Films which you just cannot like, even though you think you should.

[VegaLA]

Solaris.

When I was asked what I thought of it from a work colleague I responded "Dull" and was promptly told 'I did not get it', which immediatly got my back up. No, I did not get it, I did not get what was so cunting great about watching George Cunting clooney faff about on a spaceship on acid. It was complete Toss.

Fuck Steven SodBug, he's got nothing on Atom Egoyan. At least Atom he can make a smart film that is both entertaining and interesting.

*Huff*

[Serge]

It's A Wonderful Life
No it's fucking not. I saw this at a cinema a couple of years ago when they played it as part of some kind of 'classics' season, near Christmas. I was bored the whole angel crap, and totally unmoved by how things developed. The central character should have jumped off the bridge at the beginning.

Just when I was beginning to think I was the only one! I've never managed to make it all the way through the film, and unless there's a twist at the end where James Stewart accidentally falls off the bridge and breaks his back after having decided to live, I don't think I ever will.

I fucking absolutely loathe 'Amelie', but I don't feel I should like it, so probably shouldn't repeat all my previous rants about it in this thread.

[Neomod]

In Bruges

Incredulous at all the praise it gets. Shit performances and a shit film. Farrell is his usual appalling self whilst Fines has just stepped out of an episode of Only Fools and Horses.[nb]I really wanted to like it as I loved McDonagh's 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' and 'The Lieutenant of Inishmore' and Brendan Gleeson is usually great.[/nb]

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I can't think of another guy who could've done the role any better, and I fucking hate Colin Farrell.

And I must've missed that episode of Only Fools And Horses.

[Tiny Poster]

I thought Inception was a decent enough action film, but as PB says, there were no characters, and the the insistence in the meeja that it was really complex and deep wasn't really borne out by the the fact that everything that happens in the film is neatly and handily explained throughout.

I did find this reading (from an AV Club Inventory) to be quite interesting, but it doesn't make the film any better:

There's a lot going on in Inception, including a running commentary on how movies work. Take the scene in which Leonardo DiCaprio walks Ellen Page through the way dream worlds get constructed, and how at the slightest hint of unbelievability, the dreamers turn on their makers. As with movies, the illusion must be thorough or run the risk of falling apart. Or look at the way the film's dreams start to align with film genres, including a trip into the deepest part of the psyche, which resembles the compound of a Bond villain. Or take the fate of Cillian Murphy's character, who's slowly manipulated into making a moving breakthrough about his relationship with his father, one that leaves him sobbing and looking at his life differently than he had before. But really, it's just a story he's been told. He sees himself in it, but it's just as external as the one writer-director Christopher Nolan is telling us as we watch his film.

[Jemble Fred]

I really shouldn't have read any of these posts about Inception. Anyway, it's scrubbed off the To See list, I think, if I end up watching it by accident or for social reasons, so be it.

Ah well it was only on my To See list because the whole rest of the world had seen it and I felt left out. I fucking hate Nolan's schtick.

[ThickAndCreamy]

I enjoyed Inception, but as a high quality action film, as it's little more than that. It's not particularly complex, and it's as if someone is holding your hand the whole way through but it's still very enjoyable, but certainly nothing extraordinary.

Nolan knows how to make stylish films, with lots of action accompanied by overblown storytelling and music. He just doesn't make anything particularly spellbinding or intelligent, instead just taking a few basic moral issues and forgetting any sense of ambiguity when promoting them.

Despite loving all Pixar movies, Toy Story 3 did very little for me this year. Up and Wall-E are probably my favourite animated films of all time but Toy Story just felt a bit... empty somehow. I just generally don't like the franchise, much preferring they'd make an original film again with the beauty of Up or the depth of Wall-E.

[Dark Sky]

I had so many long winded arguments with people about how I didn't want to go and see Inception that in the end I was embarrassed into going to see it.  And I quite enjoyed it!  It's nothing special, though, and anyone who thinks it is in an idiot who should watch more films.

(And Wall-E just makes me sad.  Such an amazing first half, completely let down by the second. Conversely, I was dragged to Toy Story 3 knowing I was going to hate it, as I did not get on with the first two films at all, and ended up thinking it was absolutely superb.)

Speaking of idiots who don't appreciate things properly...

I've tried to like Akira Kurosawa but I can't.  I find his direction completely uncinematic, with lousy, amateurish misé en scene.  I don't understand why he's known as being such an astoundingly visual director when I don't think he can frame a single shot properly, and then does camera moves which look like they were filmed by someone on their summer holidays to Tenerife.  I don't get him, and I feel like a stupid idiot who doesn't deserve to consider himself a film fan for not getting him.  Someone help me!!!

[Queneau]

Wall-E just makes me sad.  Such an amazing first half, completely let down by the second

Totally agree with that. What a let down after such a promising begin that is so well put together.

I've never liked the Toy Story films either. That's why I haven't seen the third.

[Famous Mortimer]

It's A Wonderful Life
No it's fucking not. I saw this at a cinema a couple of years ago when they played it as part of some kind of 'classics' season, near Christmas. I was bored the whole angel crap, and totally unmoved by how things developed. The central character should have jumped off the bridge at the beginning.

It's as perfect a "Christmas" film as humans will ever make. It's so good that to not cry at the end when George is rushing down the street wishing everyone a merry Christmas (in fact, I'm welling up now just thinking about it) is a sure sign of some sort of human empathy-deficiency.

[Vitalstatistix]

I agree with Shoulders re Batman.

Burton's films are artfully strange, funny and warm.

Nolan's are cold, overblown and pretentious.

To be fair to Nolan, his films are interesting to watch, if a little tiring and emotionless.


I think I should like Pixar films more than I do. I mean, they're pretty good but apart from Toy Story 1 and The Incredibles, I'm yet to be convinced the studio's as great as everyone else makes out....

[Famous Mortimer]

To be fair to Nolan, his films are ...emotionless.

I've heard this criticism hundreds of times about Nolan, and I've never understood where it comes from. He's not got as much emotional wank in his films as some directors, true, but to say his films are emotionless or cold seems to me, in most instances of its use, to be parroting something that's been said before by someone authoritative (not saying that's the case here, of course).

I think his films are rich and usually beautiful and fascinating. How could anyone describe "Memento" as emotionless?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

If people find Inception thought provoking on some level outside of their usual analysis of films then good for it, I say. Any film that leaves you with a taste of its themes and ideas and has you thinking about it afterwards while at the time entertaining and gripping you fully is high quality, and I think the majority of people think that about Inception- very well made, great fun and thought-provoking. Not particularly clever or complicated though.

The weak point of the film is how the characters just aren't explored richly enough. There's a lot of plot set up for DOM COBB and a lot of backstory about his relationship, but I never really felt like I knew who he was, what sort of person he was, what his values were. This extends to other Nolan ventures in my opinion.

[VegaLA]

A conversation I had last night turned me back here.
The Harry Potter films. I love Dark movies, 'Empire strikes back', 'Indianna Jones and the Temple of Doom' is my fave of the three, er, four Indy movies so when I was told by a HP fan that the films would get darker as they run through the books I was looking frowards to the last few films. I had enjoyed the first 3 or 4 films oddly enough, I found them very entertaining, but after the 4TH they seemd to get dull and boring. 6 was painfull to sit through but was reassured that the final two films would be epic as there is so much going on, and so I was talked into going to the Cinema to see it.
I found it to be more of a borefest than the 6TH outting.

Sad thing is I will almost certainly be forced to view the second part of 'Deathly Hallows' next Summer. My only consolation is that I get to moan about the experience here!

So is it because i've not read the books why I could not care less about HP & Co? Like I say the first 3 were very entertaining, so am I a child stuck in a Mans (very manly I hasten to add) body or are these films just complete shite?

[Vitalstatistix]

to say his films are emotionless or cold seems to me, in most instances of its use, to be parroting something that's been said before by someone authoritative (not saying that's the case here, of course).

I think his films are rich and usually beautiful and fascinating. How could anyone describe "Memento" as emotionless?

Well this is probably an argument that ran for many pages in the Inception thread, so I'll just say that his films don't do much for me. When I say I find his films emotionless it is a genuine personal reaction, although I do find Memento superior in this regard.


Vega - after having had to sit through all the Potter films for the first time in the space of a week, I think they vary wildly in terms of quality.

1&2 are very childlike, charming but annoying. 3 is excellent, 4 is terrible, 5 is ok, 6 and 7 are well made but seriously lag in places, especially the last one. Personally I preferred the overall turn towards darkness, the whole thing is so long-winded and repetitive though. As someone who quit the books half way through the first one so can only judge on the films, it seems Rowling grabbed a formula and held tight.

Edit - oh and the amount of fucking times they're in an impossible situation and some fucking ridiculous, unexplained saviour arrives, like a fucking flying car, or some wanker goblin. Man that got my goat!

Edit 2 - I know it's Magic! It's still shit!

[Dark Sky]

I've heard this criticism hundreds of times about Nolan, and I've never understood where it comes from. He's not got as much emotional wank in his films as some directors, true, but to say his films are emotionless or cold seems to me, in most instances of its use, to be parroting something that's been said before by someone authoritative (not saying that's the case here, of course).

I think his films are rich and usually beautiful and fascinating. How could anyone describe "Memento" as emotionless?

I used to like Following and Memento, but...  God, Nolan makes emotionless, cold films devoid of humour or empathy.  And I'm not parroting anyone else, I've said this since Batman Begins six or so years ago and have the blog link to prove it!  Begins was such a disappointing, awful film, and after The Prestige I had to completely reassess Nolan.

Looking at all of Nolan's films (except The Dark Knight Does a Fart or whatever it's called 'cause I never saw it), they're all full of lonely, emotionally stunted men separated from supposed love interests and eternally trying to get back to them, or avenge them in some way. A recurring theme of Nolan's which may be partly autobiographical, I dunno. You're never shown these female characters, which leads me to suspect that Nolan has never met a woman, or else only sees them as confusing, impenetrable beings. In Nolan films the women are always distant and aloof, unpredictable, and cold. Happy times between a man and a woman are shown merely in little flashes. There's no chance for empathy because they're so emotionally stunted they're almost psychopathic. They're not real characters to us. It was fascinating in Following and Memento when it seemed like a deliberately written characteristic, but the more films he makes with the same character the more I feel he is either sourcing from a very narrow pool or - blasphemy! - perhaps isn't a particularly good writer.

Following and Memento work because they have a puzzle you piece together due to their interesting narrative style. It's almost there with Inception, and I do genuinely think it's the most interesting film he's made since Memento. And I did enjoy it, which I didn't with The Prestige or Batman Begins.

But it's still an utterly cold, unemotional film. It's annoying in its myriad of rules which seem to apparently be made up on the spur of the moment to advance the plot (something I don't think I've seen since Van Helsing...god remember that!). Modern Doctor Who is criticised for the same thing, but Doctor Who has warmth and charm and H-U-M-O-U-R and even - occasionally - characters you actually care about.

And I can't help comparing Inception to Synecdoche, New York, which is unfair because it's like comparing Transformers to The Seventh Seal or something.  But the reason the Kaufman film is a brilliant, engaging film about the nature of memory and desire and a life wasted in pursuit of something unattainable, is because Kaufman started with the characters and worked his way up.

Inception is a pretty film, and even I'd go so far to say a good film, but in its core it's just a mindless Hollywood action film with two dimensional characters in a two dimensional story which if you look at it the right way says something superficial about the way we perceive the world. But that's nothing to celebrate in my mind.

Comparing it to Synecdoche, New York is unfair because it's a David vs. Goliath battle. Never have two films so similar in theme been so terribly, terribly far apart. One of them entertained me for two and a half hours which I was very pleased about, and one grabbed hold of my heart and squeezed it in ways both pleasant and depressing. Which am I gonna think the more highly of as the decades roll by, and the Inception clones become too numerous to count?

[Santa's Boyfriend]

If people find Inception thought provoking on some level outside of their usual analysis of films then good for it, I say.

Quite so.  I do think it proved a point, that being that cinema audiences are capable of following a plot slightly more complicated than your average Die Hard movie.  There is (apparently) a genuine policy in hollywood that if the bottom 25% of any given audience won't understand something then they don't do it, on the basis that they'd be cutting out a section of their potential audience.  Inception is high concept and well made, but the main element that challenged hollywood (I think) is that it required the audience to follow 3 or 4 interlinked narratives all at the same time, which meant the audience had to work a little harder to keep up.  Yet most people did this without much trouble and it made a shitload of money.  I'm very much hoping this means hollywood will allow film-makers to do slightly more challenging and complex stories from now on, as their policy of smarter films=lower box office has been proven wrong.

[Pedro_Bear]

Hi. [nb]There were no multi-narrative interactions, or any sense that what happened at one level was going to interfere with the linearity of the mark ultimately opening the safe. The number of visible "kicks" on screen in the tedious white van chase, including the van turning over on itself, made any sense of dramatic tension regarding the premise they could accidentally wake up redundant. The activites on each level that didn't focus on DiCaprio were entirely linear, exactly the same in nature, and utterly boring because the characters were non-existent. It wasn't established why they needed to be "kicked" on any level but the plane, if the point of inception was the mark opening the safe. The whole "ooh will this supporting character make it in time?" business at each level was activity, not action with any relevance to the story.

Ellen Page did nothing for the whole film that couldn't have been done by any of the other supporting characters; everyone but DiCaprio and the mark were interchangable. The film felt, played out and looked like a computer game circa 2006.

Ahh, but that's because of the ending "reveal", and the mumbo jumbo the wife told us about in the "bad" level, isn't it? No. No it's not. The Total Recall ending did not follow from the film we had just endured for hours, it was tacked on, blatantly so. The guy is not the Auteur presumably the cocaine makes him think he is. Six more writers can't be beyond the cost of this sort of Hollywood film, the dialogue was as clunky as the characters were unmemorable, the plot was piecemeal.

Cinema tickets are not cheap these days, we deserve more, especially given the hype. Sci-fi needs good films right now, given that Spielberg and Lucas have given up.

"Generating discussion" does not a good film make in and of itself, that's marketing talk. Primer it ain't. It's not even The Matrix. Nobody was challenged by Inception beyond their patience. The same number of people left the cinema thinking about the themes the auteur wished they could have communicated as left Avatar depressed because the 3D visuals were so stunning they made their lives seem empty, i.e. one person writing the emergency press release to con punters into going to "see the film and decide yourself". Inception was on-par with The Expendables, but without the keen sense of humour, self-deprication, fun, or the sense that the characters were interacting with each other as characters.[/nb]

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Well I enjoyed Inception, but I agree there's nowt complex about it. The multiple levels are no different to any film in which a team splits up to achieve their goal. Like a heist film in which one has to knock out the alarm while the rest tunnel into a vault.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'd be very, very surprised if there's many clones of Inception in years to come. But, I suppose, if you see it as an average two-dimensional Hollywood film with two-dimensional characters then its easier to see clones.

I've not seen Synecdoche, NY as I was less than thrilled with Kaufman's other stuff as a scriptwriter (Being John Malkovich, a film more clever than interesting, engaging or particularly worthwhile; and Adaptation, a film that squanders whatever moderate goodwill it's built up with its boring ending) so I can't comment on Inception with regards to that film. Kaufman, for me, is the definition of this thread: interesting little pomo experiments that say a lot and achieve little.

Re: "emotionless", I feel it's quite important to state that coldness, confusion, unpredictability, aloofness (all words you used to criticise Nolan) are emotions. It'd be much more accurate to say that Nolan doesn't use the sort of emotions you want to see in films, and I'm not even sure that's true: like I said, Memento and The Prestige (which is a film primarily defined by the extremely strong emotions of its two stars, and neither of us have mentioned yet) just don't fit your idea of his films at all.

I had a bit more stuff to write but then I re-read your post and noticed you've compared Nolan to the Transformers film, Van Helsing and Doctor Who (oh, and claimed some film you thought was "good" was two-dimensional, mindless and superficial), so I'm guessing whatever I write is going to fall on fairly stony ground.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

Hi.

Hi! [nb]Hey lads, I think I'm in here![/nb]

[El Unicornio, mang]

In Bruges

Incredulous at all the praise it gets. Shit performances and a shit film. Farrell is his usual appalling self whilst Fines has just stepped out of an episode of Only Fools and Horses.[nb]I really wanted to like it as I loved McDonagh's 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' and 'The Lieutenant of Inishmore' and Brendan Gleeson is usually great.[/nb]

I didn't get that one either. Might want to give it a rewatch just to make sure though.

Can someone explain the point of Rat Catcher to me? It was recommnded to me by a few people but I found it depressing, tedious, at times unintelligable and just pointless. There was one nice shot where he climbs through the window but otherwise it was just grim nonsense.

[Pedro_Bear]

I'm going to make a film called Neither Lesbians In A Relationship Die, it's going to revolutionise cinema as we know it.

What an unexpected, never seen on screen before twist, eh? I put it in the title to "generate discussion", and con people into "see the film and decide yourself". And because it's got lesbian characters in it, people will watch it anyway.

It's going to be two and a half hours of Sasha Grey and Gigi Rivera watching K-ON!! in their pajamas, and occasionally getting up to make more tea. At some point they pull a duvet over themselves because it's getting a bit chilly outside. Ahh, but do you see? They're inside, with the central heating maxed-out? Geddit? Yeah? It's a shared recognition and mutual expression of caring for each other thing? At another point, the phone rings, but they just ignore it. We'll give that one to the viral marketing team for Inception to big up the mysteriousness of it.

And at the end of the film, right, neither of them die.

But, apparently, Mulholland Drive was a great film, so what do I know?

I like David Lynch films, his expressionism and dream invocation is amazing. He strips the mundane back to reveal the latent emotions we all juggle with in the day-to-day, and plays dark unapologetically for what it is, moral trespass.

So... what the fuck happend with Mulholland Drive? No, seriously, what the fuck happened with Mulholland Drive? Or did I see a different cut of the film to everyone else, victim of some sort of elaborate and extremely specific practical joke?

A mid-life crisis involving masturbatory fantasies over lipstick lesbians does not a good film make, let alone a David Lynch film. There are quite a few arty films like this, turning on a really prurient, almost hate-filled point about homosexual women. Or just offing a happy lesbian relationship for no good reason other than to have lesbians in the film it seems, V for Vendetta I'm pointing at you. And no, you didn't redeem yourself by insinutaing V was the other woman. Well, maybe. And yeah, Natalie Portman cosplaying for the paedophile was good cinema... alright, you're off the hook. Just.

[Dark Sky]

I'd be very, very surprised if there's many clones of Inception in years to come. But, I suppose, if you see it as an average two-dimensional Hollywood film with two-dimensional characters then its easier to see clones.

I'm really surprised you think the characters are more than two-dimensional props to support the plot, to be honest.

I've not seen Synecdoche, NY as I was less than thrilled with Kaufman's other stuff as a scriptwriter (Being John Malkovich, a film more clever than interesting, engaging or particularly worthwhile; and Adaptation, a film that squanders whatever moderate goodwill it's built up with its boring ending) so I can't comment on Inception with regards to that film. Kaufman, for me, is the definition of this thread: interesting little pomo experiments that say a lot and achieve little.

I feel your reaction here is a knee-jerk one, using my criticism against something I've said I like, but in actuality I do agree with you to an extent re: Malkovich and Adaptation (though what's the "boring" ending to Adaptation?).  I always liked them for their cleverness, but never loved them.  (Though I would argue that the characters in them are a hundred times more interesting, original, and memorable than any of the characters in Inception!)  Eternal Sunshine, however, blowed me away by its depiction of the nature of relationships which I found very moving, and Synecdoche...whilst again being stranger, and barmier than any of his previous work, just...thrilled me.  One of those rare times where after watching it I came out of the cinema and walking back through town found it looked completely different...more mystical, magical, stranger, sadder, and more joyful.  It was an amazing experience delving deep into the mindset of a middle aged man, with all his angst, neuroses, insecurities, desires, want to recapture memory and loss of identity explored through intricate surrealism.  Do watch it, even if just to see just the similarity to Inception in some of its themes :)

Re: "emotionless", I feel it's quite important to state that coldness, confusion, unpredictability, aloofness (all words you used to criticise Nolan) are emotions. It'd be much more accurate to say that Nolan doesn't use the sort of emotions you want to see in films, and I'm not even sure that's true: like I said, Memento and The Prestige (which is a film primarily defined by the extremely strong emotions of its two stars, and neither of us have mentioned yet) just don't fit your idea of his films at all.

Yes they are emotions...  But I think there may be a bit of confusion here over emotions he gives to his characters and which they experience, and emotions the audience as a viewer experiences.  The viewer may experience empathetic emotions with the characters appearing on screen, or else be deliberately made to feel the opposite (anempathetic).  In all the films I've seen by Nolan (haven't seen the Insomnia remake or Batman 2), he infuses his main characters with a cold, painful drive to achieve (or get revenge for) some kind of happiness they have lost.  They are driven to do sometimes awful, impossible things in their quests, which are often completely and utterly futile.  And in Following and Memento, this works great!  His first two films, it's interesting, plus it fits with the interesting narrative style present in both those films (despite it feeling more like a gimmick in Memento).  Yet he does the same thing in his later films and...it's become boring.  And he's become less good at it.  I think you do like the main character in Memento, or at the very least feel sorry for him and his futile quest.  You root for him, yet are appalled by the things he does.  In Batman Begins, The Prestige, and Inception, I really don't care for the (similarly driven) main characters, because as a viewer I do not appreciate what they are missing.  I am not made to feel why I should care for the characters.

Yet in Inception to an extent I would say it doesn't really matter too much...  The two dimensional nature of the character is just enough to drive the narrative.  Except I can't help thinking how much better it would be if the characters WERE better realised.  How much more moving it would be if you cared for the main character...or any of the characters.  If you really felt his loss and his yearning desire to succumb to his memories and live forever in them with his wife, yet his conflicting reluctance to do so.  Yet we aren't shown anything to make us miss her and their life together.  Just occasional flashes, and whenever she appears, she herself is cold and distant, as all woman are in Nolan films.

Which does in fact disturb me a lot...  In all his films women are simply objects of desire...not necessarily sexual, but a storytelling shorthand for supposed "love" and "happiness" now long out of reach, which the characters are striving for.  But although you get glimpses of them, they're always cold, impenetrable objects, confusing and unpredictable, darting out of reach, infuriating.  It's worrying. 

(Obviously in Inception you also have Ellen Page, wasted, as a cardboard plot driver.  She might as well not have been in the film.)

I would love it if Nolan had a female writing partner, I think it could inject some soul into his characters and complement his technically impressive direction and story plotting amazingly.

I had a bit more stuff to write but then I re-read your post and noticed you've compared Nolan to the Transformers film, Van Helsing and Doctor Who (oh, and claimed some film you thought was "good" was two-dimensional, mindless and superficial), so I'm guessing whatever I write is going to fall on fairly stony ground.

Now you just sound a bit petulant, which is a shame.  I believe there is a lot to enjoy about Inception, but I still think it could be so much better.

Really, though, I criticise it because of how much it has been overhyped.  There are cleverer, more imaginative and better written films out there than this.  I think it's a shame that a lot of people credit Inception with a level of sophistication which it doesn't have.

[Johnny Townmouse]

Once Upon a Time in America

This film has ALL the ingrediants required for me to put it in my top ten best films of all time.

Prohibition set epic tale of small hoods and criminals. Directed by Sergio Leone, music by Ennio Morricone.
Starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Joe Pesci and Tuesday Weld.

What could possibly go wrong? Well it just doesn't engross me, or even interest me. I find the pace and editing quite turgid, and the use of music and dubbing often grates. Some of the problems that can be seen in the Ireland sections of Fistful of Dynamite/Duck You Sucker really stand out in OUATIA. I don't know, I just find the pithy dialogue, questionable acting, and the use of zoom/soft focus/emotional music to be completely off-putting. People talk about Heaven's Gate being a flabby, poorly executed film, but I think it pissed all over Leone's effort.

[ThickAndCreamy]

I felt exactly the same towards it, but generally I find popular gangster films, especially with major directors like Scorsese, to be quite cold and manage to evoke so little emotion from me.

Goodfella's, Scarface, The Godfather, even to some extent City Of God don't really appeal to me very much at all. It could be that I cannot relate to them at all, or that I often find them quite predictable and cold.

[Johnny Townmouse]

I felt exactly the same towards it, but generally I find popular gangster films, especially with major directors like Scorsese, to be quite cold and manage to evoke so little emotion from me.
Goodfella's, Scarface, The Godfather, even to some extent City Of God don't really appeal to me very much at all. It could be that I cannot relate to them at all, or that I often find them quite predictable and cold.

I usually find gangster/hoodlum films to be either shite or great. I love Mean Streets but despise Gangs of New York, I love Goodfellas but hate The Untouchables, I love City of God but hate Scarface. There is something about the genre that equally repells and entices me. I think it is a genre that for me, is difficult to pull off well. In terms of British gangster films, I can't stand pretty much all of them with the exception of Brighton Rock, The Long Good Friday, Sexy Beast, and Gangster No.1. The last in that list was for me a genuinely unpleasant and ferociously violent character-study of the difference between a 'gangster' and a 'psychopath' as explored very badly in The Krays and shown with terrifying authenticity in Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas. Paul Bettany is great in it, but it got drowned out by all the shitty gangster films that came out in the last 12 years that people spunked over but now don't really give a shit about.

[Ignatius_S]

...But, apparently, Mulholland Drive was a great film, so what do I know?

I like David Lynch films, his expressionism and dream invocation is amazing. He strips the mundane back to reveal the latent emotions we all juggle with in the day-to-day, and plays dark unapologetically for what it is, moral trespass.

So... what the fuck happend with Mulholland Drive? No, seriously, what the fuck happened with Mulholland Drive? Or did I see a different cut of the film to everyone else, victim of some sort of elaborate and extremely specific practical joke?...

As a project, arguably it's a compromise - failed TV pilot adapted for film, which I think showed.

Although well-received, it did get get some high-profile criticial kicking. In terms of punters, I don't think I've really met anyone who hates it, but I can't say I've met any who truly think it's a great film.

[Ignatius_S]

For those who have mentioned Scarface, the original is worth a look for comparison – and puts George Raft's "Where did you pick up that cheap trick?" in Some Like It Hot into context.

... In terms of British gangster films, I can't stand pretty much all of them with the exception of Brighton Rock, The Long Good Friday, Sexy Beast, and Gangster No.1. The last in that list was for me a genuinely unpleasant and ferociously violent character-study of the difference between a 'gangster' and a 'psychopath' as explored very badly in The Krays and shown with terrifying authenticity in Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas. Paul Bettany is great in it, but it got drowned out by all the shitty gangster films that came out in the last 12 years that people spunked over but now don't really give a shit about.

Britain doesn't really have the same sort of tradition of gangster films as in America and I would say it's more of a recent trend.. particularly of not very good films.

They're obvious examples, but I would also put in Get Carter and Villain as good British gangster films. I don't know if Mona Lisa really counts, but I would also add that.

I very much like Gangster No.1 – Bettany was great as you say, and I thought it was well done with McDowell as the older Gangster.

[samadriel]

I felt exactly the same towards it, but generally I find popular gangster films, especially with major directors like Scorsese, to be quite cold and manage to evoke so little emotion from me.

Goodfella's, Scarface, The Godfather, even to some extent City Of God don't really appeal to me very much at all. It could be that I cannot relate to them at all, or that I often find them quite predictable and cold.

I adore The Godfather, and I'm at least entertained by Scarface, but I really don't see the big deal about Goodfellas either.  It just kinda ticks over alright.  Joe Pesci's memorable, nothing else about it has really stuck, except that the ending was a bit of a damp squib, but that can't be helped I suppose.  I find The Usual Suspects similarly unmemorable, except that, of course, the ending was dreadfully clever in that one.

I've never made it all the way through Blade Runner awake, and I don't know if I can be bothered to try again; with that gone, Alien's the only Ridley Scott film I could give a damn about.  At least he's got that, though; his brother's just a flat-out turd.  'Domino' for Christ's sake!