bad movies Terrible movie thread

[hkmaly 490]

On 05/26/2016 at 9:02 AM, ijuin said:

On 05/25/2016 at 1:53 AM, hkmaly said:

The list is pretty long and may not be all radioactive. For example, latinum can't be replicated (that's sort of the point) and I don't think it's radioactive.

 

I thought that the thing with Latinum wasn't that it couldn't be replicated at all, but rather that any person with an ordinary tricorder could distinguish the difference between replicated Latinum and the natural stuff. In other words, counterfeits are easy to detect.

Well, It can't be replicated.

On 05/28/2016 at 11:03 PM, The Old Hack said:

On 05/28/2016 at 9:01 PM, CritterKeeper said:

Based on his reputation and esteem, I know Sean Connery must have been in good movies at some point in his career....

He has.

Question is if he was in any other good movies than the Bond ones.

 

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

I present to you The Intern. Robert De Niro should have never taken on this steaming pile of Mary Sue. He has no character arc, and neither Mrs. Prof nor myself gave a flying carp about the characters who played in his shadow.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

Separately, I offer Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Avant garde meets multiple personality disorder meets God knows what. In Mrs. Prof's and my own opinion, it was pretentious to the extreme and offered another group of people who didn't really engage the viewer. No clue how it deserved any Oscar nominations.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

On 29 May 2016 at 3:35 AM, CritterKeeper said:

So Bad It's Good is better than what he's put out lately....Who would have thought they could so thorougly ruin such a good graphic novel as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

LXG was utter garbage. Somehow the movie makers managed to take everything good from the comic and replace it with complete codswallop. It was agonising to watch.

[Scotty 1,061]

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. There wasn't really anything about it that felt like a Final Fantasy product, sure there were references, one of the characters was named Cid, but the whole thing felt off, the "villain" wasn't really a villain, just a misguided fool that was too stubborn to listen to reason, but I couldn't feeling any sympathy for. And it didn't feel right to have it set on Earth using real locations and such. Final Fantasy was always about fantasy worlds and creatures an magic, and that just wasn't in this.

[Don Edwards 548]

2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

LXG was utter garbage. Somehow the movie makers managed to take everything good from the comic and replace it with complete codswallop. It was agonising to watch.

I thought it was okay but not great.

Perhaps that's because I never read the comic.

[Scotty 1,061]

That's the thing about movies that are adapted from books or games, or even movies spun off TV shows. The people that have read, played or watched the source material will have higher expectations for what the movie will be like. People who never had any prior experience with the lore and setting would just see it at face value and whether it's good of bad for them depends on are the story and characters interesting, is there the right amounts of action, romance, drama or comedy, but for those that know the source material, they're more likely to pick through all the details, did they get the setting right, do the actors portray the characters well, did they stay faithful to the source, or change anything because they thought it'd look better on screen.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

That's the thing about movies that are adapted from books or games, or even movies spun off TV shows. The people that have read, played or watched the source material will have higher expectations for what the movie will be like. 

I had expectations of it not being UTTER GARBAGE that totally ignored the original characters and their relationships and more resembled an F-level superhero movie than a steampunk masterpiece that stayed true to the spirit of Jules Verne, Stoker and Rider Haggard. In the original, Mina was an amazing (normal) woman who shaped the entire team around her force of personality and iron will. In the movie, she was utterly bland and had been turned into a bollocking VAMPIRE to give her superpowers she did not need in the comic just to justify her presence. Moriarty -- yes, that Moriarty -- had just one defining trait: frantically fleeing as soon as the 'heroes' discovered his hiding place. This happened at least four times. I could eat the waste basket of a paper shredder and PUKE a better screenplay.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

On 5/28/2016 at 1:01 PM, CritterKeeper said:

Based on his reputation and esteem, I know Sean Connery must have been in good movies at some point in his career....

Bond, James Bond. Then there's Indianna Jones father, the dragon from Dragonheart, and he was in Hunt for Red October, and.... uh...

I got nothing else.

Can't think of any good roles I've seen him in other than those.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

On 6/1/2016 at 5:58 PM, Scotty said:

That's the thing about movies that are adapted from books or games, or even movies spun off TV shows. The people that have read, played or watched the source material will have higher expectations for what the movie will be like. People who never had any prior experience with the lore and setting would just see it at face value and whether it's good of bad for them depends on are the story and characters interesting, is there the right amounts of action, romance, drama or comedy, but for those that know the source material, they're more likely to pick through all the details, did they get the setting right, do the actors portray the characters well, did they stay faithful to the source, or change anything because they thought it'd look better on screen.

Speaking of adaptations that fail, WATCHMEN. a movie with a plot so convoluted I'm pretty sure only a fan could ever enjoy it, I know i was lost for half the thing. except it apparently got that convoluted due to over-condensing and rewriting the source material in a way that pissed off existing fans, making it a movie made for nobody. wonderful job there, Hollywood.

[Tobyc 22]

On 03/06/2016 at 2:36 PM, InfiniteRemnant said:

Bond, James Bond. Then there's Indianna Jones father, the dragon from Dragonheart, and he was in Hunt for Red October, and.... uh...

I got nothing else.

Can't think of any good roles I've seen him in other than those.

Murder on the Orient Express comes to mind (though I preferred the later David Suchet version, including David Morrissey's take on Connery's character). Also The Untouchables, The Rock, The Man Who Would Be King, the first Highlander and maybe Marnie.

On 03/06/2016 at 3:16 PM, InfiniteRemnant said:

Speaking of adaptations that fail, WATCHMEN. a movie with a plot so convoluted I'm pretty sure only a fan could ever enjoy it, I know i was lost for half the thing. except it apparently got that convoluted due to over-condensing and rewriting the source material in a way that pissed off existing fans, making it a movie made for nobody. wonderful job there, Hollywood.

That's stretching it, since there're plenty of fans of the book, myself included, who thought it was as good an adaptation as could be expected. And I say this as someone who hadn't finished the comic at the time I watched the movie.

 

Last movie I watched that wasn't merely disappointing but almost irredeemably crap, The Wicker Tree. Roughly as inept as Neil LaBute's Wicker Man and nowhere near as entertaining, and this is despite coming from the director of the original Wicker Man.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

8 hours ago, Tobyc said:

Last movie I watched that wasn't merely disappointing but almost irredeemably crap, The Wicker Tree. Roughly as inept as Neil LaBute's Wicker Man and nowhere near as entertaining, and this is despite coming from the director of the original Wicker Man.

Isn't the only reason Wicker Man even has fans due to falling into "so bad it's good" territory? What'd they do, fix it just enough to make it just regular bad?

[Tom Sewell 268]

On 5/28/2016 at 2:03 PM, The Old Hack said:

I submit to you, in the category of So Bad It's Good, Conan the Destroyer.

Yes, totally schlock, with rubber monsters worthy of an Ed Wood production. A guilty pleasure of mine, also.

[mlooney 3,417]

In the so bad it's horrid "Surf Nazi Must Die"

 

[Scotty 1,061]

Do the Sharknado movies fall into the "so bad it's good" category, because the premise is really the only reason I refuse to watch them and why is there a freaking 4th one now?!?

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

Do the Sharknado movies fall into the "so bad it's good" category, because the premise is really the only reason I refuse to watch them and why is there a freaking 4th one now?!?

Well, they are kind of odd because they are very deliberately made to be bad. I personally don't care much for the sheer stupidity level either, but the rifftrax version made by the MST3K crew is really quite entertaining.

[Scotty 1,061]

1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:

Well, they are kind of odd because they are very deliberately made to be bad. I personally don't care much for the sheer stupidity level either, but the rifftrax version made by the MST3K crew is really quite entertaining.

To me, it seems like it's cheating if rifftrax uses a movie that was deliberately made to be bad, because movies like sharknado sound like they riff on themselves already, so having rifftrax do it is redundant.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

6 minutes ago, Scotty said:

To me, it seems like it's cheating if rifftrax uses a movie that was deliberately made to be bad, because movies like sharknado sound like they riff on themselves already, so having rifftrax do it is redundant.

You are not alone in that attitude. And to be fair, I think you have a point. But I still think the result is entertaining so I like the rifftrax anyway. I guess I am not averse to the occasional low blow when it comes to commentary.

[Tobyc 22]

On 13/06/2016 at 7:54 AM, InfiniteRemnant said:

Isn't the only reason Wicker Man even has fans due to falling into "so bad it's good" territory? What'd they do, fix it just enough to make it just regular bad?

The original Wicker Man (1973, directed by Robin Hardy, written by Anthony Shaffer, starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee) is a legitimate classic and one of my favourite horror films of all time. The 2006 Nicolas Cage version is a So Bad it's Good mess that mostly repeats the plot of the original scene-for-scene without understanding why any of it worked, replacing a slow burning mystery accompanied by ideological conflict, with a succession of jump scares and no such conflict.

The Wicker Tree, though, is a 2011 spiritual sequel by Robin Hardy. It has the seeds of a good idea (see http://1000misspenthours.com/reviews/reviewsn-z/wickertree.htm for details), but it's shockingly badly acted and directed, again without being entertaining.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Not too long ago, I saw this film with an audience.

There was one loud person making rude comments about how it was so "cliché and predictable".  The movie had nothing "original" at all, according to the freelance in-house critic.

This film was from 1929.  The reason it seems cliché now is because every comedy director, writer, and actor for the last 90 years has been imitating Laurel & Hardy.

The move itself is not terrible.  It is actually a classic.  But it does show how art can seem so different to different people.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

This film was from 1929.  The reason it seems cliché now is because every comedy director, writer, and actor for the last 90 years has been imitating Laurel & Hardy.
 

Kind of reminds me of when some Rowling fans shredded Sir Terry Pratchett for Unseen University, which he had clearly ripped off from Hogwarts.

[Tom Sewell 268]

7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Kind of reminds me of when some Rowling fans shredded Sir Terry Pratchett for Unseen University, which he had clearly ripped off from Hogwarts.

You may be ironic here; the Discworld series started before the Harry Potter series. And before both of them, Ursula K. Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea featured a magic academy.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

2 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

You may be ironic here; the Discworld series started before the Harry Potter series. And before both of them, Ursula K. Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea featured a magic academy.

I was indeed being ironic. It is not an uncommon fan event to accuse material older than that they are fans of of ripping off the work of their idol. Also, it is worth remembering that when Sir Terry created the Discworld, he was basing his first book solidly on satire of previous popular work.

[ijuin 572]

TV Tropes calls this effect "Seinfeld is Unfunny". Basically, it's when something becomes imitated so much that people who see enough of the imitations become jaded and start to see the original as just another imitation.

[Tom Sewell 268]

On 5/29/2016 at 5:44 PM, hkmaly said:

Question is if he was in any other good movies than the Bond ones.

Yes, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

"We named the dog Indiana!"

What's indisputable is that Connery is the only Bond who was a real-life badass. Remember the scene in L.A. Confidential when Russell Crowe calls a hood's date a hooker made up to look like Kim Novak and she turns out to actually be Kim Novak? The hood was supposed to be Johnny Stompanato, and he was also very real and very much Kim Novak's boyfriend, despite studio attempts to change that. He was definitely a Made Man, bodyguard to Micky Cohen, who was running the LA rackets until he was busted for income tax invasion. Connery made a movie with Kim Novak in England and Stompanato went to England and got in Connery's face on the set. Connery flattened Stompanato.

Not too much later, Kim Novak's daughter stabbed Stompanato to death. There was going to be a big movie built around that incident some years ago, but it died in pre-production. The working title was Stompanato.