Okay, that is a pretty fantastic description of Weekend.
Raging Bull – I’m with Pauline Kael on this one. I just don’t get it. I’m bored.
Taxi Driver – I kinda like this film, but I still think it’s horrifically overrated.
American Beauty – cliche ridden pile of shite.
Last Year At Marienbad – the very definition of pretentious.
Scarface (Pacino) – I like some of De Palma, but i actually get a little bored by this film – irritating unlikable fuck of a character gets what he deserves. I prefer Carlito’s Way (it’s got Luis Guzman for a start)
and so i’m not all just negative – 5 films that don’t get praised enough: 1/Harold & Maude, 2/Martin, 3/The Innocents, 4/His Girl Friday, 5/Svankmajer’s Alice
To why I don’t like “Rear Window” more elaborated- I think the story is so ‘holllyyywood’ A man has a broken leg- okay, he sits in his apartment all day looking at people – starts to get interesting – he thinks he witnesses a murder- oh this is actually sounding good. But, I found James to be a very annoying actor and I hate his accent. Also, after I got the story, I felt it was dealt with in an uninteresting and text book way. Technically I can respect this film, but Picasso could have made a brick look good.
And @ Crap Monster – It isn’t really sarcastic, sarcasm is usually used to hurt someone. Also, its not an attack on anyone in person. I was poking at how in just about any “list your 5/10/15/20/25/30 (anything)” about 1/4 of the people say “oh my no way I can list that few.” Of course the “brag” part is a horrible stereotypical thing to say, but, thats the comedy of it. I must fail as a satirist if you thought it was offensive =(. For that I apologize
The reason I chose 5 was because if you pick a number two high the list becomes generic and a lot of the same films get listed, if you choose a lower number, you get a more unique list.
Wow, A LOT of my favorites posted in this thread. Also, I think Blues Brothers is one of the best comedies ever. Infinitely watchable for me.
i agree on “raging bull”. just saw it for the first time last week. i wouldn’t put it in top-tier scorsese on its best day. it lacked emotion and cinematic punch. and it was a very anti-climactic film. it didn’t build up to anything. i enjoyed “gangs of new york” more than i enjoyed “raging bull”.
I agree as well on Raging Bull. Although, I loved the photography. But you are spot on on how it is anti-climactical. The performances though, cannot be discredited.
When I first saw Raging Bull, I thought it was overrated. When I watched it again, I thought it was a masterpiece, certainly the best Scorsese I’ve seen. Go figure.
Unbelievable! Some of these masterpieces you guys are saying are overrated is inexcusable.
I had a similar experience with Raging Bull. When I was young I thought it was overrated and a little slow. When I watched it years later, I found it poetic and moving. And while the car chase does drag on, Blues Brothers is quite simply a comedy classic. It’s not as good as the sum of it’s parts, but those music performances alone make it worth the time. Ray, Aretha, James, Cab Calloway, Booker T & the M.G.s… I think I want to watch it right now!
Citizen Kane: Now it’s not that I dislike this film but it is just that this film is glorified as the best film ever made by many. If I had to choose between it and The Trial I would always have to choose the Trial. Welles is a true master of cinema but Citizen Kane is over rated. Not only this but Welles found that The Trial was a better film and the ending to Citizen Kane with Rosebud was his least favorite part of the film because he thought of it as a gimmick.
Au Hazard Balthazar
Mouchette
Both films by Bresson I was just simply unable to “get”. They were slow, ponderous, and the acting was terrible and out of place. I understand not having actors emote to try to get a feeling of reality, but no one acts like this in reality. The unnecessary dead fish look of the actors and complete lack of affect doesn’t make me feel any of the spiritual themes that Bresson was trying to convey, its simply distracting and seems amateurish.
Chungking Express
I don’t have anything bad to say about this film, just that with all of the praise that it received I was really expecting something terrific. It seemed like it would be completely in tune with my sensibilities but just came off as forced and boring. Didn’t finish watching it, not because it was terrible, I just felt indifferent and thats about the worst thing I can feel when watching a film.
Peeping Tom
Another film where I simply couldn’t understand the praise. I saw half of this film and don’t really remember enough of it to critique it, just to say that it didn’t capture my attention in any way.
Vertigo
I liked this film, just not as much as everyone else seems to like it. It’s a well made and hypnotic film that overstays its welcome and doesn’t really cash in on its premise. The ending isn’t as surprising or interesting as its made out to be. I really don’t like Jimmy Stewart to begin with so that didn’t help matters much. I also mentioned on another thread that while this film seems to be mentioned whenever someone considers the theme of obsession in film, I feel that there are plenty more films that deal with the same topic and convey an actual feeling of obsession much better than Vertigo.
Everyone isn’t going to like the same films at the same level. There are so many posts that say I like the film but I feel it is overrated. That wasn’t the question. And if anyone thinks these films are absolutely horrible well I just don’t know what to say. And my three favorite films are Vertigo, 2001, and Taxi Driver so suck it. : )
Jason: the Graduate did not take home the best picture prize, but it did take home best director. the best picture award that year went to In The Heat of the Night…personally, i thought the Graduate was a much better film, and i disagree with those who say it doesn’t stand the test of time.
my choice? Elephant, comes to mind. i guess i can’t say its overrated, so much as i really didn’t like the film. i’ve heard tons of theories about why Van Sant made it, why he made it the way he did, what its all supposed to mean, and how its Van Sant’s masterpiece, but i thought it was just crap. considering the subject matter, it was a highly innapropriate, pointless, and rather cruel film. it wasn’t just the slow pace, or the lack of dialogue (i thought Last Days was a great film) but rather the unsensative detatchment and emotional distance from the subject was a poor choice for a film. also, its ripe with sterotypes about teen-life. although the claim might be that Van Sant isn’t pointing fingers as to why these two Klebold-and-Harris-esque kids shoot at their school, i see plenty of ideas on how these kids were treated poorly and didn’t fit in, and yadda-yadda bullshit with the end result of everyone dies. i also thought the school shooting itself was unrealistic. i once stated that one of the reasons the body count at Columbine and other school shootings is so low, is because you have amateurs with weopons they don’t know how to use very well shooting at moving targets—accuracy will suffer. Van Sant had these kids hitting pretty much everything they shot at easily, almost like it was a fun game to see how many dead kids he could put on screen, and how shocking he could make this film. apparently people bought into that, because whereas most people say Gerry and Last Days were terrible movies, even though both were pretty much filmed in the same way that Elephant was, this film was considered a masterpiece, almost convincing me that its considered so “profound” and “important” only because its about a sensative issue. no one is moved by a rock star or two guys lost in a desert, but flash some kids shooting at their school? why, that’s just controversial enough to win some awards…
another one: Bressons Lancelot du Lac. I found the exaggerated noises of the metal armour produced a rather comic effect. Felt like Monty Python without the jokes.
I also could not help being bored by Procès de Jeanne d’Arc and L’argent, but maybe I just have to see them again. Balthasar and Mouchette on the contrary I find very touching.
And Raging Bull is nothing less than fantastic: a quite deep exploration of really annoying characters and simply the most beautiful b/w photography I know of. (just bought the blu-ray and was blown away). And of course Cathy Moriarty!
Taxi Driver is a masterpiece, because of the acting and the how beautifully it was shot, but I have to agree with those who said that it was anticlimactic and it made itself very hard to care about the characters. If Marty had made Joe Pesci the main character, and made his brother Jake Lamotta a secondary character, then it would have worked better as a film, in the same way that Mean Streets did. But as is Jake LaMotta is such a despicable human being that you simply cannot care about the man and what happens to him-and they didn’t even put in the worst scene in which he beats his wife so bad that she has a miscarriage. Its not really a good idea to try and make a film about such a horrible person, without making him the bad guy of the film. Marty tried to be objective, and so the film falls a little flat.
I didn’t like The Graduate for a number of reasons, but one reason is that I just found Hoffman’s character to be annoying with all of the “Mrs. Robinson” stuff. Once you start screwing a woman, you start calling her by her first name. He was almost as annoying as the little kid in Shane, but atleast that was an enjoyable movie.
I agree entirely with JASON TROCHESSET:
‘bridge on the river kwai’ left me with virtually nothing. it was the first david lean film i had ever seen and i was watching it in the plane, and i’m afraid it only lengthened my 14 hr ride.
just realised it was supposed to be 5 films not just one, so here are few others i always had a problem with:
Strangers On A Train-one of the least interesting or suspensful Hitchcock films i’ve ever seen
American Beauty-poorly written, decently acted at best, and completely predictable cliche shit trying to be passed off as satirical portrait of suburban life.
Roshomon-yea, i’m the guy. i didn’t take to this film. i thought it was poorly paced and it’s style seems dated. it didn’t come across to me as a very mature film. of all the Kurosawa i’ve seen, this one had the least affect on me.
Crash-pure shit. overly melodramatic trash. predictable. sterotypes coming out the anus. poorly written. said it had a point, but was suprisingly pointless. at leas tall the other films i can see WHY there is some appeal or point to them, but not this one. i have yet to see anyone give me a valid argument as to why this should be considered a good film. pure shit.
I guess I’ll list the films that have already been written on this thread that fall into my favorite films of all time – all of which I could watch over and over. I don’t know what makes a movie a “masterpiece,” but I love these movies and just feel the need to defend them. I almost feel like we watched completely different films, because I have no complaints with these five.
1. Au Hasard Balthazar
2. The Seventh Seal
3. The Battle of Algiers
4. Taxi Driver
5. Weekend
obviously in my last post, I meant to say Raging Bull instead of Taxi Driver.
I do agree, though, that films like The Graduate and Easy Rider are simply soaked in pop culture, and have not stood the test of time.
Sorry, Bobby Wise, but I just don’t see how RAGING BULL can be said to lack emotion. Can you elaborate?
These aren’t all masterpieces, but surely "critically acclaimed’’ and loved by many. I thought maybe I just need a second viewing. Someday…
LAST PICTURE SHOW – "Bogdanovich directed this, he was a film critic y’know? Blah-blah… " Ok, Cybill Shepherd looked pretty. That’s all I can say…
M*A*S*H – I like Altman’s films, and his fans can argue all they want but I’ll still say I’d rather watch the tv series.
SENSO (Visconti) – Plenty of beautiful images, I just couldn’t get into most of it. The countess and the cad deserved each other. A friend warned me it’s a “Chick-flick for the cinephiles.” I should have listened.
RESERVOIR DOGS – I’m probably alone. Man, I still get lots of shit for not liking this one too much. Well, I grew up watching Chinese, Japanese and Italian action/ gangster flicks, full of quick-cuts, comical characters and smart-ass dialogues. Reservoir Dogs just seemed like a hodge-podge of those. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t understand the fascination with the banter at that scene in the restaurant. Great turn by Lawrence Tierney though.
CRASH (not the Cronenberg one) – My first reaction after seeing this was “Are you fuckin’ kidding?.” It’s so phony and exasperating, especially to hear people talk about the ‘redemption’ of the rapper Ludacris’ character in the final scene, while the human trafficking victims were left to fend for themselves. Redemption? What that character needs is a baseball bat in the face!
Raging Bull is a tough watch with no redeemable characters, but it’s one of the most poetic and fascinating studies of a flawed man that has ever been made. It’s just one of those films where the director has put everything they have into it. It doesn’t care about having an audience and it’s precisely that which makes it stand out as film that respects its audience by not patronising the viewer.
If you hadn’t guessed, I love this film. And I think that “Breathless” still looks as fresh and jazzy as always.
Now the over-rated / disappointing.
Anything By Hitchcock. I just don’t get the love for Hitchcock at all. I’ve always found his films rather gimmicky and I don’t like how he directs actors. He makes good, solid entertaining films, but for me, there’s very little to elevate them to the status they have.
The french Connection. I love seventies films, but French Connection is just okay. There’s very little too it, apart from the big setpiece. I should probably give it another go without the hype. I thought the second one was much better, and seemed more of a character study.
E.T. I seriously couldn’t watch this again. It sends me to sleep, and as usual for Spielberg is way too sentimental.
You can add SAVING PRIVATE RYAN there as well, which I thought was technically superb, but emotionally clumsy and way too manipulative for me.
400 BLOWS. Yes it was highly influential, but it hasn’t aged well and it didn’t seem to amount to a whole lot. I think Truffaut generally is over-rated.
“raging bull” lacks emotion on one level because of the main character. la motta. what does he do. he fights. why? what is it about fighting that gets his emotions going? nothing, because fighting doesn’t get his emotions going. he only does it because he does it. maybe he’s a sadist, or maybe he’s a born fighter, but it doesnt move him deeply one way or another. not the money, not the power, nothing. its just a fact of life for him. no emotion for the women in his life either. he’s interested in acting sadistic to them, but he even goes about that with no emotion. nothing’s at stake for him, emotionally. not the fights, and not the women. so he doesnt provoke any emotion in the audience watching the film.
on the level of film style. there’s no passion in the filmmaking. dramatic scenes dont build with any sort of climactic events. film form isn’t experimented with in any emotional or exciting way, unlike say “taxi driver” or “goodfellas”. but the key reason “raging bull” lacks emotion is because the audience doesnt care for the main character. not that he has to be a good likeable guy. he just doesnt provoke many emotional responses. the film suffers as a result.
LaMotta is a character filled with emotion. The problem is that he just expresses it the wrong way – by abusing his wife and brother, beating people up in the ring, basically ripping his entire life to shreds. As Roger Ebert points out, he’s got a Maddona-whore complex: he thinks Vickie is an angel, then when they marry she’s suddenly a cheating slut. The whole film is about that rage that drives LaMotta to do horrible things.
As for the film’s style, I think it’s very passionate. The fight scenes are absolutely masterful. Scorsese was certainly experimenting with editing techniques, the use of abstract sounds, etc. He used black-and-white, which was certainly uncommon at the time. To me, there is an incredible amount of passion in the filmmaking of Raging Bull – more so than in Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, both of which I found slightly overrated.
I actually think the scene in prison, where he is beating the wall and saying “I’m not that guy” is one of the mots heartbreaking moments in cinema. You know this guys a louse and he knows it too, but you never really get to know who he is. I see it that he doesn’t know how to express himself other than through violence. He’s actually a shy guy away from the ring. Look at how awkward he is socially and with those awkward scenes where he shows Vicky around the apartment. It makes me squirm. He’s this ball of pent-up rage, but maybe there’s more to him than that, although we never get to see it. He almost has a tender moment when he tries to reconcile with his brother near the end. It’s an almost hidden masculine emotion, but it’s there. That scene in the prison is really sad. In many ways De Niro is riffing off another interpretation of the Jimmy Doyle character from New York, New York, only it’s more brutal and without the comedy.
Having a terrible day, just venting… sorry fellas!
NOTABLES:
COMING HOME – Hal Ashby is alright. But I really hated this movie – Hanoi Jane and all. I wonder why some folks are still whining about it losing the best picture to Deer Hunter at the Academy awards.
THE IDIOT (Kurosawa) – I only saw this once on a really bad PAL transfer, so I’ll probably give it another chance.
THE GENERAL (John Boorman) – I remember so much critical acollades was given to this one when it came out in ‘98. A film about the Irish criminal Martin Cahill- I found it difficult to believe the Dubliners consider him a folk hero. The film dragged on for eternity, and halfway past the first hour, I was already wondering what’s taking the IRA (or the Ulster forces) so long to kill him.
GRAND ILLUSION – I’m surprised at myself for including this since I still think it’s a great film after seeing it a few times. Recently I had a change of heart. I found it patronizing, and those blasted bellyaching elitist officers…
Bobby you have no clue about what you are watching, why dont you just keep watching Spielberg.
Bobby – I can’t believe you would claim Jake LaMotta is a man without emotion. He’s a man completely driven by his emotions. Just because he’s not an introspective character, or not a very smart man doesn’t mean he has none. Everything he does in the film is because he’s angry, or frustrated, or jealous (mostly all three) and each of those is just as valid an emotion as love, happiness, or any other. He’s a man that never learned to control himself, consistently contradicts himself, and never thinks before acting and that is the cause of his downfall, he actually reminds me of my father (mostly because both constantly act without thinking).
Steve Oerkfitz
Rio Bravo-Ricky Nelson can’t act and Dean Martin looks ridiculous in a western.Some actors shouldn’t do period pieces.
Johnny Guitar-Could never understand the popularity of this, Joan Crawford gives one of the alltime grotesque performances.
Passion of Joan of Arc-I appreciate the artistry but can’t get beyond the fact I’m suppossed to feel sympathy for a religious nut.
Pickpocket-Find the lead actor very distracting as he spends the whole movie looking awkward and stiff-he doesn’t know what to do with his hands(a problem you face when using non professionals).
Weekend-Other than a great tracking shot I find it totally unwatchable pretentious filmmaking. An anti bourgeoise film for pseudo intellectual bourgeoise.