RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[M.10rda]

I watched DECAMERON last year or the year prior and I hated it, too. I think I rated it 1/5 or 0.5/5. My review was much more cruel than yours! However -

Il Decameron (1971)
These stories could be very funny, if done with a slapstick Benny Hill/Carry On approach.

.......That line is a masterpiece of meanness - I salute you!       It's funny 'cause it's true, too. Watching BH or CO would be more "fun" than this Pasolini arthouse movie!

[Dr. Whom]

I watched DECAMERON last year or the year prior and I hated it, too. I think I rated it 1/5 or 0.5/5. My review was much more cruel than yours! However -

Il Decameron (1971)
These stories could be very funny, if done with a slapstick Benny Hill/Carry On approach.

I didn't intend to be mean. I was just talking about the source material. Way back, when I was taking my degree in Medieval History I did a course on Chaucer's fabliaux, so I read a number of them. These are rowdy knockabout farces very much in the spirit of Benny Hill or 70s sex comedies. So if you adapt them, it should be in this spirit, and not try to make Serious Art.
It is what I like to call the Carl Orff effect. If you read the Carmina Burana, you find that they are very frivolous: about students partying, and chasing girls, or spending all their money on drink and pleading with their patron not to cut them off. Yet if you hear the orchestration of Orff, you might be forgiven for thinking that the end of the world had arrived.

.......That line is a masterpiece of meanness - I salute you!       It's funny 'cause it's true, too. Watching BH or CO would be more "fun" than this Pasolini arthouse movie!

[Rev. Powell]

DECAMERON is the weakest of that Pasolini trilogy. CANTERBURY TALES has one cool scene. ARABIAN NIGHTS is the best but none of them are great. I find Pasolini pretty overrated; TEOREMA is pretty good, and the basic plot has been imitated many times, but outside of that... eh.

[M.10rda]

Having now seen a handfiul of Pasolinis, I must lean uncomfortably towards the position that SALO is the best of those. It was the first Pasolini I saw and @ the time I thought it was the most horrible thing ever. Honestly it's pretty well-written, acted, and directed, and it makes a cogent statement, even if I need never watch the torture scenes again. The second was PORCILE, which is interesting though it doesn't add up to much. TEOREMA is like PORCILE but worse, I think - interesting ideas that are waaay underbaked. Then I've seen a couple that are as bad as DECAMERON. I will probably keep trying now and then to find one I can admire more than SALO....... which, you know, is a film to be justly rejected and abhorred, not admired!

[zombie no.one]

HEART EYES (2025)

dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear. a slasher that looks and feels like it was made by a bunch of people whose only frame of reference is AI generated Youtube shorts about makeup, SEX & THE CITY, and pop rap videos of the 2020s. not 'badly made', but tonally just abysmal from every angle. left a bad taste in my brain. that's the real horror. they got my money. they win. they win.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
The Jesus Trip(1971)
https://youtu.be/QoH2yDfO5Vc?si=68Td8qd3U4Csb3sL

A group of bikers returns from Mexico with some new(ish) bikes, but runs into trouble at a border checkpoint...
They make a break for it, & ditch the cops by going off-road..... One of them was shot in the run, so they decide to crash at a nearby convent they think is deserted (at least for the weekend), but find three nuns are still there.... One of the nuns patches the hurt biker.... Later that night, one of the bikers finds that the new bikes had heroin hidden in them, meaning drug dealers are also looking for them....
The next day, a cop shows up to flirt with one of the nuns, but he spots one of the bikes, so the bikers take him hostage, then ride out with the cop & the nun as hostages....
They leave the cop in the middle of nowhere, while taking the nun with them.... The drug dealers' helicopter finds them, & they dispatch it with a pistol....
They decide to hide out in a tiny town where one of them grew up, only to find it abandoned... The nun starts to get Stockholm syndrome.....
Three of the bikers go into town for a grocery run, but decide to stop at a nearby bar & get hammered, so they end up having to spend the night.... The next morning, the cop & his dirt-bike club find & capture them, & this time, he aint looking to make any arrests.....

Not thrilling, but not grating either.... Most of the scenes are poorly lit.....