I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
Tarantino is overrated. You have to watch a lot of movies to come to this realisation, because otherwise you don’t realise his movies are often in large part a collage of other movies. Movies which did what he does better. That means that it doesn’t actually matter that Tarantino is overrated for most movie goers. More generally, this is why critics’ opinions don’t actually matter that much. They’ve watched too many movies and likely know too much about movies, to tell the average audience goer if they’ll enjoy a movie.
Once you’ve watched a few thousand movies, and especially if you’ve ever studied film or read a few books about it, you’ll often find you enjoy interesting but shit movies more, than very well made but unoriginal movies. People who truly love film, invariably aren’t snobs. They enjoy absolute trash, they enjoy arty farty stuff. If someone has a related degree or even a doctorate or works in the industry, the likelihood is high that they’re also a fan of B-movies. They don’t need to pretend to be knowledgeable, because they are. A film snob will bore you with the details of a Tarkovski movie. A cinephile is more likely to bang on about 80s horror movies, lesbian vampire sexploitation movies, Albert Pyun’s Cyborg, or Troma’s The Toxic Avenger.
I enjoy Tarantino movies. It all boils down to: are they solid fun entertainment or not, and to me the answer is yes.
Someone else did it better elsewhere? Sure, and he is very forthcoming about his influences. So if you’re a fan, you’ll likely find his sources and enjoy those too. Win win.
This is how I’ve come to view anime. You can tell the age of an anime fan by whether they’re enamored by the latest hit series or they sigh and go “this is just a remake of [old series from the 90s/00s].” I don’t give a shit how well made a series is; if the premise is “been there done that” without an original take or twist, or a tired and worn trope gets trotted out (looking at you, every fucking series that includes a scene where a female character comments enviously on another female character’s large breasts, yes Frieren that means you), then I’m insta-jaded on the series. At a certain point you realize anime relies heavily on its perpetual fandom refresh, with new fans replacing the ones who “aged out.” For me, I knew it had gotten bad when I was struggling to enjoy Cyberpunk because I felt like I had heard all the voices before in previous series.
Do you have a recommendation for a book that’ll turn me into a cinephile?
Oh, wow. Old comment.
The easiest route to learning about movies, is to watch a lot of movies, and reading about the movie you’ve just watched. Wikipedia, a more in depth review, interviews with people who made the movie (not just the actors).
Google a top 100 list. Work your way through a few of them. Eg.
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time
They also have cool features. For example, Michael Mann’s made a load of really cool action movies. Here’s a feature on his movies they made:
https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-michael-mann
Or here’s famous critic Mark Kermode’s top 10 of horror movies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdj_22hHRyM
Yes, he has a PhD and is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the UK equivalent of the Academy of Motion Pictures. No, he’s not a snob. Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s in the top 10. So are some older classics, which are still good.
But if you want to read something, you could try:
Bordwell and Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction.
David A. Cook. A History of Narrative Cinema
Wow, thank you so much for all the recommendations! I sometimes feel like I don’t know how to watch certain kinds of movies (e.g., older movies, or more artsy movies). I hope reading up a bit will help me appreciate them more
Horror films are where art flourishes and it has a huge culture of being outside of Hollywood which is just a plus. Also the acting is usually way better
Amazing, every word is wrong
Most horror movies have worse acting than a porno.
There is no accounting for taste. Who’s to say what’s a better actor?!
I watched The Princess Bride and couldn’t understand why it gets so much love. I found it really gruesome and unfunny, and Robin Wright’s princess was bland and unlikable.
Out of all the bad opinions in this thread, this one legit made my BP rise. Well done at having a terrible opinion lol
Inconceivable 💀
The Mario movie was incredibly mediocre, despite its high production value. I’m talking MCU-levels of truckloads of money spent with shockingly little to show for it.
Interstellar is a terrible movie that doesn’t say or do anything special and I still don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s so amazing.
I did really like the robot guy though.
The critic rating is better than the audience rating. I’ve never seen a film with a high critic rating that didn’t have something worthwhile about it. But I’ve seen a lot of audience hits that were garbage.
Terminator is better than Terminator 2, and as cool as it is Terminator 2 should never have been made (or should have a different script).
I know the mob is raising the pitchfork, but hear me out, there are two main ways time travel can solve the grandparent paradox, these are Singular Timeline (i.e. something will prevent you from killing your grandfather) or Multiple Timeline (you kill him but in doing so you created an alternate timeline). Terminator 2 is clearly a MT model, because they delay the rise of Skynet, but Terminator is a ST movie. The way you can understand it’s an ST is because the cause-consequences form a perfect cycle (which couldn’t happen on an MT story), i.e. Reese goes back to save Sarah -> Reese impregnates Sarah and teaches her how to defend herself from Terminators and avoid Skynet -> Sarah gives birth to and teaches John -> John uses the knowledge to start a resistance -> The resistance is so strong that Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah -> Reese goes back to save Sarah…
The awesome thing about Terminator is how you only realise this at the end of the Movie, that nothing they did mattered, because that’s what happened before, the timeline is fixed, humanity will suffer but they’ll win eventually.
If Terminator was a MT then the cycle breaks, i.e. there needs to be a beginning, a first time around when the original timeline didn’t had any time travelers. How did that timeline looked like? John couldn’t exist, which means that sending a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah was not possible, Reese couldn’t have gone back without the Terminator technology, which they wouldn’t have unless the resistance was winning, and if they are winning without John, the Terminator must have gone back to kill someone else and when Reese went back he accidentally found Sarah, impregnated her and coincidentally made a better commander for the resistance which accidentally and created a perfect loop so that next time he would be sent back and meet Sarah because she was the target (what are the odds of that). Then why is the movie not about this? Why is the movie about the Nth loop after the timeline was changed? The reason is that Terminator was thought as a ST movie, but when they wanted to write a sequel they for some reason decided to allow changes in the timeline which broke the first movie.
Ah! A fellow holder of the belief that time travel stories are better when they are internally consistent! I hate e.g. Looper for having time travel that makes no goddamn sense. It takes me out of the story when the characters are literally watching the timeline change before them as it magically radiates out from one point. And then our protagonists somehow remember the original timeline… Bah.
…So I must ask - have you seen Primer? If not, maybe you’d like it!
Not to mention that it’s fucking stupid to have all your infiltration units have the exact same face and body. The first movie even showed other terminators with different faces, so why is every T-800 Arnold?
That said, T2 is one of my favorite movies.
Also Eddie furlong is fucking insufferable
My head hurts.
Never watch Primer.
You’ve way over analysed it. It’d be like pissing on Star Wars because the Force has no basis in science.
As someone who enjoys the magic systems of Brandon Sanderson, I do piss on Star Wars for not having a logical basis for The Force.
Actually it’s not that bad. Harry Potter is much worse.
No, the problem is internal consistency, in Star Wars the force works the same way in all films. But imagine if on one movie someone was shown using the force to move objects, and on the next movie the same character was shown trying to reach for something important and failing and not using the force and when asked he replies “it’s not possible to move objects with the force”. That’s the problem here, internal consistency, on one movie it’s said it works one way, on the other it’s said it works differently. I love both movies, I just think T2 shitted on one of the main things from T1.
Except the prequels establish force powers that we never see again and so do the sequels. Like force super speed in the phantom menace.
Films where I don’t recognize a single actor among the whole crew are almost always better than ones where I’ve seen such and such actor in other movies. Just more immersive. And even if they’re not the best actors I’d much prefer that over whatever the hell Chris Prat or Tom Cruise or Leo D are up to.
I knew being faceblind must have some benefit. I often only realise I know an actor when I see their name in the credits. Then again it can take me half a movie to realise there are two men with dark hair, a beard and glasses, so I wouldn’t entirety recommend it.
My experience watching The Departed while almost entirely sober felt like a face blindness simulator. I was baffled when one of the characters that had been killed came back and none of the other characters acknowledged it. Cool movie but so confusing.
So many well known actors play themselves playing the character.
Tom Cruise has employees rewrite movies he’ll be in to make his part more, and more in his style.
He has more acting range and ability than so many other actors
Crash? More like Trash.
Also, Avatar fucking blows.
Which Crash are you referring to?
Crash (2004)
Agreed with both. The 1996 Crash I liked
The movie where they’re recreating car crashes? Because if so, yes yes yes! I love that movie!
That’s the one!
Dennis Villeneuve is currently untouchable in the same way that Christoper Nolan was a few years ago. For whatever reason I meshed with Nolan’s work at the time but I have been completely disenchanted by Villeneuve since Blade Runner.
The Godfather, extremely overrated and very boring. Saw it many years ago, and maybe my taste in movies have changed a bit, and I consider rewatching other movies I did not like, but not that one.
The original Star wars trilogy was overrated, the sequels were underrated, and I’d rate them all to be equally mediocre.
The best thing about Star wars is the world building. The expanded universe with the books, comics, and cartoons contain much better stories than any of the movies.
The sequels were rated quite well by critics, except for the final one. The Last Jedi even got a better rating than Return of the Jedi from the originals.
I agree that overall the original Star Wars films are overrated.
The Empire Strikes Back is the only one that I would say is a great movie.
A New Hope is solid. You can find blemishes, and they’ve torn new ones with the “special editions” that just cram more CGI shit on the screen for no reason, but as a classic Hero’s Journey movie A New Hope works rather well. It was amazing for its time; I mean, a fun Sci-Fi movie? With special effects this good? It was a cultural phenomenon for a reason.
The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie that has been made, which is why when most people quote Star Wars they’re actually quoting Empire. The characters are at their deepest, the setting feels the most magical, and the Luke/Vader saber fight is utterly gripping.
Return of the Jedi was the beginning of the “Lucas is a genius who can do no wrong, do everything he says” era. The “let’s put a funny thing in the background” starts happening. We get Jabba’s hedonism palace with the droid torture room, Bikini Leia, Ewoks, and lightning hands Palpatine. This would only get worse by the time the prequel trilogy is made, Lucas gets to make whatever he wants without question.
This post is so confusing. Do I upvote opinions I strongly agree with or down vote them?!
Upvote things that contribute to the post, downvote things that don’t. Has nothing to do with like/dislike, or agree/disagree.
Upvote since I agree with that sentiment
Stanley Kubrick never made an original film, they are all adaptations of other creators original works.
And yet, they are fantastic films. Your statement is not really an opinion, it’s a fact. My statement is an opinion.
I love the first Dune book, and I love the goofy 80’s Dune movie, which was pretty close to the book in terms of getting a lot of the internal dialog in place. But I hated the new Dune movie. I didn’t like how sterile and empty they made the palace, or the weird anus mouth design of the sand worms. Or the silly use of balloons to help lift harvesters. I very much didn’t like how they made Lady Jessica an emotional mess, instead of being in control of her outward emotions, as she was trained to do.
They also screwed up the personal defense shields REAL BAD. The idea that the shields react to kinetic energy, so a fast moving project from a firearm would get stopped, but a slow moving blade would pass through. The fight near the end had people being killed by fast sword strikes by hitting the shields, it was just so jarring and lazy. They also completely misrepresented who and what the Sardukar are. Based on how many people loved the movie, I have an unpopular opinion. Though I found that most people who absolutely loved the movie hadn’t seen the original movie, or read the first book, so they didn’t know anything to color their impression.
The 80s Dune movie has a stellar cast and amazing art direction.
