Not sure if memes are allowed here. Apologies if they aren’t.
See, I find, that “critically acclaimed” and “popular” usually don’t go well together. However, something with just critical acclaim from people I like (and sometimes a Criterion release) tends to be some of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed.
But to the meme’s point, Tarkovsky’s Solaris was boring, and hard to understand for me, so much so I didn’t ever finish it. I’ll have to try again maybe from a different perspective.
Read the book. Seriously, Lem’s depictions of all things alien are orders of magnitude better than any movie - even modern CGI - can be. (I watched the Tarkovsky movie after reading the book and wasn’t impressed either)
KPop Demon Hunters came out this year.
It sounds like a cheesy kids’ movie. It even kinda looks like one. Or, at least, before it got super popular when everybody realised “hey, this movie is actually really good” and started playing the soundtrack nonstop between viewings. And not just little kids, middle-aged people like it, too. I’ve been watching and loving movies for about 40 years, and I remember seeing Mortal Kombat (1995) in theaters, and being just floored by that opening. Cheesy yes, but techno music with sound bytes from the game (the Super NES/Genesis game!) while flames roasted the dragon logo? Movie intros usually aren’t that cool. Movies aren’t meant to be a thrill ride. They play the long con. KPop Demon Hunters was the first one in a long time (I guess 30 years) that gave me the same feeling. I felt it when the first song hit. Then the scenes with the light flashing in the plane windows. I knew I was in for one hell of a ride. I’ve seen it four or five times now, and it doesn’t get old. It may not be good like a Scorcese or Tarantino movie, but it’s fun, and that’s good. It’s more fun than all the recent-ish Star Wars movies. I remember when those were fun. Someone lost the memo.
Movies don’t have to be good if they’re fun. A lot of people liked Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Emoji Movie… I haven’t seen any of them. But KPop Demon Hunters looked pretty stupid, too, until I gave it a chance. If a movie makes you forget about the bad shit in the world for a couple hours, it’s done its job. Let’s stop asking much more than that from movies. Sure, I have a niche I absolutely love (smart/weird flicks like I Origins, Predestination, Donnie Darko… even if they’re pseudo-intellectual, if I can dig into it, I love that shit) but a fun dumb movie is cool in my books.
If a movie makes you forget about the bad shit in the world for a couple hours, it’s done its job. Let’s stop asking much more than that from movies.
Never underestimate entertainment value. All art is also always part entertainment. Never forget that.
Well shit. I might just have to watch Kpop hunters. I kept seeing it but I didn’t care enough to look into it.
I know the exact feeling with watching Mortal Kombat because I watched it in the theaters and thought it was great.
“Your soul is mine.”. Cutt to techno music 🎵🎶🎵🎵🎶
Kpop Demon Hunters initially looks like a girlie movie that was shoehorned into being an action flick.
It’s a drama, interspersed with enough comedy and action to make you forget that it’s a drama. The story isn’t anything special, but it has well-done emotional beats backed by a soundtrack that elevates it. It is absolutely worth watching. (And the animation is fantastic.)
Don’t go into it expecting a cinematic masterpiece; it’s made for kids. It is also, however, a kid’s movie that is intended to entertain the adults who take their kids to see it.
I’ll try to be generous to your meme but it’s hard. I’ll say I used to be like that, part of the majority who thought going to a movie meant it needed to have action, a superhero, or magic. It gets tiring and repetitive though.
A recent example was train dreams. Me 10 years ago would have called it a snore fest. Now? I have much more respect for movies and it ripped me up inside. So this meme is very subjective on the individual
Train Dreams was awesome
We compare the slop of the present to the masterpieces of the past because we don’t remember the slop of the past.
This happens a lot with old movies.
A film comes out that’s revolutionary, so every film after it copies it. Future eyes lack that context, so they just see something that looks like everything else they’ve seen.
Citizen Kane is a good example. The writing, editing, and cinematography were revolutionary at the time. But, through a modern lens, it appears very ordinary because it’s very similar to every copycat that followed it.
deleted by creator
Brokeback Mountain
The recent adaptation of Dickens with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. Interesting, but they could’ve cut about 30% of the singing. It got to be repetitive, and it’s not like I dislike musicals.
There are many, but I tend to automatically forget them - I’m not wasting space in my brain for that crap.
Now, of course, you’re going to tell me why I’m wrong about these movies. Save it.
deleted by creator
Gone Girl. Most boring, predictable, lazy ass movie. The Postman is by far the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Tootsie, I can’t imagine a more problematic way to make a movie. One Battle After Another was good, but nowhere near good enough to win any awards which it definitely will win.
I love The Postman. It’s not an amazing film but it has its own identity and I really appreciate that.
I liked One Battle After Another but it’s definitely a kid-tier PTA. I watched it pretty shortly after Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and Punch-Drunk Love, though… so the bar was very high. Magnolia was so much better than I expected, it was amazing.
Really? Magnolia was fine. Far from his best film imo
It’s not just you, my friend.
Among many movies, I felt that way about Killers of the Flower Moon and it literally took me to fall into a random convo with the girl who cleans my office at work before I found a like-minded individual.
That movie and The Irishman were piss, but everybody insists they are masterpieces because Scorsese made them. Scorsese is just like James Cameron and Fancis Ford Coppola where they have reached an age and are so accomplished that they have lost touch with the world and are surrounded by yes men who don’t dare tell them no. And so they make very long and very shitty movies that are more for themselves than they are for anybody else. At least, Cameron is able to make his avatar slop entertaining while you’re watching it even if it is forgettable af.
Killers of the Flower Moon was particularly infuriating for me because it was so clearly just Scorsese making yet another movie about white men who are shitty, while pushing the native Americans off to the wayside as supporting casts in the movie that was supposed to be about them.
I read the book too because people kept telling me my opinion was wrong and that this was a good movie that is very faithful to the book. Well, clearly every person who claimed this, did not read the book because the book very much stays with the native Americans and their perspective and the case is treated the way it normally would when you have a conspiracy/murder mystery. You get invested in this people, you fear for them and the revelations are horrible.
Scorsese was like: how about we make the movie entirely about the bad guys and we have no reveals ever because we are told exactly what and how things happen from the start and treat the native Americans like they are ignorant, brain dead idiots who fall for the easiest trick in the book? Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s make the natives stupid and naive and have the conmen be super obviously evil and gross too, to the point that we don’t understand how any of these native Americans could have ever called them friend or family. Let’s race swap the only nice white man in the movie too. He was native American in real life, but for whatever reason they made him white in the movie. I still don’t know why they did that. I thought this was supposed to be authentic to real life. We do not race swap historical figures. I thought we all agreed that it was dumb when they made Anne Boleyn black. It’s also dumb when we make a native American man white in a movie about how white men committed systematic murders on native Americans to get their money.
Oh, let’s also make the movie 4 hours long and throw a temper tantrum when cinemas around the world implement intermissions so that movie goers have a chance to pee and get refreshments. No no, this slop is ART and Scorsese-manchild wants you to sit through all 4 hours of his slop because it’s his movie.
Piss movie. I hated it so much and nobody agreed with me until I spoke to my cleaning lady who completely understood where I was coming from.
The book is so much better. Such a well crafted blueprint for a suspenseful movie or TV show about a horrific chapter in native American history and how oil money attracts all the predators and vultures in the world to eat you and your family until nothing is left. Not even bone fragments.
But no. Scorsese cannot make movies from any other perspective than that of white men with corrupt souls so, sorry, native Americans. You gotta be supporting casts in your own friggin story.
Amazing. Piss movie. It riles me up everytime I think about it and it riles me up even more how much undeserved praise it recieved. Piss. Movie.
Scorsese thinks if you fire editors and shit out 3 hours of film it’s an epic.
Thought it was good. I missed much of the hype before and after and went in blind.
I think your anger is directed more at your expectations of it (a.k.a the ad/hype machine) than the film itself
I didn’t follow the hype. All I knew about the movie before going into it was that Scorsese had rewritten the script because he realized he had made a movie about white men and forgotten the native Americans. To which I now ask: what the fuck was the script like before?
I’m glad that you liked it, but please don’t make assumptions about me disliking it because I supposedly fell for a hype train. That is not what happened.
From your long drawn out text that goes into Scorcese’s filmography, I assumed you were well informed of his upcoming works and watching something because of a script re-write tends to lend itself a sense of expectation.
I think you might be plugged into the hype machine more than you might allow yourself to believe
Ah, you’re one of those people.
Yeah, I tend to heckle the soapboxers. It’s a hobby.
Especially those who can’t have a civil discussion without downvoting anyone who disagrees with them out of a deep insecurity of being challenged on anything, no matter how small.
I liked that sci-fi movie where they poked a rocket at the moon. After that it all went downhill.
Seriously, your meme is too broad. Always happy to complain about something specific though.
Not sure if memes are allowed here. Apologies if they aren’t.
We allow memes occasionally. Tagged post under “Humor”.
Tagged post under “Humor”.
That’s pretty generous
Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Mostly I just wondered why the movie was made in the first place. Sure, examining the tragedy of creating an intelligent being that cannot mature and cannot let go of emotional attachments by design is interesting… but the meandering, pointless story had like three places it could have ended and just … didn’t, finally topping it off with a ‘bittersweet’ ending that seemingly had no purpose besides to give some catharsis to the audience despite being so out of left field that it had no relation to the rest of the story. It could have been an art book showing off the scenery instead of bothering to throw an aimlessly wandering robot child into it.
It was a movie that Kubrick and Spielberg both thought the other guy would be able to make it work. So they passed it back and forth. The scenes you think Kubrick came up with, were actually things Spielberg came up with and vice versa. “Here’s a scene you’d be the perfect director to make, you should direct this movie!” So it’s a mix between what Spielberg thought Kubrick should do and what Kubrick thought Spielberg should do.
Neither of them could make it work. But Kubrick died and Spielberg felt he had to finish it. It’s an interesting movie to see what each director wanted the other director to do, but it’s not a great movie to just sit and enjoy as a movie.
I still like the movie although it is definitely a movie I have to be in a mood for. However, after I watch the ending I realize I want the future people and technology to be a movie.
It wpuld be more interesting to reimagine the film as future archeologists discovering this story but maybe not getting it exactly right based only on artifacts. More like short stories being told through the film. It would have had the same message, characters and locations, but would have been more focused as the stories they showed would have had to be ultra relevant to the plot. Not sure if any of this makes sense.
This is a great idea, actually.
It’s one of those “the right story but told the wrong way” movies. We need a fan edit!
This is me with most Tarantino films. I watched Pulp Fiction and have no idea what actually happened in that movie.
That sounds like a you problem. It’s really not hard to follow.
I find many of his movies enjoyable, but they definitely is a required taste. The last Tarantino movie I saw was the hateful 8 and I hated that movie so much, so I get where you’re coming from. Haven’t watched his movie about Hollywood because I cannot bring myself to care about Hollywood people making movies about life in Hollywood. The only Hollywood director who could get away with that was David Lynch, but he also had so much more to say and his Hollywood-focused films were so much deeper than the typical navel gazing bullshit in that specific niche genre. Under the Silver Lake is a movie I wish I could unsee. Ironically another film that people seem to love, but where I’m just over here like: okay Hollywood, don’t gas yourself to death with all that farthuffing.
Guy gets a watch.
deleted by creator
I feel this way about Synecdoche, New York, with the caveat that I understand it but just think it’s hot garbage.
I recently watched it for the first time and loved it. The disjointed flow of it worked for me as a mechanism to immerse in an experience of a person’s life. Like a speedrun. The themes - including never really launching into life, seeking to but never really connecting with others except post-facto, struggling to understand and metabolize losses, breaching out of the self - all resonated with me so that helped.
I watched a trailer that seemed to pitch it as an absurd comedy, which on reflection is an extremely weird approach.
The themes made sense to me, I just had no desire to endure the repeated misery and alienation of it. I mean, it’s definitely art, I simply find it very ugly. It can be ugly on purpose all it likes, I still find it repulsive.
So you didn’t even finish the movie? Or did I misread
I watched the trailer before watching the film.
I was referring to the part about having no desire to continue
I’ve sat through a lot of things that I didn’t enjoy in my life!
In this case it was my optimistic nature hoping that eventually there would be something I felt was worthwhile. Alas, no, it was just a post-modern miseryfest, from my perspective.
Yeah I can always complain about something specific. I think this one was mentioned as “must see cult classic”, so I watched it a bit but just couldn’t go through. Something about large factory halls filled with people?
It’s post modern, something The Simpsons summed up as “weird for the sake of weird”. It’s a smidge more complex than that but all I can say it left me with was a deep-seated annoyance at its pretentious existence.
it’s the former, not the latter
To expand on that;
Y’all are seeing Survivors Bias / Rose Tinted Glasses in action
The bad movies of the less recent past are forgotten or lost to time, even the over hyped ones.
But we’re living in the present, so the bad and over hyped of the recent past is still fresh in our minds, and that paints out perception of “they made better movies in the past”
There was the same or more bad shite, just everyone forgets about it
I couldn’t stand Ready Player One. Yeah I said it.
Well yeah, it’s shit, but that’s beside the point I made.
It’s nostalgiabait made by a Redditor for Redditors, and so of course that gave it undeserved hype, when it’s well and truly shite.
I’ve realised that over time, a lot of my favourite films or ones that I enjoy and basically mainstream blockbusters.
I try to broaden my horizons but quite often, I find these amazing acclaimed films boring.
It’s not quite the same but I was amazed when I got the Criterion edition of Armageddon. All these bonus features about a great blockbuster film.
So imagine my disappointment when every other release from Criterion is a film I’ll probably never watch in the first place.
Example, I took a chance on Brazil because I was in a bit of a Terry Gilliam phase. I quite enjoyed that one. Then I tried Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That DVD never got a second play.
A few of my friends recommended Eraserhead. It felt like David Lynch was seeing what he could get away with.
Eraserhead isn’t a movie to be enjoyed, it’s a movie to be regretted, for the rest of your life….
fun fact: that’s a real horse embryoI absolutely love David Lynch, but Eraserhead is not the first, second nor third Lynch movie I would put on at any given time. I love the radiator girl segment in the film. The rest is forgettable.
I’m more of a Mulholland Drive fangirl. It is one of the best movies ever made in my humble opinion.
Someone also mentioned Elephant Man which is likewise a stellar movie.
Yooooooooooooooo, I have been saying this shit for years.
I hate that movie so goddamned much and the recommendation felt like a friend group initiation prank hahaha
