Last (x) Movies you are going to Avoid

I know we all love to waste our lives inside the black box but there is only so much you can tolerate. This is a negative thread so please be that.

Youth (Paolo Sorrentino, 2015)
Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman, 2015) - this looks terrible
Hail, Ceasar! (Coen bros., 2015) - a cast to avoid

I was just thinking this about Anomalisa, like ten minutes ago

I will not allow myself to watch A Bigger Splash. Not that trailers are remotely an indication of how good a film is going to be, but the trailer for this is so pervasively nauseating that it would be a triumph of editing were it somehow to not reflect accurately.

Now that awards season is over, I no longer feel like my avoidance of The Revenant, The Big Short, Mad Max: Fury Road, Room and The Martian is that big of a deal, so I'll just continue quietly avoiding them now.

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!

teh danish girl
steve jobs
hateful 8

o yea room also def

Brooklyn

A War! Fuck that propagandistic crap.

Youth was a shade less revolting than The Danish Girl; both movies you can point and laugh at.

will avoid:
Oliver Stone's Snowden thing
X-Men XVIII or whatever
Independence Day 2
Star Trek XXXVIII or whatever
Eastwood/Sully
Magnificent Seven remake
Harry Potter spinoff
Star Wars spinoff

will wait for streaming:
Zootopia
Deadpool, maybe
Finding Another Fish

I thought I was pretty positive & unpicky about films but pretty much everything listed so far I am either avoiding or wish I had avoided

I think the sole exception is Independence Day which I will proooobably see one day even though it looks extremely terrible

Anything Terrence Malick puts out. I have come to accept the fact I find his films shallow and boring, and can no longer be bothered to try.

(I mean, I rarely go to the cinema to catch new films anyway but I don't really see that as actively avoiding films, just... failing to go to the cinema.)

Oh right, now that Oscarbait season is done, Deadpool is thing I give the least shit about.

Might only watch Stone's Snowden thing because of JGL, but still a big maybe.

emil.y, I'm with you on Malick (after Thin Red Line).

what movies have you willingly watched recently that would make you reconsider the actively avoid list by comparison?
(my having watched zoolander2 means I can't really have an actively avoid list anymore)

how is malick "shallow"? of all the ways to go at the guy...

I don't think he's shallow, more like he's got these few things to say and repeats them ad nauseum. I will avoid the new one.

This is supposed to be a solely negative thread, so no defending! Though I guess to me 'shallow' = I appreciate the look of his films but the underlying messages and themes completely fail to resonate with me. I just get nothing deeper than 'oh, I guess that's quite pretty'. You might get something more, but I find myself unmoved.

all of them

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).

Really wanna see House of Gooch tbh

Here, found it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBv3_0j0y_4

Elvis

Baz Luhrmann is a tacky vulgarian and should never be allowed to make a film ever again.

Bardo

(Walter Chaw: “Bardo is Jay Sherman’s 8 1/2, and knowing it doesn’t excuse it.”)

Despite being wuite capable of impure thoughts about Daisy Edgar-Jones, you could not pay me to see WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

*quite

That movie title makes me think of some sort of swamp Disney singing animal thing, or Ghost World’s parody Miramax-style art film “The Flower that Drank the Moon”

I thought that was the new Scorsese movie.

is it just me or is The Fabelmans a deeply embarrassing looking film?

It's called THE FABLEMANS

*FABELMANS

The Moviesons

so you're agreeing with me

*i'm not a fabelmans, i'm a fable, maaaaaaaan*

Yeah it looks stupid as shit

The O’Silverscreensons

MOM: "You go ahead and make those movies!"
DAD: "There's more to life than movies!"
LIL STEVIE: "Movies: The Movie"
THE ACADEMY: "Give that man 1000 Golden Moviemans, hereafter known as Oscar Fabelmans"

I’m pretty sure I’ll avoid it but I do want to hear from someone who’s seen All Jacked Up And Full of Worms.

I want to see the bit of The Fabelmans where he finally meets John Ford and it's David Lynch, but YouTube will probably sort me out for that if I wait a few months.

Morbius would have defended this, miss him.

Something about the Violent Night premise is intensely irritating to me.

Yeah, that looks like garbage.

gleefully smug transgressive action movies kinda wearying to me in general, maybe moreso these days. santa claus as a skilled wildcard killer foiling the bad guys' plans almost too dumb to be real. the die hard in a chimney premise almost feels like a simpsons parody.

I’ll possibly end up seeing it anyway, but The Whale looks miserable.

hard hard avoid from me

Babylon, AMPAS indifference willing

avatar, obvs

I still can’t believe I saw the last one

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

The theatrical version of The Whale is an incredibly moving piece of theatre. No idea how the film version will shake out but I'm going to give it a try.

Violent Night ruled. It's a bit weird in that its core, it's really a traditional family Christmas movie, but then eventually bad guys get decapitated.

It's more like Miracle on 34th Street with Santa ruthlessly killing bad guys to protect a little girl from harm.

Pretty sure The Whale.

seconded

Enys Men, Tar, The Banshees of Inisherin

Aftersun looks kinda lame tbh.

It's terrific.

It gets the Alfred B+ by me

Aftersun rules

Despite my reservations, Frankie Corio gives the best youth performance I've seen in a very long time

it's a heartwarming, wistful memories of dad movie isn't it? I've seen people praising it but I've not felt very tempted to watch it as yet.

Wistful, sure. Dunno about heartwarming.

Saw a poster for Tar after coming out of a re-screening of Roman Holiday (Wyler, 1953). I can see the value of wanting things like this: light script (with stuff beneath if you wanted to go there), beautiful leads with chemistry, the right length of 90 minutes so no overstaying.

Films are absolutely all too long these days. Or rather, they spend too much time in the 2 1/2, 3 hour zone. Give me 80 min or give ne 4 hours.

Very few films justify the length of over two hours.

And the most repetitive but truthful comment is to say that x film was great but 20 mins too long.

It's become especially noticeable since 2020, as if COVID killed editors.

It's weird because something frivolous, fun, but also nicely made and played, that doesn't speak to anything contemporary and 'short' would be just the ticket after 2/3 years of no cinema.

(I am not looking too closely so I'm sure those things are about, but what dominates attention -- and is sadly on my radar -- is stuff like Tar rn)

Length=$ in the streaming era, everyone wants inventory

A nice side effect of this for me personally tho is that Bollywood/Kolywood/Tollywood productions no longer seem daunting. I used to avoid that territory because of lenght issues but now they're just the same size as yet average thing at the cinema.

On my most tinhat days I suspect Hollywood is actively killing off the movie format in order to force people toward prestige TV, where minutes watched is the base metric, not admissions.

It's like one of the metrics for an app. The 'best' ones are usually judged as the ones you never log away from.