Ask Lemmy

2001: A Space Odyssey was rightfully not well received when it was first released. It is incredibly well crafted in terms of visual effects and has about 30 minutes of great, tense sci-fi in it. Shame about the other six hours (perceived) of tedium. Even in the late 60s people in ape costumes smashing things while the soundtrack goes aaaAAAaaUuuAaa wasn't interesting for more than a minute, don't even get me started on the stewardess, docking, moon journey or the damn screensaver. Which, yes, is iconic, but 20 minutes?

It does make sense that people would get high before subjecting themselves to this and then put on a Pink Floyd album during all the tedious scenes.

2010 is a better movie. It starts with dialogue and knows when slowing down increases tension.

The Big Lebowski

Interminably dull. Watching it made sense of why the people bigging it up were stoned..

I think the acting and dialogue of the original Star Wars trilogy is just awful. Bad writing delivered poorly by most of the cast.

I totally understand why people love it and why it has its place in film history but man.....not for me.

Anything by JJ Abrams. He only knows how to start his shitty mystery box plots but never finish them.

It's kind of interesting how the reasons people dislike things range from "it sucks" to "here is a carefully constructed argument showing why the film's thesis promotes toxic ideas of etc etc"

Also interesting when someone's reasons for hating something are someone's reason for loving it. Like a review says "It's full of sad gay shit" and one chunk of people are going to boo and the other are going to perk right up.

Ted.

Juvenile fratboy humour done badly, very badly with lots of fan services to get the brainless cheering.

Made me laugh once in the first few minutes (I can't even remember the joke) and walked out of the cinema after about an hour.

The Ready Player One movie was absolute dogshit. Was that movie even well liked? Pretty sure everyone agrees it was buttcheeks.

Pretty much every Nolan film, with the disclosure that I stopped watching his movies after Inception. His films are always well-acted and well-produced, but the scripts are just… dumb? They take themselves way too seriously and carry this air of highbrow intellectualism while being riddled with plot holes and contrivances. Not to mention the crypto-fascist messaging.

He’s like Zack Snyder, but he pulls it off well enough that critics buy into it. It drives me crazy when I see his name mentioned alongside great auteur filmmakers like Kubrick and Scorsese.

Ready player 1 - oh yeah, I agree with you. Garbage film. Just an excuse to do fan service. I viewed it like a music video or clip compilation. It was neat to see all the random franchise together on the big screen but worthless as a narrative. I enjoyed it like I enjoy godzilla films, turn brain off, watch the spectacle.

I hate Avatar (blue cat people). Dances with Wolves but Halo. It was pretty! However people seem to act like it was an actual film and not a tech demo. They literally called the mineral unobtanium. It's a meme. Smh.

This thread confirms my theory: For everything universally loved there is a person on the internet that thinks it's shite.

The Greatest Showman is a masterclass in style over substance—a glittery spectacle that sacrifices depth and integrity for catchy tunes and flashy visuals. Beneath its feel-good facade lies a shallow, formulaic narrative that romanticizes P.T. Barnum’s exploitative history while failing to give meaningful voices to the marginalized characters it claims to celebrate.

The musical numbers, though undeniably infectious, feel jarringly modern and out of place, prioritizing audience pandering over authenticity. Despite its popularity, the film’s sanitized themes and lack of emotional nuance reveal it as more empty circus than cinematic triumph.

If you’re looking for substance, you’ll find the tent empty.

Elf.

Once you’ve seen the first 3 minutes and get the premise, then the entire rest of the film is so predictable in its jokes and situations that I derived absolutely zero pleasure from watching it and it just grated the entire way through.

Films can be funny because the initial premise leads to really entertaining, unexpected or clever situations… or a film can super straight up and shallow in its humour.

I really don’t get why Elf is so incredibly popular.

Oppenheimer.

It's probably an interesting movie, but holy shit each shot is less than 3 seconds long and it just cuts around to different camera angles every 3 seconds for 2 hours...

Not only was this making me feel physically sick and disoriented, but this erodes tension in the film and is completely unnecessary. You don't need 14 shots of someone walking down a damn hallway or having a think, you need one (1).

Take all that shit out and you're probably left with a story worth actually telling.

Saving Private Ryan

I like Spielberg, but compared to others in the war drama genre like Band of Brothers or Full Metal Jacket, SPR is laughably bad.

The tone of the movie, trying to be more inspirational than realistic, was awkward at best. Acting was pretty mediocre, probably because the script and characters were 1 dimensional.

It completely disregards the historical context of the war. You could watch this movie and learn absolutely nothing about the history of WWII.

Now Band of Brothers. That was some amazing retelling of true war stories. It wasn't trying to be inspirational. It was just honest about the chaos and brutality of war. That made it harrowing heartbreaking, infuriating, and inspirational all at once.

Saw.

It is on the very tiny list of movies that I am actively angry I watched because I'm never getting that time back. It is one of the single worst movies on "Tell don't show" that I felt like I was being actively gaslit by the writers because what they were telling was opposite of what they were showing.

"Jigsaw tricks people into killing his victims" says the cops, and says all the people watching the movie. NO. He kills people and gives them a potential for a way out. Setting up a maze with cutting wire and a door sealing off if you don't make it in time isn't "tricking someone" it's killing them with extra steps. It's like blaming fucking landmine victims "Well if they didn't step there they'd be okay". Legit the logic that movie gives I find my blood pressure rising just going into it again.

And the ending. I guess spoiler if you haven't seen the movie, I'm not gonna bother to figure out the formatting for it so here's your warning to stop reading. The surprise twist was why my friends made me watch this movie, the logic above was explained and how clever Jigsaw was they said I'd like it. I'm not a horror guy but I love Scream because holy fuck it was clever and well done. Saw, the victims are looking for where Jigsaw is watching them and I just said "He's the dead guy in the middle of the room." and questioned why would I come to that so early in the movie my reasoning was simple. It was a dumb movie that was up its own ass so much to say that it was clever that was the obvious "clever" haha we got you option it could be. Anything else would have actually been clever.

I compare Scream and Saw so much. Scream is a very clever movie masquerading as a dumb movie that deconstructs a genre and pulls of a fantastic twist that if you didn't see it coming will shock you and when you go back there's all sorts of clues. Hell, part of the twist is realizing they put thought into the killer instead of just "slasher villain #85" that the genre had done for so long, but if you know what's happening the movie is winking with you with such amazingly dumb and clever things like "He's behind you Jamie". Saw is a dumb movie that masquerades as smart, it wants to be clever and philosophize at you and wants to pull off a twist that is unearned because there's no clues for the twist, so unless you watch a lot of movies and realize this one is up its own ass, of course you're going to be surprised. It's like a guy who built a tesla coil and (think he) knows how it works and no one else does so he shows up in a cheap top hat and a wand and expects everyone to applaud like he's David Copperfield. Sure, everyone loves tesla coils, but that reaction is unearned.

From what I understand from others who've seen the rest, even what little cleverness goes away on the character and it just becomes a show to watch more elaborate ways to see people get hurt. It's the only way I can comprehend that the series is loved by as many as it is. I work in healthcare, I can see plenty of that on the day to day basis.

I hate the Beatles.

Spirited Away

No consistent world, cringy behaviour of the main character, love story out of nowhere, you can't have a plot twist if you didn't have any previously established lore. It felt a bit like a dream that was trying to take itself seriously as an actual story.

Probably most films by Darren Aronofsky. Pi and The Fountain are some of the worst movies I've seen. Feels like someone's artsy shroom trip. I dislike most "artsy" movies without a coherent story.

Also a lot of horror classics bores me to death. For example The Omen, Poltergeist, The Exorcist.

Any marvel movie. I just do not get the appeal. The only people who like it seem to like it way too much. Most of them are also grown ass children.

Kill Bill. Boring as fuck.

The Crow. I refuse to elaborate.

Pretty much anything from Kevin Smith except Mallrats and even that I'll admit was dumb but I liked it as a young teenager.

Deadpool. Juvenile humor from the king of "I'm in a movie because I'm unbelievably charming"

Not a movie (well maybe there is one?) but I absolutely hate The Trailer Park Boys. I just don't get it. It's not funny, at all. It's not my thing at all. I've been hated on for this opinion but I don't care, it sucks.

On that same note, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Same reason tpb sucks to me.

Lord of the rings. So boring.

This thread is fun though. I enjoyed reading everyone's opinions, especially those I disagree with.

If you think Ernest Cline's movie is cringy, wait until you read his poetry. Absolutely one of the worst piece of writing I've ever read.

And it only gets worse from there.