Films that are disappointing, overrated or just plain bad
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- DirectorHarmony KorineStarsRachel KorineBrian KotzurTravis NicholsonFollows the lives of a small group of sociopathic elderly people in Nashville, Tennessee.And Korine did it again! He broke another record! Whereas Spring Breakers is my favorite film ever, Trash Humpers is in my opinion the worst film ever made: this Nottie and the Nottie has Fatefully beaten Manos, Hands down. In Gummo, Korine used the strategy of making his audience accept trash, in principle any trash he could dish out, no matter how despicable, through the establishment of guilt, because to reject it would be 'superficial'. Trash Humpers confirms this interpretation of Gummo. It is the worst imaginable kind of trash. It is not a film. It's literally a bunch of 'people' humping or trashing trash containers, trees, or each other: thats all there is to say about it. I cannot remember having ever seen a porn movie that was worse than this in terms of cinematic qualities. This is Korine, trying to make his fans look stupid, just in order to find out how much they would be willing to swallow, just for the hell of it. It's not unlike a situation where all his fans are lined up in a row around Korine, and he pulls down his pants and takes a big fat dump right in their mouths, after which they will swallow and thank Korine for giving so generously and selflessly. And the most hilarious part is that it worked! His fans accepted his trash with Gummo, and they also hailed Trash Humpers as a valuable contribution to American independent cinema. It won an award for best documentary at the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival in 2009. And all the while, Korine must have been laughing his ass off! This ought to have been released on the first of April. Surely, Korine knew what he was doing, because with Spring Breakers he has proven that he knows full well what the difference is between a good film and trash. 1/10 (because IMDB doesn't allow me to give a 0/10)
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsJean-Paul BelmondoJean SebergVan DoudeA small-time crook, hunted by the authorities for a car theft and the murder of a police officer, attempts to persuade a hip American journalism student to run away with him to Italy.Now this must be the most overrated film of all time! It is really not at all the ultimate film ever made. In fact it has many flaws. For instance, the very long conversations are dragging on and on and are neither very deep, nor very entertaining. In that sense it is the ultimate arty-fartsy movie!
- DirectorBill MorrisonStarsTsuru AokiJulia CalhounMargaret CullingtonA meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.I expected it to be of Koyaanisquatsi-like quality, but I was so immensely disappointed. Its just random decaying footage for 67 minutes and the images don't even look good. Its good for two things: slowing down time (3 minutes will feel like 15 minutes) and torturing people.
- DirectorPaul HaggisStarsDon CheadleSandra BullockThandiwe NewtonLos Angeles citizens with vastly separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race, loss and redemption.Its just over-sentimental mass produced Hollywood tripe, we are forced in to liking because of its anti-racism theme. Its like: "if you don't like this movie, you must be a racist!" I say: "screw that!"
- DirectorPeter JacksonStarsNaomi WattsJack BlackAdrien BrodyA greedy film producer assembles a team of moviemakers and sets out for the infamous Skull Island, where they find more than just cannibalistic natives.This was a God-awful film! Gazillions of Brontosauruses just rolling and throbbing over each other while they fall into a ravine like a bunch of digital marshmallows is simply beyond ridiculous. And no this film wasn't touching! How someone in his right mind can give this film a high rating is beyond me.
- DirectorMerian C. CooperErnest B. SchoedsackStarsFay WrayRobert ArmstrongBruce CabotA film crew goes to a tropical island for a location shoot, where they capture a colossal ape who takes a shine to their blonde starlet, and bring him back to New York City.There's something about King Kong... that just ain't gonna cut it for me. I didn't like the predictable plot, the wooden acting, the unimaginative and stereotypical characters and settings, the barren visuals the laughable special effects, the silly ape and... that doesn't leave me with much else. Mind you this is still a whole lot better than Peter Jackson's remake, which I thought was beyond terrible. But still, I think there were things that were actually done better in the Jackson remake. I think that the CGI of the ape itself wasn't that bad after all compared to the old ape: in fact I had to repress quite a few laughs seeing that stiff thingy stutter around the screen (now I know why they make porn parodies called "King Dong"). And basically those laughs were the only moments of real enjoyment for me. The silly special effects that must have been impressive for it's time, looked just awful by today's standards, but they were also kind of cute in their awfulness which made them mildly enjoyable in an Ed Wood sort of way, which can't be said about Jackson's Brontosaurus-stampede-awfulness which wasn't cute at all. Maybe those effects were the best thing they could do at the time, but if so that doesn't mean they should necessarily have been done at all: they should have sticked to the things they could do. The only good thing about those effects that was actually visible instead of merely deducible was the fact that they got the illusion of the dimensions right: that was impressive. But this kind of technical impressiveness can't carry a whole movie, if film-making is to be any different from making wooden clogs. And there was also no romance between the girl and the ape and because there was no scariness either there was actually nothing of interest going on between them: in that way Jackson did a better job by trying to create a romance, even if he did a terrible job in execution. What makes this one a lot less painful than the Jackson movie though is the fact that it's only 100 minutes long instead of a whopping 187 min, which successfully avoids the pitfall of being totally boring: with such a thin plot you can't make a long movie and while Jackson forgot that, the makers of the old one were wise enough to keep that in mind. What also makes it better is the fact that the silliness of the movie also makes it kind of cute (at times): this was a very important difference. And then there is the fact that for its time the film was original, innovative and inspirational to many other film-makers: that's positive for sure, although new is not necessarily better. Another positive thing about the film is that it is very iconic. It has become a symbol for many people out there: but then again, Paris Hilton is also a symbol for many people showing her fans how to take a King Dong on her One Night in Paris. It may have been a fantastic movie at the time, but to me it just didn't withstand the test of time. That possibility needs to remain open for it to be meaningful to say that other classics (like 2001, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc and many others) did withstand that test: they can't get a free pass just because they are classics or otherwise why bother watching and reviewing them at all? I can't get a higher rating out of this than 5 out of 10. Compared to 3 out of 10 for the remake that's still a decent score, but compared to the 8 out of 10 it gets on IMDb, that makes for another terribly overrated film.
- DirectorSam RaimiStarsBruce CampbellEllen SandweissRichard DeManincorFive friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons.This is not a film: its a load of rubbish. The special effects are especially terrible and the characters do not perform better than in an Ed Wood film. If only it were enjoyable or funny, I might have been able to appreciate it as a self-parody, but its far from enjoyable and Ed Wood films are actually a lot funnier. But that's not the worst thing: oh no... the worst thing is the cult following it has gathered, making it sound like the coolest horror flick out there.
- DirectorHarmony KorineStarsNick SuttonJacob SewellLara ToshLonely residents of a tornado-stricken Ohio town wander the deserted landscape trying to fulfill their boring, nihilistic lives.I thought this one could be great... alas. It tries so hard to be shocking, but I was mostly just bored to death. In terms of cinematography there is nothing even remotely interesting going on here. As a social critique it fails miserably, because it attacks a straw man: there are many dumb people living in the suburbs, but do ninety percent of them look like they are mentally retarded, while considering killing cats as their favorite hobby? Nope. And then the depravities we see don't serve any point, not even the point that there isn't any point, because it would still take some actual film-making skills to make a point like that come across. This film is just utter garbage! 3/10.
Edit after a rewatch: Gummo is physically repulsive. Boring is not the right word and often it is quite dynamic, although at times it does make time drag. Shocking it is, but not in the right ways: killing cats (not for real luckily) is shocking to look at no matter for what purpose and just rubs me the wrong way. Gummo looks butt-ugly, from the cheap camera effects to the dirty-bath-tub-shampoo-spaghetti-chocolate mixture. I don't think it should be seen as an attempt at social critique, so I was wrong to conclude earlier that it failed at this. It is more an attempt to represent some of the *beep* up sh*t that supposedly happens regularly in the suburbs, without any clear judgment by Korine. But this attempt is a failure for the most part, because the caricatures are way too much over-the-top to relate to the real world out there in believable ways, although the chaos itself does seem to have a certain truthfulness to it. Spring Breakers has caricatures as well, but they blend in perfectly with the visual style and do not undermine the believable portrait of the real spring break parties at St. Petersberg. But anyway, I have to hand it Korine: Gummo is not a film you will easily forget. It is one of the most radical, uncompromising forms of art-house trash I have ever seen. And the repulsiveness is deliberate. I think Korine wants us to condemn most of the cat-killing characters (and the film) at face value, by turning them into despicably unlikable caricatures, only to provoke us to feel sympathy for them at other times as well, which is of course doomed to fail, so that he is in effect trying to make us feel guilty about rejecting his main characters, and about our impossibility of loving them despite their 'faults', and in turn about our impossibility to come to terms with the film's trashiness. The whole idea is to make us accept trash (both the characters and the film), because to reject trash would stem from some kind of superficial, judgmental attitude. Some people are effectively convinced by this strategy. But in this way, Korine is in effect saying something like: I could have made my public like any trash I could have served up, anything would do, no matter how despicable or repulsive, because my strategy makes them feel guilty about condemning trash. I'm not conviced. It seems like a juvinile and stupid way to make a film, and a cop out in terms of the task to make something with genuine qualities, which cannot be effectively transcended without making a bad film. If there are post-modern reasons to doubt that, then Gummo undermines those reasons through its failure. To be sure, in some ways, I am willing to admit that Gummo is a piece of art, but it is also and primarily a piece of random, incompetent trash. Art can be despicable and repulsive, without ceasing to be art, and without ceasing to crap. 3/10 - DirectorGore VerbinskiStarsJohnny DeppGeoffrey RushOrlando BloomBlacksmith Will Turner teams up with eccentric pirate "Captain" Jack Sparrow to save Elizabeth Swann, the governor's daughter and his love, from Jack's former pirate allies, who are now undead.Over-hyped brainless entertainment. On top of that it didn't even entertain me: instead I was constantly irritated by the stupid accent of Johnny Depp.
- DirectorStan BrakhageStarsStan BrakhageJane WodeningThe prelude to Dog Star Man (1964), an experimental film wherein a man climbs a mountain along with his dog.This review concerns the whole *beep* thing, from the prelude to parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Let it not be said that I don't appreciate abstract film in general, nor that I don't appreciate Brakhage's films specifically. A cursory glace at my list of favorite films will quickly dispel such notions. However, I have to be blunt about this: Dog Star man is mind-numbingly boring! It takes far, far too long and reveals only material that is either sub-par or plain ugly. It is both his most ambitious film and his least accomplished one. That smells like pretentiousness. I am not sure that is the right word, but a grand failure it most certainly is. Dog Star Man is mostly abstract and none of his purely abstract works I have seen so far possess the proper quality to sustain a full-feature film, not even The Dante Quartet which I hold in very high regard. Almost all of those films were very short and justly so. We can only savor the good stuff in small quantities. Even his most ugly abstract works are much more palatable than Dog Star Man, simply because they are short and forgettable. Not only the length is an issue but also the incoherence: this was supposed to be his magnum opus, so he spent a lot of time cleaning up his otherwise messy images. But the problem is that the cleaner and more internally coherent the individual images become, the more chaotic and externally incoherent the transitions between the images become, because internal coherence creates borders instead of ways of overcoming them. This is especially true of the prelude, but it also goes for the other parts. Add to this the incoherence of the mixture of his non-abstract work and his abstract work: they simply don't match or correlate with each other, leaving us with a total mess. Then in terms of content: Brakhage must have noticed somewhere down the line how boring this was becoming, so he must have thought: "well, let's throw in snippets of me own cock." To make matters worse he thought: "well, let's throw in snippets of me own cock cumming". And if that wasn't enough he thought: "well, let's throw in snippets of me own new-born baby, intercut with snippets of me own cock cumming". That's beyond bad taste! That's just plain ridiculous! And I couldn't care less about the man climbing a mountain with his dog: clearly they went through an ordeal, but doing it all in slow-motion conjured up images of Tom Cruise showing off in some bad Mission Impossible sequel. That's not cool! To be honest, not all of the material was as bad as this, but in a film this long you become immune to any extenuating circumstances: 4 out of 10. - DirectorRoberto BenigniStarsRoberto BenigniNicoletta BraschiGiorgio CantariniWhen an open-minded Jewish waiter and his son become victims of the Holocaust, he uses a perfect mixture of will, humor and imagination to protect his son from the dangers around their camp.This is one of the most overrated films ever! The guy yelling about his little "princess" all the time is simply irritating. Yes it is also a sad story, but it just didn't work out for me, although I would not go so far as to call it a bad film.
- DirectorWilliam FriedkinStarsEllen BurstynMax von SydowLinda BlairWhen a young girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two Catholic priests to save her life.One of the most overrated horror films.
- DirectorYoshishige YoshidaStarsMariko OkadaToshiyuki HosokawaYûko KusunokiTwo interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.I expected so much, because of the beautiful imagery, but its just 3 and a half hours of incoherent and unbelievably boring nonsense.
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsAnna KarinaSady RebbotAndré S. LabartheTwelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.Vivre sa Vie possesses many of Godard's trademark self-conscious and empty trickery, and the story is not nearly as meaningful as it pretends to be.
- DirectorKar-Wai WongStarsTony Leung Chiu-waiZiyi ZhangFaye WongSeveral women enter a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years, after the author has lost the woman he considers his one true love.It pretends to be of 2001 quality; in fact it's nowhere near as good.
- DirectorLuc BessonStarsJean RenoGary OldmanNatalie Portman12-year-old Mathilda is reluctantly taken in by Léon, a professional assassin, after her family is murdered. An unusual relationship forms as she becomes his protégée and learns the assassin's trade.I'm supposed to like this, but to me it was all a bit amateurish.
- DirectorAndrew StantonStarsBen BurttElissa KnightJeff GarlinIn the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.But... its got like cute robots and stuff! Hasn't it? Yeah, but the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense and the environmental propaganda is constantly being shoved down our throats. Not that I'm against the environment or anything. Its just that I like to do my own thinking.
- DirectorJames CameronStarsLeonardo DiCaprioKate WinsletBilly ZaneA seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.A standard soppy romance with no creativity and bad acting.
- DirectorMartin McDonaghStarsColin FarrellBrendan GleesonCiarán HindsAfter a job gone wrong, hitman Ray and his partner await orders from their ruthless boss in Bruges, Belgium, the last place in the world Ray wants to be.In Bruges is very disappointing and highly overrated, considering its score of 8/10. First of all, Brendan Gleeson was about the only actor who wasn't out of place. It's the bloody Irish accents. Colin Farrell's Irish accent is so forced, that it sounds fake, which is really weird, considering the fact that he was born and raised in Ireland: this is probably caused by his strained attempt to sound tougher than he is and look a little cute at the same time, which is too much to ask from a bad actor who also reminded me a bit of Jack Sparrow in this particular role. He doesn't convince for one minute. This is further complicated by the fact that his inner struggle was totally unbelievable: on the one hand we see his eyes light up at the prospect that there might actually be a gangster job to do in Bruge, instead of just being bored by Bruge's medieval architecture, while his inner struggle with one of his gangster acts gone horribly wrong, makes him suicidal about his gangster life at the same time. 2+2=5. Ralph Fiennes is a great actor, but his Irish is fake as well. He also lived in Ireland for a few years in his youth, but his accent doesn't convince, probably because his Irish history is too far away and because he fits into this role as as a comic Vinnie Jones style gangster about as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger fitted into his role as a pregnant father. A shame to see all that talent going to waste on a bad casting decision, even though some of it still manages to seep through. Apart from those bad Irish accents, we have Thekla Reuten: she can't speak English for one second, without hearing immediately that she's from Holland, which is a real turn off. In a Dutch English-spoken film such a shortcoming is to be expected and much easier to live with, also considering the fact that in this film we're supposed to be in Belgium and not in Holland. Then we have Clémence Poésy: a cute and likeable girl for sure, but not a great talent, as she can't do a whole lot more but smile. Her role had no depth. Then there is the mid.. ehm, Jordan Prentice: although the film makes fun of the fact that Ray thinks he's just "the midget", he really is nothing more than "the midget" in its most generic manifestation, not because of him or his size, but because the film makers were tragically incapable of giving any depth to his character. Above all he is just out of place, because a character this thin belongs in a comedy, whereas I can't appreciate the film as a comedy. The film has the same loose take on believability that a comedy usually has, but mostly lacks the humor (although there are some weak attempts), which makes many scenes unbelievable and ineffective. Take for instance the final scene where Harry aims to kill: it has all the unbelievability that a comedy usually has, which makes it kind of hard to take seriously as drama, but it is clearly not meant to be funny either, so this makes it simply awkward, and because it is clearly meant to be a brilliant twist it comes off as a grand failure. Some cool chase scenes and the impressive tower scene just before the end would almost have given this film an extra point if it were not for the final scene which served as an anti-climax. In Bruges is often praised for its rich scenery and moody cinematography, but I saw little more than generic picturesqueness, cheap clichéd embellishment straight from a tourist post-card, but no real beauty. The film almost makes you believe you're indeed just "in f*ing Bruge". 5/10
- DirectorRon FrickeStarsBalinese Tari Legong DancersNi Made Megahadi PratiwiPuti Sri Candra DewiFilmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.The first half an hour was impressive, close to Koyaanisquatsi in terms of quality and with a distinct slowness that gave more time to let the beauty sink in. I thought it was just that: beauty registered calmly for the sake of beauty. Alas... as soon as it went to the modern world it began to trade beauty in for moralizing. It failed to show the modern world as just as strange as far away cultures, because it resorted to showing weirdo punkers and a manager in an office painting mud on his face to do that. Then it showed some stuff about the food industry and how the cows all have to walk in circles and the chickens are harvested by machines and stuff, so that we can eat burgers, over and over again. Then it showed that in Africa the same people who walk in strange clothes, doing strange dances, also kill each other with guns, over and over again. And it showed poverty in Africa. And it showed a lot of other culturally pressing problems around the globe, over and over again. Trouble is, that if I wanted to see all that stuff I would have rented a documentary about it. And all this social commentary is actually a rather clever trick, because anyone complaining about it would come off as an insensitive bourgeois prick, wanting to see the beauty of strange far away cultures, but not wanting to see the social problems behind all that beauty. To hell with that though; I hated all that social commentary stuff, not because I don't want to know about all those problems, but because I don't think that film is a medium that should be used to send messages, and that moralizing, in film and elsewhere, often amounts to simply teaching things that people already know and then forcing us to think the same way about it. I don't like to be forced, not by a person, not by a film, even if it is for a good cause. If I would have bought a cinema ticket for this, I would have wanted my money back. 5/10
- DirectorGrigoriy KozintsevStarsInnokentiy SmoktunovskiyMikhail NazvanovElza RadzinaAfter the death of the King of Denmark - Hamlet's father - his brother Claudius ascends the throne, who takes his widow Gertrude as his wife. Hamlet meets the ghost of his father and learns that he was killed by Claudius.It looks pretty good, but its really boring.
- DirectorSteven SpielbergStarsTom HanksMatt DamonTom SizemoreFollowing the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.It is only decent and therefore highly overrated.
- DirectorWilliam WylerStarsMyrna LoyDana AndrewsFredric MarchThree World War II veterans, two of them traumatized or disabled, return home to the American midwest to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.The film is undeniably well crafted: it goes from a to b, to c on a steady pace, and doesn't miss a thing. But I was mostly only mildly interested, or to put it another way: mildly bored, with what was going on. What went wrong? Well, I think The film suffered a bit from simplicity. Moral simplicity for instance. There was a guy who said about the war against the "Japs": "maybe we attacked the wrong people". I guess he wasn't exactly a patriot. How convient that he was also a tactless *beep* making a war veteran feel useless: that way we can all feel anger against unpatriotic, un-American people! The fact is, that I'm not exactly patriotic either (and being a Dutch guy, I'm also 'un-American' for an objective fact) and I don't think they should have dropped the A-bomb: am I one of the bad guys now, deserving a punch in the face? There is also narrative simplicity: you can always see where it's going and it's never doing anything wrong, but it also never steps out of line. Then there is visual simplicity: almost never an exciting - let alone daring - shot, but mostly just totally neutral: close your eyes for five minutes, only follow the conversations and you won't miss a thing. Too bad really, because creative visuals could really have created an atmosphere of brooding tension which was desperately needed, but deplorably lacking. The acting and the script were constant, always of the same fairly decent level, but never really spontaneous, interesting or particularly sympathetic, except for Harold Russell, who was believably pitiful with his hook-hands. That last storyline was the only one that actually made me feel anything, a feeling extending into the last five minutes which were much more interesting than the rest of the film. But all in all, it's mostly a steady, mildly (un)interesting ride to a 6 out of 10. It's definately overrated as such.
- DirectorJames McTeigueStarsHugo WeavingNatalie PortmanRupert GravesIn a future British dystopian society, a shadowy freedom fighter, known only by the alias of "V", plots to overthrow the tyrannical government - with the help of a young woman.Over-hyped.
- DirectorSidney LumetStarsAl PacinoJohn CazalePenelope AllenThree amateur bank robbers plan to hold up a bank. A nice simple robbery: Walk in, take the money, and run. Unfortunately, the supposedly uncomplicated heist suddenly becomes a bizarre nightmare as everything that could go wrong does.Could someone please explain to me why this film has such a high rating? To me the story was just plain ridiculous.