RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[LilCerberus]

^Eh, It's easier to remember.^

[M.10rda]

I'm so obsessive compulsive I had to start this thread to feel intellectually honest and ethical. If I accidentally posted a review of a Good movie in the Bad Movie section I might actually lose sleep. Sure I could delete it and repost it in the right section - uh - but what if someone read it before I did that and then thought it was a Bad Movie??? 

I saw AMERICAN ASTRONAUT many years ago and couldn't quite jive with it, but Lil' Cerberus' review made me curious to revisit it.

[LilCerberus]

I'm so obsessive compulsive I had to start this thread to feel intellectually honest and ethical. If I accidentally posted a review of a Good movie in the Bad Movie section I might actually lose sleep. Sure I could delete it and repost it in the right section - uh - but what if someone read it before I did that and then thought it was a Bad Movie??? 

I saw AMERICAN ASTRONAUT many years ago and couldn't quite jive with it, but Lil' Cerberus' review made me curious to revisit it.

[LilCerberus]

I've always had trouble telling the good movies from the bad ones....
(1) I used to think Zardoz was supposed to be a "good" movie because of the runtime, & it had an a list actor in the lead.....
(2) As a kid, I would watch Easy Rider because a kid with long hair & a motorcycle was "supposed to".... I eventually realized I could just listen to cool music & browse through a coffee table book of cool motorcycles....
(3) La Belle Noiseuse.... Can't tell ya a thing about it, aside from four hours of Emmanuelle Béart naked....
(4) Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).... Some people argue it's the best ever, but I loathed it.... I felt like they added too much stuff, some scenes were too long, and above all, it was way too contemporary, especially that '70s style depressing ending..... Some folks hated the Giggling Guy, but I was indifferent.....
(5) Longtime members probably already know, I'm perhaps the only human being on the planet who loved Timothy Hines version of War Of The Worlds in all four hours of glorious awfulness....
So, yeah, for me, all movies are kinda on the same plain........

[zombie no.one]

SCROOGED (1988)

I'm blaming my work already piping in xmas hits all day for putting me in 'the mood' to watch a xmas film. Except I'm not in 'the mood' at all... bit like Bill Murray in this film.

This film operates entirely in its own world of (non) logic. reminded me a bit in spirit of PEEWEE'S BIG ADVENTURE and HUDSON HAWK, but is not as heartwarming as the former, or creatively manic as the latter.

some really really weirdly horrifying scenes unfold here. not a family film.

ultimately got a bit too OTT shouty and full on, but I did at least make it about 2/3rds of the way in.

[Senor Citizen]

CRITTERS 3

movie you wanna punch

This was just bad. C-movie made with left hand with really bad actors. If movie`s running time would been 2 hours, I would have quit in hour.
Even end credits suck. Imagine that.

[Senor Citizen]

CRITTERS 4

16 minutes and I quit.

[zombie no.one]

Don't blame you there SC

I'm a pretty big fan of the first 2 CRITTERS movies (in fact "Brad Brown is back in town" was my sig on here for ages), but part 3 was a major letdown and part 4 is the dullest 'in space' sequel ever made... it barely even features any critters!

[M.10rda]

Lil' Cerberus, I hear you and I understand you.
It is difficult to accept "conventional wisdom" or public opinion etc as being representative of any film's actual quality.
Opinions I have expressed before that fly in the face of generally established belief (historic or contemporary): CASABLANCA is overrated and not that romantic; Robert Altman's SHORT CUTS is the director's worst film and is emblematic of everything bad about his large catalog of films; MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING isn't funny, isn't heartwarming, and is in fact racist, offensive, and reprehensible. I might as well add that I like Spielberg's 1941 and rank it among or near his Top 5! 

We all just have to consider every darn film individually on its own merits and on our experience with that film, I guess. Nuance! It's a thing... a laborious yet necessary thing.

Case in point:
I really like SCROOGED... maybe I love SCROOGED... however all of ZNO's criticisms resonate for me. SCROOGED was directed by Richard Donner, who I think was a largely mediocre, sometimes utterly inept, and certainly often strident director who would aggressively direct scenes at maximum speeds and volumes down the throats of his viewers over and over again, usually with no appreciation for nuance whatsover! I find all the LETHAL WEAPON sequels to be borderline nonsensical - all of the actors might as well be shouting Cantonese at each other incoherently, with Mandarin subtitles superimposed along the bottom of the screen.

Yet I like the original OMEN, somehow, and I like SCROOGED a lot, even though those two films still very much bear the Donner touch. Bill Murray is a masterful screen personality and performer, and he puts SCROOGED over for me....... quite persuasively. ZNO, it's too bad you didn't make it to the closing song/credits, which (on its strength) makes me willing to forgive SCROOGED any other Donnerian excess.