24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice

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I was surfing the web, literally, and came across this article, "24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice." Check it out, let me know what you think. I personally think the list could have been a lot different, but I'll have to post my changes after I do some sleep.

Here's the link.
"24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice"
http://www.avclub.com/content/featur...reat_films_too
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Interesting list, some i haven't seen, some I have only seen once a small number I have only seen twice with about 10yrs between viewings
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Interesting list. I haven't seen most of the movies on there, but I would disagree with The Passion of Joan Of Arc being on the list. I saw it once, and had to immediately see it again, and I had two thoughts at the end: "I can't believe I waited so long to see this," and "I have to own this film!"

On the other hand, the first movie I thought of when I saw the title of the thread was number one on the list: Requiem For A Dream. It's a great movie, but I don't want to see it again.



I actually watched couplpe of them twice...mm...painful? i suppose



Yeah, like everyone else, when I think of good films I don't want to watch again, Requiem For A Dream comes to mind. So does The Passion of the Christ (though I have seen it twice), and Traffic.



A system of cells interlinked
I love Traffic and can watch it endlessly. I have seen Requiem upwards of ten times. Will see it again.

Of all those listed that I have seen, I have the most trouble with Audition, which I will most likely never watch again, and Dancer in the Dark, which I own, and will probably watch again...

Both films seriously upset me, for much different reasons. Audition is sick, twisted ****. Watch at own risk...
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Interesting list.... a lot on there I haven't seen yet.... but I have seen Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don't Cry more than once...
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Audition is sick, twisted ****. Watch at own risk...
Yep, it's fantastic, innit?

If I couldn't watch a film more than once, I wouldn't consider it anywhere near 'great'. I've never had a great meal that I wouldn't wanna eat again...

...I wouldn't eat it every week but look forward to my next trip to that particular café.
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Thursday Next's Avatar
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Dancer in the Dark was the first film that sprang to my mind when I saw the title, but I probably will watch it again, because it was brilliant.

Boys Don't Cry I have watched more than once, but yeah, it is still painful to watch.

One film I would put top of this list is The War Zone,
which was good, but probably the most disturbing film I have ever seen.



Oh, i just got Dancer in the Dark....

Of the ones on the list i've seen, it's been at least twice or thrice for them. Heard Salo was pretty disturbing, going to have that soon. Just watched United 93 and it's a stunning film but really really upsetting to watch, though might watch it again. Seeing that on there made me think Elephant might be on there as well.
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Dancer in the Dark is also the first one I thought of, both because it's super depressing and because it's also pretty boring. Now, I know of at least a few prominent (hope that isn't damning with faint praise) mofo's who love this film so I'll explain my feelings regarding that film. I think it was aiming for a swift kick in the nuts by contrasting the gritty realism that the dogme brand entails with a fantastical fantasy world, basically showing you our heroine's beautiful inner yearnings and then showing them ground down by the hardships of the world. Didn't work for me as I suspect it did for many others, partly I think it's because I just don't really dig Bjork's music that much, so the yearnings didn't connect; also I just find that approach way too blunt. If I look at something like Straight Story on the other hand (strangely absent from that list, guess they bought the "uplifting family film" publicity) that one is a lot creepier to me because the cross-over between Straight's happy yearnings and the darkness in his actual life is a lot subtler and more complex, you see his trying to find beauty in a f-ed up world (and sometimes he does) along with a lot of dark symmetries with his life creeping in at the edges (I went into some depth about this movie a while back in the movie tab thread, but a few examples are the burning house, the woman seemingly fated to kill things that she likes, the runaway who may just end up like Straight's daughter).

Another similarly depressing movie that I like better (and also uses a similar musical device) is the film adaptation of Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven. Compared to either of those movies, I think Dancer in the Dark is too blunt, comes across like when you were in Public High School and had to go to those "meet people who lived really hard lives and be sullen for an hour" things at the auditorium.



Thursday Next's Avatar
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I can see why people don't like Dancer in the Dark, it is pretty relentless and it is somewhat contrived. When I read about it I thought I can't be bothered to sit through 2 hours of misery. But I love Breaking the Waves so I thought I would give it a go, and although it does have its flaws I just think it is such a stunning, well made film.



I was surfing the web, literally, and came across this article, "24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice." Check it out, let me know what you think. I personally think the list could have been a lot different, but I'll have to post my changes after I do some sleep.

Here's the link.
"24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice"
http://www.avclub.com/content/featur...reat_films_too
I'd never even heard of 19-20 of those films. I don't go to many of the movies made nowdays, but I generally read reviews wherever I find them, so I wonder how much of a buzz these films generated.

Of those with which I'm somewhat familar: I've never seen Straw Dogs, which did cause a buzz when it came out in the 1960s. But based on what people who had seen it were saying, I decided it was too violent for me. I've seen too much real blood as a medic and a former police beat reporter.

Boys Don't Cry -- I understand that's a great performance, but it still comes down to the story of a cross-dresser being beat to death by backwoods yahoos whose collective IQs are smaller than their shoe size. What's the entertainment value of that? (Basically the same thing applies to Monster, even though the perpetrator and victims are at the opposite end of society's pool.)

Leaving Las Vegas -- (1) I've seen too many drunks to give a damn what happens to them. (2) I've seen too much of Nicholas Cage in some really rotten movies. (3) No other film about alcoholism can tell the story better than Days of Wine and Roses.

United 93 -- I know a lot of folks think this is really the berries, and that probably includes many in this forum. But that just seems to me like the absolutely worst type of exploitation, like when a mother drowns two kids by pushing her car into the lake and a month later there's a made-for-TV movie about it. It's enough to know the plane was hijacked and crashed; I don't need to see Hollywood's take on what the final hour aboard that flight was like. That pretty much applies to any film about 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing. I've seen more than I wanted about those disasters on TV news.

The one listed movie I'm iffy about, is The Passion of St. Joan. I remember seeing a silent movie about Joan of Arc, but I'm not sure that's the one. If so, I don't recall anything particularly squirmy about it.

On the other hand, I saw and appreciated at the time the immense talent displayed in Reservoir Dogs, but dammed if I ever want to sit through it again. There were too many scenes where I just had to look away from such violence.
From Dusk to Dawn wasn't anywhere near as good a movie, but I have the same trouble with the early mayhem committed by the two outlaw brothers in that film; the later vampires are a bunch of wimps compared to them. I've never watched any of the Jaws series. I once was at a murder scene where blood squished out of the carpet with each step I took; since then I can't stand to see movies where blood splatters on the walls or billows up in the water. I also avoid movies about the Holocaust or the Japanese brutality to prisoners--such inhumanity makes me sick.



Requiem For A Dream was a great film, but I never want to see it again.

Bad Lieutenant I actually liked and will probably buy the DVD eventually.

Leaving Las Vegas is depressing, but Nicholas Cage gives the best performance of his life in that film. I have it on DVD and have seen it about 4 times.

One movie I'm surprised was not included in the list is Midnight Express based on a true story about an American who gets arrested trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey and spends years in a Turkish prison. I saw the movie on TV censored. I never want to see it again and it would he even more horrifying uncensored.



Leongunz123's Avatar
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SMOKE SIGNALS - Good movie, but I can only watch a bunch of guys getting so upset about cutting their long hair once in a life time.

All the other great movies I've seen I wouldn't mind stumbling upon them again.
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Thursday Next's Avatar
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Boys Don't Cry -- I understand that's a great performance, but it still comes down to the story of a cross-dresser being beat to death by backwoods yahoos whose collective IQs are smaller than their shoe size. What's the entertainment value of that?
It may seem like it doesn't have much entertainment value, but I'd rather see a film like this twice than one in which gratuitous violence is there as pure entertainment.



That is a good list. As I was reading it, I was thinking that this or that one should be there, and by the end, many were.

There are only a couple of poor choices. First, Million Dollar Baby shouldn't be watched once, let alone twice, because it is an inauthentic, stupid movie. Then there's the shallow, derivative Requiem for a Dream.

Of the others I've seen-

Like RfaD, Lilya 4-Ever is a one-note assault on its characters- but Lukas Moodysson is unmatched in modern cinema at creating connections between viewers and characters, so what happens to Lilya and Volodya is extremely painful to watch. (In contrast, it's hard to give a crap what happens to Aronofsky's cast.)

S21 is an extraordinary experience, setting a profoundly good man the impossible task of understanding why his former captors (in a Khmer Rouge prison where less than 0.05% of captives survived) could have committed such staggering evil.

People's Temple is more standard in form, and simply reporting this grim tragedy is enough.

United 93 adopts the same spare approach to docudrama instead of a documetary, and is pretty effective.

Leaving Las Vegas has a couple of excellent central performances and is reasonably affecting.

Grave of the Fireflies aims straight for the heart and when it hits is just about unbearable.

The unique When The Wind Blows is a masterpiece of vital political commentary wrapped up in the sweetest down-home package, and it's unforgettably sad.

Nil by Mouth is unrelentingly vicious and inescapably real. It's a superb, horrible film.

Boys Don't Cry at times overlays its hellish true story with a layer of Hollywood cliche, but it does have honest and sometimes extremely brutal moments.

Bad Lieutenant is not a great film but it is memorably grim.

Straw Dogs is a good film, but hard to watch for a different reason than most of the others- it is the product of a sick mind and I found myself hating Peckinpah more than I appreciated his talent.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is a bit of an anomaly here- yes, it is powerful, but it is such an incredible film that it practically demands repeat viewings.



I've seen Boys Don't Cry about 10-12 times. Requiem For A Dream i've seen about 5 times. United 93 and The Last House on the Left, once. My Addictions Professor told the class to go rent Leaving Las Vegas this long weekend, so I'll likely go rent it tonight



Oh and the one movie above all others that should have been on that list but wasn't- Threads. The totally realistic, unimaginably horrific depiction of an armageddon that at the time always seemed days away from happening for real scared me to my soul and scarred me forever.



Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright
The first film that came to mind for me was The Passion of the Christ (which Yoda mentioned, but I'm surprised no one else has said anything about).
While the guts and gore of horror flicks are often really gruesome, they don't tend to have a lasting effect on me, because I know its just a story, not real. Its those movies that portray a real life thing that happened, and brings it down to the individual level, that get to me.
When I first saw the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, I eventually started thinking to myself, "My God, when is this going to stop?" Not because I thought it was bad cinema, but because it kept driving home the point of what it was like, on a very individual level, what it was like to be there (think the quick scene of the guy going back to pick up his own arm that had been blown off - granted, that hopefully never actually happened, but it could have).
Now, take that sequence, and reduce it down to one person. Also, instead of there being just one really, really bad part to get through, the whole movie keeps going back to it, and shows it all, in very close, horrific detail, and through it all, you know that that worst part is yet to come, and on top of all that, that this is the type of thing that was actually done to people.
I felt it important for me to see once, just so I could get a more personal judgment on all the uproar the movie had created. What I came away with was that I told a number of people who were thinking about going to see it, not to, based solely on the fact that it was so intense, so horrific to watch, that they would not want to sit through it. This included my parents. I told them I saw it, and quickly told them they didn't want to.
I have no desire to ever see that again, but am glad I did the one time...

Wow, I have a proclivity towards rambling... I'll stop now (assuming any of you bothered to even get this far )
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