Most overrated movies

[Nathan Shumate]

The thing about Citizen Kane isn't that it's the greatest movie ever made, but that it was so danged influential.  From the non-linear storytelling, to using the camera so innovatively... I mean, the final revelation of the "Rosebud" mystery is done with a visual and no dialogue!  That's old hat to us, but it was honestly the first time that someone had thought to do it that way, without somebody saying, "Hey -- the sled's named Rosebud!  By golly, all this time, all he's really wanted is the sled, and the parental love it symbolized for him!"

Sure, everyone's taken all of the tricks that Welles first tried out in CK and refined them, and they've become such a part of the basic filmmaker's repetoire that it's hard to imagine a time when no one had thought of them... but there was.

Nathan

[Babydoll]

Redjack wrote :
"Titanic - My only regret is that Leonardo and Kate were not on the real titanic when it went down"


My husband would agree with you.  

The only part I like about the movie is watching the ship sink.  It reminds me how dumb humans get when they think nothing can happen to us.

[Lee]

Titanic
Sixth Sense-"I see dead people." Yeah great, now do something with it!
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-Pretty good movie but not the amazing film everyone calls it. There are way better martial arts movies out there(and way more original.).
Raging Bull-The good stuff I hear about must have happened while I was asleep.
Casablanca-This so called great moving film didn't get much of a reaction from me.

[Chris K.]

J.R. wrote:
>
> I know we all have opinions, yadda yadda yadda, but anyone
> who does not see the greatness of The Matrix has something
> seriously wrong with them.

Not to get in an argument here (which, by the way, is the last thing I want to do), but what is really wrong with not liking THE MATRIX? I didn't like it, and I didn't like it due to the overbearing special effects. The effects were GOOD, but they were also way OVERUSED. I kept asking myself "What happened to the story here?"

The story does have promise, but when using special effects to cover up a storyline that is a bit underdeveloped then I ask "So where's the story, where's our characters?" And the acting wasn't too bad, but I would have hired somebody else who is better than Keeanu Reeves. He always acts like he is stoned in his films (except in SPEED, his only greatest acomplishment). I would have also asked for more character development, but when THE MATRIX is all about the effects and not the story then expecting to know our characters a bit more is not gona happen.

Maybe I need to watch THE MATRIX over again, but in the meantime I don't see what is so special about it. Maybe for groundbreaking visuals, but thats the same with STAR WARS and I am definately not a fan of that trilogy either. I really ask for too much when it comes to being entertained, but why not? It wouldn't have killed the writers and the director to stop shooting for a day or two and work on the script problems.

So I don't like THE MATRIX. Big deal. Like I say to those who are in shock that I don't like BRAVEHEART, the end of the world is not coming if I don't like a certain film.

[Chadzilla]

Lee wrote:
>
> Sixth Sense-"I see dead people." Yeah great, now do something with it!
>

Uh, he did...at the little girl's funeral, then with his mom, and finally with Willis's character.  As a character oriented drama it was a damn fine little movie, but what were you expecting?  The kid's eyeballs to glow and shoot out fireballs?  Rotating heads?  Dozens of far cheesier (not too mention badly written) schlock 'thrillers' are jammed with the stuff and not one of those elements would have improved on the actual story nor made it more interesting, just cheap and laughable.

[Pete B6K]

Seven:

Good but no way as good as everyone makes out.

Blade Runner:

I'm gonna get some angry people for suggesting this one, but I found it to be a very slow, and therefore dull film. Good ideas and plot, but it didnt keep me interested.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (aka Sorcerer's) Stone:

Dunno how it was received in the US but in Britain it was supposedly great fun for all ages, but I couldnt see anyone older than 12 really enjoying it.

I'd also agree with 'Shrek' and 'The Sixth Sense'.

[Brock]

I finally saw "Charade" recently, and I have to say it was every bit as good as it's been built up to be.  A true classic.  Usually something that hyped disappoints, but I loved that movie a whole bunch.  As far as hot retro chicks go, Audrey Hepburn now fills my #2 slot, just below Patty Duke.

[Private Joker]

Silence of the Lambs was very good, and deserved most everything it got, but it did leave me a little dissapointed, I was expecting a masterpiece, which it is not.  I think Se7en was a better movie by far.

[Vermin Boy]

Forrest Gump. I dunno, it just didn't do much for me. Pulp Fiction should've won that year.

I liked the Matrix, but it was nowhere near as mind-blowing and "deep" as everyone made it out to be. At its heart, it's just a somewhat goofy sci-fi/kung-fu flick with a nifty premise and Gap commercial technology. Ditto Shrek; I liked it, but most of its "revolutionary" humor had been done before in Animaniacs and other shows.

And I wear as a badge of honor that I've never seen, and have no plans to see, Titanic.

[systemcr4sh]

I never saw Cast away and My goal is never to see it. And to take any actions that I need to in order to get out of seeing it

[Lee]

Here's what I mean. In Stir Of Echos, Kevin Bacon was seeing dead people(or dead girl I guess is how I should put it.). But there was a point to her showing up. It was about solving the mystery. Sixth Sense doesn't have that! The dead people just show up and we're supposed to care! Why the HELL do people like this movie?! It's boring and goes abosolutely NOWHERE!!!!!

[Lee]

More overrated movies:
Cast Away-BORING! That and Helen Hunt is in it.
Pulp Fiction-makes nosense and just plods along forever!
Fight Club-Cool flick but it didn't re-invent the wheel as so many think.
LOTR-Except for the last twenty minutes this was a bore.

[Chadzilla]

Ironically both Stir of Echoes and The Sixth Sense covered the same ground.  Both dealt with characters that communicated with the dead and helped the troubled souls find closure.  The primary difference was that Bacon's character had a latent talent that was awakened (notice how 'wasted' he feels about his life prior to the hypnosis) and that he has unknowingly passed onto his son.  That he will continue to contact dead people is inferred by the sounds of voices his son here in the closing moment of the movie.

The character in Sixth Sense has similiar struggle in that he has a power that he does not want and fears using.  The irony that both Willis and the boy help each other toward a necessary goal is what drives the plot, not the genre elements that it only brushed upon (unlike Stir of Echoes).

I'm not surprised that most genre fans would prefer Stir of Echoes (which is a GREAT little movie) because it is more firmly rooted in the genre.  The Sixth Sense is not.  It is a mainstream drama (NOT a horror movie) with only one or two truly unnerving scenes, but mostly it is a character driven story, the plot revolving around the surrogate father/son relationship that develops between the doctor and the boy.  The movie is clearly NOT without a point, but it is a dramatic one and not a genre one...some examples...

1) In the opening sequence Willis laments not having children of his own, that he has neglected his wife and put off having children of his own for personal goals..something his wife denies, but which he does not believe.  It is that sense of failure that keeps him hanging around.

2) No mention is ever made about the boy's absent father, but the need for a guiding male figure for him to relate to is made clear (note his first appearance at the boys home, he is sitting across from the boy's mother, much in the way a mother and father would be waiting for an errant child to arrive home - the mother then, after having her say, gets up and leaves the room so the 'father' can talk to the boy man to man - that she is actually unaware of Willis's character is called irony - also note that later Willis is sitting next to her when the emergency room doctor accuses her of child abuse, again the visual mother/father symbol is sent again and, again, Willis as a 'man to man' talk with the boy)...that the boy later helps his own mother with a family problem (revolving around a MATERNAL dispute) also backs that up.  His embracing of his calling is symbolic of the transition from childhood to manhood.

3) Consider the funeral scene where the boy reveals the Munchausen by proxy actions of the mother to the clueless father (this also shores up the film's underlying message that a father is needed to be more active in the family - also note that the problem there was between a mother and a daughter)

4) The boy has become a man and the doctor is made to understand that his life has not been wasted, that he was a surrogate father to many and that his wife HAD understood that loved him all the more for it.  THAT was the point of the movie, a dramatic one, not a genre based one (i.e. the solving a murder).  So I dispute the statemet that movie went 'nowhere'...as far as finding it boring, like I said...the movie was a supernaturally themed drama, not a genre movie in and of itself, so those expecting a thrill ride type of experience would be disappointed.  I loved the movie, but I do hesitate in praising it for more than it is - but I did think that the Oscar nominations were deserved.

While I'm here let me add Forrest Gump to the overrated stack, I hated the movie did not see why so many people loved a movie that said, in no uncertain terms, that to be truly successful in America you had to be a moderately talented, status quo idiot.  Hard work and using your brain has at all nothing to do with.  The meek won't inherit America, the morons will!

[Drezzy]

27 replies and no mention of TRAFFIC...

I couldn't stand that f**king movie. I saw the first 45 minutes of it, and then fell asleep. And the sad part is that I wasn't even tired.
It didn't really open up any eyes to the world of narcotics, and if it did, the owner of those eyes was a very sheltered human being.

Add in BLOW and THE X-FILES to overrated pieces of crap...

[Susan]

The Sixth Sense revived a sort of horror/chiller genre long lost since Freddy Krueger I guess.

I liked "Stir of Echoes" better. WHY? Because it was unformulated. It put CLICHE movie moments right out there in front of you and intentionally avoided them. He reaches under the bed....any other movie woulda had something grab him or appear when he gets up. But nothing, so first it got all those cliches out of the way so that it could "Grab" you at truly unexpected moments. (like when he leans back on the couch..yikes) I like that.

Oh, "The English Patient". Need i say more