Good Movies I Don't Want to See Again

Lolita ahead of Dr. Strangelove and 2001??? Oh Honeykid, you do this just to drive me mad, don't you? You, my Kubrick-hating friend are much, much crueller than me.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Reuqiem for a Dream. That movie was hard enough to watch the first time.

Why do Requiem for a dream disturb so many people? It's a good movie, and good movies should be watched over and over.

Grave of the Fireflies. I can recognise on one level that it is a good (anime) film, but it is unrelenting gloom and doom about Japan in WWII.

The Return of Martin Guerre. 122 minutes. I watched it about a decade ago on a flight to somewhere. A brilliant film but once you know the ending, it would never be the same again since it is a mystery film.

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All secrets are safe with this man, because none are as deadly to him as his own. His secret is that he is Richard Kimble. (The Fugitive - Conspiracy of Silence)

I gotta ask, Mark--what job did you have in the 1970s that hinged on your "objectively" analyzing movies?

There may be good reason to be objective about a film, but I've always found films and books to be very subjective. The writer of the book, the director and actors in a film or play all bring their personal experiences, ambitions, fears, prejudices, and other emotions into their creation. That may match or contrast with my own experiences, fears, prejudices, etc., so I can't not react to what I read or see. I'm not a blank slate on which the book or film can be imposed. Either I like it or I don't.

Usually when I don't want to see a film again, it's because it failed to adequately interest me the first time around--just didn't speak to me or get me involved in its storyline for some reason, most often because it seemed to me poorly made and not told very well.

There is only one film I can think of that I think is well-made, well-acted, true to its "reality" and yet you couldn't pay me to sit through it again. That film is Reservoir Dogs. A hell of a story, extremely well-acted, totally believeable, and it introduced me to some fine actors with whom I was not previously familar. But I just can't sit through all of its violence again. Because of things I've seen and experienced in my own life, I just can't take that film. You wouldn't believe how much it upsets me.

There are several popular films that I've never seen and never will see for the same reason. I've never sat through any of the Jaws movies, or even their previews. Won't see Shindler's List. Won't see Mel Gipson's "the beating of Christ" movie, not just because of the violence which I understand is disgusting, but because the message I perceive from Gipson through that film is irresponsible and morally corrupt.

On the other hand, there are several popular movies that I have seen and would never watch again because I didn't like 'em the first time around. One that pops to mind is Saving Pvt. Ryan, which I considered poorly made, unrealistic, and basically foolish. Not looking at it objectively at all! Didn't like Sound of Music. Detested E.T. and hated Close Encounters even more. Didn't care for Alien or any of its derivatives. Lost interest in 2001 after the opening with the apes and watching the spaceship dock (the best thing about that movie was its soundtrack). Gladiator was to me just one big yawn. My interest wandered during I Walk the Line--you get my drift.

Not saying they were bad films, because movies as popular as those surely have something going for them. Just because they don't appeal to me doesn't mean they're "bad" (well, maybe I do feel a little like that on the 3:10 to Yuma remake ). I don't for a second think I'm the only one correct in disliking them and all of their fans are therefore wrong-I recognize I'm the one out of step, but whatever it is that appealed to others about those films just rolled off my knife.

I edited and wrote for a film reference book which was attempting in the 1970s to become what IMDb is today. Most of what I did never saw the light of day, and the book I got credit for I did very little on, but I still have thousands of pages of computer printout of the work I did. You see, it was drilled into me to not hate films because of their actors, subject matter, directors, year of creation, etc. Now for me, that's not really difficult when it comes to film. I love film. I do not hate film. I may think that some films aren't worth watching to most people and that some films are pathetic, but I don't hate them. You have admitted that you won't watch movies with Goldie Hawn and the Baldwin Bros (even though one of them is a conservative!), plus you've said that Hanoi Jane repulses you unless she's in Cat Ballou. It's not that I don't have that luxury to automatically think poorly of something, it's that it's just not in me, and the older I get, the more I purge the last vestiges of it from me. I'll admit that I have a few sacred cows, and Spielberg is probably the most obvious one, but like I tell people here, if you dislike Stevie, drop my rating by one, and if you like something I seem not to, add one rating to mine. I don't know, ruffy, I think I've only seen you rate one movie and that was Taken which you gave .

Just as an aside, I'd like to add that you only seem to frequent limited parts of this site. I'd appreciate it if you took a gander at Movie Tab II where I post most of my "reviews" of films both old and new. (You'll have to go backwards from this page.) Also, I have put a lot of time into My Top 100 list here. I'll admit that it starts out rather childishly, but I do put more effort into my later posts, and this will put you at my recent discussion of Spartacus.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I don't want to see any good movies ever again.

The reason Requiem for a Dream disturbs many people is because it depicts a multitude of scenes that are very confronting on either a visceral level (like the scene where Jared Leto injects heroin into a gangrenous hole in his arm) or an emotional level (each of the film's main characters gets a very unhappy ending), and is such an unpleasant and pessimistic experience that most people don't want to sit through more than once (if they manage at least once). The film's quality is also debatable, as it may have some reasonably flash visual style, but the story is still fairly weak and that makes the film suffer as a whole.

Also, I don't watch movies.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Clearly you Do watch movies.

Well, it is supposed to be sarcastic. I guess it doesn't translate so well sometimes.

Apparently not.

Well, that's an interesting background in film. My "education" in film is limited to a few teenage years when I took tickets and ran the concession stand at a small town movie house. I was into writing even then, editing the high school newspaper and writing a weekly column for the town's one newspaper, and listening to movies over and over for hours at a time evenings and all day weekends gave me an ear for dialogue. An actor who can sell the story by voice alone, without body language and facial expression is very good at his (or her) profession.

As for my prejudices about certain actors, I've disliked Hawn from her days on Laugh-In. Don't know what it is exactly but she's like fingernails on a chalk-board to me, although she was least offensive for some reason in Swing Shift. My differences with the Baldwins has nothing to do with their politics--they just strike me as too pompous and smarmy and just not entertaining. I haven't done an actual count, but it seems to me every movie in which a Baldwin had a major role was just boring, so I tend to avoid them. Same way with Chevy Chase and some others--there are some actors I just don't like, the way some people don't like liver or turnips. There's no accounting for taste. I do resent Jane Fonda's actions and statements in connection with her trip to North Vietnam during the war, and I have a low regard of her knowledge of politics and history based on a close encounter with her during an interview near the end of the war. But I disliked most of her movies well before that. One of my ex-wives used to watch Barefoot in the Park over and over to the point where I can't stand to be in the same room with that film. Barbella was just a big waste of film as far as I'm concerned, and I've always thought Klute was tremendously overrated because of the holes in its paper-thin plot. Seeing her and dad together On Golden Pond left me cold--Henry was good, Kate was good, but Jane was expendable. Yet I thought she was the sexiest thing on two legs in her first movie with Anthony Perkins about college kids living in a small trailer. And she's absolutely perfect in Cat Ballou, one of my guilty pleasures, I guess. For what it's worth, I have an even lower opinion of John Wayne's politics, even though he was generally a good actor until he started making films by the formula in his later years. Wayne seemed to me too eager to send young men to fight in 'Nam, especially after he sat out World War II on a deferment as a married man with children when even older married men with families like Glenn Miller served and died. My idea of an actor who proved to be a great American in World War II was Sabu who came to this country from India, became a naturalized citizen and flew combat missions in WWII as the belly-gunner on a B-17.

As I said in my earlier post, there are probably good reasons some times for some people to be objective as possible about films. Personally, I expect a film critic to apply his special knowledge, insight, and opinion to his review, and I want that review to be well written and witty. As for rating films myself, I'm more binary in my assessments. I either like a film or I don't. I don't grade on a bell curve--it's pass or fail. There are some films of which I'm very fond, and there are some I automatically dismiss because the subject just doesn't interest me--primarily what passes for horror films these days, or the comedy favorites, or films based primarily on car chases and prolonged shootouts--in other words, the kind of films that would attract most of the under-30 set to their first weekend debut. I don't read books that don't hold my interest, why should my movie selection be any different?

Last King of Scotland

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elephant def

Once we were warriors. Found it very depressing

american history x - good movie- one and done lol

The Elephant Man--Well-filmed (well, I did find the woman and elephant interludes off-putting.) and well-acted but way too emotionally involving. I've never actually cried in a theatre, but that ending was one of the times I almost did.

David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. Well-made, well-performed but I spent a lot of time staring at the back of the seat ahead of me, or the floor, grossed out by the events on screen.

Maybe Titanic.. It is too long. and you could easily memorize the scenes..

Probably The Godfather films. They are good, very good in fact. But I just don't find myself getting exciting by the story again.

I would actually agree with honeykid about most of Kubrick's films. The man was without a doubt a genius. Nobody can dispute that. But a majority of his films lack an emotional connection. Though I absolutely LOVE A Clockwork Orange

YES!!! Someone agrees with me about Kubrick. The revolution starts here people!