Films Loved by the Critics but not by You.

[BAYLOR]

The Barbie Movie
Just saw it. Every moment of the film I wondered when there was going to be a sense of a story. It had the same impact for me as a typical PowerPoint presentation. A series of vaguely related scenes set side by side. And none of the scenes felt like the interactions of real people. That may have been the point. But it wasn't enjoyable to me.

Only one scene felt "real" to me. That is one scene in the entire movie felt to me like real individuals interacting with each other -- the scene at the school lunch table. It was actually pretty great watching tweens telling Barbie off. --- And even that scene has the most basic problem that schools in LA don't let random adults wander onto campus.

The previews didn't make me want to go out and see it .

 

[Rodders]

I struggle with most new movies and yearn for a more "old school" form of stroytelling. Too much action soon becomes dull, politics over story, race swapping. It's just all too shallow. Bring back films like 'Tora, Tora, Tora' or the Sound of Music.

 

[Elckerlyc]

The previews didn't make me want to go out and see it .

That was my initial thought too.
But then I did watch it* and found myself enjoying it. It is not as awful as the title suggests.


* On Netflix or HBO, I don't recall. Not the cinema. I only go there for top-notch movies you have to see in the cinema. And hence haven't been there the last 3** years.
** Or 4, maybe 5. It could be 6, even 7. I don't recall either. Perhaps 8?

 

[CupofJoe]

Vertigo [1958 Alfred Hitchcock]
I've watched it a couple of times [the second time was as film I had to study for a cinema course].
I don't get it. It's not a bad film but I don't get what is so good about it that it has been rated as one of the best films ever made.
Maybe I just don't like Hitchcock's direction.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Vertigo [1958 Alfred Hitchcock]
I've watched it a couple of times [the second time was as film I had to study for a cinema course].
I don't get it. It's not a bad film but I don't get what is so good about it that it has been rated as one of the best films ever made.
Maybe I just don't like Hitchcock's direction.

I agree. I've never really understood what all the fuss is about when it comes to Hitchcock.

 

[paeng]

From this list,

The Greatest Films of All Time

In 1952, the Sight and Sound team had the novel idea of asking critics to name the greatest films of all time. The tradition became decennial, increasing in size and prestige as the decades passed. The Sight and Sound poll is now a major bellwether of critical opinion on cinema and this...

www.bfi.org.uk

Videodrome
Star Wars
Suspiria
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Birds
Heat
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Magnificent Ambersons
Twin Peaks: The Return
The Watermelon Woman
Alien
Pulp Fiction
The Matrix
Only Angels Have Wings
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Thing
Jaws
The Wizard of Oz
Once Upon a Time in the West
Spirited Away
My Neighbor Totoro
Moonlight
GoodFellas
Blade Runner
The Apartment
North by Northwest

 

[JunkMonkey]

L'Atalante (1934)​

Here's one that always seems to appear on critics 'all time greats' (it's well up the BFI list) but left me sitting there thinking the director did his career a really big favour by dying before he'd finished making it. "How would the history of cinema be different if he had lived past 29?" waffles a critic on the BFI site. Like James Dean and various others who died before they got potentially fat and old and disgraced themselves by shagging under-aged amphibians in public I'm sure Vigo - had he lived - would now just be a minor footnote in cinema history. As it is his only feature "embodies more fully and purely the inherent fluidity, surrealism, realism, eroticism and ghostliness of cinema".

I thought it was a dated, boring, and thin with irrelevant scenes that were obviously only there to pad it out to feature length.

​

 

[Baldanders]

Beasts of no Nation - completely stupid movie (with a deceitful trailer), which got several rewards and made me turn away from Idris Elba.

At the first 15 mins you think: okay, good exposition - African chaos, rebels, the boy involuntary becomes a part of a child partisan squad. So many roads for a rich scenario!

But instead you get boring crap, periodically interrupted by beating children to death and raping their parents by this child-partisan squad and the main hero, who are always on drugs. And till the very end you're thinking - now they are going to understand, to change, some kind of a moral is approaching. No, sh*t! The movie goes to nowhere, and the best description of it gives the main hero: I don't have any thoughts. More than these, it seems to be glorifying these brainless always-on-drugs murderers by comparing them to social workers, who are children, because they don't know how the dead smell and never raped anyone. Pf-f-f-f!

Since when showing abomination without giving any reasoning became worthy of rewards? If I want it, I'll go see news. Movies has another purpose.

Just to compare - Lord of War (2005). The main hero is quite a *******, he doesn't change, and the movie also shows African chaos with very heavy details. But it has a message! And it is quite powerful. All the unpleasant scenes in it are tools to express the author's idea, not the purpose itself. But Beasts of no Nation is a typical Netflix hype-spitting trash clip. In my chart it got below bottom. Even the bullsh** Frankenstein's Army was better, although it would seem - what can be worse?

P.S. special regards to Idris Elba, who accepted a role of a pedophile in this circus

 

[pogopossum]

I have attended a 30 hour SF movie marathon event for years. This year I forced myself to stay awake (At 3 AM in th morning!) to watch a film that frequently shows up on best SF movie lists.
Alphaville. I know that it was supposed to be groundbreaking in its use of stock backgrounds to illustrate philosophical ideals.
I also know that I lost almost two hours watching that pretentious claptrap while I could have been sleeping in prep for watching better movies - like The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, shown later in the morning.

 

[BAYLOR]

I have attended a 30 hour SF movie marathon event for years. This year I forced myself to stay awake (At 3 AM in th morning!) to watch a film that frequently shows up on best SF movie lists.
Alphaville. I know that it was supposed to be groundbreaking in its use of stock backgrounds to illustrate philosophical ideals.

Ive never this one

I also know that I lost almost two hours watching that pretentious claptrap while I could have been sleeping in prep for watching better movies - like The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, shown later in the morning.

Who can forget the battle between Hercules and the terrifying terrible Siamese Cyclops. This film is a wonderful comic send up the Sword and sandal films of that time. It's a film I can watch and rewatch over and over again . It's totally silly and totally entertaining stuff.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Alphaville. I know that it was supposed to be groundbreaking in its use of stock backgrounds to illustrate philosophical ideals.
I also know that I lost almost two hours watching that pretentious claptrap while I could have been sleeping in prep for watching better movies - like The Three

Ive never this one

It's one of Godard's funnier films.

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm Scottish and I'm not keen on this historical travesty. The idiots here even built a statue of Wallace that looked like Gibson.
View attachment 53470

Best description I've heard of this is that it's nothing more than a 'porridge western'.

In Historical terms , there is so much wrong with this film.

 

[paranoid marvin]

In Historical terms , there is so much wrong with this film.

Yes there is. It is almost entirely fantasy.

But I still enjoy it. Which is unusual for me, as historical tv/movies that deviate too much just turn me off.

But this movie is so far wide of the mark in relation to its historical accuracy that it ceases to be an issue. Instead we have some amazing battle scenes (as brutally realistic as any I've seen in a Hollywood movie) and some brilliant villains (McGhoohan is superb as Edward).

Although it's a great shame that Neeson's Rob Roy, which was released around the same time got completely overshadowed. It's interesting to note though that Rob Roy is just as historically inacurate as Braveheart, yet receives none of the criticism. Possibly because many people still believe that he was the romanticised 'Robin Hood' figure that Walter Scott turned him into. Another great villain in tbis movie too, played superbly by Tim Roth.

Why do tbe English always make for the best villains? And so often an Englishman in a Hollywood movie is a bad guy.

 

[BAYLOR]

Yes there is. It is almost entirely fantasy.

It once appeaser on the Syfy Channel here in the states,

But I still enjoy it. Which is unusual for me, as historical tv/movies that deviate too much just turn me off.


But this movie is so far wide of the mark in relation to its historical accuracy that it ceases to be an issue. Instead we have some amazing battle scenes (as brutally realistic as any I've seen in a Hollywood movie) and some brilliant villains (McGhoohan is superb as Edward).

Yes, The battle scenes are pretty impressive and so was Patrick McGoohan as Edward.

Although it's a great shame that Neeson's Rob Roy, which was released around the same time got completely overshadowed. It's interesting to note though that Rob Roy is just as historically inacurate as Braveheart, yet receives none of the criticism. Possibly because many people still believe that he was the romanticised 'Robin Hood' figure that Walter Scott turned him into. Another great villain in tbis movie too, played superbly by Tim Roth.

Terrific film , I loved Rob Roy and the whole cast . It got me to read Sir Walter Scott's novel and also got me to read Ivanhoe as well .

Why do tbe English always make for the best villains? And so often an Englishman in a Hollywood movie is a bad guy.

Because as villains they project cool calm , charismatic and menacing demeanor so well .

 

[BAYLOR]

Vertigo [1958 Alfred Hitchcock]
I've watched it a couple of times [the second time was as film I had to study for a cinema course].
I don't get it. It's not a bad film but I don't get what is so good about it that it has been rated as one of the best films ever made.
Maybe I just don't like Hitchcock's direction.

I agree. I've never really understood what all the fuss is about when it comes to Hitchcock.

It's a very creepy film.

 

[KGeo777]

The 1950s Rob Roy-The Highland Rogue is pretty good. I didn't like the Liam Neeson movie.

As for critically acclaimed films I loathed.
Godard's Weekend. C'est obnoxious.