Rules: explain why
Ready player one.
That has to be one of the cringiest movies I’ve seen, is tries so hard, too hard with it’s “WE LOVE YOU NERD, YOU’RE SO COOL FOR PLAYING GAMES AND GETTING THIS 80S REFERENCE” message and the whole “corporation bad, the people good” narrative seems written for toddlers… The fan service feels cheap and adds nothing to the story.
Finally, they trying to make the people believe that very attractive girl with a barely visible red tint spot on her face is “ugly”… Like wtf?
Yet it received decent reviews plus being one of the most successful movies of that year.
I hate the Beatles.
Poor Things
I saw nothing but praise for this thing and have no idea why. None of the characters are relatable, their take on female empowerment is creepy and gross, and almost every male character is either evil or a simp. This is like a weird fourth wave feminist Frankenstein porno.
Alien Romulus
This movie seems to get a lot of love for some reason. I understand the bar was set really low by Prometheus and Covenant but that’s not an excuse.
Romulus is just a collection of greatest hits from all the previous movies. None of the beats were new or original. Not a single protagonist or element added to the story in a meaningful way. None of the main characters are memorable in the slightest (compare to the phenomenal characters in Alien or Aliens). It was just so…bland
If you think the movie eas cringe, definitely don’t read the book. It’s so much worse.
Elf.
Once you’ve seen the first 3 minutes and get the premise, then the entire rest of the film is so predictable in its jokes and situations that I derived absolutely zero pleasure from watching it and it just grated the entire way through.
Films can be funny because the initial premise leads to really entertaining, unexpected or clever situations… or a film can super straight up and shallow in its humour.
I really don’t get why Elf is so incredibly popular.
Lucifer. My sis loved it and I hated it with a passion. I don’t think Ellis is any good in it and they’re just relying on him (and the other actors) being hot instead of actually telling a decent story or making enjoyable characters.
Saw.
It is on the very tiny list of movies that I am actively angry I watched because I’m never getting that time back. It is one of the single worst movies on “Tell don’t show” that I felt like I was being actively gaslit by the writers because what they were telling was opposite of what they were showing.
“Jigsaw tricks people into killing his victims” says the cops, and says all the people watching the movie. NO. He kills people and gives them a potential for a way out. Setting up a maze with cutting wire and a door sealing off if you don’t make it in time isn’t “tricking someone” it’s killing them with extra steps. It’s like blaming fucking landmine victims “Well if they didn’t step there they’d be okay”. Legit the logic that movie gives I find my blood pressure rising just going into it again.
And the ending. I guess spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie, I’m not gonna bother to figure out the formatting for it so here’s your warning to stop reading. The surprise twist was why my friends made me watch this movie, the logic above was explained and how clever Jigsaw was they said I’d like it. I’m not a horror guy but I love Scream because holy fuck it was clever and well done. Saw, the victims are looking for where Jigsaw is watching them and I just said “He’s the dead guy in the middle of the room.” and questioned why would I come to that so early in the movie my reasoning was simple. It was a dumb movie that was up its own ass so much to say that it was clever that was the obvious “clever” haha we got you option it could be. Anything else would have actually been clever.
I compare Scream and Saw so much. Scream is a very clever movie masquerading as a dumb movie that deconstructs a genre and pulls of a fantastic twist that if you didn’t see it coming will shock you and when you go back there’s all sorts of clues. Hell, part of the twist is realizing they put thought into the killer instead of just “slasher villain #85” that the genre had done for so long, but if you know what’s happening the movie is winking with you with such amazingly dumb and clever things like “He’s behind you Jamie”. Saw is a dumb movie that masquerades as smart, it wants to be clever and philosophize at you and wants to pull off a twist that is unearned because there’s no clues for the twist, so unless you watch a lot of movies and realize this one is up its own ass, of course you’re going to be surprised. It’s like a guy who built a tesla coil and (think he) knows how it works and no one else does so he shows up in a cheap top hat and a wand and expects everyone to applaud like he’s David Copperfield. Sure, everyone loves tesla coils, but that reaction is unearned.
From what I understand from others who’ve seen the rest, even what little cleverness goes away on the character and it just becomes a show to watch more elaborate ways to see people get hurt. It’s the only way I can comprehend that the series is loved by as many as it is. I work in healthcare, I can see plenty of that on the day to day basis.
Spirited Away
Spirited Away, and to some degree all Ghibli stuff leans very heavily on a shared cultural Mythos. It doesn’t do exposition in the same way that zombies or angels aren’t explained; everyone knows that stuff because we all grew up with a million references.
how dare you
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Edited my comment
i agree with you, and i pretty much felt the same the first time i watched it. plus, Chihiro feels like a very reactive character, driven from one errand to the next, and nothing feels really earned.
however, my opinion changed a little bit, because i got to see its theatre adaptation on stage. this is more or less my first time seeing a stage play, so it was a very new, and different experience for me. basically it is a big make believe, because unlike film or animation, what you can do with props on stage is very limited. i had to try very hard to turn the analytical part of my brain off, otherwise the whole thing will just be ridiculous. and that somehow made it a lot more enjoyable.
so i guess what i am trying to say is, don’t think too hard about it? 🤷
I gave up on spirited away half way through it.
Ghibli it’s very hit and miss for me, it’s either really amazing or really tedious and boring.
It’s weird, because I loved Spirited Away upon first watching it. But I can’t do it anymore. It’s like you say, a dream with no consistency. I let it fool me once, but now I’m lucid and see through the facade.
That’s not to say I think it’s bad, per se. It’s still beautiful, and fascinating, and has a great score… But for me personally it has no re-watchability for precisely the reasons you mention.
Literally every thor movie OTHER than Thor Ragnarok. They’re just stale and full of lore that I don’t care about, also the older ones are so dark I can’t see anything. Ragnarok is SO funny to me and I was hoping Thor: Love and Thunder (the sequel) would be like that too but it was just too lore heavy for it to really latch onto me :(
Perhaps I just have the brain of a 12 year old that laughs at a guy getting hit in the head with a big rubber ball but like I’m in the movie for a good time, not note taking 😭Ragnarok and Guardians Of The Galaxy feels like fun short story books that’s like 200 pages and has images while the others feel like the 4th book in a series that’s like 500 pages each.
that being said I know hardly nothing about the marvel universe past basic stuff, so it’s probably just me 😅
(also I don’t know box offices, I just know what my peers opinions are on them)Any marvel movie. I just do not get the appeal. The only people who like it seem to like it way too much. Most of them are also grown ass children.
Kill Bill. Boring as fuck.
The Crow. I refuse to elaborate.
Pretty much anything from Kevin Smith except Mallrats and even that I’ll admit was dumb but I liked it as a young teenager.
Deadpool. Juvenile humor from the king of “I’m in a movie because I’m unbelievably charming”
Not a movie (well maybe there is one?) but I absolutely hate The Trailer Park Boys. I just don’t get it. It’s not funny, at all. It’s not my thing at all. I’ve been hated on for this opinion but I don’t care, it sucks.
On that same note, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Same reason tpb sucks to me.
Lord of the rings. So boring.
This thread is fun though. I enjoyed reading everyone’s opinions, especially those I disagree with.
Kubrick’s version of The Shining. Most likely, I would feel differently had I not read the novel first, but the reduction of the story to a Nicholson-show pisses me off to the point where I cannot enjoy it for what it is. I’d rather endure the over four hours of less brilliant screenplay of the 1997 version.
Dune
Boooooooring
Ready Player One was so bad, but this is a rare instance where the book is worse than the film. At least the film has visuals the book is just cringe and rememberberries.
The movie did ruin the Iron Giant, though.
I haven’t seen Ready Player 1, and now I have a reason not to see it.
You don’t disrespect Su-Per-Man.
I am not a gun.
Except when it makes for a cool action movie scene.
Oh hell naw. If you mean that they made him go superweapon, that’s damn near legal cause to burn down a studio
I haven’t actually seen the movie, only a few clips of it. I’m pretty sure they make him use his weapons, but maybe not his superweapon.
Agreed. The movie is just a fun action film wirh no brainpower needed. If you go into it with no expectations it’s fine.
The book? The author insists on yanking you out of the story with listicles of callbacks and references to obscure ‘80s shows or whatever. The main character is just an ass, and is also conveniently capable of meeting every challenge thrown at him despite being an impoverished basement dweller. The book became a slog of contrivances to get from A to B with “Aren’t all these retro references cool?” jammed in at every opportunity.
The thing that baffled me about that movie was how many “startups” used it as reference for what they were trying to create. Like, did I watch the same movie? Real life was so shitty they had entire blocks of people living in trailers mounted to each other vertically. They used the matrix or whatever it was called to escape. And you want to create that for real?
Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.
Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.
Have you been around the car culture?
The book is straight garbage. Probably the biggest Gary Stu ever. The movie is actually decent by comparison, because it removed a lot of cringe and toned down the main character.
Gary Stu? Is this the male version of a Mary Sue?
Yes.
RPO is bad, yes. But Spielberg is a good director and that’s why the movie is at least entertaining. I hate-read the book, but I still enjoy the movie.
Agreed. That book was recommended to me by a few fellow sci-fi book fans, so I gave it a shot. Couldn’t get through it. It read like a 6th-grade kid’s fanfic about the 1980’s. Bad writing, bad dialogue, ham-fisted plot.
To be honest, isn’t it a ‘Young Adult’ book, i.e., intended for preteens/teens, not adults?
Young adult means the content is suited for a younger audience, it’s not an excuse for unintelligent writing void of anything of value.
Lets be real here, young adults (I.E toddlers and teenagers) aren’t exactly the most critical readers or familiar with judging literary quality. The writers of books targeted at young adults know this, and tend to not do more work than they have to on plot and world building. Go ahead and write me a five paragraph essay on the value that Warriors added to the medium. No child read warriors for the themes, they read it for the premise of anthropromorphic cat drama and as fuel for their first role-play world building sessions. YA novels are the literary version of comfort food, enjoyable for those that like the taste but you would be foolish for expect a fufilling rich plot with well thought out characters.
True! But I guess young adult readers don’t tend to be as discerning, which is why I never expect the writing to be any good.
True, but it’s still poorly written. And so much of the content is GenX nostalgia, it’s obviously meant to be a crossover to those preteens’/teens’ parents.
Very weird take. Everyone I’ve ever talked to lives that book. I honestly cannot picture any conceivable reality where the movie was better than the book.
Wasn’t it supposed to be bad though? Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought people liked it because it was ridiculous and campy.
Yeah, the book was meant to feel a bit cringey, because the story is told from the perspective of a teenage gamer obsessed with pop culture. It’s the entire reason he wins the egg hunt, because he’s always got these obscure references floating around his head.
Yeah, if OP thought the movie was heavy on the “good job being a teenager in the 80s!” content, they should steer well clear of the book.
Marvel movies. Yes all of them. They’re trash. It’s just cgi slop, badly written one-dimensional characters, cliché tropes, formulaic stories, plotholes bigger than meteorcraters and brainless action sequences. A cashgrab.
A saw a couple; I gave them a fair chance. They’re all the same. The appeal is beyond me. Brainrot at its finest.
Nosferatu, the one that just came out, is very well done. It’s also just Nosferatu: Again.
I was very bored watching the movie because it’s the same story I’ve heard before many times. Those 2 hours and 12 minutes dragged hard.