I just weatched DREAMWORLD-which was one of those movies where after I watched it, I still didn't know exactly what I'd seen , and was setting in stunned silence while the credits were rolling. A halfway hot babe wakes up in a motel alongside her boyfriend, who , unbeknownst to her, has suffered a minor seizure. They start driving along the desert highway, and hear Hitler on the radio giving his speech at the 1936 olympics. Only the news announcer says it was given yesterday. The car conks out, they get scared when strange noises are heard, and the car rocks, they take off running, the guy passes out and has another seizure, the car starts up-tries to hit them, but misses-it backs up, the suicide doors open (it's an old lincoln), and Hitler is driving. Confused yet? I forgot-before that, they stop in a weird diner out in the middle of nowhere. The guy running it has 'dreamland' on his shirt, but this is never explained. There are other weird and assorted characters in it, and it supposedly has something to do with aliens, Roswell, area 51, and time warp/travel. I no longer care. Nothing makes any sense whatsoever, especially the ending. Mercifully short at 77 minutes. To be avoided like the bubonic plague.

Thanks for the heads up.
I haven't seen anything really good in a long time...

Christ, my first review in the thread, and I got the name wrong-it was DREAMLAND. Shows you how much I cared about it. Time-travel movies usually suck big-time anyway-watch The Terminator or TIMECOP again, if you want to see a good one . David Lynch really sucks, and some amatuer trying to imitate him sucks even worse.

383-Did you or anyone else, ever check out HOSTAGE w/Willis? I thought that was one of the better adult-themed flicks I saw last year.

Yeah, I saw "Hostage". It was a good suspense thriller. Definitely good Friday Night viewing. I can't remember the ending at the moment for some reason, but I do recall enjoying it.

I'll agree with you on David Lynch's more abstract films like "Mulholland Falls" or "Blue Velvet". I think they're highly overrated and I suspect the reason for this is that people are conned into believing that there's some higher meaning to them when all I can decipher is a bunch of nonsense. Lynch is better when he plays it straight, I think. "The Elephant Man" is one of the 100 best films I've ever seen. "The Straight Story" is warmhearted and well acted, but very slow.

Opinions regarding films are so broad and subjective that it sometimes drops my jaw. I have no idea what criteria people use when judging films. William Goldman, the screenwriter, is known for having said "No one knows anything" as rule #1 of filmmaking, meaning no one, regardless of reputation, is an expert on what will hit or miss with audiences.

Maybe it's easier to agree what sucks, and move on from there. Here are the TEN WORST, how do I say this, theatrically released non-documentary films I've ever seen that anyone may have heard of. It's hard to define. For instance, some films are intended to shlock and should be considered such, but it seems that some shlock is better than others. I know what to expect from "Friday the 13th Part VIII" for instance, and, if I'd seen it, I'd try to judge it accordingly.

10. "The Minus Man"

Luke Wilson plays a serial killer who uses poison. Cheryl Crowe makes a cameo as one of his victims. Okay, maybe most haven't heard of this one. It's a good thing. Snoozefest.

9. "Hulk"

Ang Lee went off on some kind of acid trip and made a Hulk film where the story makes no sense at all and a computer animated Hulk is in scenes so dark that he can't even be seen. Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair here because there is a very good battle/chase scene about 3/4 of the way through the film where the military chases The Hulk cross-country. Other than that portion of the film, I'd rather have watched a dated episode of the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno seventies TV show.

8. "Mulholland Falls"

David Lynch nonsense that Hollywood loved because it made them think something intelligent was going on because it was all so nonsensical.

7. "Nixon"

Oliver Stone takes an interesting man and an interesting presidency and attempts to do a character study of a man that Stone obviously dislikes, and believes to be a one-note ego-maniac, played in toothy caricature by Anthony Hopkins. Basically a three-hour crucifixion of Nixon that reveals almost nothing about what led the man to make the mistakes he made. What led him to make those mistakes? A nearly pre-cognitive sense that we would face what we on this board are up against today. Milton Friedman said that Nixon was the most intelligent president he'd met, but felt that Nixon lacked scruples. Stone's film gives you all of the latter and none of the former. If nothing else, it's a boring film. The recent History Channel documentary on Nixon, "Nixon: A Presidency Revealed" is more informative and gives a better sense of his character.

6. "The Rules of Engagement"

William Friedkin takes us through a two hour plot involving a trial of American military personnel responsible for shooting into a crowd of Islamic protesters only to show us at the end that these protesters had amazingly pulled weapons out and that was why the soldiers fired on them. The accused are conveniently silent about this throughout the whole film. This is a bit difficult to explain if you haven't seen the film, so let's put it this way: the film cheats, big time. It sets an entire plot up around a scenario that can easily be destroyed by someone speaking a single line of dialogue that they never speak solely and exclusively to keep the plot going.

5. "Gladiator"

Won the "Best Picture" oscar. Just didn't interest me. I can't even give you good reason. I think it was poorly edited and spent alot of time on unnecessary establishing shots. I just didn't care and wasn't engaged.

4. Tie. "The Hours" and "Monster's Ball"

"The Hours": Another "Best Picture" winner. This film is so in love with itself that it's revolting. Everyone in it overacts. It has no discernible thread between its "interwoven" plots. Pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, melodramatic horseshit.

"Monster's Ball": Got Oscars. Critically acclaimed. Tragedy for tragedy's sake. A bunch of ridiculous, contrived tragedies drive two low-down characters from opposite worlds into a love affair that finally comes to fruition with a supposedly red hot interracial love scene that isn't as red hot as it's cracked up to be; Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry have simulated sex in a bunch of quick edits obscured by a coffee table. You see, their pain drove them together. Zzzzzzzzzz....

3. "Hostel"

Big hit. One hour of college kids travelling around Europe in search of partying against a backdrop of constant nudity is followed by a second hour of senseless, over the top violence in a "pay to torture and kill" retreat for (of course) wealthy American Capitalists to do what we all know they really want to do; torture and kill trapped human beings in grizzly blood stained cement death rooms. Plotless. Makes "Friday the 13th" look like "The Godfather". Pure crap. directed by Eli Roth, who also directed....

2. "Cabin Fever"

A bunch of kids go out to a cabin and catch a flesh eating virus. They find themselves in a situation where they can't get help...well, despite the fact that they can get help. Then, they do things so dumb that it boggles the mind, spit up alot of blood, take off their clothes, have sex, and mourn their dead friends with less sympathy than you do a dead goldfish in a pet store. Also, the film has no ending, but just decides to give up because everything has gotten so dumb that it ends on basically a self-referential gag reel that you'd expect to waste your time with on the special features of the DVD.

(As I move through the bottom half of this list, I almost hope that you see these films to see how bad they are. If nothing else, you might say "Oh, My God, I can't believe someone paid millions to make that and made millions of it.)

1. "Powder"

Powder is an albino bald boy with special powers. Here's the thing: People don't understand him and he's treated "differently"! Well, we've never seen that before! OH, poor Powder! I hope that he finds justice over those who have treated him so poorly! The film was made by convicted child molester Victor Salvo and the film smells so bad of everything you'd expect from just that knowledge that it makes you sick. Powder bears eerie similarities to Michael Jackson. I laughed out loud in the theatre at the end scene as Powder, oh good grief, runs through a field with others chasing after him, begging for his acceptance for all they've learned from his unique self. Here's the thing I love most about "Powder". Twice I've said that this is the worst film I've ever seen and twice I've had someone say in response "Oh! I loved that film! OH, it meant so much to me!" How pathetic. Go ahead and see it. Oh, poor Powder, no understands him... tough shit.

So, there it is. That was off the top of my head, but I think its a pretty good list. I'll let you know if I think of more.

P.S.(You don't have to read this):

Now, please don't think that because I've criticized some of these films while mentioning violence, sex and nudity that I am offended by these things. Rather, I think it's bad filmmaking when they're used for their own sake. Violence is fine in "The Godfather" for instance, in my mind, because it serves the characters and the plot. Sex and nudity are fine in "Basic Instinct", "Unfaithful" or "Fatal Attraction" for instance, because that is what the characters and the plot are about.

Here is my test for these things. Sex and nudity first. There are three possible reactions to sex and/or nudity: titilation, embarassment, or offended. Regardless of which of these three the audience feels, it is very difficult to drag the audience emotionally back into a plot that has nothing to do with any of these three emotions. However, if sex is a central theme to the plot, it's fine. There's no place for a sex pit stop in "Die Hard" or "Jaws" though, for example.

Violence, though, is tough. If you can compel the audience that a reasonable person in the specific situation of the character would resort to violence, it's fine. If your portraying a character that uses violence in an unreasonable manner as part of his/her character, it's fine. This is very broad reasoning for the use of violence in films. I notice that I find violence most disturbing when the character I've sympathized with is commiting it and/or the character I sympathize with is having it enacted upon them, unless it has been properly established that the character is going to use violence and/or be a victim of violence. Then there's a redemption factor after the violence occurs and, if that is properly fulfilled, it seems to us that the violence is OK because it served the plot and served redemption.

If a nameless bad guy is shot by Jack Bauer on "24", I hardly blink an eye. When Michael Corleone shoots Salozzo and the police captain in Jack Dempsey's restaurant, I'm disturbed, it's shocking and gorey, but I get past it quickly, knowing that those guys are sons-of-bitches. Watching a sympathetic character die in a similar fashion though is particularly disturbing, and the film's plot had better deliver big time to make us feel redeeemed for it. Anyway, it gets much more complex with violence.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: WinstonSmith,

Most here will probably hate me for saying this-but I couldn't stand the godfather. I'd never seen it-mainly because I burned out on mafia movies decades ago, ESPECIALLY the ones that glamourize it.

Everybody kept telling me how it was the best picture ever, etc; so-I rented it one weekend back in the eighties, watched half of it, said to myself out loud "What the f**** am I wasting my valuable time with this shit for"? Turned it off, rewound the tape, took it back, and managed to complain so loudly I got another rental in its place, although they looked at me like I was nuts ("But You HAVE to like it-it's a classic "(no-I don't)) I will go to my grave never having seen the second half of this movie, and absolutely not one minute of its sequels. GOODFELLAS sucked the big one, too. As you said, there are no rules. Nobody knows anything. To me, the beginning of the death of movies was in the 70's, when all the overrated young (mostly Italian descent)directors came along, as well as Lucas & Spielberg.

Believe it or not, I've never seen the Godfather.

I never had any interest in it.

I'll check out Hostage. I like Bruce Willis.

So far as the list above, I agree with Winston's critique, at least on the one's I've seen; I haven't seen everything on the list, but I can vouch that Powder sucks huge time. I couldn't even finish it. So far as the Eli Roth "films", I also agree.

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I enjoyed taking my young son to see the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, that was the last time I watched a movie in a theater.

In the 80's I had cable and HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime. I was divorced and my son visited every other weekend. Once he was old enough to drive I realised I watched a lot of crap on those premium stations and canceled them. With the money I saved I started renting videos. But after many trips when I could find nothing worth renting I reduced my trips to about once a quarter and still have trouble finding anything worth the investment.

My son still enjoys movies, now 30, but he enjoys taking apart the special effects mostly. The advent of frame advance on DVDs has really inspired him. He is a web designer and applies what he has learned to shock and awe the gullible in advertising a client's offerings.

Movies are advertisements of our culture to the rest of the world. Do you feel they represent you?

Probably the worst viewing of "The Godfather" is the first viewing. It's quite long and the plot is difficult to follow in both part I and part II. I had to read the book before I finally had a good idea what was going on.

I've seen "The Godfather" and "Godfather Part II" probably 20+ times if I add in all the bits and pieces I've caught on TV over the years. I think the watchability of these films catches on after you've watched them once all the way through. Then you find yourself kind of drawn into them. They stick in the mind and it's all played out so subtly and there are so many dotst to connect that I keep finding myself watching again to determine what's actually going on. The films very much rely on the audience putting itself into the shoes of the characters to understand what's going on.

Dave Clark's observation of life #38: "If you have to watch a movie several times to understand what's going on, it doesn't bear watching in the first place."

Just my opinion, though LOL

I imagine it is like reading a book over and over, it depends on whether you are just looking for a distraction or are trying to learn something from the experience.

You might liken it to people you meet and want to see again.

SEVEN-A film designed to appeal to those who have a fascination with graphic cruelty and sadism. Sickening and depressing, it paved the way for other 'torture' films like the SAW franchise, HOSTEL, CABIN FEVER, etc; further giving horror films a bad name.


Here's another one I just suffered through on AMC (America's Moronic Channel): PINATA: SURVIVAL ISLAND. A living pinata starts killing off teens on an island. Yes, you heard me right. A living pinata. Another to avoid.

--------------------------------
SNAKES ON A (MOTHER******G) PLANE-well, there's one nice thing about watching something you KNOW in advance is going to be a piece of shit-you can't possibly be all that disappointed with it. Actually-had they played this straighter and left out the unneeded and way overdone sex, gore, and some other crap, this could have been a halfway decent disaster flick, but-of course, since it was New Line, they took the low road, resulting in an atrocity that would've been unwatchable had it not been for Samuel L. Jackson, who literally carrys the thing on his shoulders. I can't figure him out-according to one article I read, he's been in more high-grossing films of all-time than any other actor (I know, that doesn't mean they were GOOD, but still), yet he'll constantly lower himself to be in a POS like this. Oh, well, he saved it from being on my 'worst' list.

Plot, for those under a rock, Jackson is an FBI agent escorting a witness to testify against a mob boss he saw commit murder. Said mob boss sets a booby trap in the luggage section of a huge crate full of various snakes of all kinds, complete with exploding phreormones (sp?)that 'drive them mad', causing them to bite people(guess he never heard of bombs). Some are expendable to the script, some not, and it's all extrememely predictable. Surprisingly, after the months upon months of free hype this thing got via the internet, (which is where his famed line actually came from, according to the extra features) it stiffed in theatres, not even opening at #1. I'll have to check IMDB to see if it broke even or lost money.

I've never seen the Godfather movies either.

I like B horror flicks. LOL Not all of them, but some. I've seen Cabin Fever called the worst ever other places, but I didn't think it was any worse than most of them. Not worth watching again.

I liked Pinata: Survival Island. To me, it seemed a little different from the usual...maybe because of the setting or the monster thingy, but I can't remember exactly what made me think so. It's been a while since I saw it.

What gets me is THEY ALL FOLLOW THE SAME STUPID FORMULA. Everyone gets killed off except the one or two main characters (usually a man and a woman). There's no suspense in that regard. The viewer can't invest in liking a character because that character WILL die (unless it's one of the aforementioned main characters) and knowing the two main characters WILL survive, there's no suspense in that either. With no emotional investment, no one cares.

I think the only reason I like B horror flicks is most of them are paranormal based. Most of my TV and movie watching has paranormal or sci-fi aspects.

I haven't seen Snakes On A Plane yet, but I want to. Not sure why. Snakes give me the creepy-crawlies (the snake pit in Indiana Jones...eeeek!). I like Samuel L. Jackson and he looked like he was having fun with this one in the promos, so maybe that's it.

IT WAITS-every once in a great while, you accidently, just by chance, find a little-known gem. It was late, the home vid store was ready to close, and I had a free rental coming, but couldn't make up my mind. Grabbed this one. A female forest ranger is drinking too much due to a tragedy in her past, and runs into further, even worse problems when she runs afoul of a centuries-old monster that some Indians have unwittingly unleashed again. Star is a GORGEOUS female who actually has some meat on her bones rather than the usual anorexic hollywood variety these days (I think she may have been in CABIN FEVER also, but this one is head and shoulders above that).This one was produced and co-written by one of my idols, Steven J. Cannell, who has given the world so much entertainment, I can't even begin to remember it all (SIMON & SIMON, A-TEAM, HARDCASTLE & McCORMICK, RENEGADE, and on and on.). His tv series were sometimes fluff, but the writing was good, and they were always entertaining. At one time in the 70's-early 80's, he had a show on damned near every night. Strongly recommended for those who would like to see a good horror film for a change. Excellent example of what people who care can still accomplish with a low budget.

I think Pinata Island is one of the low budget time-slot fillers that sci-fi had commissioned into existence. They have a pile of un-heard of movies, and frankly, many aren't worth sitting through, and I'm a big fan of goofy B movies.

Almost all of my TV veiwing are sci-fi style shows. I like Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr Who (SOME-not many Dr Who episodes) ,and Battlestar Galactica. (This very good show seems to be losing it's edge, and becoming "Days of our lives" in space)

I liked a LOT of Stephen Cannell's shows. He did have a ton of shows out, for sure.

There was a real oddball one he did, something kind of like Indiana Jones....can't remember the name now.

I also like GOOD war movies.. Patton, Saving Private Ryan, the Band of Brothers mini series,(yes, I liked the Dirty-Dozen-Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson- real ass kickers!!!) but I detested "Three Kings",for a reason I can't really put my finger on...I think it was george (c)looney that did it in for me. Can't stand him.

Also, I like just about anything that John Carpenter did.

quote:

There was a real oddball one he did, something kind of like Indiana Jones....can't remember the name now.

Am I thinking of THE ADVENTURES OF BRISCOE COUNTY with Bruce Cambell here? Or was that Sam Raimi striking again?

I think that's one of Raimi's projects.

He and Bruce have worked together from the beginnings of their careers, I believe.

My unforeseen gem was "Ravenous" with Robert Carlysle and Guy Pierce. It's about these guys in the late 19th century on a military base somewhere up north who end up contending with vampiristic cannibalism. Now, with that description, how could anyone think it was good? I loved it. Very, very gorey, though. Rented it on a whim expecting nothing and got very caught up in it. It somehow manages to be simultaneously intelligently done and ridiculously over-the-top. Great pacing and good camera work.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129332/

quote:

Originally posted by dave clark:
SEVEN-A film designed to appeal to those who have a fascination with graphic cruelty and sadism. Sickening and depressing, it paved the way for other 'torture' films like the SAW franchise, HOSTEL, CABIN FEVER, etc; further giving horror films a bad name.

One thing you'll notice about "Se7en" is that, except for the ending, which answers the entire moral question of the movie's theme, there is not one single scene of violence in the entire film. (Okay, Brad Pitt does get hit over the head at one point, I think, but that passes for midday TV violence).

"Se7en" is not in the tradition of any of these other films. Everything is a crime scene in "Se7en", and this is more effective because it leaves the audience to fill in the worst with their imagination. The other films you've mentioned don't employ such subtlety because they're inferior films and they can't.

"Se7en" is an archetypal film. In other words, it is a reworking of a story that has been told for thousands of years: a young warrior (Brad Pitt) led by a guiding elder (Morgan Freeman) to meet an evil overlord (Satan figure, Kevin Spacey) and overcome, thus passing ultimate initiation on his hero's journey. In this way, "Se7en" has much more in common with "Star Wars" or "The Silence of the Lambs" than it does any of these other films. "Se7en" twists this a bit because Brad Pitt's character is put into a situation so impossible to deal with that he loses his battle.

The philospher Joseph Campbell of "The Power of Myth" fame outline "The Hero's Journey" in his writing and in "The Power of Myth" PBS mini-series. Campbell died before "Se7en" was made, but it fits consistently with his criteria and his explanation for why stories like "Se7en" have resonated with audiences for millenia.

Horror films can serve a theme very well, and even better than films in conventional genres that attempt to take these themes head-on. It seems that writers and filmmakers haven't realized this. Try to name 20 Great Horror Films with a straight face. Horror presents a great writing opportunity.

For example, "The Sixth Sense" in a larger thematic sense, is not about a kid who sees ghosts; it's about a single mother who, despite her best intentions, is not equipped to deal with the problems of her child. Bruce Willis' character enters as a surrogate father figure. "The Shining" isn't about a hotel full of ghosts, it's about a family dealing with a father's chronic alcoholism (and Stephen King had a multitude of drug problems at the time). "Night of the Living Dead" is well known to be a thematic statement on communism. "Rosemary's Baby" makes so many statements about so many things I can't even get into it here.

"Psycho", I think more than any film, is completely responsible for any shift in many now-past-middle-aged people's perception of something they detect having gone askew in what they want from films. "Psycho" was the first film to shift horror from being some alien invader or unreal monster to horror being a normal looking guy next door. There's a weird lag in sixties films that makes it hard to pinpoint "Psycho", but then there's a very hard and immediate shift to alot of intense anti-hero films in the seventies. The shift seems to very much follow the political times. It takes place after the assasination of MLK and RFK and the end of the Johnson administration. Right about there, you start getting "Chinatown", "Rosemary's Baby", "Bonnie and Clyde","Night of the Living Dead", etc. Films start to take on an edge.

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