Unpopular Movie Opinions

I generally like Day Lewis but I thought he was ham on rye with extra cheese in There Will Be Blood

Citizen Kane is a tough slog to get through without any interesting characters you want to follow. It's a beautifully shot bore.

Death Becomes Her and The Devil Wears Prada are the best overall movies Meryl Streep has ever been a part of and will probably two of the few films in her filmography that still have fans 20 years from now. She's been wonderful in everything she's done, but the movies themselves are usually stinkers.

David Fincher's films are always emotionally cold and I don't enjoy watching them very much. His best was Gone Girl and even that could have used a little more life in it. It needed someone with a sense of humor like Brian De Palma.

The Godfather movies are stupid.

I'd put 2001: A Space Odyssey in the "beautifully shot bore" category

De Palma is better than Hitchcock--there, I said it! And I think he owes MORE to Antonioni than Hitchcock. And he is also better than Argento.

I hated the profanity in the latest "A Star Is Born".

The Joker sucks and didn’t deserve all the attention it got.

Shame by Steve Mcqueen is, at most, a good movie, not a great one. That actresses rendition of "New York, New York" is so bad, she should have gotten shot. This scene is supposed to make you sad but instead, I was laughing yet also uncomfortable with how poor the scene was. And it ends in a cliched way. The acting is good all around, though.

Exorcist II: The Heretic is great. And I don't mean in a "so bad it's good," cheesy kind of way. I believe it is a legitimately good movie.

Moonlight ended right as it was starting to get good and didn't deserve the Oscar.

I hated the "Wonder Woman" reboot. I thought it was going to be a campy action romp in the vein of Tim Burton's "Batman". But it was dreary gray slog through hell.

Sheri Moon Zombie actually isn't a bad actress. I think most people just refuse to give her a chance because she is married to Rob Zombie and stars exclusively in his films. Speaking of Rob Zombie, I like all of his movies and they're some of the only horror movies I get genuinely excited for.

All About Eve is far inferior to Sunset Boulevard. All About Eve is all about the dialogue and would have been much better on Broadway than as a movie. Visually, there is little that is interesting about it. You cannot say that about Sunset Boulevard. And I think Sunset Boulevard has more to say about life and Hollywood, in the end.

The Wages of Fear is boring.

Eyes Wide Shut is Kubrick's best movie.

When a Stranger Calls >>>> Halloween. None of John Carpenter's movies are that good. I agree with Pauline Kael in her dismissal of Carpenter when she said he seeems to be someone who doesn't have a life oustide of the movies-he understands technique very well bu nothing else.

Inferno>>>>Suspiria

Femme Fatale is one of the greatest movies of the 00s. I like it even better than Mulholland Drive, which I cannot even bring myself to watch all the way through anymore.

Japanese film is the best in the world. Japanese films can be entertaining and arty, something European films don't seem to be capable of.

Glenn Close would have made a far better Miranda Priestley than Meryl Streep.

I don't care what anyone says. I enjoy It (1990) a lot more than I do It (2017).

Tori Spelling gave two of the best female supporting performances of all time in "Trick" and "The House of Yes".

I can't speak for the Japanese version as I have never seen it, but the American version of The Ring is boring as hell and I have no idea why everybody raves about it and calls it a horror classic. I like the scene where she crawls out of the TV but that is one of the only good parts.

Poetic Justice (1993) is a great film.

The remake of Dark Water with Jennifer Connelly is better than a lot of people give it credit for and she's really excellent in it. It's just a shame it's not scary at all.

Moonlight is awful, as is the peach fucking disaster

Goodfellas is boring

Auteur theory is bullshit.

R14 Does Rob Zombie let her act in movies that aren't directed by him??

The Graduate is bland and unfunny, and loses whatever energy it does have in the second half when Anne Bancroft disappears.

The Godfather is incredibly boring and probably the most overrated movie of all time.

The English Patient is the most pretentious piece of crap I've ever seen.

Jurassic Park III wasn’t that bad. I liked it better than The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

It was good to see Alan again, Billy was cute, and Eric wasn’t an annoying kid (unlike Malcolm’s daughter in The Lost World)

R25, She was in Toolbox Murders directed by Tobe Hooper and an episode of Californication directed by David Duchovny but that is all.

Forrest Gump is an incredibly bad movie with one of the worst performances I've ever seen.

Meryl Streep is a bad actress. Katherine Hepburn was right when she said, "I only see the gears moving as she waits to take over and try to impress you."

Jack Nicholson has made a career playing Jack Nicholson.

Brad Pitt is a good actor.

Katharine Hepburn was accusing others of being mannered?!

R27, that’s not an unpopular opinion.

Touche R31

The new It movies and the latest Halloween were both highly overpraised turkeys. Not a single scary aspect to any of them.

R29 I wonder what's stopping her from acting in more varied projects. Rob? Or is she not hired? Or does she just not care?

The Tree of Life was great

I hate breeder TV shows and rom-coms where the couple constantly bitch, nag and fight (Mad About You; Everyone Hates Raymond, etc.). Why is that entertaining? Is this what it's really like in Straightland?

No thanks.

Hepburn and Streep are both hams of epic proportions but at least Hepburn was a bit choosier when selecting roles and she appeared in mostly good films and quite a few masterpieces. Meanwhile 90% of Streep's resume is filled with bland Oscar bait films that are forgotten the moment the award season is over.

"The Shining" was the most boring movie I have ever seen. Horrible.

Get Out is overrated.

Yes, Get Out is massively overrated, and contains contradictory narrative strands that actually reinforce racist ideologies.

Shakespeare In Love is an excellent film and deserved the Best Picture Oscar over Saving Private Ryan, which really is only notable for its opening sequence (before it devolves into a dull by-the-numbers war movie).

R41 Please explain.

Hereditary was hilariously bad. It should be considered a so-bad-that-it’s-good movie on par with films like Birdemic. The only thing remotely good about it is the way it’s shot. The writing and the acting are both hilarious, yet it’s played up as the scariest horror movie to come out of recent years. Ridiculous.

Eyes Wide Shut is Kubrick’s best film. The 90’s Lolita was better than Kubrick’s version.

I did not care for Heath Ledger in his role as “The Joker”.

r43: the movie appears to be about how racist white people are, that they're white supremacists, but then turns around and actually indicates that these white folk actually think black people are SUPERIOR to white people, because they want to possess their bodies -- and hence their abilities -- to be "better" -- better athletes, better photographers, better at sex, etc. It's a contradiction the movie never resolves.

A more interesting take would've been to remove the race angle and just have this family collecting "the best" of their talent, regardless of race or ethnicity. But then the movie wouldn't have had all the hand-wringing "we are all racist" commentaries to propel the box office.

Us is also overrated. It was very underwhelming and not suspenseful at all. It feels half-finished and not complete.

I am 100% onboard with OP's assessment of "View from the Top" (and this is coming from someone who loathes goop), but I could not disagree more about "Paris, Texas"—that movie is a masterpiece and is to date the only thing I've ever watched that made me bawl my eyes out. Actual sobbing. The last scene with Nastassja Kinski and Hunter Carson is the most poignant thing I've ever seen in a film.

I never saw A View From The Top. I just remember Goop seemed very ashamed of it. Like she didn't want to promote it and only made it to fulfill some contractual obligation to Miramax.

The movie Boyhood was exploitive of it’s young actors who did have the wherewithal to consent to being on film over that long stretch of time.

Martin Landau gave the best performance of the 1990s, in "Ed Wood."

That's not quite an unpopular opinion R52. He won an oscar for that performance.

The Rock makes movies for stupid fat people.

Marvel comic book movies are not cinema.

Amadeus is pointless.

Uggghhh, I totally agree R55

There is nothing hammy about Daniel Day Lewis you rent a critic. You have some terrible fkin taste, dumb ass bitch.

Such a convincing argument, r58.

R16, Glenn would have been a better Miranda Priestly, but Sigourney would have been the best.

R32 is right, so I’ll defend the unpopular. The English Patient is a masterpiece, and its reputation was unfairly destroyed by one of Seinfeld’s worst episodes.

Also, the best Marvel movie by far is Thor: Ragnarok, because the Marvel movies work best as comedies, and that’s the only one where the jokes actually work.

Cher is a terrible actor and I write this as someone who loves "Moonstruck" and her.

I liked The English Patient too (probably because I'm a huge La Binoche fan). It was no masterpiece but it was definitely better than the overrated Fargo.

Little Miss Sunshine is overrated.

Stanley Kubrick is far, far, FAR from the greatest director.

I like "Mame."

Return of the Living Dead is the best movie of the 1980s.

Jane Fonda did not deserve to win the Academy Award in 1979.

The Birds is a stupid movie. Birds are not scary unless they eat your entire flesh. Marnie was better! But Frenzy is even stupider than The Birds with one of the most comically-bad rape scenes of all time.

Sheryl Lee should have won an Oscar for her role in "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me". I have never seen abuse portrayed so convincingly.

r47 sounds like a Trumpster

Titanic is a great movie, the ship being the biggest and best star in it.

I hated everything with Heath Ledger in it. The best Joker was Jack Nicholson by far.

I managed to watch 5 minutes of It's a Wonderful Life before I turned the tv off. It 's a perennial broadcast favourite before Christmas.

The Bond films since Casino Royale have been incoherent messes and that includes the overrated Skyfall.

I hate watching sex scenes in any movie. Gratuitous male frontal is acceptable.

Ishtar is actually very funny.

The English Patient is as one critic noted just one long Camay Soap commercial

Crash may be the worst film to ever win Best Picture

Cameron Diaz is a brilliant comedic actress

Reese Witherspoon is a boring one note actress and in no way deserved the Oscar for Walk the Line

Jackie Brown is Tarantino's most underrated movie

[quote] Jane Fonda did not deserve to win the Academy Award in 1979.

Amen to that, sister! Both female acting Oscars in 1979 fell into the wrong hands: Ingrid Bergman and Maureen Stapleton should have been the winners that year. Too bad Bergman undeservedly won just a few years before that, because the Academy sure as hell wasn't going to give her historical Oscar #4 so soon after that.

Nicole Kidman's best, most alive performance was in To Die For.

Vertigo is scarier than Psycho.

R77 That seems to be the general consensus here on DL.

What are good modern Japanese films? I was just as a Japanese botanical garden t ok day and at Japanese dollars store today and have had Japanese semen injected into me so I mean this with live when I don't really like old Japanese movies.

R79 that's because Nicole played herself. Pretty, valid, manipulative.

R80 Lay off the 'shrooms, darling.

R80 Any of the films by Kore-eda. Thank me later.

The Age of Innocence was horribly miscast--neither Pfeiffer nor Ryder (ESPECIALLY Ryder) should have been cast in the movie. And Scorsese does not have what it takes to pull off a period-piece. Mayne Francis Ford Coppola would have done better. Or not, because he did cast Ryder in Dracula. Ryder is good in anything that does not require accents or take place before the 50s.

When I hear Oscar winner I run from any movie. It’s usually unforgettable trash.

I agree. It's the films, never the actors.

R85, why so bitter, G?

Wait. Who's M? You or me?

Death becomes her should’ve won every category. That movie is pure comedy gold and I cannot watch it enough.

We’re all Spartacus and we’re all M.

ET is the most over-rated movie ever made.

Magnolia sucked donkey balls and then threw up.

I've never liked any films by PTA.

Schindler's List is very overrated--there are probably loads of Holocaust movies that are better, The Pianist being one of them. The lack of creativity is perfectly demonstrated by that little girl in the bright red coat (everything else is in black and white)--how obvious can a director get!? The problem with Spielberg is he can't grow up.

I hated Top Gun. And you couldn't pay me enough money to see the new one.

R94 The problem with Spielberg is that he makes popcorn movies. The only thing he’s ever made that can be called “art” somewhat is Jaws, and even that is sort of a blockbuster. A guy who makes what was the 80’s equivalent to Marvel movies shouldn’t be making a Holocaust drama.

R96, Jaws basically invented the modern blockbuster, but Star Wars really perfected and perverted it (think of all the merchandising). In any case, I agree with you. I can't believe some people put Spielberg and Lucas in the same sentence as Scorsese, De Palma, Altman, etc.

Scorsese is a hack who makes boring films that usually say the same thing over and over again.

Can’t stand Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott. They are only marginally less shallow than Michael Bay.

Cannot stand Meryl Streep in any role except for Devil Wears Prada. She’s always ACTING, even when she’s standing still.

Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat and The English Patient could be used at GTMO for enhanced interrogation purposes. They are celluloid hate crimes.

A genuinely unpopular opinion: I love The English Patient, it's one of my favorite films of all time.

"Silence of the Lambs" is sick, depressing stuff, doesn't deserve its reputation as a classic.

Op is wrong...wrong about Paris Texas and wrong about the actors.

I could live without the entire Star Wars series.

Blade Runner is not a classic--it looks fantastic but it barely has a story.

R98 I find Scorsese to be tiresome, as well. That said, I do appreciate his love of film and am thankful for his World Cinema Project, which has preserved a ton of classic films from around the world.

It’s only really unpopular here, but some Marvel movies are good.

All three "Lord of the Ring" movies were like watching paint dry and were excessively twee. I only went because my friends insisted but it is all a blur of boring.

Adaptation is horrible and Synecdoche, New York is Kaufman’s best film.

Magic Mike is the greatest comedy of the last 20 years.

Quentin Tarantino's films are mostly violent, incoherent messes.

Hot Summer Nights is incredibly well done and the best film Timmy has been in.

Magic Mike was also Matthew McConaughey’s best acting

Cody Horn was Oscar-worthy in Magic Mike.

Fatal Attraction is one of the greatest bad movies of all times. That's right I said it. Its bad because its ending is so flawed, it corrupts the preceding fist two acts, which are magnificent. The ending is god awful; the film changes genres and resorts to being a horror flick and doesn't even ring true to someone who is borderline. With that being said, G. still deserved that Oscar.

She sure did deserve that oscar R114. And since we're on the subject of unpopular opinions: Glenn Close is a better actress than Meryl Streep. Yeah, I said it.

R114 I love Fatal Attraction, but I agree the ending sucks. I just don’t know how I would have ended it. I didn’t find the alternate ending any more satisfying.

I adore Robin Williams, but he was woefully miscast as Garp in The World According to Garp, as was John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon. Glenn Close was good as Jenny Fields though.

I agree she deserved the "Fatal Attraction" Oscar. The ending was too predictable. I wish Alex had killed Dan and his family, and then they cut to her, like Norman Bates at the end of "Psycho", muttering "I told you not to ignore me."

Christopher Nolan's movies are too damn hard to follow. You need a PhD. to figure out what the hell is going on. It's exhausting. I had to watch YouTube videos to explain Inception and Interstellar after I watched the movies.

Angela Bassett should have won the Oscar over Holly Hunter back in '94.

I don’t have the visceral hate that others have for Forrest Gump. It is what it is. But we certainly shouldn’t have been giving it awards over Pulp Fiction.

WHAT ABOUT US?

I’m going to make sure none of you ever work in this town again.

"Nell" is almost as funny as "Airplane".

My post was in response to the poster who mentioned Spielberg should never make serious films.

r123, Bitch, you are 2 degrees away from fucking Harvey Weinstein. You have no clout.

[quote] Titanic is a great movie, the ship being the biggest and best star in it.

I'm pretty sure Titanic was only the film's third biggest star (after Kate Winslet and Kathy Bates).

Forrest Gump is a brilliant movie if you read it as satire.

If you take it seriously, it’s a piece of shit.

R128 = Kellyanne Conway

R114, you and G would probably be in the same camp in preferring the original ending.

But the movie would not have been the success it was without G going full-on active psychopath.

Mulholland Drive should have been a mini-series as originally planned, not a film. The rhythm of the movie is all off and revisiting it, this becomes more and more apparent.

Yeah, that's the catch-22 of Fatal Attraction. If they had gone with the original, quieter ending, the film would have maintained it's artistic integrity but been less commercially successful. By going with the big horror movie ending, the film became a box office success but remains problematic - especially for people who have a problem with BPD sufferers being portrayed as homicidal maniacs.

Ingmar Bergman is the most boring "great" director ever. His only interesting movie is Persona.

Laurence Olivier is a hammy, mannered actor.

Madonna acted really well in "Dangerous Game"--it's too bad she trashed the movie when it started getting bad reviews and threw Abel Ferrara (the director) under the bus. He still hates her for doing that. Somehow, he managed to get a very good performance out of her. Wonder if he gave her the Kubrick treatment?

Someone once posted a clip of Madonna in Dangerous Game and I couldn't get over her constant blinking. Her acting was surprisingly good but that fucking blinking totally ruined it.

R118, that's probably how the movie would end had it been made today. Hell, I was always Team Alex until she killed the bunny. Once she killed the bunny, I switched teams and couldn't wait to see her brutally murdered.

I can see where people would find its depiction of mental illness problematic, but I don't remember them ever saying exactly what was wrong with her. I feel like that gave them free reign to make her typical movie crazy. If they'd actually come right out and said she was borderline, I could see why people would be offended, but they never did.

Speaking of psycho movie performances, I thought Rebecca DeMornay deserved an Oscar nom for The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. She's scary good in that - going from soft spoken, angelic beauty to bug eyed screaming psycho.

R136, she did blink a lot in that clip (I remember when it was posted here). Madonna actually comes off very natural in the film which NEVER happens. I have no idea what Ferrara did. I think the fact that she was so vulnerable--not just in the movie but in her professional life--scared her which is why she threw Ferrara and his film under the bus.

Boyhood was a long and uninteresting drawn out BORE. The critical jerk off fest to this bland bowl of porridge was mystifying.

YES, YES, YES R138. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle is my movie and Rebecca DeMornay was amazing in that. It always puzzles me how people write it off as a silly psychological thriller when it was so well written, filmed and acted. To this day, I can watch 'Cradle' and 'Single White Female' and be on the edge of my seat like I'm watching them for the first time. And I've seen both movies about 9,465,822 times now, lol.

Here's the blinking Madge clip (subtitled in Greek, for some reason):

Single White Female was another really good one and Jennifer Jason Leigh should have been nominated for that. It's funny how so-called "trash" from the 90's is looking like high art these days.

I agree about Streep. She’s like a bad penny that keeps showing up.

I know right R143, lol.

Catch Hell (2014) isn’t bad at all.

Yeah, all those "yuppies in peril" films that were so popular in the late 80's/early 90's were so much fun. It's just too bad the bad guys never got away with it, because I was usually rooting for them; they always had to pay by dying a painful death for trying to disturb some boring yuppie couple's suburban existence in the end.

The biggest problem with modern film is miscasting. Producers will pick flavor of the week actors and actresses and cast them again and again regardless as to whether they actually fit the part.

I'm going to go a step further and say that when it comes to proper film casting , technical talent is overrated. Sometimes a less skilled performer will inhabit a role better than a more gifted actor, providing that they have certain qualities that fit the role. Sometimes performers will just have a certain "presence " that fits the character.

So you're saying that a Rebecca DeMornay is a better casting choice than a Meryl Streep for a film like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle R148?

[quote]Unpopular Movie Opinions

Talkies were a BIG mistake.

R149 Haha exactly. De Mornay isn't as technically good as Streep but she worked perfectly for the role.Though it certainly might have been fun to see The Hand That Rocks The Cradle created as Oscar bait starring Meryl Streep .

Good lord, that would be tedious R151. We'd see Meryl tick, tick, ticking away - overthinking and overacting every move, every gesture, every glance to portray Peyton's insanity. I much prefer Rebecca's reckless abandon over Meryl's precision any day, lol.

R152, Meryl is as precise as a sledgehammer. I saw Manhattan and The Deer Hunter a few months ago and she wasn't nearly as "click click click" back then.

Marilyn Monroe was a great star but there have been far sexier women than her in movies. Side note: it is a big red flag if a female claims that Marilyn Monroe is their idol and they attempt to quote and imitate her. She probably has bipolar.

[quote]especially for people who have a problem with BPD sufferers being portrayed as homicidal maniacs.

But Alex was first and foremost a homicidal maniac, which is what gives the movie, and G's performance, its juice. As R137 says, I don't think they ever mention BPD.

R154 I enjoy reading about the stars of Hollywoods Golden Age but Monroe bores the fuck out of me. There is absolutely nothing about her persona, aesthetic or acting that I find remotely intriguing. I never understood why so many are obsessed with this woman. I may be in the minority but I found her childlike voice and mannerisms off-putting verging on repulsive.

I find the sheer number of biopics about Monroe irksome. There were so many fascinating actors and actresses in cinema from the 30s to the late 1970s, I would rather see a book or movie released about almost any other performer besides Monroe.

I love to overturn some of the sacred cows of Cinema Studies 101. Some stars in my personal Academy of the Overrated:

CASABLANCA

RULES OF THE GAME

CHINATOWN

De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. I know they might not have the widest range of talent, but they sure were perfectly cast in those roles and I can't imagine anyone else in those roles, which is one of the best compliments you could probably give an actor. It's like Anthony Perkins in Psycho. It was the perfect role for him.

I think that point about the miscasting of roles with "technically" good actors is the problem. Remember when Julianne Moore played Carrie's mom in that remake of Carrie? You'd be an idiot to say Moore isn't a wonderful actress, but I think they only hired her so they could say "Academy award nominee Julianne Moore" and give their film some prestige, when that role wasn't a good fit for her. They needed someone who could play crazy better.

I agree about Julianne Moore. I like her, but she's got her limits.

Imagine CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME if Melissa McCarthy hadn't replaced Moore. Imagine a drab, de-glammed Julianne--and all of the humor. anger, and pathos McCarthy brought to that part just evaporates.

Thank You, r156 I never understood the appeal of Monroe. It entirely escaped me.

You can play "Pretty Woman" on a loop at my funeral cuz I'll be dead and won't have to watch it.

Aside from being a sexual predator, Harvey Weinstein's other crime is that he had shit taste in promoting movies. Almost all of the projects he pushed are junk that hasn't aged well and has been pretty much been all but forgotten. A major reason why the Academy awards declined so much in the last twenty years is because of him.

I was shocked to hear Moore wasn't just cast but actually shot footage for Can You Ever Forgive Me? Such a different movie that would have been. And not in a good way. I think I saw her discuss this on that Andy Cohen show and I was surprised that she was so open about it. If a big Oscar winner like Julianne Moore can get fired from a movie, anyone can. It really made me love her even more. She was so humble about it.

I'm a fan of hers, but that's such a bad role for her. McCarthy was genius and gave her best performance to date.

If you don't get Marilyn Monroe's appeal, fine. But it does show you're blind, that's all.

And part of the point of her pathos is that she wasn't from the "Golden Age" of Hollywood, for Christ's sake. She came in as the studios were collapsing and that explain part of her success and most of her downfall.

I just know that against intentions and interest it's her face I'm looking at on the screen even as she drags the proceedings down (at times) and appears to occupy a different universe, not just from the other characters but from the actors playing them as well.

And of course, this being about unpopular opinions, that's the general consensus.

Also, note that the "unpopular opinions" here tend to be plain statements without any thought or explanation behind them.

As if saying "overrated" justifies anything. One reason why some opinions are not the norm is because they're rather shallow, personal and unconsidered.

The Haunting remake is better than the original. The original is the most overrated horror movie of all time. Literally nothing happens, and Julie Harris is one the hammiest actresses ever. Lili Taylor is the superior actress. The new Netflix remix is also far superior.

Jane Fonda should have done more films in French, a language that suited her cold analytical affect and her gauche caviar intellect. Fellow Vadim fucker, Deneuve was extremely effective in English and it's a pity she didn't act more en anglais.

For example, while Dancer in the Dark was mostly a slog, Deneuve brought me to tears several times. She doesn't have that sentimental oomph in French.

Cuban cinema in the 60s was among the best in the world and it all must be restored to perfect condition and become better known. Classic Egyptian Cinema is decaying, and it's a colossal loss to world cultural patrimony. It's so entertaining and with gorgeous people. It's a scandal first world money hasn't been sunk into saving this. I thought MBC would do the job, but no.

Here's a freshly minted unpopular opinion: I've just watched "Wild Strawberries" (supposedly one of the greatest films ever made) and I thought it was a fucking chore to get through. Bergman's films are very hit or miss with me, and this one was definitely a huge MISS!

R170, I find Bergman tedious. Yet I love Antonioni (my favorite European director, easily). Probably because Antonioni is more visually-based whereas Bergman always feels "stagey".

R!69, what Cuban films would you recommend (preferably those on bluray).

I don't know which are on bluray. The number one on this list has been restored and is on Criterion.

The same director made the gay themed Strawberry and Chocolate in the 90s. Which is also a good movie.

R171 Didn't those two hate each other's guts? I seem to remember once reading some deliciously bitchy comments they made about each other. And they also happened to die on the exact same day (I believe Antonioni outlived Bergman by a few hours). What a perfect way for two lifelong rivals to go!

[quote]Citizen Kane is a tough slog to get through without any interesting characters you want to follow. It's a beautifully shot bore.

I like "Citizen Kane", but it's my unpopular opinion that the Academy got it right when they passed it over for Best Picture in favor of "How Green Was My Valley".

Agree that Ingmar Bergman can be a shore to sit through; he did, however, have great skill with actors and, especially, actresses.

Roma is a horrible, horrible movie and didn't deserve any of the extensive praise it received.

Wow, I SO disagree about Bergman- Cries And Whispers and Autumn Sonata are two of my favorites of all time...

LOVING the love for Rebecca DeMornay in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.

Even her apple chomping scene after Julianne bit the big one is FUCKING BRILLIANT.

I hate everything about "Sleepless In Seattle", but especially that Queen of Twee, Meg, "I Play Every Character the Same Way" Ryan.

Is it me, or are the foreign films just not as vibrant as they were in the past, especially during the 90s and the oughts?

Movies in general are not as vibrant as they were in the past. Particularly American movies.

But yes, it is accurate to say that foreign films are also a shadow of what they once were.

Digital moviemaking really took something out of the movies. I don't know whether its the drab color schemes or the "perfectness" of the print, but there's something so artificial about these films made today. I miss real color schemes in movies. Directors who had their own unique styles. So many current movies are just so visually depressing and bleak.

And CGI was one of the worst things that ever happened to movies. It's not a technique that should be used to cover all bases. At most, it should be used to supplement genuine special effects and creative directorial work, but some idiot directors think sticking someone in front of blank screen equates magic. It doesn't. It looks fake from the audience. You think they would have caught on to that by now. The war scenes in Apocalypse now (just to name one film) beat the pants off of anything that CGI has ever tried to do. It's not that impressive, people.

R184, I agree completely and I felt this way back in the 00s when it was just starting to take over. Digital Cinema isn't as nice to look at.

R!76, you're right! They didn't like each others movies. I will always side with Antonioni over Bergman.

Yes, I hate the washed out color palette of modern movies. Why must everything have a dark blue tint?

I miss the look of the 80s and 90s.

Before he got sick Roger Ebert was on a crusade against digital cinema. He argued (with a great deal of scientific backup) that digital information was received by the brain in a different manner than analog. Psychologically speaking, watching something shot and projected digitally is less compelling, emotionally cooler.

Another hater of digital cameras here! I miss that cinematic and slightly grainy look that only film cameras could achieve. Movies all look so cheap today. I mean, what's the point of spending $200 million dollars on a film if it looks like it was shot on someone's iPhone?!

And regarding the comment about the decaying quality of foreign films; I think that's especially true when it comes to European cinematography, which really started going downhill sometime in the 80s. Best foreign films today seem to come from places like South America, Iran and South Korea. And speaking of South Korea, you guys shouldn't miss Parasite, which is opening in the US in a few days. Someone above said that the Japanese have the knack of making films that are both artsy and extremely entertaining at the same time and I think that definitely applies to Korean films as well (and Parasite is a great example of such film).

R189, thanks for the recommendation! I'm gonna check out Parasite. I forgot about Taiwan and South Korea when I made my comment, they also find a balance between art and entertainment.

I agree with all of you guys that digital films look really cheap and CGI sucks. I miss the visual effects of old school movies which are more primitive than CGI but look more natural and life-like. CGI makes me feel like I'm watching a video game.

R184 "Visually depressing and bleak " Yes, definitely! I am so tired of this gray blue pallor that is in every so called "serious " film. I want bright rich GORGEOUS colors again .

r188 I had no idea that Ebert hated it too , or that digital is processed differently by the brain. Perhaps that would explain why so many modern films, even well directed and acted ones , leave me unmoved. Very intriguing.

This whole discussion leaves me thinking how recent films that moved me would have moved me had they been shot on film instead.

I think the right color grading can help digital look more like film, but they almost always just half ass it and put that boring blue/green filter on everything to make it look serious and washed out.

Susan Sontag was writing about the death of film about 30 years ago, part of which she attributed to digital technology but also to home video and the end of the communal viewing experience.

How right she was there.

I haven't read all the comments yet but Crash has got to be the worst best Picture win this century. And not only that, its not even a good movie.

10 Things I Hate About You is the quintessential 90’s teen comedy. It’s better than Clueless, better than she’s all that. It trumps every other teen film that came out in its decade.

Heathers is lightyears better than Mean Girls and it deserves the love that Mean Girls gets.

BUT, did she predict endless Marvel movies and the fact that movies are competing with video games now, R194???

I would watch The Rock in anything, any day, over the untalented and bland Vin Diesel. And he's hotter than him too.

Erna’s straight to VHS movies are all Oscar worthy classics. True gems!

I think Heathers has too much of a wicked edge to ever be as mainstream as Mean Girls. It was always destined to be a cult film. Mean Girls is pretty much the exact same movie, but without the body count. So is Jawbreaker (though it still has the body count and some of the same edge Heathers had). They're all interesting and worthwhile movies, though.

[quote]I haven't read all the comments yet but Crash has got to be the worst best Picture win this century. And not only that, its not even a good movie.

That's hardly an unpopular opinion and it's the almost unanimous opinion of the Datalounge.

Two of the highest rated movies for the year according to Metacritic are “The Farewell” and “Us.” The Farewell is fine but far from a masterpiece. Forgettable, really. Us is a train wreck. Half-baked ideas. Nonsense. And when the actress uses that low gravely voice, I found it completely absurd and couldn’t help but laugh.

Us had some good ideas, but I thought it was a complete mess. It fell apart by the ending. Get Out was pretty much just a race/gender swapped Stepford Wives, but at least it had a coherent story and was well made. Oscar worthy? Hell no, but well done.

Sometimes I LIKE movies that feel stagey.

R205 Give us an example of such a film.

I know this thread is supposed to be dedicated to controversial and unpopular opinions but I think R65 still crossed the line.

Birdman was awful! Critics must have no taste.

"Auntie Mame" is stagey.

R209 Well so is 90% of other films made before 1970. Most old films get a pass from me for being overly stagey.

r196, 10 things is a very good film, but don't dare diss my beloved Clueless one of the greatest comedies of all time. Clueless is really a 90s pop culture comedic satire masquerading as a teen comedy.

R197 I never understood Mean Girls classic comedy status. It's mildly funny but nothing particularly special.

R208 I hated Birdman.

People seem to forget that Mean Girls was based on/inspired by a nonfiction work about girls bullying and cliques.

Birdman was pretty bad and the wife was an especially terrible actor. I could barely get through it and I shouldn't have.

Get ready for another one r156.

Netflix just completed shooting on Blonde about Monroe.

r162 I could kiss you, you are totally on point. Also all the actresses he pushed for were shit actresses.

I hope he is out of Hollywood long enough for us to really see what the Oscar race can be without his intimidation making people vote for his projects.

Weinstein actually had a great taste back in the 90s; he was the one who helped masterpieces like The Crying Game, The Piano and Il Postino become such huge hits. But that ended quickly. I actually stopped watching the Oscars the year The Artist won best picture - seeing a milquetoast film like that winning and a masterpiece like A Separation not even being nominated in that category was just a bit too much for me.

Wasn't Weinstein getting a lot of his projects from the Brits when his company was known as Miramax? Miramax had quality projects, The Weinstein Company was when things took a slide.

Clockwatchers is a better workplace movie than Office Space.

Rumble Fish, Shock Corridor, Watership Down, Umberto D were all movies that I watched recently based on some “Criterion closet” recommendations from filmmakers, and I was underwhelmed.

Rumble Fish is beautiful but is another one that thinks straight white males are the most interesting people in the world, and here they’re really not.

Shock Corridor - no.

Watership Down - why?

Umberto D. was heartbreaking, but I don’t think you really need to see it.

Others I watched during this marathon were L’Argent, Tess, and Day of Wrath, which were less disappointing, but you’re not missing out if you don’t see them.

The Moment of Truth, however, was another one in this Criterion closet binge, and I was happy for the eye candy.

I am also one who finds Bergman a slog, but enjoyed Antonioni's L’Avventura and La Notte, and felt like Fellini's 8 1/2 was just right the first time I watched it.

R221, your opinions on certain movies are totally similar to mine. I am the one who posted earlier about really disliking Berman but loving Antonioni. I watched L'Argent myself and it was very good, I would just have 0 desire to rewatch it, ever. I only saw the first 20 minutes or so of Rumble Fish but I found it dull. I have heard great things about Umberto D and The Bicycle Thief, but neither would probably appeal to me (not a big fan of neorealism).

R220, One day I MUST find Clockwatchers on Amazon and watch it again..

I LOVED it in the late nineties when I was in my very early 20's and identifying with Toni's character - and I sadly think that I still will-

Nicholas Cages’s best performance was in Valley Girl

John Travolta and Debra Winger had great chemistry in Urban Cowboy

Eva Mendez is underrated

Winona Ryder was awful in Stranger Things

Maya Rudolph is very good dramatic actress

Audrey Hepburn’s voice—ugh

Robin Williams was not a good actor

Anthony Michael Hall is underrated

Mark Wahlberg’s brother is a better actor and Mark’s career is a mystery to me.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, Dark Shadows, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride. The predictability, the blandness with the dark, gloomy aesthetic, and the same one-trick actor, Johnny Depp. Enough is enough already. The guy hasn't made anything original since Beetlejuice.

Valley of The Dolls' "so bad it's good" status baffles me a bit. I found the movie as a whole to be pretty boring and underwhelming.

R225 Agreed. It's one thing to have a distinctive style. But Burton's films have become interchangeable. I found Willy Wonka and Alice in wonderland to be unwatchable.

R224 I can't speak to Maya Rudolph's talent as a dramatic actress, but she is horribly unfunny as a comedian. That's an unpopular opinion since everyone seems to think she's hilarious.

I always found Valley of the Dolls boring, too, in spite of some incredibly campy performances and a few decent scenes. It's never quite campy or serious enough to work as a serious drama or a hilarious camp classic. At least movies like Showgirls and The Room are daffy and head-scratching at every turn.

Speaking of camp classics, I actually find Mommie Dearest scarier than most horror films. I still recognize why people think it's funny and there are some parts that make me laugh, too, but I find Faye pretty effective throughout.

Let's get into some really niche shit, shall we? Let's talk Jesus movies. (No carping about my taste, please, you have shit you're embarrassed about liking, too.)

* If you want the best depiction of the traditional Christian image of Jesus, [italic]The Greatest Story Ever Told[/italic] is what you're looking for. The overwhelming number of celebrity cameos isn't nearly as apparent today since that era's stars are seldom remembered by modern audiences, and Max von Sydow gives a convincing portrayal of the otherworldliness of a messiah at once a part of our world and outside of it. There's an almost alien aspect to his performance, which must stem in part from being his first major non-Swedish role and not being particularly adept at the English language at the time. (Additionally, Charlton Heston breaks from his usual "calm-collected-Hollywood" approach for John the Baptist. He gives it a hammy touch that hints at the truth of the historical figure -- the out-of-his-mind crazy, the shtick you'd expect from a squirrelly bastard preaching out in the desert waist-deep in water for months at a time. The scene where he 'baptizes' his arresting officers had me on the floor as a kid.) True, GSET is founded upon a giant mountain of clichés, with no portrayed depth to any of the characters at all, but that's just an indicator of how much thinking fundamentalist Christians actually apply to their faith. If anything hurt the picture, it was the editing after it ran long in previews. (See the post below, linked from an archive of the IMDb forums, which gives some indicator of what's missing.)

* For the total opposite approach, a film that probably comes closest to portraying 'Jesus the man', then you want [italic]The Last Temptation of Christ[/italic]. Shot on a low budget in just under 2 months for $7 million "all in," after false starts in the late Seventies/early Eighties, not only is this one of Scorsese's finest works, but it's a fine riposte of films like the above which take the Bible at its word. In the Bible, it's platitudes and miracles left and right, always something nice to say or the right thing to say at the right time, and then he's a sacrificial lamb. [italic]Last Temptation[/italic] deals with the same tropes as GSET, but from a more human perspective: a man struggling with whether or not he wants to be God, assuming God isn't just a voice in his head, and also with what exactly it is he's supposed to do -- "love," "the ax," or "sacrifice."

(Side note: I've also always found it interesting that the first half of [italic]Last Temptation[/italic] seems to set up all of [italic]Jesus Christ Superstar[/italic] perfectly, and yet Tim Rice claims in his autobiography that he never read the book.)

I will admit The Rocky Horror Picture Show was and remains the epitome of a cult movie, but I actually enjoy Shock Treatment much better, from the overall plot to the songs. Rocky Horror had stand out performances but that's more due to the screenwriting and characterizations than actual acting (with maybe the exception of Tim Curry). The only thing I miss is seeing Barry Bostwick in tighty whities.

R230 I agree. You can see the animosity and rage just simmering in Faye when she interacts with her daughter. People love to joke about Faye's performance (to be fair I have too) but it is a fairly accurate portrayal of how a tightly wound, severely mentally ill individual would behave when upset. Anyone who grew up with a mentally ill people recognizes that Faye's mannerisms in Mommie Dearest aren't nearly as outlandish or unrealistic as one might think.

R231 The soundtrack to Last Temptation of Christ is amazeballs. I choreographed a dance to one of the tracks when I was in high school. Still haven't seen the movie though.

And yes Mommie Dearest, Faye Dunaway in particular, is terrifying.

r234, it's definitely worth seeing it, but be warned -- you'll need 2 hours and 43 minutes in which to view it.

R234 Since you're into "Jesus" movies, have you seen Passion of the Christ? I know Mel Gibson is not popular around these parts, but I'm curious how that film ranks in the canon of Jesus flicks.

I meant R235 .

r236 / r237: After seeing it twice in its initial release, and purchasing the DVD, I can safely say that I regard it as Christian torture porn, and I want no part of it. It offered nothing new about the man's life, and had enough blood to print several issues of [italic]Fangoria[/italic]. I feel that even a sadist would have walked away from [italic]The Passion[/italic] with shivers of revulsion.

R238 That's Mel Gibson for ya' :-)

The sequel, called "The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection" is scheduled to come out next year, but it's been pushed back a few times already so I wouldn't count on it just yet.

It will take place where the first one ended and the entire main cast is returning. I just wonder how they're going to explain that everyone suddenly aged 15 years overnight.

Holy shit, it's a miracle.

R223 I saw it as a teen in the late 90s. Several years later, when I took office temp jobs during in college and in between a job loss after college, I watched the movie again after finding it on DVD at a store and I also related to Toni's character. The movie was spot on about how crappy temps can be treated.

Jessica Lange is a much better actress than Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep portrays a character, but Jessica Lange IS the character.

The 1954 Star is Born is not very good. Stilted performances. Cornball script. Some great musical numbers, but the Man Who Got Away sounds like it was recorded in a closet somewhere- does not match the natural sound of the club where she sings.

Adore Judy, but this movie kinda stinks.

All About Eve is classic, and has a delicious script, but upon multiple viewings can be a chore to get through. The pacing slogs at times, as opposed to Sunset Boulevard which is tight as can be with nary a wasted moment.

I think Douglas Sirk movies are beautiful. But I don't get the appeal beyond that. Magnificent Obsession with it's Christian overtones and plot holes and soapy dialogue. What am I missing?

What about Imitation of Life R244? One of Sirk's most famous films. It's beautifully shot and acted (by Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner) and it deals with the subject of racial passing. Have you seen it?

The remake of Suspiria is garbage. It takes all of the originality and interesting qualities of the original and spits on them. I love Luca, but he really wasn’t a good fit for this project. The color palate is ugly, which is a shame because the original was so beautiful and experimented with color so well. All of the acting besides Tilda Swindon was hilariously bad. Why the fuck did he cast the 50 Shades girl and the girl from the horrible remake of Carrie? The camera work wasn’t really interesting or impressive. It valued cheap body horror over the unsettling tension build of the original. Overall it paled in comparison to the original film, both artistically and as a horror movie. Luca’s style wasn’t a good fit for this at all.

R247, is that really an unpopular opinion? I thought it got trashed in the reviews.

Here’s an unpopular opinion. The original Suspiria is also a boring piece of pretentious crap. It’s not scary. It’s not art. A cool color scheme does not a movie make.

R249, agreed. I think it is one of Argento's weakest movies from his peak period. Inferno, Opera and Phenomena are all vastly superior. They are actually suspenseful and less badly acted (not that that is saying much).

I have read Argento and De Palma being compared, but De Palma is vastly superior. Yes, his movies are less fantastical but De Palma also has much better skill with actors than Argento (or John Carpenter). And his scripts are better.

Xanadu is a wonderful musical film.

I hate the original Suspiria too. It looks like pure kitsch (and not in a good way) and I actually laughed out loud when the main villain turned out to be an invisible snoring witch.

I actually think Profondo rosso was the last decent film he made - his output after that really went downhill.

I think Argento suffered when he split with Daria Nicolodi. I liked the films he made before her well enough, but he really came into his own with Deep Red/Profondo Rosso and all the films he made with her in them were pretty damn great and could be considered classics. Opera was his last truly great film and that was over 30 years ago. I find it funny that when Daria returned for Mother of Tears, it might not have been a good movie, but it did have a little bit of that spark that had been missing for the past 2 decades. I've heard rumors that Daria is a witch. You think she put a curse on Dario?

I also think De Palma's films with Nancy Allen had a certain spark to them and I consider Carrie-Blow Out to be his finest period of work.

Maybe there really are such things as muses.

R245 yes, I've seen it. Years ago. Liked it better than Magnificent Obsession.

Last Tango in Paris. I don't get the big fuss over this film. Why do people think so highly of it?

R255, it was thought highly of due to Paulina Kael's inaccurate review of it. She thought it marked a new era of film-making and was the most sensual movie ever. I had no idea putting butter in a woman's vagina against her will was "sensual"?

R223, if you can suggest a location, I'll upload Clockwatchers

[quote]I had no idea putting butter in a woman's vagina against her will was "sensual"?

If you thought he was putting the butter in her vagina, then no wonder you didn’t understand the fuss.

R258, it doesn't the hole it was put in--it was rape.

Overrated recent movies:

Spotlight is a boring, dry, HBO movie with no pulse and DID NOT deserve the Oscar for Best Picture.

Birdman is a gimmicky, mildly entertaining backstage movie that really offers nothing to every day people who aren't in show business.

La La Land is a TERRIBLE musical with completely unmemorable music and mediocre singing and dancing. Chazelle is a promising young director but he makes the mistake that a lot of young directors make when filming a musical: he choreographs the camera instead of focusing on the choreographed dancing. His camera zips around through and over cars and swish pans back and forth so much that you don't remember any of the dancing. If you look at the great musicals, the camera is right where it should be to capture the dancing but doesn't draw attention to itself getting there. Chazelle's camera does nothing but draw attention to itself.

If Heath Ledger hadn't died, The Dark Knight would not have been reviewed as well as it was and we wouldn't be talking about it very much. The Dark Knight is the LEAST interesting of the three Nolan Batman movies. It is a ponderous bore with NO character development. Heath Ledger's Joker is a one dimensional character, which is fine since a guy in clown make up killing people is always entertaining, but every other character is a complete nothing. Name another interesting character in that whole movie and please explain what's interesting about them. The script is a disjointed mess: characters are introduced, disappear for an hour, re-appear, disappear for another hour (I'm looking at you Eric Roberts' Mob Guy, and you, too, Asian accountant). The third act is a frantic, eye-rolling clusterf**k. Two Face gets short shrift in the last 10 minutes when he's driving around killing people we don't know or care about. It's a weak movie. Don't listen to the puerile fanboys who try to claim it's thematically profound. IT ISN'T.

The Hateful Eight and Kill Bill (both parts) are superior to Pulp Fiction, which I think is overrated.

[quote]Spotlight is a boring, dry, HBO movie with no pulse and DID NOT deserve the Oscar for Best Picture.

I agree with this. I saw it theaters because a friend had free tickets from a contest. We went to get coffee afterwards and right away he said the movie reminded him of an HBO production.

The Social Network is BORING. Fincher manages to take what is definitely "made for Hollywood" material and makes it so dry. I don't think the movie will look that good 5 years from now, assuming people still like it today.

R260 Agree with all your points, particularly the description of Spotlight as an HBO movie. Spot on. It was supposed to be an "important " film but it didn't feel at all like something that was meant to be theatrically released. I still can't believe it won either.

I agree with a lot of what's been addressed in the previous 5 comments or so.

In general: it's astonishing how little remembered most of these Best Picture nominee/critically acclaimed/"important" movie are, and how little cultural influence they have. The average intelligent viewer watches shows, miniseries, and movies on streaming TV, probably no longer watches/follows the Academy Awards, and couldn't even tell you what won this year, much less what else was nominated.

There's no lasting love for most of those prestige movies named. No one needs to own them, or view them repeatedly. They all generate a lot of press initially, make some money, and are forgotten.

I stopped watching Spotlight after about 15 minutes because the cheap look of the film and the crappy editing gave me a major headache.

Turns out most of the opinions in this thread aren't that unpopular at all, because I agree with most of them.

I've always found it hilarious that most of the big "important" Oscar worthy/film festival bait comes and goes, getting its awards, accolades, and strong reviews, but most people can't even remember having seen them a year later.

If you asked me what won the Oscar for best picture in 2009, I'd have absolutely no idea. Whatever it was clearly didn't hold up as a classic. It's always the smaller, quirkier movies than end up achieving classic status.

The same thing goes for the big box office winners of the day. Some of them are rightful classics like Jaws, E.T., Star Wars, etc. but many of them are all but forgotten in the following years. Do we really think people are still watching Avatar a decade later?

R267 Avatar is definitely a strange case - it held the the title of the highest grossing film of all time for a decade but it's rarely even mentioned anywhere these days. It never really became part of pop culture the way Cameron's Titanic and Terminator did.

It's gonna be super interesting to see how well Avatar 2 and 3 are going to do at the box office.

AVATAR was a novelty because of the 3D technology and CGI, but ultimately a very silly movie.

Plus they've waited way too long for the sequel. That youth audience has moved on. And it's true that I don't think younger people grew up watching it, much less loving it (vs, say, the TOY STORY movies).

So true R265 & R267. I used to be an Oscar nut. I can rattle off a whole lot of award trivia up until about 2003. After that, I've lost track. The movies just aren't memorable nor the ceremonies. These movies really do come and go and don't impact the culture like they used to.

The Academy Awards were last relevant in the 70s, that's probably the last time they rewarded actual classics.

I disagree R261. The Hateful Eight is definitely Tarantino's worst film to date. It's boring, way too long and Russell's John Wayne impression is embarrassing and laughable. His films have really suffered since his editor, Sally Menke, died in 2010. His last truly good film was Inglourious Basterds, which was the last film of his she edited.

Jackie Brown is his best film, followed by the Kill Bills.

I think Death Proof is one of Quentin’s best film. Zoe Bell the stuntwoman was incredible, the jolie laide woman dancing and teasing in the bar, and the death sequence with the women in the car was new territory.

Avatar 2 was first supposed to come out in 2014, but it's current release date is December 2021. Maybe nostalgia for the late 00s will kick in by 2021, making that film a box office hit (though I have no idea why anyone would want to be nostalgic for that crappy era).

R268, I was just about to chime in with Terminator 2 is what really put Terminator on the map. The first one, while financially successful, was seen as very well made B-movie, nothing groundbreaking.

[quote]Anyone who grew up with a mentally ill people recognizes that Faye's mannerisms in Mommie Dearest aren't nearly as outlandish or unrealistic as one might think.

I agree Winona Ryder is a shitty actress. Always has been.

I hated Mulholand Drive.

[quote]R50 I never saw A View From The Top. I just remember Goop seemed very ashamed of it.

She once did refer to it as A VIEW FROM MY ASS.

It must be said.

Martin Scorsese is an overrated director whom straight white men worship. The same men also revere De Niro and Pacino even though they've both been unbearable hams for the last thirty years or so.

I like Scorsese but his movies really went downhill after Dicaprio became his new muse.

[quote]R189 and Parasite is a great example of such film

PARASITE 3-D is our dear Demi’s debut film!!

[quote]R215 Birdman was pretty bad and the wife was an especially terrible actor.

That actress was nominated for an Oscar playing a druggie mom in GONE BABY GONE, and was also good as a dorky HR manager on THE OFFICE. She has an extraordinary range.

Wasn't Ryan actually the frontrunner to win the Oscar that year? I remember her picking up the majority of critics' awards.

Totally agree R281

Psycho is overrated in terms of how well its made and also how supposedly influential it is. I would argue The Exocist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Night of the Living Dead are all more influential as horror films.

[quote]r285 Wasn't Ryan actually the frontrunner to win the Oscar that year? I remember her picking up the majority of critics' awards.

I honestly think that is one of the single best performances I have ever seen...where each moment is completely and correctly "etched," in a sense. Especially when you realize she is naturally nothing like that character. The accent, the look, everything is all so different from how she comes across as herself.

Philip Seymour Hoffman chose her as his leading lady for the one film he directed. I would be so flattered if a leading talent like him selected me above all others to costar with them. [italic]There can only be one winner!

Most of Jean-Luc Godard's oeuvre is merde.

It's certainly hard to watch, R289. I don't even particularly like "Breathless," one of the most accessible ones. Hard to believe Godard is still alive, BTW.

I'm a big Truffaut fan, and while old school cineastes acknowledge his greatness, it seems like he's really fallen from favor with the current cinema studies crowd, along with Bergman and some others.

I had to take an entire semester on Godard. Thankfully, we all smoked through the class and screenings, and the prof let us crash in his garçonnière in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Decades later I realize that many of the cineastes of those years were only watchable while smoking.

I love LOVE Ingmar Bergman, but I guess you may be right R290--I majored in English in college and had an emphasis on film studies, and I don't recall watching any of his movies in any of the numerous film courses I took. I did watch some Godard, and more obscure things like Barbara Loden's "Wanda" or "WR: Mysteries of the Organism" . There was a LOT of David Lynch talk from what I remember, and quite a few of his movies.

I'd say 3/4 of French New Wave films are merde. Truffaut and occasionally Chabrol are the only two whose films remain actually watchable. I think you have to be a pretentious cunt to like stuff from Godard, Rivette, Resnais, Rohmer etc.

Come to think of it, I don't particulary care for films from other new wave movements (Czechoslovak, British...) either. Time really hasn't been kind to these. I'm glad Italians didn't fall for that crap and went on to create some of their greatest masterpieces in the 60s.

R293, I really like some Japanese New Wave stuff but you're right, even a lot of American stuff from the 70s (where a lot of American directors borrowed from French New Wave directors) doesn't hold up today despite seeming cutting edge back then.

We have access to SO many movies so easily, quickly and cheaply. From all over the world from the entire history of cinema. It's overwhelming.

R294 I'm not well familiar with the Japanese New Wave but I tried to watch Oshima's "Boy" a few weeks ago and I wasn't able to finish it. It was a fascinating story and visually the film looked amazing but then all those annoying and totally unnecessary New Wave-ish touches (like the color randomly changing to black & white every now and then) made it unwatchable, at least for me.

Another film that was totally ruined for me, because the director tried to imitate the French New Wave style of filmmaking just a bit too much for my taste, was the Romanian film "Reconstituirea" (which was actually voted to be the greatest Romanian film of all time recently by top 40 local film critics). Too bad, because there was an actual masterpiece hiding in there somewhere.

So yeah, I'd say Godard did a lot of damage to the art of filmmaking. And not only is he an overrated hack of a director, he's also a fucking terrible, anti-semitic cunt in real life. Can't he just croak already?

[quote] We have access to SO many movies so easily, quickly and cheaply. From all over the world from the entire history of cinema. It's overwhelming.

Tell me about it. I've really become spoiled by such an easy access to films. I have hunreds of downloaded films from all around the world on my external hard drive and if the film I start watching doesn't pull me in I just say "Fuck this shit" and go to the next one. Sometimes I have to skip 3 or even 4 films before I find one I actually like.

Remember those good old video store days: back then people forced themselves to watch even the films they didn't really like, because they fucking paid for them. Now that was stupid (because life's too short to be watching crappy films) but all this skipping through films, simply because you may find the first ten minutes a drag, is a bit extreme too.

R297 I couldn't agree more. Some days, I feel like I spent more time scrolling through the choices on Amazon or Netflix than actually watching real content.

I can’t watch a comic book-based movie.

ON the upside, so many films are restored beautifully nowadays. When I think of the shitty prints I watched in my teens and 20s. Even MOMA used to show extremely shitty prints. You always had to check the listings because they would warn you - this print is crap.

R296, what is it with France producing so many anti-semites? No wonder Godard worked with Bardot.

Godard is Swiss not French.

R300, Blu-Ray is one of the greatest inventions ever. That, plus 4k. I have Taxi Driver, L'Eclisse, Kiss Me Deadly and many older classics on Blu-ray and they are remastered very well.

R297, that's all part of FOMO(fear of missing out). I do the same thing with books. I'll buy a bunch and I won't even finish some books and move on to another one. Sometimes, I find myself finishing a book years after I bought it (recaptured interest).

Bluray still is about capacity, mostly. Not getting us higher scans. There are not that many classic movies distributed higher than 1080p, digitally. I think streams will see more higher resolutions than physical media.

CES 2019 was about 8k screens, not 4k. And I have no classic movie content for my 4k.

I don't think I'm will live to see significant chunks of great cinema distributed at 4,320. I believe there is information on celluloid masters to go beyond 4,320.

Still, I am thrilled with what I do see from the restored masters and 2k and 4k scans, scaled down to 1080p.

For example, I never enjoyed Lang's Metropolis, until it was scanned and restored digitally. I watched a restored La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc a few weeks ago, not having seen it since a projected print in the 80s. Its a different movie now, and at only 1080p. It's so modern and see Renée Jeanne Falconetti's skin, makeup, and the actress performing the role.

Tarantino's entire filmography is grossly overrated. A heist movie he stole the idea for from a better Asian film, a decent, unspectacular adaptation of an Elmore Leonard book, a couple of second rate martial arts movies, a second rate Dirty Dozen rip off war movie, a second rate Blaxploitation movie that misses the entire point of Blaxploitation movies, and a deadly duuuuuullllll western that he stole the idea for from a 60s TV show, and this latest tedious, self-indulgent, pointless bore. Critics lost their minds for Pulp Fiction and thereafter couldn't admit that the emperor had no clothes. They couldn't admit they were wrong when they saw him as the future of cinema. Is the future of cinema doing rip offs of movies and ideas that were already made? Go watch the movies Tarantino steals from, they are all better and made by more talented filmmakers.

I just watched "A Quiet Place" and it did not live up to the hype. It was good, but certainly not Oscar worthy like it was made out to be. It was lazy how they laid out the story. There wasn't enough character development, either. I didn't care if any of them lived or died.

Frankly, it felt like a M. Night Shyamalan rip-off.

R307 There’s a reason it was only nominated for a technical Oscar and nothing more. Despite the amount of stupid people lauding it as the next big thing in horror, most people thought it was mediocre and forgot about it the month after it came out.

Robert Altman is a better filmmaker than Woody Allen, yet gets half the praise.

Synecdoche, New York is one of the greatest films of all time and also the best film Charlie Kaufman ever made.

At least three-quarters of Woody Allen's output is dreadful and deservedly forgotten. His remaining champions only remember the good ones.

And younger audiences have no regard for him at all.

One that always seems to elicit shock is when I tell people I hated "No Country for Men."

R311 Woody Allen was only ever appreciated by boring white guys who are just as weird and fucked in the head as he is. They’re the guys who make women uncomfortable and then complain about nice guys finishing last.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922) are creepy to watch, but they're no fun at all as movies. Most of the creepiness comes from the silence and grainy image, which are technological artifacts.

R314 Those two are still super fun to watch if you compare them with Tod Browning's Dracula. Now there's a real stinker! Before I watched it I had no idea that it wasn't based directly on Bram Stoker's novel but on some horrible and super boring stage play.

The first 15 minutes or so are amazing but once Bela Lugosi disappears (and he's offscreen for most of the film) the film becomes really painful to watch and feels like a badly acted melodrama.

R314 Caligari sucks but I found Nosferatu genuinely scary. It had a great sense of atmosphere, some of the techniques they implied to get the scares right were genius.

Even if some of the New Wave films from different countries suck in retrospect, those movements were necessary to change cinema from it's "old ways" to "new ways."

Add Leo and Spacey to the "overrated hams" category. DiCaprio's Oscar campaign was one of the most desperate, craven things I've ever seen.

R307 That flick recently disappointed me, too. Also full of stupid, lazy plot points. You've lived in that house for 5 years and haven't ever seen fit to implement ANY kind of soundproofing? Letting the small kid wander freely in the store at the beginning. Fuck off.

R309 Also entirely correct.

Lifetime’s adaptation of Flowers In The Attic is better than the original one, even if the original had better production value.

Well, Lifetime's Flowers in the Attic was more faithful to the novel. I'll give it that. Louise Fletcher and Ellen Burstyn were both wonderfully cast as the grandmother, but who was worse as the mother? Heather Graham or Victoria Tennant? I remember them both being kinda shitty, but at least Heather looked the part. Tennant felt like a repressed English schoolteacher.

I like Woody Allen's dramas more than his comedies. Another Woman, Interiors, and Blue Jasmine are among his best work.

I did find it funny that Lifetime's Flowers in the Attic had the benefit or restoring a lot of the more taboo aspects of the book, but somehow forgot to let the material breathe due to its 90 minute runtime. None of the big plot developments or heartbreaking moments had any punch whatsoever, because they would reveal them and then move on to the next revelation.

[R99]: “Celluloid hate crimes!”

LMFAO!!!!! What a great observation!

Bravo!

The Departed is Scorcesse's best crime film and superior to Goodfellas & Casino.

Victoria Tennant is a terrible actress.

i donk know

Victoria Tennant was so boring and always looked pissed off in everything she was in. You wondered why the woman even signed on to show up in the first place. I'm glad to see she's disappeared from the screen for the most part. I found her terribly unengaging to watch.

Bohemian Rhapsody would have been so much better with SBC playing Freddie.

Recently was feeling in the mood for some bad-movie comfort food, and I rewatched (don’t judge, DL!) “Beyond the Poseidon Adventure”, which I hadn’t seen for many years (maybe during a network TV airing?)

It remains a terrible film, no question, but I’ve never found it boring. And (here’s the unpopular opinion part) my favorite part of the film was Sally Field’s performance. I seem to recall Field’s wisecracks on a gutted, sinking ship being a particular object of critical scorn, but that’s the problem of the script, not Field. I thought she was appealing and likable. She gives Karl Malden a little slap on the back as they out on their little boat to the Poseidon that was very real and very sweet (I know, Mary!)

Oh, and Veronica Hamel was GORGEOUS!

I absolutely despise "Forrest Gump." Cannot understand the popularity of the film. Tom Hanks is not a great actor. His characters are simply different shades of earnest!

Roger Moore was the best Bond and the Camp element was the most entertaining and the best formula. Pierce Brosnan’s 1st three are the best otherwise.

A Thousand Acres is the best performance of both Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer’s careers. Also, one of the most underrated movies of the 90s. It was overlooked and underrated because people don’t like to hear about incest.

R116 I say they should of just went for it. G kills Anne Archer right after A calls the police, injures/ties up Michael in the living room and then sits on the couch and reads The Velveteen Rabbit to that boy-girl child who’s hair she strokes as Child & M look on in fear with police lights flashing outside the window.

All the good movies have been made and there's nothing left to make any more.

Most people who like the depressing, overrated tripe considered to be the best are really just insecure, elitist assholes, who’s tastes are dictated by group think just the same as the retards who fill the theaters for Marvel films. They think because a movie is vague and you have to think on the plot for 30 seconds it’s a masterpiece. It’s not. A lot of these bullshit movies are confusing for the sake of being confusing.

Zsa Zsa deserved an Oscar nomination for Queen of Outer Space.

"I say they should of just went for it"

Oh, dear.

R338 fuck off and get COVID.

Suzy Parker should have been a HUGE movie star. She couldn't really act but she's so gorgeous you can't keep you're eyes off her when she is on the screen. Suzy and Joan are the best things about THE BEST OF EVERYTHING which turns into a slog after the former falls off the fire escape and the latter vanishes for long stretches.

Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny is one of the best American films of the oughts, but everyone (including connoisseurs of pornography) sensationalized the blowjob scene out of context.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a poor man’s Robert Altman.

Nicholas Cage was at his best in Vampire’s Kiss.

Jack Nicholson was at his best in Carnal Knowledge.

I'm watching Shoah right now (I'm about three hours in). Claude Lanzmann is such an annoying and smug interviewer he almost makes you sympathize with the fucking nazis he's interviewing.

I'll finish watching it because I have nothing better to do anyway but watching this documentary is hardly a life-changing experience I was expecting, based on its reputation.

Julia Roberts is fabulous in pretty much everything she does!!

Though it contains Judy Garland's greatest performance, A STAR IS BORN (1954) is a chore to sit through.

Hated "Avatar" and thought all "The Avengers" movies were loud and lacked any interesing charachters. "Titanic" was a cliche soup and I loved it.

R244, Sirk meant his movies the way we watch them now. He said he cast Lana Turner in Imitation of Life because she always seemed to be "performing" and wanted to tell the story of someone with that kind of fakeness. He cast Lauren Bacall in Written on the Wind because of her "calculating" quality.

Most films of the time would have had us look at those heroines as idealized figures, but Sirk is critical of them. If you allow yourself to watch his films though the eyes of 2020 they are better than if you try to understand them "in period."

Also, watching a lot of Fassbinder before you go to Sirk makes it clearer what the older filmmakers game was.

Parasite is a mediocre, overrated movie. The film won four oscars because the academy wanted to prove how progressive they are.

I agree with Trump on one thing: Streep is massively overrated and didn’t deserve half of her Oscar nominations.

Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jack Nicholson. The fact that these guys are considered acting legends is mystifying.

^^^ Okay then, whom would you place on a list of legends...???

Pacino’s performance in the Irishman was razzie worthy.

The Irishman was horrible.

Casino is far superior to Goodfellas, is one of the best films ever made and Sharon Stone’s performance was one of the best of all time; she deserved the Oscar.

Funny, "Paris, Texas" is my favorite movie ever. Along with Mulholland Drive

Little Women wasn’t that great. Chalamet’s wooden acting nearly ruined it.

Jodie Comer>>>>>Saoirse Ronan

Daniel Day-Lewis is just an angry psychopath doing impressions.

Goodfellas isn't that great.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was constructed to include that final twist purely so Tarantino could get away with his usual torture porn in the post-MeToo period. It wasn't wistful, it was cynical.

Pulp Fiction has nothing to distinguish it apart from its Look and the fact that an ordinary plot is not told in a straight line. Set up to excite the postmodernist critics, but there's nothing there.

The Plot Against America is a cure for insomnia and Winona Ryder and Zoe Kasan just can't act.

Only, it's not a movie, R359.

R331 Forrest Gump is mainly hated by those on the far-left because the film celebrates Americana and they just hate anything American. Nevertheless, as R128 noted, it is very satirical about it.

Revered British actresses like Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are overrated, IMO. They can't even do a proper American accent (or others) and can only play British grand dames.

Martin Scorsese makes unpleasant films about unpleasant people who you'd never want to spend any time with, not even just to watch on screen.

Citizen Kane is overrated. So is Hereditary. So is The King's Speech.

Meryl Streep is only a good actress some of the time.

Just because you brutalise your characters, it doesn't make your movie necessarily deep or interesting or worthwhile.

Toni Collette's accent in About a Boy is atrocious. I am seriously baffled when I hear people praise it.

Inglorious Basterds is not good. It's lazy.

The entire section of Once Upon a time in Hollywood revolving around Leonardo DiCaprio acting in his Western drags the film down and should've been removed entirely.

Films about Hollywood really aren't interesting to anyone who isn't part of the industry.

Tangerine was the only watchable American film made in the last 10 years.

Re: Bond movies.

Never Say Never Again is much more entertaining than Thunderball (even though it basically comes across as a campy, cheap looking remake).

Quantum of Solace is more entertaining to watching than Skyfall.

The only PTA movie that wasn't a chore to sit through was Hard Eight, which was a brilliant character driven story with excellent performances by Philip Baker Hall, Gwyneth Paltrow and John C Reilly. PTA is way too precious about his own work and he needs to pay more attention to pacing his stories. He's also a trashy and full of himself.

Sweet Smell of Success is a way better movie than Citizen Kane.

With Goop I never understand why only her lame movies became hits. I didn't care one bit about that Shakespeare movie or Talented Ripley.

Proof, Hard Eight, Sylvia, Flesh and Bone, Sliding Doors were her best movies and she gave excellent performances in all of them. Yes View From The Top was a good entertaining movie and she was very funny in it.

Did Goop ever even have a real hit movie? The only film where she was first billed that did really well at the BO was Shakespeare in Love (which made close to 300 millions) but Miramax spent so much on the promotion for that film that it would have been a hit with pretty much anyone in the lead role (and it was really Shakespeare's name that sold that film, not Goop's).

"Get Out" was unoriginal ("The Stepford Wives", anyone?), didn't deserve the hype, and SURE AS HELL didn't deserve the Oscar. And Jordan Peele is just as unoriginal and overrated.

Get Out was like a poor man's version of Being John Malkovich, with half the wit. I'm sure that when Catherine Keener was reading the script for Get Out she was like: "Wait, wasn't I in this film before?!"

Paris, Texas is my favorite movie ever

“Silence of the Lambs” is a sick movie, ugly and disgusting.

Robert De Niro is the most overrated actor in film. Only ever plays one character. Let’s see him play an English lord. I bet he can’t even do an English accent.

[quote]Robert De Niro is the most overrated actor in film.

So true. Fuck DeNiro.

I loved Jane Campion’s “In the Cut.” An intelligent thriller with great visuals.

Being of Italian descent, I never fully accepted Marlon Brando as the godfather. Maybe it was knowing he had cotton stuffed in his mouth.

Ralph Meeker -- sexier, edgier, and more charismatic than Marlon Brando. I haven't seen his Stanly Kowalski (footage probably doesn't exist), but it was most likely better than Brando's.

I think Spike Lee's "Crooklyn" is highly underrated and his second best film after "Do the Right Thing".

"The Wolf of Wall Street" is an over the top comic opera. I love it, and DiCaprio is superb.

Both Woody's best and Gena Rowlands' best, the under-appreciated "Another Woman", which gets better with every viewing.

My late father's two favorite movies were ones he saw as a six and eight year-old, "Drums Along the Mohawk", and "How Green Was My Valley", both directed by John Ford. Children can have excellent taste in movies.

Fearless is a great movie and one of the top three from 1951-2000.

I'm one of the few people who thinks the Academy got it right giving How Green Was My Valley Best Picture over Citizen Kane.

Magnolia was awful. The longer it went on, the worse it got.

[quote] And Jordan Peele is just as unoriginal and overrated.

Key is way better and hotter.

Scary, disturbing and evil characters are more effective when we DON'T know much about their backstory or the reason why they are the way they are. If a movie has been effectively scary up to the backstory exposition part, it will very quickly lose momentum afterwards.

I recently re-watched Almost Famous, reaffirming my conviction that Kate Hudson was absolutely robbed of the Oscar. What an unforgettable character she created in Penny Lane. Marcia Gay Who in Pollock What? Is this an unpopular opinion?

R386 Yes, because she wasn't anything special in that film. I was more impressed by that McDormand woman. I usually can't stand her but she was pretty funny and touching in her small role.

But the winner of the BSA Oscar that year should have been Dame Julie Walters. What an amazing onscreen chemistry she had with Jamie Bell! Meanwhile the only thing I remember about Gay Harden in Pollock is that her hair looked atrocious in that film.

R379 My mother and her sister thought Ralph Meeker was really sexy. They saw the original production of "Picnic" on Broadway specifically to see him.

Funnily enough while the play was going on, they both kept staring at a handsome young actor on stage with brilliant blue eyes. They both commented afterward about how compelling he was.

It was Paul Newman (in his Broadway debut.) Wish they'd kept their playbills!

R387 Julie Walters is very talented. She has another excellent performance in the mini series National Treasure on Hulu. She plays a wife whose famous comedian husband is accused of rape. Very intense.

She's great in those Talking Heads episodes she's in too. One of them she plays a very naive aspiring actress, and in the other a woman married to a serial killer. Really worth watching, like many of the actors in that series it's amazing how they can keep you hooked in what is essentially just them talking at the camera. The scripts are wonderful as are the performances.

Uma Thurman gave the most iconic performance by an actress in the 21st century (thus far) in the two Kill Bill films. She should have won the Oscar, but wasn’t even nominated. Aside from Charlize Theron in Monster (the winner in 2004), I doubt history will remember the other nominees or the 2005 winner.

Kill Bill is basically the only Tarantino film necessary. It covers everything that he's all about.

This will be a really unpopular one I think, because I've never seen anyone else say this, in fact they say the opposite.

Piper Laurie's performance in Carrie isn't good. It's hammy, over the top, and liable to make people laugh rather than be frightened.

R393 Wasn't that intentional? Laurie has often said in interviews she interpreted the script as being a comedic one. While I disagree about her not being scary I do think that her performance could easily be transformed into a comedy film, without any changes, and work just as well. And that's exactly what makes it so great.

I feel sorry for Sia because of the controversy going on with her upcoming movie. Non-disabled actors have been playing people with disabilities for decades and I think people chose her movie to make an example out of because frankly, it looks pretty cheesy and overly sentimental. I do believe she had good intentions, though, and that people are giving her too hard a time.

It's hard for me to feel sorry for Sia. She's just become so goddamn annoying since she started with that idiotic hair gimmick and shoving that Dance Moms girl down our throats. However, I did hear that she's supposed to be pretty nice in real life so I guess I do have some sympathy for her.

R395 Jesus! This is another reason why identity politics are stupid! The far-left has gone out of hand that they think people can only ever relate to others who look/think/act exactly as they do. Acting is thrown out of the equation. I'm a Latino, and I have never even thought of someone's race/disability when watching a movie/TV show until fairly recently, because these loons keep bringing it up. They proclaim to be colorblind but they are often the first to notice/point out someone else's skin color et al.

Cabin In The Woods was garbage, sorry Josh Whedon stans. I can't believe Sigourney Weaver agreed to be in this movie (though she's only in it towards the very end).

I'm sick of Batman and Superman movies. There seems to be a new one every year.

I hated Reese Witherspoon in American Psycho - she was so out of place in that movie. I don't hate her in general though, in fact she was awesome in Walk The Line. She was just so miscast for AP.

R375, I agree with you, but I think he plays two roles / characters. It depends on whether it's a comedy film or a crime film.

(1) A menacing, pompous and angry Brooklyn thug involved with illegal underworld activities who's wife and family look the other way. - Gritty crime or gritty boxing films (2) An overprotective, bullying, unsophisticated goon forced to interact with people who are completely different than him, now that he's not working full-time. Polished, trope-filled, comedy gag films.

R396, Agreed. Sia via her Zero 7 days and solo albums in the early aughts were really good. Then she totally jumped the shark around 2010 with her We Are Born album. She started writing all sorts of teeny bop infantile earworm songs. "Chandelier" is an ear atrocity and unfortunately is on constant repeat at my grocery store.

The only improvements to motion pictures made in the last 25 years have been technological in nature.

R403 And it's those exact "technological" improvements that make the films look so cheap today. Switching from film to digital cameras was a huge mistake. Even films that cost $ 100 million to be made look like they were filmed on someone's iPhone.

Rebecca De Mornay steals every scene in "Risky Business" that Tom Cruise isn't in his underwear. She should have been a big star.

Marlon Brando wouldn't have had the career he had if John Garfield lived. Garfield did everything Brando was lauded for first, but even better and without mumbling his lines. In fact, Garfield was the original choice on stage for Stanley Kowalski. Maybe this isn't an unpopular opinion, but not as many people are familiar with Garfield as they should -- I've gotten into his films the last few years, and he was terrific. So sexy, soulful and tough but tender!

Robert DeNiro really can't do comedy. His crying in "Analyze This" looks fake, on par with the bad acting of Meryl Streep at her worst (like in "August: Osage County").

Goop is actually very good in "Emma" and "Sliding Doors", with a rather good English accent. Toni Collette is great too in the former film.

Garfield was more than a decade older than Brando was. He was getting a bit old to play the roles of young rebels by the time he died so Hollywood would find someone to replace him in those roles even without him croaking.

Garfield probably would have been great in "On the Waterfront" though.

R394, yeah I heard that she thought it was a satire or a dark comedy or something too. This is why I say I feel all alone in that opinion, because most people say, as you did: "that's exactly what makes it so great". But for me, I don't see it like that at all. It comes across as all wrong to me, cringey and I don't think that's the tone she should've gone for. It detracts from the movie. I've also seen her in other things and honestly, I think she's just a big ham in everything, in a way that I can't enjoy.

R398 agreed, horrible POS movie. Like something a twelve year old thought up. Then again, I've never bought into the whedon hype.

Probably unpopular here, but diversity casting is long overdue. For about fifty years we've seen the same types of people in every role and people have the nerve to whine over a bit of change. I think many individuals who have been represented in books and film for years underestimate the effect it has to not see depictions of those who are like you . Or to only see depictions that are somehow tragic .

DePalma's Carrie deserved the Oscar for best picture.

R412 agreed. It's so boring to see the same thing over and over again. New stories, stories from different perspectives are so welcome as far as I'm concerned.

I want more films from the Estonian point of view.

More films from Eskimos as well.

^Perhaps you're joking, but I WOULD be interested in something like that :)

White guy here and a huge horror fanatic. I'm really happy for Jordan Peele, and now Chris Rock, venturing from comedy into horror. Black horror directors are practically non existent, and I cant think of any horror movie off the top of my head aside from the original Night of the Living Dead that featured a black lead character. Peele's "Get Out" and "Us" were very solid debuts from him and I'm really looking forward to his take on Candyman. I also had no idea Rock was such a fan of the Saw series. I still have to check out his Fargo tv series, but the reviews I've seen have been good.

OT - I’m a HUGE Chris Rock fan, but he deserved better than season 4 of Fargo. There are moments of genius and Rock does everything he can, but it’s the least of the seasons so far. Both rushed and somehow overextended.

Ooh, perhaps this is another place for an unpopular opinion, then. I think Chris Rock has a punchable face.

R420 I can't stand his speaking voice. His delivery and inflections are completely affected and don't work for any true character other than a comedian. It's almost melodic like talking the lyrics of a song. And there's a lack of humanity. It's like performing comedy to someone trying to communicate as a human being.

Probably not popular among film purists but I don't generally get deeply engaged in films made before say, the mid 1960s. And I prefer modern films even to those. The mores and mannerisms of very old films are just too foreign to me but of course I can appreciate them for their artistic merit.

I couldn't agree less with that statement, R422. I find older movies and TV shows (pre-1990) to mostly be technically and artistically superior despite the lack of the more sophisticated digital technology we have today. Like the song from 1949's [italic]So Dear to My Heart[/italic] says, "it's what you do with what you got."

I'd rather an ok print of a great film with wonderful writing and acting (classic or modern) than a pristine highly CGI'd Dolby whatever is the latest technology amazing effects of a film with a bad script and acting.

The problem with old films is the acting is worse than modern day films. The stories are better and they are better directed but the overly mannered way of talking and performing is annoying and is the main reason a lot of the younger generations don't like them

R425 confuses taste and style preference for "better acting," states that contemporary acting is not "overly mannered," unaware that naturalism itself is highly mannered, and is "annoyed" at historical styles and techniques as something untutored rather than reflecting several centuries of applied craft adapted to evolving film production.

All of this leads to the presumed capper of "younger generations" not liking these problematic old films. As if film art has anything to do with that. Film art depends on the market but box-office primacy still is a matter for the investors, banks and accountants. In other words, screw "younger generations" when it comes to attempting to discuss film.

Now let's try to guess what "old films" R425 is talking about. Is the acting in, say, "Chinatown" or "Bonnie and Clyde" old enough to be annoyed at? They're certainly older than she is. No?

What about "Doctor No" or "Georgy Girl"? "Rebel Without a Cause" or "The Thing from Another World" or "Kiss Me Deadly"? No? Now we're before her parents' births.

Does "Wizard of Oz" have an annoying acting style? Funny. It includes some of the vaudeville comedians, Broadway stars and movie scenery chewers often included in "old show biz." Or what about "Road to Singapore"? No? Because it's in a low-key, conversational style that makes fun of mannered Asians?

"It Happened One Night"? "Min and Bill?" We're now at the end of the silent era.

So it is silent films R425 is talking about? How many silents has she seen? No, it's not the way the techniques of commedia dell'arte, Restoration acting or formal stagecraft of the 19th century was blended with panto to reach audiences without dialogue. She says it's about the way of talking.

Maybe R425 just doesn't like certain kinds of movies - say, historical dramas or romances, or love stories or thrillers or high-comedy dramas or camp satires or parodies - and the kind of acting that necessarily goes with them.

Well, if that's so, it's quite a different place to be than someone without knowledge not understanding the models of various genres because she only wants to watch Avengers movies (or whatever) and then speaking for an entire generation of similarly uninformed knuckle-draggers.

Burn that celluloid! Preferably in a confined space. Or was the acting in "Inglourious Basterds," which was highly stylized in various ways, too old-school to endure?

R425 can't understand non-garbled sentences that aren't interspersed with the word "like" and with pseudo-words like "bruh" everywhere.

No, the reason the younger generations don't like them is because they are overfed and undereducated.

Jesus old people get offended when younger people don't like their pop culture. It's not that serious gramps.

Old? I'm not even 40 yet!

All these generalised comments about how different groups behave, as though humans are that easy to pigeonhole. We got together and watched Rear Window the other week and all agreed that it was one of the best movies we'd seen.

Oh, and here are a couple of movie reviewers of my generation having a great time with The Seventh Seal:

And with Ladri di Bicicletti:

[quote]Robert DeNiro really can't do comedy.

Robert DeNiro can't do comedy.

Kate Hudson hasn’t done anything of worth since but her performance in Almost Famous was amazing and deserving of the Oscar. Never understood why she choose suck thankless roles after and her talent shown in that film was never tapped into!

[italic]Hudson Hawk[/italic] was better than [italic]Armageddon[/italic] but for some reason the former has more of a reputation for being a bomb.

Kate Hudson had a brief career plagiarizing her mother. Her appeal was limited and people got over her quickly.