Author Topic: What is the worst film you have watched?  (Read 15912 times)

Eccentrica Gallumbits

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Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #75 on: 07 January, 2013, 11:17:58 am »
I think you'd like Godzilla vs Bambi. I saw that once. It's not bad.
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


Psychler

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Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #76 on: 07 January, 2013, 11:37:53 am »
"The Red Baron" [2008] 

Supposedly the story of Manfred von Richtofen - absolute pants.
I'm gonna limp to the pub and drink 'til the rest of me is as numb as my arse.

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #77 on: 07 January, 2013, 11:54:23 am »
Fight Club.

Nah, Fight Club is one of the best.

Lost in Translation. That was unmemorable shit to be sure. The kind of movie where you want to press pause, step into the frame, grab the actors and yank them out, and then re-insert them with nothing more than two pairs of inflatable armbands into Jaws: The Revenge before telling them to swim.
I gave up watching Fight Club. Too silly.

Mr B thought Lost in Translation was very clever, in that it was an American film with Japan portrayed as disconcertingly alien, but very Japanese in theme & style. She quite liked it.

I found the two lead characters dull and rather indulgent, to be honest. I couldn't find much sympathy for their predicament and generally, given the circumstances, I think the film would have been more entertaining with an injection of sharks. Admittedly, many movies would be improved by sharks. Or robots. Or robot sharks. Alien robot sharks, preferably.

OK, it was a film where I saw what they were trying to do (I'm a regular traveller to Japan, and I've stayed in the Park Hyatt – once, till my boss saw the expenses and turned a shade of puce), but it was all a bit laboured. I think the Japanese would have done it better. And the odds of an giant alien robotic shark monster would be far, far higher....
I think that expecting to feel sympathy with the predicament of the lead characters is a rather narrow view of what to expect from a film. One can observe from outside & appreciate the dynamics. One does not need to identify with the characters in a film to enjoy it.

I've seen quite a few Japanese films (well of course  ;D ) & never had any difficulty avoiding monsters of any kind, & without needing to make any effort to do so. I've never understood why Godzilla, et al are taken as typical of Japanese cinema. Most of the Japanese films I've seen have a lot of repressed emotion, feelings of alienation - sound familiar?
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

ian

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #78 on: 07 January, 2013, 12:23:49 pm »
...

I think that expecting to feel sympathy with the predicament of the lead characters is a rather narrow view of what to expect from a film. One can observe from outside & appreciate the dynamics. One does not need to identify with the characters in a film to enjoy it.

I've seen quite a few Japanese films (well of course  ;D ) & never had any difficulty avoiding monsters of any kind, & without needing to make any effort to do so. I've never understood why Godzilla, et al are taken as typical of Japanese cinema. Most of the Japanese films I've seen have a lot of repressed emotion, feelings of alienation - sound familiar?

I think empathy was the word I really meant, rather than sympathy, but anyway, I found it hard to care. Incredibly privileged people being miserable in a five star hotel. I'd have just ordered room service or gone out and pointed at noodles (in an effort to avoid sea cucumbers, my Japanese culinary nemesis, I do a very good slug mime).

I think you misunderstand. I want more monsters. I don't want feelings of alienation, I want actual aliens with bad attitudes and bigger guns. Life is too short to be scratching my chin and watching people be miserable.

citoyen

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Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #79 on: 07 January, 2013, 12:49:49 pm »
I think you misunderstand. I want more monsters. I don't want feelings of alienation, I want actual aliens with bad attitudes and bigger guns. Life is too short to be scratching my chin and watching people be miserable.

I quite enjoyed Lost In Translation, but I know what you mean. My son watched X-Men: First Class on telly yesterday so I caught a bit of that and I couldn't help wondering when it was that superhero films started to become so po-faced and, frankly, dull. The worst offender, in my experience, is Superman Returns - how any film about a man with incredible superhuman powers who flies around in a silly blue and red costume could manage to be so unutterably tedious is truly beyond me. Give me Christopher Reeve slugging it out with Terence Stamp any day.

But films don't have to be silly to be entertaining. Just look at Casablanca: deadly serious subject matter, hardly anything happens, but it's packed full of great one-liners, memorable characters and emotional highs and lows. It's about time Hollywood rediscovered the art of storytelling.

d.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #80 on: 07 January, 2013, 12:57:02 pm »
..., I found it hard to care. Incredibly privileged people being miserable in a five star hotel. I'd have just ordered room service or gone out and pointed at noodles (in an effort to avoid sea cucumbers, my Japanese culinary nemesis, I do a very good slug mime)....
Well yes. I'd have gone out & wandered around looking for something more interesting, e.g. a local bar. I once had to kill time in a commuter suburb near Yokohama while Mrs B was in a meeting & found plenty to do, despite the museum which was my first target being shut (open Tues-Sun - it was Monday  :facepalm: ). But I've met enough people who find foreign places scary even in a relatively familiar country such as Spain, to understand that however baffling it is to me, the thought of wandering around a city where you can't speak the language or read the writing & don't know how things are done is terrifying to many people.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Jakob

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #81 on: 08 January, 2013, 02:04:33 am »
..., I found it hard to care. Incredibly privileged people being miserable in a five star hotel. I'd have just ordered room service or gone out and pointed at noodles (in an effort to avoid sea cucumbers, my Japanese culinary nemesis, I do a very good slug mime)....
Well yes. I'd have gone out & wandered around looking for something more interesting, e.g. a local bar.

Not really the easiest thing to do in Japan, unless you are somewhat familiar with the language and culture.
I really like "Lost in Translation", although most of my Japanese friends hated it...but I do think it paints a reasonable picture of the combination of wonder and isolation that you can easily experience as a foreigner in Japan.

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #82 on: 08 January, 2013, 02:27:24 pm »
This does seem to be a list of "movies I dislike" rather than "really bad movies".

..So in that spirit, I'll nominate Meet Joe Black.

It was obviously an attempt to recreate the romantic fantasies of the golden era and garner a load of Oscars. Anthony Hopkins does give it a bit of gravitas, but that's about as good as it gets.

Brad Pitt plays Death. That's right, the Grim Reaper, for reasons too tedious to relate and which I can't remember anyway, is granted human form as a stoned beach bum, emerging puppy-eyed from a three week stint in his basement. I think they wanted Keanu Reeves but he was busy making the Matrix.

It resides in my memory as endless scenes of Brad Pitt being lonely and sad because he's Death. 

It wasn't, in a lot of ways, a bad movie. At heart it's not such a bad idea, it looked good, and it has some half-decent actors in it. But what grated about it was the aching sincerity, which the movie couldn't justify. It really wanted you to believe in this sad Death figure, eternally separated from humanity. Of course he's cut off from humanity, he's Death! Nobody's inviting him around for a few beers in front of the football. Especially not the sad figure that Brad Pitt portrays. To prepare for the role he must have spent weeks down at the high school watching the gloomy teenagers fail to crack a smile.

The choking seriousness might have been undercut by a hint of wit - even a hint of a hint - but I reckon the director was too caught up in the profundity of his movie to allow a whisper of a smile to touch his face. Laughter was banned on set, as were bright colours, so that nobody forget that they were making a serious movie.

If there was a Gloom award for the Saddest Movie of the Year, this wouldn't even have turned up. It would have been sitting in a darkened room contemplating its own sadness and loneliness.

It would have been a better movie if they'd chucked in a few aliens. or turned it into Silence of the Lambs II, with Anthony Hopkins slaughtering and munching his way through the supporting cast.

And it's about a million years long.

LEE

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #83 on: 08 January, 2013, 02:40:12 pm »
Anyone seen Battlefield Earth..?  ;)  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/battlefield_earth/

I think that's the one that started this thread.

Yes, and I raised the stakes with "Pterodactyl"...a film that's bad in the sense that it's just f***ing terrible.  Low budget, filmed seemingly on a domestic video camera, monsters on strings and Coolio the rapper.

It IS however worth watching.

LindaG

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #84 on: 08 January, 2013, 04:15:31 pm »

..So in that spirit, I'll nominate Meet Joe Black.

I love that film.

Kim

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Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #85 on: 08 January, 2013, 04:45:53 pm »
Another bad film I can recommend (as it were): Starflight One

I am, for my sins, a great fan of 1970s cinema.  Cheesy disaster movies are an important part of that, the cheesier the better.  Seriously, there's nothing I like more than watching a Frustrated Engineer or Clairvoyant Seismologist being pushed around by the man, and through a series of bad decisions or freak events lead to a likely collection of stereotypes ending up in mortal peril.  You then get to watch and snerk as a they get picked off one by one by fire, water, lava, meteorite strikes, explosive decompressions and other non-CGI special effects, with plenty of in-fighting, back-stories and even worse decisions to punctuate the heroic efforts of our heroes as they try (and occasionally succeed) to heroically save them.  What's not to like?

Fortunately for us, the 70s disaster movie survived well into the 80s (and can still be found from time to time in TV movie land).  Starflight One is just such a beast.

On paper, this one should be a triumph of the genre.  It has everything: An implausible premise, no-star cast, gratuitous stock footage, weightlessness, racial stereotypes, unexplained gold bricks, countless shuttle launches, a giant space-hose, and more ham acting than you could wish for.

In reality, it tries too hard.  It somehow makes 115 minutes seem like 5.5 hours.  It's the only thing that's ever made a shuttle launch boring.  And its original release was blighted by the much funnier spoof, Airplane II.

Fortunately, if you want to experience it without the time dilation, there's a handy synopsis here:
http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Starflight_One_1982.aspx

ian

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #86 on: 08 January, 2013, 05:41:33 pm »
But I think bad films are by definition good. It's supposedly good films that are actually bad that I don't like. So we're back with the The Thin Red Line, which is the baddest-not-in-good-way film ever. Basically, with movies like that, they're effectively serving you dog poo and telling you it's chocolate ice cream. They'll even eat it and claim it's really good. But it isn't. Because it's dog poo, that's why.

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #87 on: 08 January, 2013, 06:10:52 pm »
..., I found it hard to care. Incredibly privileged people being miserable in a five star hotel. I'd have just ordered room service or gone out and pointed at noodles (in an effort to avoid sea cucumbers, my Japanese culinary nemesis, I do a very good slug mime)....
Well yes. I'd have gone out & wandered around looking for something more interesting, e.g. a local bar.

Not really the easiest thing to do in Japan, unless you are somewhat familiar with the language and culture.
I really like "Lost in Translation", although most of my Japanese friends hated it...but I do think it paints a reasonable picture of the combination of wonder and isolation that you can easily experience as a foreigner in Japan.

I found it very easy to get very pissed in Japan, and there seemed to be an endless supply of ex-pats ready to latch on to me for drinking company...almost desperate. I don't think that was coincidental, Japan seems to get to everyone, sooner or later.

Lost in Translation portrayed well that ambience of seeing something that on the surface looks exciting and dynamic but underneath is far more constricted and boring. Mind you, scratch the surface of the Japanese and you'll find a bunch of pervs.

LindaG

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #88 on: 09 January, 2013, 08:10:35 am »
But I think bad films are by definition good. It's supposedly good films that are actually bad that I don't like. So we're back with the The Thin Red Line, which is the baddest-not-in-good-way film ever. Basically, with movies like that, they're effectively serving you dog poo and telling you it's chocolate ice cream. They'll even eat it and claim it's really good. But it isn't. Because it's dog poo, that's why.

We saw The Thin Red Line at the cinema. My, but it's long.

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #89 on: 09 January, 2013, 02:14:36 pm »
..., I found it hard to care. Incredibly privileged people being miserable in a five star hotel. I'd have just ordered room service or gone out and pointed at noodles (in an effort to avoid sea cucumbers, my Japanese culinary nemesis, I do a very good slug mime)....
Well yes. I'd have gone out & wandered around looking for something more interesting, e.g. a local bar.

Not really the easiest thing to do in Japan, unless you are somewhat familiar with the language and culture.
I really like "Lost in Translation", although most of my Japanese friends hated it...but I do think it paints a reasonable picture of the combination of wonder and isolation that you can easily experience as a foreigner in Japan.

I found it very easy to get very pissed in Japan, and there seemed to be an endless supply of ex-pats ready to latch on to me for drinking company...almost desperate. I don't think that was coincidental, Japan seems to get to everyone, sooner or later.

Lost in Translation portrayed well that ambience of seeing something that on the surface looks exciting and dynamic but underneath is far more constricted and boring. Mind you, scratch the surface of the Japanese and you'll find a bunch of pervs.
They're not all pervs.

In any city of any size there'll be expat bars for those who need to escape from Japan. Single men will find that they are sometimes visited by Japanese women who are curious about foreigners.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #90 on: 09 January, 2013, 02:33:56 pm »

..So in that spirit, I'll nominate Meet Joe Black.

I love that film.

;D

Someone was bound to. I like some of the movies other people have mentioned.

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #91 on: 09 January, 2013, 04:57:08 pm »
They're not all pervs.

The ones I met were

 :thumbsup:

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #92 on: 09 January, 2013, 05:58:31 pm »
The Expendables. Absolutely pernicious trash. There was one moment in it about Arnie becoming president. Other than that, a total waste of two hours of my life.
Haggerty F, Haggerty R, Tomkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, Macintyre, Treadmore, Davitt.

fuzzy

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #93 on: 10 January, 2013, 09:00:31 am »
The Expendables. Absolutely pernicious trash. There was one moment in it about Arnie becoming president. Other than that, a total waste of two hours of my life.

A shit film with a saving grace- lots of blowing shit up :thumbsup:

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #94 on: 10 January, 2013, 12:28:18 pm »
Yebbut the problem was they were literally blowing people up - into pieces & graphically, which is why it was so pernicious. It took the gore violence from XBox games and made it into a mass-market movie. It completely trivialised ultra violence, which is bad enough in a video game, but even worse in a mainstream Bolloxwood movie, IMO. I've watched many violent movies, including Tarantino's efforts, but have not felt like this about any other movie.
Haggerty F, Haggerty R, Tomkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, Macintyre, Treadmore, Davitt.

What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #95 on: 10 January, 2013, 12:53:34 pm »
I think the most over-hyped film in which I was most disappointed in was Quantum of Solace. I didn't think much of it, TBH, but then I think Craig is a poor Bond, although pretty eye candy. Bond is fun. The new genre takes it too seriously.

Any of the Lara Croft films are truly bad though.
Spinning, but not cycling...

Wascally Weasel

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Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #96 on: 10 January, 2013, 05:50:19 pm »
‘Worst’ film questions are interesting because a lot of entertainment is subjective, also all that is terrible is not necessarily un-entertaining.

One thing that is definitely true of awful films is that you can be a lot more forgiving of them if you saw them when you were young and/or drunk.

There are also a bunch of films starring Rutger Hauer that should probably be on the awful films list but get a pass from me due to having Rutger in (‘Salute of the Jugger’ maybe, not sure about ‘Wedlock’).  Hence ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ gets a double pass (one for Rutger, and one for being a Friday night beer and curry film from my youth).  It’s still rubbish though.

I would put both ‘Hudson Hawk’ and ‘The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension’ as thoroughly enjoyable films that are both terrible, the former I think because it isn’t a very good film the latter because it’s a parody (Which also has John Lithgow delivering the line “Laugh while you can monkey boy”, almost worth watching just for that).

Truly dreadful films are ones I would or have walked out of a cinema part way through and make me want to bat everyone involved over the head with a metal stamp that imprints the words "MAKE BETTER FILMS" on their forehead:

Bridesmaids
Rancid Alluminium*
Love, Honour and Obey (appears to be a Rhys Ifans theme going here)
Screamers**
Killing them Softly


*This is the worst film I have ever seen the opening 20 minutes of and was the first film I ever walked out of (unless you count either of ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ or ‘The Tailor of Panama’ both of which I left part way through to be violently ill (actual sickness rather than severe criticism).  On walking out I said “This is shit!” out loud and much the remaining audience clapped.

** Arguably a worse film than Battlefield Earth

Jakob

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #97 on: 11 January, 2013, 06:43:07 pm »
..., I found it hard to care. Incredibly privileged people being miserable in a five star hotel. I'd have just ordered room service or gone out and pointed at noodles (in an effort to avoid sea cucumbers, my Japanese culinary nemesis, I do a very good slug mime)....
Well yes. I'd have gone out & wandered around looking for something more interesting, e.g. a local bar.

Not really the easiest thing to do in Japan, unless you are somewhat familiar with the language and culture.
I really like "Lost in Translation", although most of my Japanese friends hated it...but I do think it paints a reasonable picture of the combination of wonder and isolation that you can easily experience as a foreigner in Japan.

I found it very easy to get very pissed in Japan

Well, yeah..they even got vending machines with beer!.

Quote
Mind you, scratch the surface of the Japanese and you'll find a bunch of pervs.

That I don't disagree with :D

RJ

  • Droll rat
Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #98 on: 11 January, 2013, 09:23:49 pm »
My worst cinema experience:

Chuck Moll - probably not helped by the fact that the soundtrack was Italian and the subtitles Spanish.  Normally I like a good spaghetti western, but this wasn't. At all.

Arthouse films with a good reputation I find difficult to understand include Eraserhead, and Ai No Corrida.  There may well be others I've been able to blot from my memory altogether ...

Re: What is the worst film you have watched?
« Reply #99 on: 11 January, 2013, 09:32:01 pm »
I found it very easy to get very pissed in Japan

Well, yeah..they even got vending machines with beer!.

I've never found one that works without a Japanese ID card to prove you're old enough to drink. I was told that was introduced about ten years ago when it was realised that (shock horror!) teenagers were taking advantage of outdoor beer vending machines to buy beer while under age. Whodathunkit? Japanese teenagers aren't so rule-bound that they'll turn up a chance to get pissed just because it involves being naughty & buying beer illegally.  ;D
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897