Films that are well boring

[Custard]

So I'm at work at the moment, and the residents are watching The Tourist (I work in a small care home). Some glammy balls, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.

My word. It's genuinely one of the most boring, uneventful snoozefests I've ever had to sit through.

It's about two con artists or something. Being followed by some other bad people or something.

The two leads have no chemistry, and nothing is happening. They just had a kiss, after 45 mins of asexual gropes at flirting, and it cut to Depp still sleeping on the sofa.

Anyway, it's boring, and I hate it.

Who else has sat through a boring bloody film, then?

BTW, The Tourist is on Film4 if you hate yourself with particular venom tonight

[Glebe]

I recall watching Conan the Barbarian at a mate's house some years ago, and surprised at how slow and cumbersome it was. Hmmm. There's gotta be more examples...

[lazarou]

Mamoru Oshii's Assault Girls did that for me. Barely 70 minutes long and it still feels like it goes on forever. Its predecessor Avalon could be glacial at times, but that was a much better film on every level, this just felt like the dullest game of Lost Planet 2 ever recorded, where everyone speaks in painful phonetic english while nothing really happens in a desert. Formidably boring.

[madhair60]

Effi Briest

[Nuclear Optimism]

The Hyman Roth bits of The Godfather Part II.

[Bad Ambassador]

Werner Herzog's 70-minute visual poem Fata Morgana was so insanely tedious that I started to forget a time when I wasn't watching it.

[Johnny Townmouse]

I'm not saying this to make a point, but I found The Avengers horrifically boring.

[Noodle Lizard]

In recent memory, I was bored senseless after an hour or so of Reality Bites.  It's just this meandering, repetitive film, clearly trying to be some generation-defining iconic piece.  I stuck it out to the end, but what the fuck was that? 

[grassbath]

The Deer Hunter. I know it's accepted that you have to make your way through the long, boring first act and it picks up after that, but I was bored all the way through. The pacing was atrocious.

Little Otik, the Jan Svankmejer one, started off tremendously but after a certain point just lost steam and droned along very repetitively with no development at all. The film's outcome was revealed far too early, so there was nothing of real interest for it to build to.

[Mini]

The Deer Hunter. I know it's accepted that you have to make your way through the long, boring first act and it picks up after that, but I was bored all the way through. The pacing was atrocious.

You do find yourself waiting for the russian roulette scenes, which are a pretty easy way to create tension anyway.

I found The Thin Red Line very dull, I know it's Terrence Malick and he's a genius or whatever but after 10 minutes you go "juxtaposing beauty with the horror of war, I get it" and after 3 hours you're asleep.

[Noodle Lizard]

I found The Thin Red Line very dull, I know it's Terrence Malick and he's a genius or whatever but after 10 minutes you go "juxtaposing beauty with the horror of war, I get it" and after 3 hours you're asleep.

You just didn't ... get it ... somewhat ...

Malick.  Socrates.

[Famous Mortimer]

In recent memory, I was bored senseless after an hour or so of Reality Bites.  It's just this meandering, repetitive film, clearly trying to be some generation-defining iconic piece.  I stuck it out to the end, but what the fuck was that? 

For me, it was the way Stiller the director gave Stiller the actor the worst part in it, the square who just doesn't get yoof culture like that beautiful star-being Ethan Hawke.

Dead Snow
I don't care how good the last half of it may be, when it gets to 45 minutes and no fucking Nazi zombies have turned up, I lost the will to carry on.

[lazarou]

Nazi Zombies have some serious previous with that sort of thing. Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake is probably the worst offender, a bunch of meandering nonsense even by his standards. It delivers some action a lot sooner, but after that brief blip it's tough going.

[Noodle Lizard]

For me, it was the way Stiller the director gave Stiller the actor the worst part in it, the square who just doesn't get yoof culture like that beautiful star-being Ethan Hawke.

I'll admit that the scene where Ethan Hawke stands on stage with his faux-grunge band singing a PG-13 hate song whilst staring intensely at Winona Ryder in the audience did make me laugh out loud.  It's amazing for a movie to have dated badly before it was even released.

[Catalogue Trousers]

I'm not saying this to make a point, but I found The Avengers horrifically boring.

Fiennes, Thurman and Connery, or the Marvel fart, Johnny?

[olliebean]

I feel asleep for half an hour during Seven Years In Tibet, and when I woke up I didn't seem to have missed anything.

[Noodle Lizard]

It wouldn't be a boring movies thread without mention of Last Days, but I do sort of like it.  In the same kind of way that I like listening to 8 hour clips of train noises to help me sleep.

[thecuriousorange]

The very long A Very Long Engagement.

I wasn't engaged for very long!

Seriously though it is shit.

[Phil_A]

Leatherheads. You know how periodically someone thinks it would be a good idea to try and revive 1930's-style screwball comedies? Well, this was George Clooney's attempt. And by God, is it ever boring. Charitably, you could say it was Clooney paying homage to the Coen Brothers, but without the Coens obsessive attention to detail, pretty much every gag falls completely flat. It's not helped by the chemistry-free pairing of Clooney and Rene Zellwegger as the two leads - Hepburn & Tracy they ain't. A massive disappointment following on from "Goodnight and Good Luck".

[phantom_power]

It wouldn't be a boring movies thread without mention of Last Days, but I do sort of like it.  In the same kind of way that I like listening to 8 hour clips of train noises to help me sleep.

I really enjoyed Gerry, but can't imagine sitting through it again

[the psyche intangible]

Heat left me cold. Actually I haven't seen it all which is why it stinks.

[Noodle Lizard]

Actually, I'm just gonna say it:  2001: A Space Odyssey.

Now, I really, really like it.  Very good movie.  But I've seen it twice the whole way through and that was more than enough for me, thank you.  The original Solaris likewise just had me sitting there thinking "I know it's good, it's doing everything right, but I'd rather be doing something else".  Much like it's possible for bad movies to be entertaining, it's equally possible for good movies not to be.

[the psyche intangible]

Actually, I'm just gonna say it:  2001: A Space Odyssey.

I saw it shown from It's original film in, well 2001 and it was not boring for me. I remember being self conscious of my stomach rumblings at the incredibly long quiet moments.

[Jim_MacLaine]

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Extremely tedious, dislikeable characters. Bored. 15 minutes. OFF.

[Queneau]

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Extremely tedious, dislikeable characters. Bored. 15 minutes. OFF.

What? Not a chance. Gondry is such a wonderfully exciting and playful director that even if I wasn't interested in the story (which, with this film I really really am, by the way) there'd be something to enjoy.

2001, is also a stunner. Like porno for the eyes.

Gerry was a tedious horrible mess though.

[Queneau]

Like porno for the eyes.

Sorry, I'm not sure what that even means.

[Bored of Canada]

I watched Tsai Ming-Liang's "What Time Is It There?" yesterday. It had moments that were warm, unique, poetic and compelling, but overall, it was too set in it's own style and became mundane. I feel scenes told entirely in long ten minute takes from a single set-up with no-movements can be incredibly effective, but only when you juxtapose them with other things. You need ebbs and flows of action and passivity. This one has every single scene like that, and they all feel like they're ten minutes each, and nothing really happens half the time. Really tested my patience and overall, didn't have enough substance enough for me, personally, to connect with.

Christ. It was dull at times.
Don't you dare say I just didn't get it. Trust me. I got it.
But I feel I could have cut that film myself and would have been able to tell the exact same thing the director was trying to get across with three quarters of those scenes shortened.

[the psyche intangible]

Sorry, I'm not sure what that even means.

You fucked a slut called Iris.

[Bored of Canada]

Also Synecdoche New York.
Christ. That flippin' film.
Uncompelling, soulless, pretentious and worst of all, bloody boring.

I don't like it one bit. Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze are both filmmmakers who inject so much soul into their productions. Definitely needed someone like that other than actually Charlie Kaufman himself. Just felt incredibly cold and more of a concept than a film. Possibly not even fully taking advantage of the medium of film for it.
I've not seen it since it first came out, so perhaps I'm misremembering that side of it, so maybe that final criticism isn't fair. But I stand by needing a soulful director comment. 

[Phil_A]

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Extremely tedious, dislikeable characters. Bored. 15 minutes. OFF.

Fifteen minutes is just about the length of the pre-credits sequence, so if you turned off after that you basically missed the entire point of the film.

Also Synecdoche New York.
Christ. That flippin' film.
Uncompelling, soulless, pretentious and worst of all, bloody boring.

I don't like it one bit. Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze are both filmmmakers who inject so much soul into their productions. Definitely needed someone like that other than actually Charlie Kaufman himself. Just felt incredibly cold and more of a concept than a film. Possibly not even fully taking advantage of the medium of film for it.
I've not seen it since it first came out, so perhaps I'm misremembering that side of it, so maybe that final criticism isn't fair. But I stand by needing a soulful director comment. 

I was quite surprised reading up on old reviews that lots of critics at the time seemed to find Synechdoche a cold, unengaging experience, which seems really baffling to me. I still think it's one of the best films of the last ten years, and probably the last thing I'd ever describe as "soulless".