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5 most overrated movies ever......

Ah such fun is being had on that other thread it's now time to take the axe to movies..........

1.Gladiator-for some reason "everybody" seemed to think there was some reason to feel emotional about this poor remake of Spartacus,the drawn-out revenge storyline trying vainly to add weight to little more than a CG generated WWF extravaganza,and the acting..oh dear..failed Aussie soap star Russell Crowe even won the oscar obviously Tom Hanks didn't make a movie that year...This films biggest crime is that it has the audacity to take itself seriously......watch it again in 5 years and wonder why you thought it was any good.
2.The Usual Suspects-with 20 minutes of this movie still to go I wanted to leave the cinema,who cared who Kaiser Sauzee was?
Off the back of Resevoir Dogs-a so-called hip movie that was all style over substance-absolute tosh,how very clever to have a script where the narrator lies to you,who cares if there were clues,who cared about any of these characters?, like a super-effective laxative launched a million movies with twist endings....
3.Blue Velvet--ah David Lynch-shocked us all with the fact that small town America had a dark side,didn't he watch the news?,read the newspapers,total junk,conceptual film-making without the concept,truly lazy nonsense,no script,only considered weird by those who like Lynch were ignored at school....unbelievably followed this up with worse movies with even more obvious points to make.
3.Platoon-some how at the time this was judged to be the movie that showed America had come to terms with the Viet Nam war..eh?
Hadn't anybody seen Coming Home,The Deer Hunter,Apocalypse Now,Bat 21?
All better movies made earlier,started Oliver Stone's trend to take serious subjects and condense them into nothing much to popular and critical acclaim.
Don't even start me on JFK.
Weren't the 80's crap.....
I don't care if he was in Viet Nam ,this movie is rubbish....
4.Braveheart-made me ashamed to be Scottish,historically inaccurate beyond belief,with an Australian playing a Scot,no doubt made ex-pats teary eyed the world over,made me cry with laughter
5.Anything with Tom Hanks-the modern day American everyman turns up everywhere,doomed space rockets,football pitches,WW2,you always know when he's in a movie that it will be sentimental populist tosh-Saving Private Ryan was great till he turned up signalling the end of any realism...oh and those Oscar speeches.............

Fire away fellow Audiogon Movie fans.........
ben_campbell
s7horton
1,065 posts
 
Mulholland Drive is way up there on my list. Totally confusing and a complete waste of two plus hours.

I watched The Mexican and Snatch both in the same night. It was like watching the same movie twice, only with diamonds substituted for a gun. I really hated both and will not watch them again.

Any star wars movie, as most have already pointed out
kthomas
911 posts
 
I loved Fargo and love (or at least respect) almost everything the Coen brothers have put out, before and since. The Big Lebowski and The Man Who Wasn't There - superb.

Dances With Wolves is at the absolute top of my Overrated list. Made just before Kevin Costner was exposed for the second rate talent he is by the movie Waterworld, I found the movie to be horribly paced, which led to it being about twice as long as it needed to be. And, oh, look! Here's a white woman for you to fall in love with out in the middle of nowhere! Just painful.

Not a blockbuster, but a way overrated movie in my book - Body Heat. Supposedly a stylish thriller, I found it to be predictable and indistinguished. That would have made it just bland, but then it included a few scenes that just made me want to turn it off (something I almost NEVER do with a movie, no matter how bad). Kathleen Turner tempts William Hurt at the bar, but leaves without him. He follows her home. She rejects him at the door. He's about to leave when, suddenly, passion just overtakes him, he breaks through the window by the front door and throws himself at her. Of course, this works out as they proceed to, well, you know. I'm sitting there imagining how the scene would have played out if it had been me and it had been real, what with the police hauling me off and all.

I'm not sure it's Top 5 material, but I'll throw out Rocky, if only because it gave us decades of additional Sly Stallone movies.

ben_campbell OP
1,164 posts
 
Memento-irritated the hell out of me-it was better than Suspects but used a similar trick-the pity for me was there was a great idea in there but it just never got developred or resolved-the nature of the plot meant that anything was possible,with no empathy for the main character I found myself bored rigid long before the end....I'm with you Unsound it would be in my top 10-the critics loved it....
ozfly
887 posts
 
Hey, I loved Memento; to Unsounds' point though, I am very empathetic to it since my memory ain't what it used to be. I'm sorry, what was I saying?
gunbei
2,327 posts
 
Pawil, Apocalyspe Now Redux takes the original and expands on it. The boat ride up the river becomes a long and trying journey which heightens the final landing at Kurtz's compound.

Pulp Fiction is one of my all-time faves, and I like Jackie Brown as well. A bit of trivia for you. Remember Bonnie from Pulp Fiction, Tarantino's wife in the film that everyone was so afraid of? She is a temp at Sony Pictures where I do a lot of work, and she has a beautiful face to go along with the nice rear view we get in the movie. She's also one of the witnesses staring at Bruce Willis after he crashes his car in another part of the film. She also makes a speaking appearance as the flight announcer in Jackie Brown at the end of the long single take of Pam Grier walking through LAX which starts the movie.

A Clockwork Orange is a favorite of mine too. Nothing funnier than Malcolm Mcdowell kicking the crap out of that old geezer while singing and stomping in tune to "Singing in the Rain". And while we're on Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove is fantastic as well.

I'm sure I'll raise the ire of a few sci-fi people here, but I don't understand why everyone holds The Matrix in such high esteem. Great mood, visual effects and production design, but a plain goofy story with the worn-out "chosen one" theme and "love conquers all" ending that makes me cringe with embarrasment. Plus, how can anyone take Keanu Reeves seriously? This guy has the acting talent of a Bose stereo. I loved Bill and Ted's Excellent movies, but Bill and Ted on a runaway bus? Bill and Ted with a leather overcoat and guns doing Kung Fu? come on! Now BladeRunner, that's a sci-fi movie!

Oh, and I don't get why Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all-time. Great photography, but beyond that it didn't grab me.
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