Trainspotting
Maltese Falcon
Done.
I think almost the entirety of the French New Wave is overrated. Jules and Jim, Breathless, and Band of Outsiders annoy me to no end. Almost every film JLG ever made gives me a rash, with the shining exception of CONTEMPT. The lavishing of hosannas on HISTOIRES DU CINEMA, which is several hours of excruciating incoherent narcissistic drivel, seems to me an indicator of the low level of current film criticism.
I think that all of those films like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and My Neighbor Totoro are vastly overrated. Also, I can’t uderstand why people enjoy that film Oldboy.
Also Man With a Movie Camera, The Red Shoes and West Side Story are not masterpieces…just average..except West Side Story which I can’t stand.
Avatar
Hated it. Also Memento was crap
Glughk.
I won’t waste my time and energy hating, but normally well constructed arguments against films keeps the blood going.
Batman Begins produced a surprised reaction from me rather than an indifferent one, which I can normally assume from the usual critics reaction to films to those that seem ‘intelligent’. I myself wonder if critics are programmed like this. With the inclusion of the Scarecrow, it suddenly became a mere child’s film with darker themes, and with the backstory element quite weak I felt it thinned out in order to fill a particular limit. This provided it with less padding to fall back on. I’m sad to say that Christian Bale failed to reach his best in this film, considering I was looking forward to watching all the trilogy.
Avatar is completely obvious, I don’t know what the critics saw in that film, ‘plagiarism’ and ‘overdone cheesy special effects’ being two phrases that should have been in their dictionary but weren’t. Not to mention Titanic, considering it was just an insulting dress up of the events of 1912. It had to go on for 3 hours, and for this we get an overly sentimental representation of the facts, while two people of different class backgrounds chase each other around a ship, the director trying to proclaim this as socially and historically relevant to the time period.
Many people that my parents know don’t like this film, including them – Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I couldn’t get my head around it, I was falling asleep due to nothing interesting happening and then the ending finally blew it for me. I’m so glad I didn’t die due to boredom – that would’ve have been embarrassing as the last thing I did before I kicked the bucket.
Last, but not least, the Tree Of Life. If this was supposed to be pseudo-impressionistic, I obviously don’t know why Terrence Malick thought an art house film using religious hymns and a CGI representation of the universe was how you leave an impression on people – I was just bewildered (“Has anyone seen around 2 hours of my life? I think I left it on the sofa before I saw this film.”)
A Summer Lifeline, I second Batman Begins – I re-watched it a couple of months ago and I thought it was crap. As was the new Batman movie, I couldn’t get my head around that people actually thought this was good to be honest… I should see The Dark Knight again, I remember liking it when it came out but even then I wasn’t all into it like most others were.
Avatar, I don’t even think anyone should mention that here. It’s like mentioning Titanic.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon I liked when I saw it, it was a long time ago and I guess I was mostly enchanted with people running on walls n shit.
Tree of Life, God yes – I’ve never cared for Malick at all and The Tree of Life meant nothing to me – his pseudo-philosophical musings with deep voice overs telling you to embrace every life and leaf… ugh.
Do you even need to mention films like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile as well? I did it anyway.
La Mépris… but maybe that’s just something between Godard and me…
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring – Oh god that was one of the most stupid things I’ve seen. Maybe not but I really didn’t like it – it’s one of those films that makes average westerners think they’re so exotic watching something buddhist, asian and foreign and thinking it’s some sort of great art. To me it was just really cheap.
The Great Dictator – I love Chaplin, his silent comedies are among my favourite films of all time and I think he’s really great but I didn’t care for The Great Dictator at all. I much prefer him in silent films like City Lights, what a genius move it was to even if the technology was there up for grabs to add sound realize that he’s better without it. Because he is, here it’s like he tries to be Groucho Marx or something and it comes out really bad…
The Piano… meh.
Jakob, do you think there are any films out there which it would surprise you for people to call ‘overrated’?
I also forgot to mention Zodiac. For a thriller, that seemed so overdone and boring.
I’ve been wanting to see a few older films because of my habit of watching modern films. I’ll watch that and I’ll see what I think. I really would like to see Rear Window.
Well, yeah, I guess not everyone hates Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. To be honest, it was quite enchanting to see people flying around with swords, but it didn’t seem to make much sense to me.
I guess Titanic and Avatar are already so overdone people are getting tired of it. I thought they were good at first but now it just feels repetitive.
Summer, was Zodiac a thriller? Might you be forcing genre-specific parameters on a film instead of a film being a film and judged on that, not on what you may think a genre film should be?
Alex
‘Thats why i think Jackie Brown is his greatest work’
Thank you.