Brace yourselves. This review will make Spielberg fans sad. (Are there any here?)
Now, me, I’m anxious to see “Syriana” (check out the trailer). The critics are warning that it might be a tad too mentally challenging for some viewers. It’s only shown locally in the old downtown theater that has a terrible screen. So, we’ll drive about 60 miles to see it in a decent theater. Maybe this weekend, maybe next. Tonight, I’m watching episodes 3 and 4 of “Sleeper Cell,” which is a hell of a series on Showtime. (Sho is replaying the first four episodes Saturday night, so you’re not too late to get into it. Try to see it. Every review says it’s one of the best series ever aired on television. It is.)
Okay, here’s the Spielberg teardown:
A few days before I read in Time that Steven Spielberg’s new movie is so significant that there had been no advance screenings of it, I went to an advance screening of it. The fakery is everywhere, isn’t it, though in this instance it nicely captures the self-importance of this pseudo-controversial film. The makers of Munich seem to think that it is itself an intervention in the historical conflict that it portrays. For this reason, perhaps, they have devised a movie that wishes to be shocking and inoffensive at the same time. It tells the story of the Israeli retaliation for the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972–specifically, of the nasty adventures of a team of five Israelis that is dispatched to Europe to destroy eleven Palestinians. The film is powerful, in the hollow way that many of Spielberg’s films are powerful.
He is a master of vacant intensities, of slick searings. Whatever the theme, he must ravish the viewer.
Munich is aesthetically no different from War of the Worlds, and never mind that one treats questions of ethical and historical consequence and the other is stupid. Spielberg knows how to overwhelm. But I am tired of being overwhelmed. Why should I admire somebody for his ability to manipulate me? In other realms of life, this talent is known as demagoguery. There are better reasons to turn to art, better reasons to go to the movies, than to be blown away…. Read more, but only if you’re a New Republic subscriber, sigh …
This review cracks me up. (I’m still angry with myself that I paid good money to see War of the Worlds, which was dreary, boring, and predictable.) Your turn … which movies would you like to savage?
I like that review.
Swindlers List was another movie which portrayed the swindler as a great guy.
I don’t know but I think Swindler was playing both sides against the middle. Of course he didn’t want the jews to be killed, they were doing good work and he liked them..
…for some because there isn’t any of what we used to call “Dick Tracy dialog” explaining all the ins and outs of what is going on. But it’s a great movie. In fact, I think it’s the best “spy” movie I ever saw, and one of the best political movies, as I noted here.
Those 60 miles will be worth it.
I just read the book it is based on. It’s a pretty good read. I actually enjoyed reading about Baer’s time in India more than his time in Lebanon.
His first book was very good.
Susan, is Syriana playing in Washington yet? I been looking and have not seen it advertized.
Today is the day it “goes wide,” as they say in the biz.
For example, it’s at the big Poulsbo multiplex, which is where we might end up seeing it… closest to us.
(Ever been to Poulsbo? It’s one of those phony Nordic “village” towns… drive by fast.)
Poulsbo is where I wanted to live, I am about 15 minutes away. Can’t wait to see this movie, would be nice to read the book first, but won’t be able to this time.
Hope I didn’t offend you. It’s just never appealed to me, and I always hated driving through all the traffic on the highway there.
No problem, I always fall for the “cute” towns…LOL, I liked Port Angeles, too, also Port Townsend. Since I broke my ankle I have not been able to get to the San Juans…lot’s on my list!
Oh I’m so glad to hear your endorsement.
I loved “Traffic” — I’ll watch it any time it’s on TV. Btw, the writer of both, Stephen Gaghan, was on NPR / Slate’s Day To Day show today. Long interview. Interesting fellow.
I’ll check out your link.
I just finished reading Bob Baer’s book, on which the movie is based. But, from the clips I’ve seen, it looks like Gaghan just used Baer’s autobio as a base from which to let his imagination go.
Courtesy of a link through Duncan Black, here’s an NPR “All Things Considered” interview with Robert Baer about the film and his role in it.
Link here.
On a separate note, I’d bash the film “Titanic”, but it’s not worthy of the effort.
If you’re still reading this thread… the source of “Traffic”, “Traffik” is available on DVD and is absolutely riveting.
You said it for me. In fact, Traffik is much better than Traffic – not “Hollywoodized”.
I’m not sure if it is a recognized genre, but I reading your comment as saying that Syriana is something along the lines of “Taking of Pellham 1-2-3,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Long Good Friday,” “The Day of the Jackal” (original) and “The Conversation.”
Seems this style of “day to day life really is hard to understand and highly complex” film comes around when we become sufficiently un-reality based. Last time (1970s) in reaction to the feel good psychedelic pop of the post-hippies, this time in reaction to the right’s John Wayne and a good spanking will make everything right fantasy world.
Just got back from watching it. Excellent. We’re going again tomorrow.
The critics who claim that this film is too complex are just dumb. Period. It is not hard to follow; one merely has to pay attention.
Just…wow.
Now I’m goin’ to bed.
I’d like to bash every movie made in the last 15 years with the exception of Office Space and the Big Lebowski. Almost all other American Hollywood movies have sucked so badly that they might as well take your 9 dollars, hit you over the head with a hammer, feed you a mixture of corn syrup and butter, and call you an asshole for showing up. The whole experience could over in minutes rather than taking up 100 minutes of your life.
Almost all other American Hollywood movies have sucked so badly that they might as well take your 9 dollars, hit you over the head with a hammer, feed you a mixture of corn syrup and butter, and call you an asshole for showing up.
nuf said
No! You’re wrong!
What about, for starters –>
The Pianist
The Quiet American
And, I haven’t seen this one yet, but Darcy swears it’s maybe the best movie she’s seen in a long time: City of God
I agree on The Pianist — excellent movie! City of God I could appreciate as a powerful movie, but I didn’t enjoy it.
BTW, were any of those movies American or was that your point? (I’m a bit dense sometimes…)
is not a Hollywood movie. It was made in Brazil and is about police corruption there (among other things). It is a very powerful movie.
…but Hotel Rwanda? American History X? Rosewood? 28 Days Later? Murder in the First? Good Night and Good Luck? Garden State? Lone Star? The Constant Gardener? North Country? Bulworth? Bob Roberts? Traffic? Waking the Dead? Silver City? The Hand Maid’s Tale? Closet Land?
I just saw Garden State on cable and I liked it. But mainly for the seen with the knight in shining armor in the kitchen. And because I like movies about Jersey, which are generally independents. Mallrats is a guilty pleasure of mine: “then we dance on the ruins of the stupid stage”, but that is because I was a punk Jersey trouble maker and I like the props to my old lifestyle.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
I thought it was good…not great, but good. My roommate agrees with you though. He thinks it is the best movie that he’s seen in the theaters in at least the last 5 years (either that or he doesn’t go to the theater often).
You’ll laugh, but one of my boys loves it too. Is that weird?
Not having children myself, I’m have no authority to speak on the matter, but yes.
Same child was in love with the movie Singing in the Rain when he was four…I think he has advanced tastes. Or something. 🙂
My Mom had a parakeet, named Tweety, of course, and Singin’ in the Rain was his all time favorite movie. When that segment came on he would run up out of his cage to the little play space on top and start to dance while he watched Gene Kelly. Hopped up and down and spun around and chirped up a storm, all more or less in time to the music. No, I am absolutely not shitting you about this.
BTW, I heard Kelly had the flu and a temp of 105 or something when he filmed that sequence.
rather than a “wow, what a brilliant movie!!”
i liked the non-linear approach, which, until the middle of the movie, you didn’t realize was non-linear.
i also loved the idea that the mind-erasing company was a little mom-n-pop outfit, rather than a large evil corporation (which would be how i would have written it…some of kaufman’s touches are far superior to his main premises).
but the basic through line was not that original (wandering through someone’s mind). in fact, kaufman himself pretty much stole it from his own third act of “being john malkovitch.”
tho anytime i can look at kate winslett, it’s a good thing. and kudos to jim carrey for not playing the goofball for once.
all in all, just “eh.” ok to rent. didn’t blow me away.
…has me curious: what movies do you like, and who do you think the best (movie) writers are?
(Not being snarky; genuinely interested.)
I just saw Adaptation which was so good in the beginning but the ending was sooo lame. My opinion on Eternal Sunshine is as above–so so. I couldn’t make it through Being John Malkovich, which is strange because I collect “weird premise” movies. I loved Memento and a sleeper B movie called The Cube. Kaufman seems to be too full of himself, and Adaptation is really self-indulgent.
…but the followups were awful.
is that it is truly inside Baseball..as they say. I happen to love it but that may be because I’m a screenwriter and have been doing that job for a number of years. It is probably the most realistic look..(I know that sounds hard to believe) at what it is I do for a living. I’ve been in several of those situations myself..short of being chased through the Everglades.
But getting oneself into an impossible job, wondering why you ever agreed to it, ducking the studio people looking for you because you are waaaaay late,I could absolutely relate. Most likely the problem with it was that it was too much of an inside joke.
I love too many movies to pick a favorite…but I do adore The Big Lebowski. Can’t wait to see Syriana. As, I’m at our place up in Sonoma it’s going to require a 50 mile round trip drive to see it, but I’m so there.
“I just saw Adaptation which was so good in the beginning but the ending was sooo lame.”
That’s awesome… you’re exactly right, except that that was the intent of the movie as I understand it. It was an extremely brave and risky choice (and I didn’t really enjoy it either for the same reason) – the structure of the movie itself WAS the point. At least that’s my interpretation.
It was brilliant. It goes from what should be dull: just people living boring lives (and yet I was on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next the whole time), to what should be, according to Hollywood, exciting: affairs, murder, car chases (and of course this whole flip happens as soon as he asks his Hollywood hack brother to help him write). Only that was boring. I think he made his point in an unbelievable way, like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s a shame he had to actually make the movie boring to do it. But what an indictment of Hollywood.
Of course, afterwards I was left thinking… there are intense action things that I really enjoy, even on a pure action level (Equilibrium is the ultimate – way outmatrixes the Matrix, without even using slow motion usually, though the Matrix is a better movie for more meaningful reasons) – so maybe he just did a bad job of making the action! Still, it made the point: characters and relationships are what are interesting to the human mind.
that insight with me. I suspected that the movie might be trying to make a point like that. But rather than being a courageous move, it could be interpreted as Kaufman just knuckling under to the forces that be. Do you think that he could have got a movie made just about a screwed up screenwriter and his brother, a lady New Yorker writer (whom the screen writer never meets) and a wacky Florida redneck who never sees the lady writer again after her article is published?
Instead of lambasting Hollywood for its vulgarity and moviegoers for their bad taste, he could have just tried to make a good movie.
that i was being pretty negative, but this is the bash a bad movie open thread.
i like the work george clooney and steve soderberg are doing in flicks now…and i’m a big fan of good popcorn movies…liked the matt damon bourne series…i rate jurassic park as one of the all time greatest films ever.
love the world of bill goldman as a screen writer. loved the lord of the rings trilogy (am really excited to see both “narnia” and “king kong.”)
someone mentioned in this thread “garden state.” thought that was very funny.
don’t hate kaufman, but think he’s over-rated, and his films always need another draft (but then, that’s true about most films today).
keep it under your hat, but the reason i’m so persnickity abou the writing of films, is i have a screenplay currently optioned, just attached a director and star, keep your fingers crossed, it might go into production sometime next year…
loved ‘rent.’ loved ‘school of rock.’ loved ‘upside of anger.’
fav film: dr. zhivago, tho it’s a terribly crafted screen play.
also love 2001.
duck soup.
toy story 2 and shrek 2.
most any cary grant or fred astaire film.
big fan of lara croft films and resident evil, love jean claude van damme in “sudden death.” (ie, not a film snob).
for the weirdest, funniest, most off the wall movie ever, check out isabella roselini and the guy from kids in the hall in “the saddest music in the world” by guy maddin. too weird to describe. very funny. very touching.
I agree with your assessments on Kaufman and Wm. Goldman. Also, I usually like Peter Wier’s films, although he doesn’t write all of them. Good luck with the screenplay! I’m assuming you’ll let us know when it’s made so we can have an “open thread?”
force all of blogtopia (yes! i coined that phrase!) to go see it…
(don’t worry, you will want to!)
Yay! Free tickets for everyone?
for some, i’m afraid…
blaspheme against The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I wondered when someone would say this!
In the last fifteen years he’s made Bamboozled, Summer of Sam, Clockers, Malcolm X…
Or does Spike Lee not count as Hollywood, and if not, why not?
Lee is a good example. I loved his first 4 or 5 films. I didn’t like any of the films you just mentioned, except Summer of Sam, which I enjoyed but didn’t think was very good.
She’s Gotta Have It is still my favorite of his.
Well, we differ there.
is the only movie I’ve ever actually walked out of — fortunately it was only $4 or some such amount (cheap matinee at a cheap theater). Too much Austin, not enough Dr. Evil, same joke over and over and over and over again…
I’ve no objection to sex comedies (I love the first two “Porky’s” flicks, haven’t seen the third), but something about Austin Powers drove me up the wall, like fingernails on a chalkboard…
I’m so relieved to see you write that … the Austin Powers character was too unappealing to watch for that long. I couldn’t do it.
I thought the first one was funny, the second one was poor, and the third one was the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. I just kept waiting for it to be funny and it never was.
i thought austin powers did not live up to its great premise. too much poo poo pee pee junior high sex giggling, too much of mike meyers’ “more is more” theory of humor (if i do it once, it’s funny, if i do it fifteen times in a row, it’s got to be hilarious!).
not enough of the gags of a 60’s man living in 2000 (loved it when he tried to play a cd on a record player, or when dr. evil thought holding the world ransom for a million dollars was a big thing).
the second two movies just were pitiful (though i liked the third (??) when gwyneth paltrow said her name was “dixie…dixie normous.” some of those jr. high sex gags work).
And speaking of Austin Powers-I mentioned this before and that is that Bush when asked about some of his favorite movies mentioned the Austin Powers movies…which does prove where his heads at at(no pun intended there at all)..I suppose he also likes the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.
Yes, I’m sure he got all of his movie recommends from Joe Bob Briggs!
Oh damn you. I hadn’t heard that gag. Now I’ll be awake all night trying to think of variations of the Dixie routine.
Not a political film, but when I finally got to see Heaven’s Gate on dvd not too long ago, it was truly amazing what a waste of talent and resources it was. And the story had been altered but not even that was done to good effect. And why are bad movies often long movies?
Two well-reviewed movies I hated: Adaptation and Lost in Translation.
I did like Being John Malkovich, though. Also (Booman) in the last 15 years, some of my favorite movies have come out: The Royal Tennenbaums, Wonder Boys, and LA Confidential spring to mind.
…I loved Lost in Translation.
that was pretty cool. I do like some of those darker films. I liked then Kevin Spacey film that won all the awards because it was similarly dark. I think my parents walked out of it, which is a good sign for a movie.
Hated it. But the same guy wrote Six Feet Under which I loved.
One of my faves is The Usual Subjects, one of Spacey’s best.
Did you see it on the big screen? Ebert gave it an excellent review and commented on his show that he’d recieved a lot of love/hate opinions in the mail and that it really seemed to reflect whether one saw it on the big screen or small.
I saw it on dvd and thought it was crap. I’m wondering, though, if there was perhaps some visual/emotional impact that was lost in… well, you know.
And I like a lot of Murray’s movies… well, I liked Groundhog Day a lot. And Ghostbusters.
And What About Bob? is one of my all-time favorites.
I knew there was another in the “plus” column — thanks!
That was my exact situation and reaction.
mrs. skippy and i agree with the “crap on dvd” opinion.
as to liking it on the big screen, i say, then go see a japan travelogue, and spare me bill murray’s angst.
ps we saw “broken flowers” on big screen. it also sucked.
as for adaptation (please see my rant against “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” above), i think kaufman suffers from the “i’m too cute for my shirt” syndrome as writer. also, he can’t write a third act to save his soul. tho “malkovitch” was entertaining (and only in the selection of john malkovitch as the character whose head everyone visits…try imagining “being chevy chase”), kaufman, i think, believes his press that’s he’s brilliant.
adaptation suffered, imho, from lack of consistent characters. why did meryl streep tell chris cooper they had to kill nick cage, just because he was spying on them having sex? streep’s character had already allowed cooper to post naked pictures of her on the internet, so it’s not like it was a big secret she didn’t want anyone to know about.
no, it was just so the movie could turn into the very movie that cage’s character railed against in the first act, a pointless car chase action thriller. that was irony. irony, my friends, might be ironic, but it sure ain’t funny.
Interesting concept but, really, who could buy Bill Murray as the character? A former ladiesman that women still think of fondly many years later? Huh? Didn’t do it for me.
COMPLETELY agree about both “American Beauty” (dark Kevin Spacey film) and 6 Feet Under. I saw American Beauty in a theater, had all kinds of expectations and found it incredibly trite and cliched – “ooooh – suburbia hollow and sterile – who knew???”
But I really liked 6 Feet Under.
I’ve seen Kevin Spacey do suburban angst much better. This film just annoyed the hell out of me. What a waste.
But yeah–Six Feet Under was GREAT!
… movies everyone hates but you love? Mine is The Cotton Club.
Armageddon.
I have absolutely no idea why. I think it is the sappy love story combined with the cheesy action plot.
Or maybe it’s Liv Tyler. Hell, I don’t know.
Well, I’m certainly not going to judge you. One I really like that I can’t explain to myself is The Long Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis.
Also, my favorite Christmas movie is The Ref with Denis Leary. We rent it every year.
I liked both The Cotton Club and The Long Kiss Goodnight so I just consider myself to be in good company.
:<)
My ultimate bad movie that I love is Grease 2. Don’t ask because I have no good answer–I just love to watch it.
Anyway, this year’s movie that I won’t watch under ANY circumstances is King Kong. I mean, really–how tired is that? Last year went to the The Passion–’nuff said.
OK, movies I hated: Basic Instinct. Can you believe that was a date movie? Clearly didn’t marry him. Hmph. Parenthood–we walked out and asked for a refund. Hot Shots Part Deux–I actually slept through the movie. Batman–Boring! Terminator–another date movie? I mean, why didn’t we go to a game or something? The only upshot? I didn’t pay for any of ’em. Thank goodness.
Clearly I married a man with MUCH better taste in film.
Movies that have not worn well with me: Fatal Attraction. Bleh. Spike Lee joints with the exception of Malcolm X, Get on the Bus and Four Little Girls (which was an EXCEPTIONAL documentary). The only actress he seems to respect is Ruby Dee, for obvious reasons.
Clearly, Michael Douglas (I just detest him now–Catherine Zeta Jones could do MUCH better…ewww), Steve Martin and the Gropenfuehrer don’t do it for me. Yuck.
I love both those movies.
A kindred spirit! So you’d fit right in when we all laugh at “life is pain — get used to it” and “God help the next delivery boy that comes to this house.”
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Tried to watch it 3 times, and never made it through the movie once. Fell asleep every time. Parts were memorable, but as a whole it was way too long…
And yet I have friends who loved it.
Ok, I’ll forgive you becuase you said you didn’t actually watch the whole thing, but not liking a Terry Gilliam movie?! I dunno, CG, I just don’t know….
;p
Yeah, well, I fell asleep in the movie theater, and kept waking up and wishing it was over so we could go home to bed…and it went on and on and on and on…
i agree, brazil was nothing to write home about. overblown. i saw it without falling asleep, and it was not up to gilliam’s usual standard. give me baron munchausen or the fisher king or any monty python film.
Other than the cool car chase scense is it really a movie??
I think that I am too ADD to sit through a movie in the theater. I like renting movies. We have a few old stand-bys like “Spinal Tap” or “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.”
I did just see “Rent” and as a person who has seen the stage performance 4 times, I was disappointed. I thought that if a person had never seen the play, then they were given no real reason to care about the characters. This isn’t a bash, just a sigh until it returns to a stage near me.
can’t agree.
mrs. skippy and i never saw the play, and we loved the film!
also, i agree, gonna get you sucka is a funny funny movie. john vernon even funnier than he was in animal house.
Hey skippy, it is me again — good to see you hanging out around here!
Curious to know (if we have actually figured correctly who the other one is…) is mrs. skippy the woman you had with you when last we met?
and i’ve had her many times since!
cool, congrats, then — belated as they are, and congrats on the potential blockbuster as well!
oh, and speaking of belated things — apologies for my overreaction to the, ahem, “I can’t criticize the government” incident — I’m sure mrs. skippy thinks I’m a complete loon….but that’s ok, so do a lot of other people! Tell her I say “hi”.
I liked Syriana alot (reviewed it here a few days ago) and loved Brokeback Mountain (i’ll post a review here on Saturday).
As far as Munich is concerned i’m trying to keep an open mind. I heard it’s un-Spielberg which these days is a good thing and since it appears to be humanist (as opposed to just pro-Israeli) i’m cautiously optimistic it might be a good film. We’ll see soon enough.
I hear Memoirs of a Geisha is tawdry but i’ll see it anyway as I loved the book and want to see what Rob Marshall does with those incredible ladies Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Zi Yi.
My sons and I just walked out of The Chronicles of Narnia about halfway through. It’s simply awful and just….creepy. And the parking lot was filled with cars with Bush/Cheney bumper stickers and those metal fish emblems. I had heard that they toned down the Christian elements a bunch but it was so hokey and poorly acted and it just creeped all three of us out. And it pissed me off that the female characters were all either evil or weak. What a waste of money.
60’s horror film.
The teenagers are not from outer space, they’re from earth. It’s the monster that’s from outer space, so right away we have a false advertising issue, but also it’s not actually shown. It’s the shadow of a lobster claw.
“Bad Fred.”
I don’t know if that’s the name or not. One day in the 70’s I was home sick and flicked on the local UHF channel, and there was a sauerkraut western about some cowboy named Bad Fred.
sorry to be the one, and i bet i’m the only one, but save your money on walk the line.
you know a movie is bad if you spend the whole film thinking about other similar films.
mrs. skippy put it best…the film kept repeating itself. she said to herself as she watched it “wait a minute, didn’t we already see this scene?”
the only amazing and i mean amazing thing is that phoenix and witherspoon did their own singing and playing. a-f*cking-mazing!
phoenix managed to convey the raw emotional integrity of cash, without doing an “impression.” very moving.
however, the movie was standard biopic fare. mrs. skippy opined afterwards that the a&e biography on cash which she saw two months earlier told her more about cash than this film.
we also saw it at the hollywood premier, complete with real stars, jeff bridges, jane seymour, joachim phoenix himself, the director and producers, plenty of b stars, some c stars, and etc.
and we still were disappointed.
if you want to be blown away, buy the soundtrack. but save your money to rent the flick.
Oh, now that’s unfortunate.
I like Witherspoon and I’ve admired Phoenix since he did Gladiator. He was AWESOME. He was the best lazy, insecure, power-mad prick ever, with the exception of Shrub.
I was hoping this wasn’t the case, but I was suspicious when I heard it was made by the same people who made Ray. I’m not quite sure what was wrong with that movie — the actors were great, Jamie Foxx was amazing and deserved his Oscar, the music was incredible, but the movie just didn’t seem to hang together somehow.
ray was far superior!
Munich
My reaction to hype about its importance is to want to puke. Betcha it’s the kiss of death.
My biggest disappointment in a political movie was the remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Of course it was probably a mistake from the beginning to try to remake one of the best movies of all time. No Sinatra fan here – but I actually never much noticed that it was him. And of course, Angela Landsbury’s portrayal…well what can you say.
One of my favorites is an another older one – Little Drummer Girl. Not sure if you’d classify it as “political” but it was for me. I felt like it did such a great job of portraying both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. And it was also one movie that almost lived up to the book.
Gigli….it got such horrendous reviews I had to rent it and see if really was that bad…the savaging it took was more than well deserved..god that was a hideous movie..like watching a train wreck…add Glitter to the List..Catwoman and Madonna’s SweptAway for starters.
But Boo did you ever see ‘BADDASSSSS’..thought that was really great, Monsters Ball also..Jackie Brown to name a few..and usually anything by John Sayles.
Gigli was GREAT! The Gigli bashers just did not understand it because they are not sophisticated enough.
JLo as a bisexual mafia operative and lines like “God bless you, penis.”
What’s not to love?
and who could forget(but I really wanted to)the ‘gobble gobble’ line…my god I don’t know what was worse the acting or the dialog. Made Catwoman look good.
Maybe I’ll just rent it again to be struck dumb again by the sheer awfulness of it.
I don’t know if Mystery Science Theater would even play that turkey…although speaking of bad movies..Who could forgot the ‘Manos Hand of Fate’ from MST?
Oh, anything that Mystery Science Theatre did deserves 5 banana peels here!
The 1973 musical version of “Lost Horizon” with Liv Ullman. Yes, I said Musical!
Netflix, sadly does not have it. I have complained.
But if you hunt, you can sometimes find it a a Blockbusters with a quirky sort of manager.
OH MY GOD!!!! SOMEONE ELSE HAS SEEN THIS!!!!!!
Absolutely in-freakin’ credible in its level of bad. Remember Liv Ulmann, dancing around, singing (sort of) that awful song about the circle of life? EEEEKKKK!!!!!
Ductape, I’d give you mega-4s for this if I could! (hell, I’d rate up the whole thread, but I gotta do some homework)
But…
I have another candidate.
Has anyone here seen THE APPLE? It’s a musical by Menahem Golan (one of those Israeli dudes who I think was an arms dealer, or is that the New Regency guy?). Well, anyway it’s from 1980, absolutely jaw-droppingly, stunningly bad. A music industry guy = Satan (really), a Donna Summer clone who later finds God but before that sings a disco song called…wait for it….
“I’m Coming…For You…” and contains the lyric “I’ll take you deeper and deeper…and drain every drop of your love…”
OMG, my friends and I were literally rolling in the aisles…
Oh, and Steven Spielberg…sucks…rocks…every…time.
I can’t stand his movies.
Oh, and I almost forgot the OTHER classic lyric from “THE APPLE” (and, um, how scary is it that I remember these lines 25 years later???)
“Bite the Apple! Mystic Apple! Mojo Apple! Juju Apple!”
It must be seen to be believed…
Yes, indeed. I have a niece that could sing along with this when she was a preschooler. Kept her out of her father’s way while he worked on his dissertation.
Her parents called me up to ask for my professional advice as to their daughter’s sanity. I wanted to know how they had such a wonderful art film in their apartment.
I thought that I was the only one who remembered that movie. Bobby Van! Yikes!!! Dumb acting, dumb singing dumb plot the whole complete package.
Yes, the musical “Lost Horizon” is a movie for which Saturday Night Live’s Leonard Pinth-Garnell was invented. “Truly baaad cinema.”
As for “The Apple,” it’s more of a “what drugs were they on when they came up with this?” piece of filmmaking.
Movies I thought were bad:
One Night at McCool’s (walked out)
Blind Date (walked out)
Bats
Bottle Rocket
Clear and Present Danger (wanted to walk out)
Wild Wild West
The English Patient (shudder…hated, hated, hated that movie)
The Hulk (walked out)
Bad but still kind of fun:
Reign of Fire
Behind Enemy Lines (Owen Wilson vs. The Serbian National Basketball Team)
I forgot:
Life is Beautiful (I can’t overstate how much I despise that movie.)
Ocean’s Twelve
The Shining
I’m so glad you mentioned Life is Beautiful. (I can’t believe I used the word “glad” in the same sentence with the title of that hideosity of a film.) The producers, director, actors, etc. of that turkey should be banned from creative work and required to eat sugar exclusively for the rest of their lives.
also Life Is Beautiful. In the case of Home Alone I went across the street and watched The Krays..that’s a movie I’d love to see again on DVD but it’s not available.
I don’t even fuck with Hollywood movies anymore. Too vacuous and glossy, and packaged.
I’ll take any film from Iran, Brasil, France, Morocco, or Finland over the crap they churn out of Hollywood.
so are the Norweigans Swedes and the Danes. Have you see Kitchen Stories, Elling, and The Man Who Forgot His Name, or Happy Together, (the Swedish version) though the Chinese film by the same name is also excellent.
Elling & The Man… were outrageously good.
of Elling is planned….why oh why can’t we leave films that are great alone..why do we need an American version?!
Sounds like everything I hate about Speilberg films, maybe this one will be no exception but at least Bana is fun to look at and Tom Cruise — not.