cool. If you're talking about any of the top three there, you definitely have an argument.

1960 might be my favorite year in cinema. There were just so many classics. I was referencing La Dolce Vita, though. I consider it the definitive Italian movie. It may very well be my favorite movie. It, Tokyo Story or Vertigo.

Which reminds me: I consider both 8 1/2 and Amarcord heavily overrated. 8 1/2 I feel is rather surface-level and lacks the subtlety of La Dolce Vita. I loved the dream sequences (and of course the non-transitions), and it was the film that introduced me to Fellini, but I don't think it's close to his best. The characters aren't as interesting, either: he's more developed technically, but Guido isn't as interesting or unique a character as Marcello, whose non-development created one of the most interesting protagonists in cinema. Amarcord is too unfocused, and the first half pales in comparison to the second. Both movies are great, but La Dolce Vita and Nights of Cabiria (whose ending reduced me to tears) are his real masterpieces.

Hayden

Location: Vietnam

NJ wrote:

1960 might be my favorite year in cinema. There were just so many classics. I was referencing La Dolce Vita, though. I consider it the definitive Italian movie. It may very well be my favorite movie. It, Tokyo Story or Vertigo.

Which reminds me: I consider both 8 1/2 and Amarcord heavily overrated. 8 1/2 I feel is rather surface-level and lacks the subtlety of La Dolce Vita. I loved the dream sequences (and of course the non-transitions), and it was the film that introduced me to Fellini, but I don't think it's close to his best. The characters aren't as interesting, either: he's more developed technically, but Guido isn't as interesting or unique a character as Marcello, whose non-development created one of the most interesting protagonists in cinema. Amarcord is too unfocused, and the first half pales in comparison to the second. Both movies are great, but La Dolce Vita and Nights of Cabiria (whose ending reduced me to tears) are his real masterpieces.

Yeah, La Dolce Vita's right up there with Breathless for me. I think I have a ranked list somewhere lazily tie-ing them as my favourite films of the entire 1960's, so...

As far as the rest, I've always felt Amarcord was overrated too, and that Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 were Fellini's best works (by quite a bit actually). So, all the love there.

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I also have a few beloved films I like to throw shit on, but first I want to hear out this Night of the Hunter thing.

My main gripe, and it doesn't help that my first time watching it was in the early 2010's, is that the film comes across as severely dated. If I saw it for the first time in the 50's, maybe I'd think differently, but I genuinely found most of the script really dull and the acting truly shoddy. The acting just... isn't good. It's not good. I don't get what people are watching that I'm missing. Billy's a kid, so I'll give him a break, but Mitchum's an absolute ham, and a fair amount of supporting characters land on the opposite side of the spectrum as completely wooden. Everyone comments on the cinematography, which at times is unquestionably beautiful (yet sparse), and the imagery is brilliant at times (also sparse), but I don't think it was as overly forward thinking as people have noted. If it came out in the 20's-30's maybe, but... well... it didn't. I think film stills are better than the actual movie. It's just not a film I can sit through without cringing... the dialogue gets laughably cheesy/cliche at times (which, maybe it wasn't when it was released), the pacing bizarrely makes the film like it has multiple spots it could've ended (especially the second half, which is the equivalent of accidentally stepping in wet pavement during a jog), and yet, all I read are floods of perfect scores Laughing

it has a 99 on Metacritic. There are a lot of times (I think) the film awkwardly transitions into a noir-parody, which... well... I don't think it was supposed to be. Often it comes across as a film that's trying to make fun of the film that it's trying to be. The cartoonishness kills any suspense, and I don't feel for any of the characters at any point even in the slightest... nothing about the film grips me. It borders comedy a fair portion of the film, diving into complete goofiness at times, and I don't think it's supposed to... Mitchum's incompetence as a 'hunter' borders Elmer Fudd.

Plotwise, I don't understand any of the characters motives or decisions, and the entire river bit is ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. What are these kids doing? Laughing

Visually, at times, it's a notable effort, which I can't help but feel sucks people into thinking it's a decent film. But that's about all I got. I haven't a clue where people think the film's praised qualities come from. There's no way that script would've passed even come the 1970's, let alone now. Other films that came out in 1955 include Diabolique, Marty, Ordet, Rififi, Lola Montes, La Pointe-Courte, and The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz... so it's not like standards were low (albeit, most of those are from France). On The Waterfront, La Strada, Rear Window, Seven Samurai, and Dial M For Murder all came out around then too... sure, there's plenty of bad films around that time as well, but I'm just trying to showcase a gist of the quality standards of films from that time deemed 'classics'. It Happened One Night came out 20 years earlier. I just don't get what they thought they were pulling with such a simple, unfocused, wooden script.

Don't get me wrong, I never go into a film (or album) expecting not to like it, regardless of how it's praised, but this one's always stuck out as a bizarre half-baked mess to me. I don't get why it's considered good, let alone a classic. It's far from the worst thing I've ever seen, but it's genuinely an easy contender to land somewhere in my bottom 50 or-so, and I've watched some real duds. I can't help but feel it's a film that has no idea what it is.

Best part's the knuckle tattoos.

(fixed some typos in the edit).
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Doubles & Conch

Last edited by Hayden on 09/28/2019 20:55; edited 1 time in total

badseed

Gender: Male

Age: 37

Location: FL

The two that always come to mind for me are The Shawshank Redemption and Fight Club.

The former is as simplistic a film as something can possibly be; absolutely nothing wrong with it but also nothing that makes it stand out at all. It gets that "12 Angry Men" love in that it's a great film but that greatness is largely exaggerated because it's one of those movies that takes no intelligence to enjoy and you can take a 30 minute dump halfway through the movie without actually missing anything that makes you confused when you come back.

The latter I think benefits greatly from nostalgia - the majority of people who love that film have loved it since day 1 because they were between ages 10 and 20 when it came out and it felt cool and edgy at the time. Many of these people have never grown up and are still living in 1999 where pointless fist fights are still commonplace among friends and music today sucks because it doesn't hold a candle to old school Korn and Eminem.
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CA Dreamin

Gender: Male

Location: LA

^^^To be fair, I haven't seen Night of the Hunter in many years, and don't remember much of it. But I remember liking it a lot. I hope to see it again some time, and we'll see how it holds up.

Okay, now I want to throw shit at a movie some of you like:

Rocky. Yes you read that correctly. I hate that movie. Perhaps some of that hate stems from the fact I'm from Philadelphia where the film takes place. I lived there until I moved out for college. But I've had quite a few Office Space Michael Bolton moments when I meet someone new, and I tell them I'm from Philly. And they reply: 'Oh, you must like Rocky.' At first, I casually smirked, before turning my head and rolling my eyes. I don't hold back anymore. It's a bad movie. It's shallow in every respect, from its characters, to its main boxing plot, to its Talia Shire romantic subplot.

That romantic subplot was especially bad. I recall an ice skating scene as their first date, where Rocky just explained boxing to Adrian for three straight minutes, and she looked like she didn't give a shit. Later on, as she was trying to get away from him, he trapped her in corner where they shared an awkward first kiss. It didn't seem like the relationship would gonna go anywhere, and yet it blossomed from there, because Stallone scripted her as a quiet, boring, socially awkward woman that would require little effort to get.

Lack of effort is also obvious in the writing of its main plot as well. Stallone supposedly wrote the script in only three days. Do any of you know how hard that is, even to write a bad movie? Here's how he did it...

...the script is plagiarized. Now, this was probably obvious back when Rocky came out. But over time, perhaps some background history has been forgotten. But yes, Rocky is based on the fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner. Apollo Creed is Ali, and Rocky Balboa is Wepner. Of course there's nothing wrong with adapting true stories into screenplays, but I think we can agree it's lazier than writing an original. And in Rocky's case, it was also an opportunity to cash in on the boxing craze, as the sport was at a peak in popularity in the 1970s. Boxing was popular because of Muhammad Ali and how controversial he was. Today Ali is mostly respected, but back in the 70s, many people didn't like him for various reasons - his race, his class, his attitude, his politics, the combination of all those reasons. Rocky totally pandered to the crowd who didn't like Muhammad Ali, as the story is about a poor white guy fighting a rich black guy. Anyway, for years Stallone either ignored or denied the connection. And idiots loved the movie, and fifty more Rockys have been made since. I haven't watched any of them, but I hear they're much worse. Meanwhile, Chuck Wepner, whose life/character spring-boarded this billion dollar franchise, was left without any compensation for decades until he finally sued Stallone in the 2000s, mainly because he was old, broke, and desperately needed money. Stallone fought the lawsuit at first, before they settled out of court. Smart move on Stallone's part. If that had gone to court, it might have gained publicity and raised awareness to what a fraud Stallone's career is founded on. There's a very good documentary called The Real Rocky (2011) with more info.

So yeah, I have no respect for Rocky nor its creator. It's shallow. It's plagiarized. It pisses me off when people assume I love it just because I'm from Philly. It has problematic racial and class undertones. The romantic subplot is dogshit. From its success, Stallone made shit tons of money and countless more Rocky and Rambo movies, while the guy who inspired it was left with no compensation for 30 years. Fuck Rocky. And fuck Sylvester Stallone. Cinema would have better off without them.
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NJ

Gender: Male

Age: 24

Location: WA

I mean, I like Rocky fine, though I definitely agree with some of your criticisms. Besides, why watch Rocky when you could watch Raging Bull instead? Really, all sports movies kind of crumble under that one...