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| bartist |
 Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:13 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| I think "Tideland" is one I could put on such a list. One of my most-hated films. Partly it's because it comes from a man who directed Monty Python atHG, Brazil, Fear and Loathing iLV, and other fine films. So I know he can do better. Much much better. This film farts in our general direction. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:14 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: Well, 4 out your 5 I would endorse and join you in a good ol' Scorn Heapin' shindig. The Last Emperor, however, seems to have evaporated from my memory so that I can't really hate it. That's a sort of indictment, too, I realize. I assume your list is of films greatly hyped, which sort of makes the loathing more fun since it's combined with toppling icons and shooting sacred cows and all that.
Sorta kinda, yeah. Damsels in Distress was awful, but more so because directed by the sometimes astonishingly good Whit Stillman. High on my worst list, also, and for much the same reason, is The Life Acquatic with Steve Zissou, the quintessential example of twee, cutesy, self-satisfied Wes Anderson-ness. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:18 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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bartist wrote: I think "Tideland" is one I could put on such a list. One of my most-hated films. Partly it's because it comes from a man who directed Monty Python atHG, Brazil, Fear and Loathing iLV, and other fine films. So I know he can do better. Much much better. This film farts in our general direction.
Have not seen Tideland, but have heard about it, all bad. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 7:28 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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| Don't know how I happened to forget The Tree of Life, but it's way up there (or down there, whatever). |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 7:29 am |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 2:56 pm |
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| Ah, The Tree of Life, which provoked quite the TEFS chat back in June/July 2011. Ghulam, Inlareview, me, and Marc (on a second viewing) all found some things to like in it, though we had to don Buddhist robes and say "Om" a few times to psych ourselves up for its plotless wonders. I recall Inla comparing the parallel performances of a dinosaur and Brad Pitt, possibly the only time a film aficionado has been moved to do that. I believe the phrase "pretentious hippie bullshit eye-candy" was used several times. I'm curious how it would sit with me now, almost six years later. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:21 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| I could not really put Last Emperor on a list of worst films, if only because I have no real conscious memory of it. Except Peter O'Toole was in it, and it was the version of Peter O'Toole who isn't any fun. And while I do not actually like any of the movies Billy lists until he got to The Big Short, they are all better than Eraserhead. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:32 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| I like The Big Short. I found The Last Emperor more interesting than involving, but I wouldn't put it on any worst list. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 12:04 am |
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Please attach the electrodes now and burn the past 45 minutes out of my brain.
That's how long I watched "Whatever Works" before bailing. The movie is stupid, disgusting (especially in light of what I know about Allen personally) and Larry David's performance falls short of anything that could be called professional acting. The script sounds like some sort of rough draft that Allen knocked off in a few nights, then stuck deep in a drawer because he knew it just wasn't working. I have complete confidence that the remaining 45 minutes are garbage. And shit. Perhaps a blend of shit-coated garbage. No matter. This ridiculous cavalcade of lurching and gesticulating ethnic and regional stereotypes will trouble me no further. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat May 04, 2019 7:48 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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As many know, Alfred Hitchcock is my all-time-favorite film director. But he made more than his share of turkeys. I think of The Paradine Case, Topaz, Torn Curtain, Marnie (though it has its fans), and Suspicion (likewise). There are also movies that some appreciate but I don't. Nevertheless there are no less than five Hitchcock films that reside on my Top All-Time 20.*
However, there is one that I can be said to hate. That one, which has its promoters as well, is Frenzy, in which Hitchcock's well-documented misogyny was displayed front and center in a murder scene that makes the one in Psycho look like Mother Goose. There's also a generalized hatred for women that exists throughout this vile movie. I really despise it.
* The five: Rear Window (my favorite film of any kinf), Vertigo, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, Rebecca. Hovering just below the top 20 are North by Northwest, The Lady Vanishes, and Notorious, with The 39 Steps way up there too. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat May 04, 2019 9:31 am |
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Location: Black Hills
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Hitchcock is responsible for both the best and worst Daphne DuMaurier adaptations, with the stellar Rebecca, the pretty good "The Birds," and the crappy Jamaica Inn. As a DuMaurier fan, I feel it's important to get her right, and the ego demands of Charles Laughton in making Jamaica Inn ruined the film and caused Hitchcock to disown it. I wish it was Hitch who had directed the adaptation of The Scapegoat, which is one of DuM's finest works. The two film versions of Scapegoat are both examples of sloppy tinkering with a plot. The more recent especially.
Not familiar with any film versions of House on the Strand, but I'm sure they're out there. If I find one, and hate it, will report back in this thread. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat May 04, 2019 3:53 pm |
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bartist wrote: Hitchcock is responsible for both the best and worst Daphne DuMaurier adaptations, with the stellar Rebecca, the pretty good "The Birds," and the crappy Jamaica Inn. As a DuMaurier fan, I feel it's important to get her right, and the ego demands of Charles Laughton in making Jamaica Inn ruined the film and caused Hitchcock to disown it. I wish it was Hitch who had directed the adaptation of The Scapegoat, which is one of DuM's finest works. The two film versions of Scapegoat are both examples of sloppy tinkering with a plot. The more recent especially.
Not familiar with any film versions of House on the Strand, but I'm sure they're out there. If I find one, and hate it, will report back in this thread.
I've never been able to make it through more than ten minutes of Jamaica Inn, and The Birds is really not very good at all, although its current reputation is better than most Hitchcocks. On the other hand, Rebecca is one of the finest films ever made and one of a handful of Oscar-winning "Best Movies" that truly deserves that status. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat May 04, 2019 9:42 pm |
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I saw all of Jamaica Inn and enjoyed it as a guilty pleasure before I discovered I was supposed to hate it. I've seen much worse Hitchcocks (Stage Fright and The Birds).
I liked Frenzy, but I wonder if I still would if I saw it today. I'm still disturbed by the scene Billy mentioned, though I thought Hitchcock was making a point rather than indulging in misogyny. A murder like that is not titillating it is ugly and, yes, misogynistic. But he also shot it a way that, even though a woman's breasts are exposed, there is no possibility of sexual attraction.
But there is a strong undercurrent of misogyny throughout the film, not just from the villain's psychopathy. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat May 04, 2019 11:48 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: NYC
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"Frenzy" almost put me off Hitchcock forever; fortunately "North by Northwest" is one of my all-time favorite films, so I try to forget the worst.
Alan Bates made a terrible movie called "Dr. M," directed by Claude Chabrol, supposedly a version of "Dr. Mabuse." All I remember is that his hair was weird, shaggy and snow-white. Someone asked him why, and he said "To make my sons laugh." That was just before one of his twins died. I don't think the film ever opened in the U.S.--I saw it in London, and have no particular desire to see it again. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun May 05, 2019 8:56 am |
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Whenever I mention The Birds here as middling good Hitch here, several members say it's bad, which makes me wonder if my liking of it is largely based on viewing it around age fourteen, around the time of the first Earth Day, and taking it in terms of an allegorical statement about mankind's effect on the environment. As just a scary movie about birds and small towns it's probably not very good.
I would not have trouble sitting through more than ten minutes of Jamaica Inn, because Maureen O'Hara. Guilty pleasure indeed.
Would you believe I have no memory of seeing Frenzy? On the list it goes. I suppose bad movies are always a potential guilty pleasure because you come out knowing better what it is you want. |
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