Last (x) Movies you are going to Avoid

Thirding the Malick disdain. Tree of Life felt achingly empty to me. I cannot gel with his very measured, almost clinically literary tone, and don't understand his emotional palette at all. I keep falling for the hype that surrounds him, but I don't think it will happen again.

As usual, you put it much better than I can. I often love "achingly empty" films, but that's normally when the emptiness is intentional. Whereas Malick seems to be desperately trying to impart something, but when I look I find nothing.

Youth is the worst Sorrention, and the first he's made in a long time that doesn't at least have that wonderful Sorrentinoesque editing, but it's still fine. Looking forward to A Bigger Splash!

― Frederik B, Sunday, March 6, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The reason for this thread is that a friend & I were going to see it and then got there and it was sold out. We were both dreading it, knowing it was going to be complete and utter shit but liking some of his previous work.

Another friend dragged me to A Bigger Splash! and it was so banal - this barely disguised ad for the Italian tourist industry (even if good things don't happen) so you should avoid it if you can.

The even bigger reason is that 2016 has been terrible for films. Rams by Grímur Hákonarson looks like this quirky Icelandic film I just don't care for. The Revenant is a complete fkn joke.

In parallel the BFI has been running a Godard season and his work from the 70s onwards (never mind the 60s) has been putting everybody to shame.

Dreading the end of this (next week is the last of it). If I am able to I always like going to the cinema.

I know we aren't suppose to defend film, but Rams is delightful... If you all didn't see Of Horses and Men by Benedikt Erlingsson, you need to do that as well, and they're kinda the same film.

dunno if something can be both quirky and viscerally crushing but this is a thread of hatred so on we go. obv i am never watching The Revenant ever

Even though I set-up the thread no one needs to follow all the rules (not that there are any hard-and-fast rules) so yeah defend if you happen to watch and like it. Obviously I'm saying 'no way' on the basis of a trailer or a review of it or what I hear about it. xp

The rams trailer made it look like quirky deadpan comedy but it's like straight tragedy. I liked it, probably in large part because it wasn't the former - as we were leaving my friend said "imagine if that had been a British film" and we both shuddered at the thought of the fucking michael gambon rhys ifans bullshit that would be

youth really was pretty bad -- glacial male-artist sorrow (certainly the end of something or other, one would sort of have to think), that one guy who only plays quivering bureaucrats as a quivering bureaucrat, all dialogue clearly written but not spoken in esl which gave the whole movie such a stilted uncanny feeling i almost liked it. liked the giant marx tattoo i guess.

anomalisa was perfect on its own extremely limited and unpleasant terms.

the coens have been at the top of their career since burn after reading so i am very excited for this obviously slight one.

anyway, deadpool.

The Revenant, The Danish Girl, the Dakota Fanning trans boy movie, most of the foreseeable superhero movies, Zoolander 2

all of them

― mookieproof, Sunday, March 6, 2016 12:49 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm.

I am the Joey Chestnut of avoiding movies

had no idea stone was making a snowden movie; that's unnecessary. idk if there's a scene in oliver stone's whole oeuvre better than the fire alarm sequence in citizenfour unless it's the one where joe pesci's wig comes off.

Rams should be seen just for the awesome images of Iceland :) They have this whole boom of cheap films filmed around the countryside, using the landscape and many amateur actors. All of the films have names like Rams, Sparrows, Volcano, Virgin Mountain, Of Horses and Men. It's a style, kinda.

Yeah, Youth is pretty bad. Sorrentino has only made 'big-male-sorrow' films. His last three films were male-artist-sorrow, but before that it was politician and mafiosi. It's definitely the biggest failing of his filmography, and Youth is really doubling down on it. The guy is still just 45, why are all his films about men growing old and irrelevant? But he is a good picture-maker, and Youth has good pictures.

When Tree of Life came out the local alt-weekly ran two reviews: "I Saw The Tree of Life, and I Loved It" and "I Didn't See The Tree of Life, and I Hated It." I'll always love Badlands and should get around to watching The Thin Red Line but nothing after that has had much appeal.

The only 'my god what rubbish' reaction I've had to a trailer recently was for The BFG, but after the disaster of Tintin I was unlikely to see another Spielberg kids' movie anyway.

The trailer for Hail, Caesar pretty much gives the entire movie away - and does so in a far snappier fashion than the film itself. Ralph Fiennes is the standout turn in H,C but even that wasn't enough to make me see A Bigger Splash, especially after I read a really arsey interview w/ the director in Sight and Sound.

And yes, Youth was unrecoverable in any coherent critical way as a 'good' movie, but it's not an especially interesting bad movie either. The corollary of its male-artist-sorrow is a gross sexism and general disregard for any of the female characters (Rachel Weisz and Jane Fonda probably give the best performances in the film, but they're marginalised and trivialised when set against mouldy Michael Caine and mumbling Harvey Keitel). Also thought This Must Be The Place was a turd, so yeah, it def feels like Sorrentino loses something quite crucial when working with an English Language script.

The Big Fucken Giant. Never saw Tintin but I will do my duty and watch it as part of the big Spielberg project. But I get to stop at Bridge Of Spies, then my commitment ends, so the BFG can G the F O.
Never watched Avatar, Titanic, Independence Day, any Jurassic Park sequels, I watch a hella lit of bad ibdies but I can't be bothered with that shit.
Still Alice, my mother keeps trying to show me and I am "no thank you"

Fast/Furious films, Saw films, TV spinoffs...

The director of A Bigger Splash is Luca Guadagnino who made the quite good I Am Love, so def seeing A Bigger Splash.

I watched Synecdoche New York two days back and decided to give Anomalisa a pass.

guys if you're not hating on days of heaven you're hating malick wrong

its like if you're really going to hate oasis you can't just start hating with 'be here now'. you have to commit to your hate. it's like hating only the late u2: fuck that.

i am love is a garbage movie for garbage people

oh my god rain on a statues face it looks like the statue is crying fuck me did your 5yo cowrite this thing

anomalisa is a great title for a mediocre mid-90s indie record

dlh's thing on youth and esl kinda makes me want to see it, or at least make a movie that uses the same trick to some effect

Non-english speaking people has been doing this for decades.

'Oh look at this stupid director, he isn't even a native English speaker, and he still thinks he can make a global film! lol, what a weirdo.'

'Meanwhile, isn't Eddie Redmayne amazing as a Dane, let's give him all the oscars!'

i think there was more to dlh's claim than that tbh

Anything with "today's comedy superstars" US version - people I generally find unfunny (Louis CK, Tina Fey, The Amy's Schumer and Poehler) ---everything I've seen them in up to now a resounding dud so no thanks.
Anything by Lanthimos
"Anomalisa" was a real chore.

Also - no more Baumbach. Or Ben Stiller ( he just seems fed up in everything).

obv non-native english speakers direct movies in english all the time. feel like writing movies in english is at least rarer but of course there is nothing silly about that either. it can just be noticeable is all, and when your leads have voices as distinct and culturally situated as michael caine and harvey keitel it's more noticeable. you sometimes see a milder version of this quality when yanks/brits write for brits/yanks.

or when woody allen writes for anyone.

Youth was so wack

Youth and A Bigger Splash are both showing at the local arthouse but they both sound so boooring. Youth in particular and not even a Maradona cameo can make it appealing.

Anomalisa is great and everyone should watch it btw

It isn't the 'real' Maradona in Youth, fwiw

Kinda looking forward to nu-Malick. Partly because I haven't caught anything he has put out at the cinema so I didn't get annoyed. Plus the new one has good post-cinema conversation potential.

Oliver Stone's Snowden thing

What's the point of that?!

story ticks so many Stone boxes he probably feels obliged to run thru the motions

As long as he can shoehorn in the Cuban gay mafia its ok I guess.

Gonna pay p close attention to my studious avoidance of Christopher Nolan's ouevre from now on, I think I might not watch interstellar this week

Tom Hiddleston double; High-Rise/I Saw The Light

High Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015) - say no to adaptations of unfilmable books. Can see why greats like Nic Roeg left this alone for a guy who I see has directed television to pick up.

I see nic roeg has directed television

A lot of it in the mid-90s. Britpop was a tough time for everybody.

I don't see how High Rise is unfilmable tbh

a guy who I see has directed television

lol at being bothered to research Wheatley enough to know this, but not bothered enough to consider his actual film work.

But hey, it's the negative thread so carry on as you are. Sadly I can't think of any more current things to hate on, I'm sure I will be back soon though.

Wasn't doing "research", just looked at a couple of wiki pages.

While everyone else wasted their time on British cinema I watched Manoel De Oliveira's last film. A real, proper film.

One single screening #RIPCinema

:D

Wheatley's "A Field In England" is freaky brilliance. Am looking forward to watching "High Rise".

^that's not the spirit! ;)

I'm not a fan of There Will Be Blood either but have found much to admire in most of his subsequent films.

I loved Phantom Thread but refused to see Licorice Pizza because I was sick of lovingly recreated 70s scuzz. If I see OBAA it will be the 70mm print at AFi Silver. Thank you to everyone who has posted in this and other threads blocking for spoilers.

This thread may or may not be the safe space for stating that I hated One Battle After Another. Brash, superficial and altogether too pleased with itself to pay any attention to character development, coherent plotting or insightful subtext. "But that's the point!" they say, and they'll be wrong. Reminded me of why I didn't like Raising Arizona either, or most other screwball action flicks come to that.

By all means post!

What scenes seemed pleased with themselves?

I sensed a general air of smugness, too much self-conscious Tarantino-esque* dialogue and contrived scenarios like DiCaprio's tunnel escape and the Lockjaw/Perfidia boner scene. What can I say, I might enjoy those scenes in another film but something about this rubbed me the wrong way. If I'm groaning in despair at the 20-minute mark I have to admit I'm not enjoying it!

Also the 'Lockjaw joins a secret society' subplot was stupid and should have gone. Those people would have been fine with him forcefully impregnating someone non-white so long as he made sure to abandon the resultant offspring! Makes no sense. Perfidia just disappears from the storyline halfway through, or did I miss something? A day after seeing it and I can't even recall anything about DiCaprio's character. Various other characters - the nuns, Willa's grandmother, most of the French 75 - come and go so fast you barely notice them arriving.

It's a shame because there were elements of the story that could have made for a worthwhile film - showing what a military takeover of civilian areas might look like, or how political disillusionment can set in among former radicals. The revolutionaries are in many ways doing what they do for the same reason (an amorphous idea of 'freedom') as the military. Everyone's politics are utterly half-baked and confused. That could have been a bleakly ironic plotline if they'd followed it.

On the plus side, Chase Infiniti and Benicio del Toro were excellent. The story should probably have been about them and Perfidia, not the sub-schlub stoner guy.

* I haven't seen any of this guy's films past the horrendous Kill Bill Vol.1, I admit

I'd prefer if you pasted these comments in the proper thread; some people won't see it.

Didn't want to stink the thread up with my negativity! Or get into a lengthy argument about it, I wasted enough time watching the thing in the first place. I think PT Anderson is not for me...

Anyway to return to the thread premise, the next movie I'm going to avoid is the Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein thing, looks dire from the trailer I saw.

you're making it sound awesome, lol

sorry i was referring to OBAA

Perfidia just disappears from the storyline halfway through, or did I miss something?

have you ever seen any other film in which every character doesn’t appear in every scene

do they all link arms and dance toward the camera singing in the final shot or

the film is set in California

With Matt#2 on Del Toro's Frankenstein. I wish he'd go back to Spain and shoot something there - my favorite films of his were made there. He peaked for me with "Pan's Labyrinth".

Saw a trailer for Nuremberg yesterday, which seemed like a massive exercise in exploitative bad taste, with Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring the capper:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/sep/08/nuremberg-review-russell-crowe-rami-malek

Saw the trailer for The Bride! during SNL and legit thought it was a parody ad.

*Many weeks later* Wuthering Heights

Out on the wileyyyy

Is it doing any kind of business? My mom saw it (it's her fave novel) and she was like "meh."

Dumping it in February--yeah sure, Valentine's Day--instead of Oscar season seemed like a danger signal.

it has grossed $192 million worldwide in its first two weeks, on an $80 million budget, is probably on track for a few more good weekends, and will probably do quite well on the streaming/airplane side of things. unquestionably a financial success. so the Valentine's Day release, even if not signaling much Oscar confidence, was a smart move and definitely not "dumping" with a movie like this. i found it fun to go see with a group of friends... looked great, drags a little, can't decide exactly how freaky it wants to be... but everyone left happy.

The Bride! was a mess

Hamnet

you’ve already missed its theatrical run and its Oscar nom encore screenings, a bit late to start avoiding it now

I found it moving albeit slow-paced

same

idk during the ostensibly moving part i was distracted by actually knowing hamlet as a play

a very pretty film but textually kind of misunderstands art in the broadest and dullest way

I agree with that point too. The moving parts happened before The Big Show. There's a regrettable subgenre of film about art-as-therapy; it never gets old, especially in this era of easter eggs

you’ve already missed its theatrical run and its Oscar nom encore screenings, a bit late to start avoiding it now

It's on at my local fleapit as we speak! Which I'm avoiding.

well that’s CURRENTLY avoiding

Seeing a lot of people on Bluesky who loved the F1 movie and either I'm crazy or all of them are.

Bit weird to make a movie about a key

Apologies for only posting here to subvert - I'm pretty sure that there's no chance that Spaceballs: The New One will be any good, but Mel Brooks is spending some of his 100th year on the planet shilling for it, so fuck it, I guess I'm going to the movies.

This one seems like ... a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9rsbp150Lw