Bad But Gorgeous Movies

So this thread is about films that are visually beautiful but are generally considered bad movies. I'll start by saying one of the lesser known superhero films The Spirit, a film that I enjoyed because it literally felt like you were watching a comic book, however many believe this is a bad film, but visually it was done the same way as 300 and Sin City were done, you know...green screens everywhere. Anyway, what movies do you think were visually gorgeous but generally bad?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrenc...ck#Filmography

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

This is the most recent thing that comes to mind.

Ugh... Australia... I think that was the name. That steaming pile of cow dung with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman

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www.catchasegnome.blogspot.com

All Tarem Singh films.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_tuscan_sun

Subjectively,I didn't like No Country For Old Men but the cinematography is stunning.

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"Anything less than immortality is a complete waste of time."

Only God Forgives. I mean this movie isn't that terrible but it's pretty bad. The only saving grace is the stunning cinematography. To the poster above who said Singh films are bad, I dont really agree. The Fall is an incredible film. It seems every movie that tries to be different or looks visually stunning is immediately pretentious. I hate that method of thinking.

Oblivion was an incredibly gorgeous looking movie, even though the story was not executed as well as it should have been. I'd say 300 was a bad movie. Don't get the love for it. It looked good, but I was mainly bored throughout.

The last Resident Evil movie had a few examples of nice cinematography, although the film was terrible.

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I'm a filmmaker...no really One Nine Seven One.

I know this is an old post, but The Cell and The Fall are anything but bad movies. Gorgeous? Absolutely. But not bad.

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I respectfully disagree.

I mean, I found The New World to be pretty bad, but films like Badlands and Days of Heaven are just the epitome of 70s American filmmaking. It's Malick at his most accessible, calm and straightforward, without the choppy editing and excessive narration.

Terrance Malick makes his films look very good. They are very beautiful but they're dull at the same time. I don't think his films are bad,not at all. They're good, but i wish they were a bit more enjoyable to watch.

I think The New World is his weakest, most like a transitional film in his oeuvre, though all of his films have the feeling of being the newest evolution of his increasingly polarizing style. While the narration in The New World and To The Wonder were a bit excessive and maybe a bit weak, I don't think his editing style is choppy at all. In comparison to any non-auteur (though not wholly inclusive group) American filmmakers, he hold his shots above average.

The only specific sequence I can remember feeling choppy is towards the end of The Tree of Life when Chastain is surrounded by the two women and the camera faces the sun:

That annoyed me, but Malick's editing style is built more on classical music than it is classical continuity editing. His images have a rhythmic flow to them not just in speed but in content that usually coalesces very well with his music: The sensual opening of To The Wonder scanned bodies as the music reached barely peaking sensual climaxes; the organ sequence in THE Tree of Life plays off of the organ's crescendos and harsh tones with the father's harsh but well reasoned parenting. It's not in the very literal way that music videos often cut, but it's focused and flowing, and I think is one of the better stylistic evolutions.

From To The Wonder, 3 excellent cuts (an near perfect matches most of the time) condensing hours of travel into a few seconds with a purely kinetic approach (as opposed to a musical approach that rules most car trip editing):

Almost unnoticeable match-cut, leaving Paris:

headed for:

Mont Saint-Michel, as the sign would indicate, this shot makes the next make perfect sense:

Now they're there, positional arrangements still held but swapped in this shot, and we're there in an instant.

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Mubi

^ Thanks for the great post. Perhaps "choppy" isn't the best adjective to use, but when I compared the editing nature of his 70s films in comparison to his newest work, I found the latter to be a bit more ... unstable. It's not a bad thing, per-se, but The New World is an example of it. The editing felt so disorganised, which gave the impression Malick had no idea what he was doing. I'm well aware that was his stylistic preference and he did it with completely full intent, but the constant cuts and heavy-handed narration get to you after a while.

It comes merely down to preference, but I vastly prefer the more simplistic, straightforward Malick of the 70s, where he could tell an engaging story but do so in a beautifully "accessible" way.

His work has become increasingly more montage-like as his career has gone onward. I think that it's because he's become more impulsive due to his work becoming more personal. With a Malick film, you usually need to view it like memory and take the whole feel rather than feeling out each event. I doubt he even thinks of an audience while he works.

We can see his unusual editing techniques in Days of Heaven, at least the beginnings of it. It wasn't very possible to make the kinds of films that Malick makes without the use of digital editing (which was accepted far before digital shooting) in the 70s. In a scene in the river, Malick opts not to provide a reverse shot, or matching dialogue in an exchange between Bill and Abby, he instead provides a medium shot of Abby from a shifting perspective that's obviously not Bill's.





It's much less dramatic here, and his work has definitely shifted in this direction into an extreme, but the seeds are here.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346457/?ref_=sr_1

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My Favorite Films

Plan 9 from Outer Space, it is so brilliantly gorgeous.

BARRY LYNDON was the first movie that popped into my head when I saw the title of this thread.