The vastly overrated, and the criminally underrated.

2001 may not be a great story . . . but it's one of the great experiences of all time. I think your passion for 2001 is reflective of your passion for music and museum arts. The docking sequence, for instance, is slow, meandering, ponderous, etc, but Strauss makes the stars sing, so frankly, it just freezes me in my tracks every time. My God, that's beautiful.

You said it perfectly. 2001 isn't just a movie, it's a work of art.

Now I need to go and watch it again.

 

"Last Action Hero - A brilliant parody of action films--I was shocked to learn that this bombed."

It was up against Jurassic Park. Anything released in the summer of '93 got trampled by that movie.

 

Citizen Kane overrated

See, i guess this is one of those films that, you had to be there when it first came out. (not that i was, but it's a LANDMARK of cinema for the cinematic techniques that Welles pretty much invented for this film.)

Count me in the "2001 is a work of art" boat. It's all a matter of taste, of course, but i could watch that movie 1000 times and never get bored of it. Kubrick was a genius.

Also, count me in the boat for "Last Action Hero" is underrated. The portions of the film that take place in the 'real world' are shockingly harsh and dark for a mainstream summer blockbuster (and make the film somewhat hard to watch), but the stuff that takes place inside the movie are brilliant in their fun.

Movie kinda goes a bit too far in the final quarter, but still, i agree it's pretty underrated..


And Tarkovsky WAS a genius.

 

Why, by the way, did you watch a movie you hated four times? I'll give a movie two tries, but four is just masochistic, isn't it?

As stated, I keep trying to give it a chance. I see how passionately people love it, and I figure there's GOT to be something I'm missing. I even wait a few years, hoping my tastes have matured, and it's not some sort of age/maturity/attention span thing. But no, every time I watch it, it lets me down horribly. It's easily my least favorite film of all time. I just find it boring, whereas the book by Clarke is incredibly engaging. The movie just feels terribly condescending and trite, as if it's trying too hard to be "art", when in reality the plot isn't terribly deep, and it could be boiled down to a 45-minute GOOD movie, not a 2 and a half hour borefest.

 

The entire history of humanity boiled down to forty-five minutes? Consider what he had to skip to boil it down to two and a half hours.

See, despite the popularity of the HAL section and the cries that said section is the only part of the film that really functions, it's not true. The film is not about HAL, it's about Humanity, capital H. It's about destiny, it's about fate, it's about history and how it flows.

The HAL section alone would have made a great film . . . but to have a great experience, you need the whole thing.

That said, you probably shouldn't try it a fifth time. Must just be some basic philosphical problem.

And as for Citizen Kane being groundbreaking . . . more groundbreaking for Welles himself than what he did. Deep focus wasn't new. Gregg Toland had used it before. God knows films that played with time were nothing new, neither were anti-heroes. What Welles represented, the devil may care young filmmaker who'd steamroll over the studio to get his way, was the truly ground breaking thing about the film.

That, of course, sadly ended with The Magnificent Ambersons.

And as for LotR being emotionally overblown . . . if you didn't care for Sam's closing moments in T2T I'm guessing your not a fan of Joseph Campbell. Or of myth in general. Or of history. Cheesy? Well, if you can call an idea that's been around for generations cheesy, I guess so. I prefer the word "true" myself.

A basic principle of myth, of fiction in general I suppose really, is the idea of overblown emotion. That's why every time someone dies in The Iliad all the manly warrior types sit down and weep and wail. Myth is about the interior existence of humanity. It's about getting at the emotion that the average person shuts away.

And blasting Serkis' performance as Gollum is just hilarious. The dude was SCHIZOPHRENIC, not to mention paranoid delusional, disassociative identity disorder and suffering from an extreme case of withdrawal. How the hell do you play a character like that? Sedately?

But King Kong is going to stink. We can all agree on that, I'm sure.

 

Ok, you've talked about 2001 as art and needing the patience of going to a museum...

Now, I love museums, I love art, I like good classical music. I have an excellent attention span and can literally read for 24 hours straight if the mood so takes me. I even very much enjoyed Moby Dick, for goodness sake. I like the idea of grand themes and the fate of humanity. And, as I said before in this thread, I GOT BORED WITH THIS MOVIE!

...Why? I honestly don't know. I would like to understand this. Does it have something to do with the fact that I have no apreciation for drunken/hallucinatory imagery? You tell me.

 

Jackson's primary directorial flaw, according to one film critic?

Glad to know there's another Jeff Wells fan out there!

Underrated: The Taran saga (Lloyd Alexander). It's Star Wars. Trust me on this. I think, at least on a subconsious level, Lucas drew more from this story than almost anything else.

Disney butchered The Black Cauldron though.

Overrated: LOTR. I agree that they're very good, but agree with Leto they're not the second coming.

Underrated: Transformers the Movie.

Overrated: Shrek

Shrek was intensely entertaining, but in a completely smarmy, LCD, unintelligent way. And the moral of the story? That you need to look the same in order to find true love. Bad, Dreamworks... BAD BAD BAD!

Whereas the Transformers movie took the source material, ran with it, upped the stakes and kicked ass.

 

A Midnight Clear--about ten people all total saw this one. And, strangely, it's probably the most effectively tragic and heartbreaking war film since All Quiet on the Western Front.

Make that eleven. And I agree with you.

 

A Midnight Clear--about ten people all total saw this one. And, strangely, it's probably the most effectively tragic and heartbreaking war film since All Quiet on the Western Front.

I tend to give that spot to On The Beach, myself...

 

OK, let me add my interpretation once again.

Shrek's moral that you need to look the same in order to find true love? I definitely saw it the other way around. That you can look different but be similar/compatible on the inside, and that you shouldn't LET appearances get in the way.

Although I suppose I can see your point if you don't take it that way...


As for the LOTR bashing, okay, it's not perfect. Neither is Star Wars, people. Yes, they rode on the incredible popularity of the books (and I'm one of those book people, from way before the movies came out... the only reason I have a movie Frodo as an icon is 'cause they don't have a book one!). But I highly doubt the phenomenon would be at the level it is now if the movies themselves didn't have an incredible power to them.

 

As for the LOTR bashing, okay, it's not perfect. Neither is Star Wars, people. Yes, they rode on the incredible popularity of the books (and I'm one of those book people, from way before the movies came out... the only reason I have a movie Frodo as an icon is 'cause they don't have a book one!). But I highly doubt the phenomenon would be at the level it is now if the movies themselves didn't have an incredible power to them.

Star Wars was at least an original work of derivative myth. Plus innovation beyond the norm in a film.

LOTR was an adapted work that didn't do terribly much innovative. MAYA was nice, but not really terribly further ahead (if at all) than other software available at the time.

 

Okay, Shrunken Jedi, I think I know why you don't care for 2001.

You like music, you like visual art, you don't have a short attention span, you like symbolism . . .

I'll tell you what it is: you require emotional involvment. If there's one thing I'll admit about 2001 it's that the characters are not emotionally involving.

This is a conscious decision on Kubrick's part, I think. The film is about the dehumanization of mankind through technology and the final redemption from that dehumanization. So, the characters are intended, I think, as ciphers.

Dullea's centerstone performance is a good example. Does his face ever change expression, even when pleading for his life, killing HAL, listening to his family sing Happy Birthday? No. He's a cloistered, emotionally dead individual.

As I say, this is purposeful by Kubrick and I think it works here. As he progressed, Kubrick would grow even more emotionally stunted, culminating in such train wrecks as A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket, films that throw characters, emotion and heart out the window in favor of directorial flourishes. Even The Shining, Kubrick's last true masterpiece, is hardly an emotional triumph. None of the characters are what we'd call fully drawn. What we get from them we get from the actors . . .

I think that's it. You require emotional investment. I usually do too. This happens to be something of an exception for me, interestingly enough. Heck, HAL, a computer with a monotone voice, is probably the most emotionally interesting character. The human characters are less than human, if you get my drift.

This is a guess, but I bet it has something to do with it. At this point, I'm still with Kubrick. LAter, his emotional stunting gets pointless and tiresome. AT this point, I'm still able to tolerate it. Perhaps you can't.

What do you think? Have I got something?

 

You could have something there... no emotional involvement. Interesting. I think I agree on HAL being the most 'human' there...

Incidentally, I am reminded that my last piece of writing for my fiction class was essentially all emotional involvement-- an experimental concept piece.

 

Underrated: Black Robe, an absolutely awesome film on the first European contacts with the so-called "New World".

 

Wow, someone else who's seen "Black Robe"!

Film also has a tremendous musical score...

 

On the Lord of the Rings talk, I think that it is slightly overrated, but for the right reasons. It was a fairly good representation of the books, which are outstanding in every sense. However, I thought that the fan hype is a little undoing.

 

LOTR is underrated. Sure it was overrated in the first 3 weeks like any film and around Oscar and that's it. Over time, the overating feeling you'll have'll go away. I thought HP:TSS was overrated initally. Troy is so underrated. Road to Perdition, Minority Report and Gangs of New York are also underrated. Chicago was definitely overrated and was Big Fat Greek Wedding.

 

Lost in Translation is highly overrated. Don't give me that subtlety of character and deep story crap. Its two highly self-absorbed people walking around Tokyo trying to resist having sex with each other. What brilliance.

 

Overrated

The original Star Wars Trilogy. Come on. They weren't that great.

Just kidding. Don't kill me.

Seriously.

I found Spiderman 2 to be highly overrated. I read reviews and they were all extremely high. And then I went and saw it and was almost bored. Esp after seeing all the best parts of the movie in commercials about 100 times.

Any movie that won an academy award for best picture save LOTR:ROTK. I would rather hurt myself for 2+ hours than watch most of these movies.

Anything by Michael Moore. I don't get why people love documentaries filled with lies about guns and Bush. I honestly don't.

Underrated

The Bourne Identity and Supremacy. Excellent, excellent movies. But they got little hype.

Daredevil. I found it to be far superior to Spiderman.

 

I can agree with Lost in Translation being overrated. It's a character based movie that I loved the first time I watched it, but it didn't have the same effect on multiple viewings. I still find certain moments in LIT to be emotionally effective, but the more I watch it, the more I wonder what the big deal was over this movie. It's just two people that enjoy each other's company, hang out some in Japan, and then go back home. Throw in a few subtle, but admittedly effective, scenes and some beautiful shots of Japan (which I think would be difficult to mess up). I understand that there is beauty in simplicity, and I do realize it in this movie, but I don't feel that it was all that it was hyped up to be. It was a good movie, but I found a movie like American Splendor to be more interesting in it's execution.

 

Stanley Kubrick, I guess I just don't get the man.

His vision of The Shining had me bored out of my mind. Said to be spooky, riveting...a big snore fest for me. I prefer the made for tv one, where Mr. King had something to do with it on a greater level.



Keanu Reeves played a great highschool dumbass in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." Probably my most favorite movie with him. Even though it was cool that he said, "Woah" ala B and T in the "Matrix"

 

Oh, yes, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Vastly overrated. The funniest guy in the cast was the guy from N'Sync and that's something I never thought I'd say.

Totally predictable, every character was a complete cartoon. I especially laughed over the brother who secretly harbored a passion for art. *Sob sniffle* What an original and heart-breaking . . . give me a break, huh?

I'm not surprised it spawned a sitcom, given that the film itself had about as much depth and originality as the average sitcom episode. Also not surprised it got cancelled, considering that it stank.

And everyone said Vardalos was the new goddess of independent film. Please. What exactly was independent about this movie? Not the plot, the thought, the characters, the philosophy. Vardalos was poor, so it's an independent movie? Shut up and go watch Frailty if you want to see an independent movie.

 

The Bourne Identity and Supremacy. Excellent, excellent movies. But they got little hype.

Odd that you consider them underrated; I consider them the exact opposite! Over here in Australia, critics hailed them as intelligent and wondrous new spy flicks.

The Bourne Identity wasn't a bad, if somewhat generic, action film, but I thought that The Bourne Supremacy was terrible. It had an unengaging plot, and was clearly only created to cash in on the success of the original.

But hey, that little critique could be applied to about 80% of sequels.

What really annoyed me most was the cinematography. Shaky cameras annoy me even at the best of times, ie, during chaotic sword-waving battle scenes, such as those prominently featured in Braveheart. But I can understand shaky camera in battles. You're running full tilt at someone swinging a rather heavy claymore about, I can understand the lack of balance and orientation one would feel during such a battle, and thus the shaky camera is tolerable.

However, I see no reason to have a shaky camera during every bloody scene, as was the case in The Bourne Supremacy. The car chase at the finale could have been exciting...but the camera jerked around so much that I had no idea what the hell was happening.

And shaky camera during intimate dialogue scenes? What the hell? Were they trying to be arty in their use of the same infuriating cinematographical technique throughout?

 

The Bourne Identity wasn't a bad, if somewhat generic, action film, but I thought that The Bourne Supremacy was terrible. It had an unengaging plot, and was clearly only created to cash in on the success of the original.

I like The Bourne Identity a lot. I wasn't expecting much when I saw it in the theater, but I found it to be very well-done, and immensely entertaining. It's far from a generic action film, IMO. And I don't think it's underrated, it made over $100 million domestically and was a surprise hit the summer it came out.

But, like you said, AdmiralZaarin, The Bourne Supremacy had the worst case of shaky cam I've seen in a major motion picture. It ruined the fight scene, it ruined the car chase, it ruined the whole film. Absolutley ridiculous how intentionally shaky and incoherent the camera work was.

 

See... I'd always thought that the Bourne novels were the absolute best spy stuff out there, which made me loathe to go see a movie based on them (since they'd suck)...

... but now you guys kinda make me want to see them.