More Unpopular Movie Opinions

[Ginger]

Apr 23, 2021 10:57:30 GMT -4 sardonictart said:

Feb 2, 2021 12:20:16 GMT -4 scarlet said:

Good day to be reminded that I loathe Groundhog Day. As much as I love Bill Murray, this movie lost me after about 30 minutes.

I also despise this film. Took me forever (like years) to get through the whole thing.

This was a dumb, guilty pleasure movie when it came out, back when not everybody worshipped at the altar of Bill Murray. Now it's some kind of classic and Bill Murray is a genius. But is it really a whole lot better than Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty's "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot" from the same era? I would argue no. That movie was fun.

It's not rewatchable, IMO. Once you know the premise, it's very tedious to watch that alarm keep going off every morning.

[Deleted]

Apr 23, 2021 10:57:30 GMT -4 sardonictart said:

Feb 2, 2021 12:20:16 GMT -4 scarlet said:

Good day to be reminded that I loathe Groundhog Day. As much as I love Bill Murray, this movie lost me after about 30 minutes.

I also despise this film. Took me forever (like years) to get through the whole thing.

The last time I saw that movie was on Groundhog Day in 2013. It was playing on a loop on the TV in the emergency room, where I was stuck for 8 hours before I was admitted to the hospital in order to have my appendix removed. So I will forever associate it with the most awful pain I have ever experienced in my life. Needless to say, I will never willingly watch it again.

[technicolor]

"Marriage Story" is totally about Noah Baumbach's divorce and no amount of cutesy deflecting from him will convince me otherwise. It's a good film with great performances that is sometimes helped, often hampered by its overchoreographed, control freak direction. Since the husband is also conveniently a control freak NY director and the wife is a LA actor, it does read as pretty self-serving that he built in all these similarities, but left out "husband (allegedly) leaves wife for other woman while she is pregnant", the one piece of really ugly gossip that came out of his divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh. And while I understand intellectually why that would have been a bad idea artistically and too on-the-nose, the film feels like a fluffy copout once you know the personal context.

Katherine Hepburn's acting style hasn't aged well at all. Some of her performances still work, but often she comes across as very mannered, particularly in older work. Joan Fontaine has the same problem. OTOH, Olivia DeHavilland cultivated a more natural way of acting and it has aged better. Bette Davis also mostly still works, she often goes big, but in a way that feels organic to the characters. Cary Grant is someone who I feel was underestimated in his time because his performances don't go for big dramatic beats. But now they seem very subtle and detailed from a modern perspective.

[Ridha]

Mar 20, 2022 14:09:04 GMT -4 technicolor said:

"Marriage Story" is totally about Noah Baumbach's divorce and no amount of cutesy deflecting from him will convince me otherwise. It's a good film with great performances that is sometimes helped, often hampered by its overchoreographed, control freak direction. Since the husband is also conveniently a control freak NY director and the wife is a LA actor, it does read as pretty self-serving that he built in all these similarities, but left out "husband (allegedly) leaves wife for other woman while she is pregnant", the one piece of really ugly gossip that came out of his divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh. And while I understand intellectually why that would have been a bad idea artistically and too on-the-nose, the film feels like a fluffy copout once you know the personal context.

Katherine Hepburn's acting style hasn't aged well at all. Some of her performances still work, but often she comes across as very mannered, particularly in older work. Joan Fontaine has the same problem. OTOH, Olivia DeHavilland cultivated a more natural way of acting and it has aged better. Bette Davis also mostly still works, she often goes big, but in a way that feels organic to the characters. Cary Grant is someone who I feel was underestimated in his time because his performances don't go for big dramatic beats. But now they seem very subtle and detailed from a modern perspective.

Interesting comment (second para, I don’t know the players in the first). I liked Philadelphia Story a lot (and I’m not an old movie buff, that and Anastasia with the to die for Yul Brynner, are the only ones I do), but haven’t seen it in years and would be interesting to re-watch now with your comment in mind.

What are your thoughts on Yul Brynner in Anastasia - and indeed generally? He is one of my favourites (again that is an extra thing considering I am not into many old movies finding them too stilted), but caught Anastasia one day (20 years ago, starting a 20 year YB crush and rewatching once every couple years) and was blown away. What struck me most was how NATURAL he was while still being every inch an X factor movie star. I thought most of his line delivery as Bounine was *chef’s kiss*

I also, due to my then newfound crush, went on to watch King and I and 10 Commandments, and while I still thought he blew everyone off the screen in terms of looks and charisma, he (and everyone else) undoubtedly had the as you say “mannered” delivery/acting style.

But Anastasia, wow, tweak with the colouring and print, and in terms of dialogue as well as delivery of said dialogue, it seemed decades ahead of its time.

[cremetangerine82]

Boy, I have a bunch!

- Bridesmaids is not the funniest movie ever, but a good movie and groundbreaking for how it was a box-office success that showed that women-lead comedies could be successful. I also think Melissa McCarthy‘s performance being nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar was a rare opportunity. So few comedic roles get an Oscar nomination or win (Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday, Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda, Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder, etc.).

- I don’t care if you like the technical achievements in The Birth of a Nation or anything besides Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar-winning performance (and first for a black actor) in Gone With the Wind, I can’t stand the racism, Lost Cause Civil War revisionism, and rape (or attempted rape). The deep unlike-ability of Scarlett O'Hara in the latter movie also doesn’t help. Also, there are similar techniques used in the former movie in previous media that doesn’t have the Klu Klux Klan as the heroes! Please check out the excellent Suspense by the immensely talented and deeply underrated Lois Weber.

- I love the OG Star Wars, but I’m OK with Annie Hall winning Best Picture at the 1978 Oscars.

- Also, I truly think that Heath Ledger would’ve won the 2009 Best Supporting Actor Oscar while alive. I hate counterfactual thinking, but last year proved that a posthumous nomination (Chadwick Boseman for Best Actor) doesn’t mean a posthumous win (won by Anthony Hopkins). Ironically, the only other actor to win a posthumous Oscar was fellow Aussie Peter Finch in 1977.

- Jason X is an underrated horror movie, an underrated meta-horror movie, an underrated science fiction movie, an underrated sequel, an underrated entry in a long-running movie series, and an underrated intentional comedy. Not good, but underrated. Discuss.

- I really didn’t care for Avengers: Endgame and I’m just burned out on the MCU and the DCEU movies. I do love Black Panther (R.I.P. Chadwick Boseman), The Dark Knight (R.I.P. Heath Ledger), Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Batman, Logan, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Hopefully that’s enough to keep my comic book nerd card.

- I really can’t get into romantic comedies. So much heteronormativity (too many to name), cisnormativity (ditto), regressive gender role enforcement (Kate and Leopold), denouncement of friendships between men and women (When Harry Met Sally…), endorsement of stalking (Sleepless in Seattle) and threatening self-harm (The Notebook), leaving partners for frivolous reasons (Runaway Bride), etc.

- I was OK with Love, Actually, but now I loathe it and completely agree with this article.

- I’ve been done with M. Knight Shyamalan since Signs.

- Both Jane Campion’s In the Cut and Karyn Kusama‘s Jennifer’s Body were panned, but I’m glad the tide has turned in those movies’ favor. They’re still deeply underrated.

- Groundhog Day made me hate Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe” and that feels wrong.

- Freddie Got Fingered needs a Criterion Collection Blu-ray release with director’s commentary because…I need answers to its weirdness, Tom Green!

- Citizen Kane is still a great movie, and I couldn’t watch Mank because it was too much in the “the script was 100% Herman J. Mankiewicz“ theory, which has long since been debunked.

- I’ve begun to like It’s a Wonderful Life because it only plays once around Christmas and loathe A Christmas Story because of the 24-hour marathon and live re-make that was ass.

- Katharine Hepburn was not a good actress and her performances are so mechanical to me. Yet she had 4 Oscars?!?

- Sean Penn should give his Mystic River Oscar to Bill Murray for Lost In Translation instead of smelting it. He was unbearable and over-over-acted to an embarrassing extent in that movie. The Bawstin accents were also atrocious, especially from Laura Linney.

- I really liked The Blair Witch Project (and I knew it was fictitious watching it in the theaters) and it holds up better than most “found footage” movies that followed in its wake.

- The Departed is a really good film, and is the first Best Picture Oscar winner to be an remake of a foreign-language movie, Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs (the second was CODA this year). But AMPAS had to give Martin Scorsese his long overdue Oscar for something in order to save face for denying his talent for so many decades. It’s indicative that when Jon Stewart hosted the Oscars a year before he won, even he made a joke about how rap group Three 6 Mafia has won an Oscar, yet Scorsese still had none. If you watch the YouTube video after the Best Original Song win, they cut that joke off because it’s a permanent black mark of how much they ignored his prodigious talent for 26 years!*

*Fun fact: I went to a movie in which I saw the trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street. There was a title that said “from Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese”, and someone in the audience screamed “Fucking finally!!” and other people started to clap! If a random stranger in the theater said thar someone was overdue for an Oscar, you’re long overdue!

[Ladybug]

Nov 22, 2010 9:41:42 GMT -4 technicolor said:

"husband (allegedly) leaves wife for other woman while she is pregnant",

I would watch a movie about this in a heartbeat. It's not like JJL was the first woman this happened to in Hollywood. My favorite character in A Marriage Story was Laura Dern as the divorce lawyer. Besides Baumbach and Billy Crudup, what other men have left pregnant partners for other women?

[scarlet]

Nov 29, 2021 1:38:37 GMT -4 cremetangerine82 said:

I’ve been done with M. Knight Shyamalan since Signs.

Off-topic, but I stumbled upon The Happening last night and, having never seen it and having heard all the absurdity of it, decided I needed to watch. I mean, you know a movie is bad when the most implausible thing isn't plants being angry at people and releasing a toxin that makes them kill themselves but Mark Wahlberg being a high school science teacher. Yikes!

[cremetangerine82]

Nov 29, 2021 1:38:37 GMT -4 cremetangerine82 said:

I’ve been done with M. Knight Shyamalan since Signs.

Off-topic, but I stumbled upon The Happening last night and, having never seen it and having heard all the absurdity of it, decided I needed to watch. I mean, you know a movie is bad when the most implausible thing isn't plants being angry at people and releasing a toxin that makes them kill themselves but Mark Wahlberg being a high school science teacher. Yikes![/quote]

Poor Mark just wanted to be something else than “a cop or a crook.”…

“We had actually had the luxury of having lunch before to talk about another movie and it was a bad movie that I did. She dodged the bullet. And then I was still able to … I don’t want to tell you what movie … alright “The Happening.” Fuck it. It is what it is. Fucking trees, man. The plants. Fuck it. You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook.”

I just don’t think Shyamalan has made a good movie since Unbreakable.

[cubanitafresca]

Ugh I just needed to put this somewhere and this seems like the only safe place.

I'm really disappointed that Brenden Frasier got Best Actor. I just don't think he deserved it. I hated that movie and couldn't even finish it. But Colin Farrell was fantastic in Banshees and so was Austin Butler in Elvis (even if he's turned out to be an annoying little twat)

IMO Frasier got the award because he is a genuinely nice guy who went through a hard time and people were happy to see him make a comeback. But that's so unfair to actors who had stronger performances. The Oscars really need to come up with some sort of Congeniality award and stop giving people "Feel Good" awards.

And this irks me even more because this is kinda the 2nd undeserved award he's been part of - I am STILL pissed about that abomination Crash winning over so many more deserving films.

[cremetangerine82]

I think Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick didn't deserve their Oscars and are inferior sequels made to feed on people's nostalgia, being able to sit in a theater, and two giant egos (James Cameron and Tom Cruise). There's no excuse when Max Max: Fury Road AND Blade Runner showed that you can do a very satisfying sequel decades later.

I think Stephanie Hsu was a stronger choice for Best Supporting Actress, the scene towards the end really sold me on her performances as Joy and the multi-verse. For Jamie Lee Curtis (my beloved) her win felt like a lifetime achievement token, a reward to "one of their own" (her parents being movie stars), and an apology for the shit-show of being in Halloween Ends.

I'm very satisfied to see Brendan Fraser won, he did seem so humble and kind and a genuinely amiable fellow it was impossible not to root for him. For someone who's seem to be so grateful for a second chance that it felt refreshing. Also, his mention on his involuntarily commitment to a unspecified facility implied he had a crises that needed it. His relief and joy was so infectious, I can't be mad at his win.

I'm glad Colin Farrell was nominated; I thought he was a star in the making when I saw him in Tigerland. Over the past years, he's given great performances and finally gets rewarded. Farrell has a chance for another chance at the Golden Man.

I'm glad Austin Butler lost; his sad face make me smile because his faux-Southern accent ON the red carpet (you're from Anaheim, California and not Elvis right now, asshole!) made me puke while portraying a child grooming culture vulture. Also, I'll be glad to never see his smug-ass face had he won.