Despised Films You're Happy To Defend

[Paaaaul]

I'm immediately transported out of that world every time Edward Furlong appears on screen.

[Puce Moment]

'Cause you could be mine
But you're way out of line
With your bitch slap rappin'
And your cocaine tongue
You get nuthin' done
I said you could be mine

[El Unicornio, mang]

Obviously not a patch on Alien, but miles better than Alienz.

Madness. I quite like Alien 3 but it's not a patch on Alien or Aliens, which are equally as good. Terminator 2 is on par with the first one also, but they're good in different ways.

I'd like to nominate Prometheus for this. It's just good absorbing sci-fi.

[batwings]

I really like Michael Mann's Miami Vice (2006) but most people seem to dislike it. It has a great mood and style and some fantastic set pieces. It's a shame it wasn't well received as I'd have loved for more to be made.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I like that one too.

[thraxx]

Madness. I quite like Alien 3 but it's not a patch on Alien or Aliens, which are equally as good. Terminator 2 is on par with the first one also, but they're good in different ways.

I'd like to nominate Prometheus for this. It's just good absorbing sci-fi.

Prometheus is absorbing until they land on the planet, then it's impossible to remain absorbed with the fucking terrible volte face in character personalities and pure silly bits.  I don't despise that film, but I dislike it intensely for being such a chiselling kop out.

[The Boston Crab]

I think some of the visual elements and the devastating use of the failed Alien-Ripley's make this a very enjoyable edition to the franchise (as good as 3, not as good as 1 but shits all over 2):

There seems to have been a recent trend of people talking shit about Aliens, instead of acknowledging it as one of the greatest and best paced action films of all time.

[Puce Moment]

Luckily they do things like start a sentence with "I think" to avoid another drawn-out discussion about subjectivity.

The fact is that Aliens did extremely well at the box office, even better on video and DVD, and retrieved the $18.5M it cost to make in the first two weekends alone. Every cunt seemed to love it, like Titanic and Avatar and all the other shit that Cameron wet-farts out of his horrible, angry bumhole. So the naysayers are swimming against the tide.

[SavageHedgehog]

Aliens is more despised around here than Alien 3. IMO neither live up to too many repeated viewings, but Aliens I did find very entertaining the first time I saw it, Alien 3 much less so, though you can see the potential on screen. The Assembly Cut doesn't help too much IMO, as it's got useless scenes like whichever baldy it is whining about "the dragon", and some distracting placeholder music. Also, it doesn't have

Spoiler alert

the chestbuster coming out of Ripley as she falls into the lava

[close]

, which I think is the most memorable moment in the finished film.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Prometheus is absorbing until they land on the planet, then it's impossible to remain absorbed with the fucking terrible volte face in character personalities and pure silly bits.  I don't despise that film, but I dislike it intensely for being such a chiselling kop out.

I agree, furthermore- the moment it clicks into a 'series of poorly engineered unconvincing deus ex machina errors' the whole notion of it being this beautiful fraught story replete with pathos and background detail is shattered. It's a difficult enough watch with the harrowing abortion machine scenes, the bunch of two dimensional utter wankers it introduces and general feeling of insidious dread then having to put up with the plot holes and utter illogic that is occupying your time where a properly written story should be.

And it's even more annoying to be sat here long after the event thinking about it, because there are so many singularly fascinating pieces of it that could have made something wonderful.

[Pepotamo1985]

I'd say it was when Fifield and Milburn get lost in the structure that it falls apart. I was willing to forgive the plot holes, goofiness and lack of logic up until that point, because I was very intrigued to see where it was going.

Im the end, there are so many angles unexplored, so many loose ends and inconsistencies,  so much abject stupidity that it's annoying to even think about,  two years on. A two hour trailer for more fucking prequels.

[biggytitbo]

Halloween 3: Season of he Witch of course.

For all its faults, Kneale's uniquely horrible original idea survives intact and it really is utterly magnificent. One of the best horror films ever made despite its reputation.

[Serge]

Ha ha! We had the soundtrack to that in today, and I was thinking I'm long overdue a rewatch. It's great.

[biggytitbo]

6 more days - Happy happy halloween, halloween, halloween, happy happy halloween, Silver Shamrock. Its almost times kids...

[popcorn]

I don't know if this counts as a "despised" film since it was, at the time, the most successful film ever, but I think Titanic is great. I don't care about the love story, it doesn't move or interest me, but I find it an efficient carrier for the bigger event, ie the great big boat sinks. It's one of the very few "event" movies I consider genuinely spectacular - in the literal sense, as in it has a real sense of spectacle, an amazing scale. The way the film juxtaposes the grandeur of the Titanic in its heyday with the sunken wreck is chilling. There's a lovely sense of dread after they strike the iceberg, and I love how it takes fucking ages to sink. I also think it works really well sort of mechanically, for want of a better word - Jack and Rose frantically scarpering around all over the ship as it sinks, the sets transforming around them.

It's a far, far better special effects picture - both as a film and how it makes use of effects - than the "definitive" special effects movie Avatar.

[Thomas]

Yes, for its flaws, Titanic (1997) features the finest cinematic depiction of the minutes leading up to, and immediately following, the iceberg strike.

[popcorn]

Just rewatched the bit just before they hit the iceberg. Yes, it's brilliant. The initial panic in the engine room, the giant pistons pumping, the underwater shots of the propeller churning to a halt and firing up again, those long bowed notes on the soundtrack and the morse code-like staccato notes, the perfect starry night - it's fucking brilliant cinema, I'm captivated every time, Celion Dion is blameless.

Also love this line, when the bloke picks up the phone:

BLOKE: Yes, what do you see?
LOOKOUT: Iceberg, right ahead!!
BLOKE: Thank you.

The urgent Englishness of the "thank you". He's even holding a cup of tea. Masterful.

[Thomas]

That's true, too. The real Officer Moody bloke did say 'thank you'.

[Puce Moment]

I actually found myself enjoying the remake of Carrie rather a lot, and the same goes for Spike Lee's flawed but visually spectacular Oldboy. I caught both on a layover in central London when I had 12-hours to kill. Perhaps I was in a good mood because I think the original Oldboy is so-so, and I can't stand Spike Lee, but somehow it achieved something rather enjoyable, I thought.

On the same tip, I have a great deal of time for Gus Van Sant's Psycho, although if I ever get into a discussion about it I sound smug and I've already had enough neg karma of that ilk thrown my way this week :-)

What is the general impression of Spielberg's War of the Worlds? I can't remember if it is liked or disliked, but I really enjoyed it. Some amazing visual scenes and action set-pieces, particularly the first act. Oh yeah, same goes for Signs and The Village which I think are perfectly good Shambalam films, although no doubt not great.

[SteveDave]

Alien 3 starts like this so it's OK in my book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vic6bO14CZg

I got actual shivers the 1st time I heard that.

[Sir Rodney Ffing]

Freddie Got Fingered.

[Incandenza]

Man of Steel. The dialogue is uniformly poor, the structure of the fights at the end completely sinks the film and turns it into a boring punchup that clearly wipes out half of NYC, but I still find it immensely stirring, compelling and weirdly heartfelt. I love the way the origin stuff is structured, moments glancing off each other sparked by a sensation or an object. Proustian Superman, y'all.

[Incandenza]

I'd also add that I think Spielberg's War of the Worlds will one day be reclaimed as amongst his best (or at least second-tier best). I'm convinced the reason people hated it is because Tom Cruise's public image was in a bad way at the time and it's hard to take the most successful film actor in the world seriously as a single Brooklyn dad who works on the docks. I think the mechanic the film uses- that we only see what our lead character sees- is a really smart way of building real fear and dread and making mankind seem so small and vulnerable in the face of the universe.

[biggytitbo]

I think both Titanic and War of World's are great films. The latter is unbelievably bleak, sci fi armageddon done through the filter of Schindler's List. Some of Spilebergs best ever work, of course undermined by that scene at the end, which I prefer to pretend does not exist.

Titanic I like the whole thing, including he love story. It's very simplistic but Cameron tells his story extremely well, and once the boat starts to sink its incomparable, only Spielberg rivals him as a director of visceral action.

[kittens]

That Snuff Film my little brother discovered in the shed that tore apart my family.

It had really clever placement of the camera and I really felt the truth of the scenes.

it gets a bad rap, but i utterly loved it. genuine laughs throughout and you really care about the characters

[Jerzy Bondov]

I like War of the Worlds but I think it's really just a collection of brilliantly directed, memorable and cool looking scenes rather than a good movie as a whole. It's rare for Spielberg to be so weak on the thematic stuff, especially when it's that old fatherhood chestnut, but it is an entertaining and exciting film so fuck it.

I love The Rules of Attraction and think it's not only the best Bret Easton Ellis adaptation but the best thing Roger Avary ever worked on. It got bad reviews at the time but I think it's a bit of a cult favourite now so not really despised. So I'll shut up now.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Disagree about War of the Worlds, I think it's really unambitious and slight- and even then the characters seem really quite unimportant and unattached from the events. The ending is unsatisfying too.

A big problem is that the death and 'horror' is anaesthetised, which we are expected to accept while still having to care about the fate of the non-characters on screen. The result is that there's inadequate stakes, threat, tension, motives, throughout.

Given who the director is, I'd say the end result is a perfunctory workaday effort. This guy did Jurassic Park, where big things terrorise little things. It is a masterpiece of grim cranking up of threat and vulnerability. How the fuck did he do such a bad job?

Independence Day is a better film.

[Pepotamo1985]

I love The Rules of Attraction and think it's not only the best Bret Easton Ellis adaptation but the best thing Roger Avary ever worked on. It got bad reviews at the time but I think it's a bit of a cult favourite now so not really despised. So I'll shut up now.

Bret Easton Ellis agrees with you big time. Maybe where the cult attraction stems from.

[Puce Moment]

I like War of the Worlds but I think it's really just a collection of brilliantly directed, memorable and cool looking scenes rather than a good movie as a whole. It's rare for Spielberg to be so weak on the thematic stuff, especially when it's that old fatherhood chestnut, but it is an entertaining and exciting film so fuck it.

Agreed, but there are also some odd little lateral moments that I don't know if they come from improvising or not. An example would be Cruise's throwing of the peanut butter sandwich against the window, or the weirdness of Robbins' character. I don't think it hangs together that well by the end and the deus ex machina was an odd thing for Spielberg to retain.

Having thought about it, if I was in a hotel room bored and I had to pick a Spielberg film to watch - I would probably go for Munich. Also flawed but I find it really quite compelling.

I love The Rules of Attraction and think it's not only the best Bret Easton Ellis adaptation but the best thing Roger Avary ever worked on. It got bad reviews at the time but I think it's a bit of a cult favourite now so not really despised. So I'll shut up now.

I was playing the 'split screen coming together' scene just this week - which is a very clever little device that works well. The only problem is that they are so much more engaged, empathetic and human than the capitalist cunt-bots that Ellis creates in his book. This is usually something that works the other way around in adaptations, but that say Cronenberg got right in Crash.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Saturday Night Fever gets a bad rap because of the parodies, dated music and fashion, and the fact that a lot of people have only seen the PG version, but the original 18-cert version is actually a very gritty, brutal (the gang rape scene springs to mind) time capsule of NYC/disco culture in the 70s, and John Travolta is brilliant in it.