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).

And who was asking for a Mapplethorpe biopic?
https://youtu.be/TvXLMpjyqpU

new liam neeson joint "cold wish or whatever" sounds exactly like every other liam neeson movie in the past two decades.

the best part of Love Actually was when crying Liam Neeson kicked the sexist US President through a window and the president knocked over Egg Off Of This Life and all his stalker cue cards

I am baffled as to why Cold Pursuit has such a "wacky comedy" poster:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOGY3YjUzOTgtMmJmMS00ZDJjLTkwOGEtYWE3Mjk0ZTgwYmY4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjM4NTM5NDY@._V1_SY1000_SX675_AL_.jpg

Like, the tagline looks like it should read "Everyone remember where we parked."

lmfao otm

It's a remake of a Norwegian comedy (with a script from a Danish writer). Very good film, the original, but even thought the director is the same I have a hard time imagining it to be any good. It's so much about Norway.

Don't fret, no one knows Norway quite like Hollywood.

Hey, if it's half as good as Nolan's remake of Insomnia it'll be complete fucking shit

I saw it today, Fred is right, Cold Pursuit is a black comedy disguised as an action movie. it's very similar to Miami Blues, and in the same universe as Repo Man (though not nearly as good as either). worth seeing imo, and I hate all that Taken shit. it's not like that at all

Liam Neeson's action star career has run the gamut from competent trash to outstanding. Taken obv made him viable as an action commodity but its the least interesting film of this era (well maybe more interesting than Taken 2&3...) The Grey and A Walk Among the Tombstones and a couple of those Collet-Serra flicks are great.

Perhaps unfairly, i assume any movie with liam neeson isn’t worth watching

gonna fight you over Darkman

and Buster Scruggs I guess

The Grey is really good

Director: Gurinder Chadha
Starring: Rob Brydon, Dean-Charles Chapman, Hayley Atwell, Aaron Phagura, Kulvinder Ghir, Sally Phillips, Viveik Kalra, Nell Williams, Meera Ganatra
Duration: 117 min

In 1987 during the austere days of Thatcher's Britain, a teenager learns to live life, understand his family and find his own voice through the music of Bruce Springsteen.

the first movie written solely for eric alterman

Saw the trailer for that the other day and it looked so bad I was embarrassed to be there for that two minutes.

there's a mini-trend of movies trying to follow the commercial success of bo rhap, using some combination of 1. britain 2. minority groups 3. classic rock. rocketman and yesterday being the other prominent ones, and this one looking by far the worst.

to be fair, Rocketman started filming before Bohemian Rhapsody even came out, although of course its director is the guy who'd replaced Singer on BR, so maybe he had some confidence it would be a hit.

No intention of seeing any of them but rocket man does sound better than the other three, which I would rather be murdered badly than have to see

I bought a ticket for a “surprise film” knowing only that it was a preview of a “much anticipated” upcoming film. I thought it might be the qt or almodóvar but it turned out to be that Springsteen thing ☹️

I gave it 40 minutes

Jesus... how are you holding up?

lol

I mean the film is exactly what it looks like. I could have seen a preview of it for free earlier this week and couldn’t be bothered, it genuinely never occurred to me that it could be the surprise film. When the title came up several people murmured “oh no”

One of my funniest cinema experiences was years ago at the film festival, they always close with a mystery film (eg last year was Roma), that year it was that proclaimers musical for some reason. When the title came up two guys in front of me looked at each other and without saying a word got up and left - maybe you had to be there but it made the whole thing worthwhile for me

When the title came up several people murmured “oh no”

lmfao!!

I saw the trailer for it before Yesterday (which I really liked, leagues better than Rocketman and, from what I gather, BoRap), and the Springsteen movie is like one of those shitty 95/96 Pulp Fiction ripoffs, but of a movie released 2 months prior.

Avoiding the hell out of that Springsteen movie, but I keep reading reviews of it for some reason. I'm weirdly fascinated by the fact that it even exists. A couple of Springsteen superfans made a movie about the true story of one of them becoming a Springsteen superfan? And people let this happen?

Probably got through on the strength of the current wave of boomer rock flicks (Queen, Elton, that “what if the Beatles never happened?” one...)

(which I now see represents the bulk of the recent discussion in this thread)

I saw the title of the thread and was like, "hmm, I wonder if there's anything about that Springsteen movie." Was amused to see that this is all that's been talked about in the thread for the last month or so.

The Irishman

I’ve somehow avoided hearing that much about this, and I can’t imagine myself not being curious enough to watch any new Scorsese at some point, but the “de-aging” stuff looks ridiculous.

everything about it seems completely dumb and pointless to me, but its going to be playing at the arthouse down the block from me and tbh i feel like theres probably going to be a quiet night when my morbid curiosity gets the best of me and i'll take a sad walk of shame down there to check it out

you ppl who proudly watch Tarantella's offal

Totino is best film maker of are generatin, Scorswayze is tired hakc

fucking Tom Hanks mr Rogers

Scorsese’s good imo

Didn’t watch the Dylan thing but will see this at some point, if it weren’t on Netflix I’d watch it sooner

you princes of Maine
you ppl who proudly watch tarantella's offal

It is with pride that I do tarantella

How was your boy genius Spielberg's intellectual property wankfest Ready Player One again?

Far fewer than 210 minutes, for starters.

So are all of Tarantino’s films, except for the sole all-in-one print of Kill Bill, which Morbs didn’t fly to Austin or Paris to see in 2011.

shorter than the Irishman: ready player one, all Tarantino

longer than the Irishman: satantango, all lav diaz, flying from New York to Paris to watch kill bill

Earlier this year I sat through 1900 (5+ hours) and didn't even stretch my legs at the intermission. But this year's crop of Oscar bait is going to have to be pretty weak to get me to see The Irishman in a theater.

Turns out there were two screenings in Philly in 2013 - Morbs could have taken the Megabus for the matinée and been back in NYC for dinner.

flying from New York to Paris to watch kill bill

iirc you were the ilxor who was going to fly to New York to watch Eight Hours Don't Make a Day!

Also, not quite ALL Lav Diaz.

Well I mean that wasn’t why I flew to New York. But I’d do it again even tho both flight and screening were longer than the Irishman, ready player one, and all Tarantino

Jojo Rabbit

I support your choice.

i enjoyed it but it took a while for me to build up some measure of trust in what it was doing/going for, and i can easily imagine it failing that test for different viewers