Tell us about the movie you used to like and now don't.
Or vice versa...
Sunday, September 14, 2008
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34 comments:
Pan's Labyrinth, I guess. I was very enthusiastic after seeing it for the first time in the cinema, but I rewatched it maybe 6 months ago and was appalled at how thin it really was. Second time around, I was bored, I was skeptical, I was exasparated. Maybe the (still deservedly) great visuals overwhelmed me on the big screen?
The Big Hit. I was REALLY young, and "You can't handle the truth" jokes were still fresh to me.
glendon --isn't it weird how humor morphs so quickly as we age?
catherine -- i had a turn around on children of men myself (though not from like to dislike but from like OK to love on the second viewing... and i was exasperated that they both came out the same time... along with everything else [insert broken record December bitching here]
In fact, the large majority of movies i have the turnaround on are December releases when you have to settle on an opinion way too quickly.
The best time to watch October-December releases is after Oscar season. That way the hype won't get to you.
Almost Famous (love to like to ...positive but whatever, I gave my DVD away because I doubted I would watch it again)
Chicago - seeing it with a crowd really makes it seem better than it is. It's really less the sum of it's parts. But some of those parts are awesome.
American Beauty - for reasons the three of you discussed.
Nathaniel, why do you tease us so? Why do you hide your grade for Love Songs?
Moved from Liked to Loved: The Third Man. I now consider it one of the best films I've ever seen, but when I first saw it, I let it sort of slip between Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil.
I agree with Aarkan, though. The bulk of the movies that I love more on first viewing than second are musicals (Chicago, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, etc.). Which makes my constantly growing love of things like Moulin Rouge! and Nashville even more special.
Ugh. Totally off-topic, but I'm getting insulted on IMDB for saying I don't like Philip Seymour Hoffman. I need Nathaniel to reassure I'm right here :-). I hate IMDB-users sometimes.
Funny Girl. I still think Babs is fantastic and gives one of the greatest debut performances of all time but when I saw the film again for the first time in a long time last year, it just didn't seem as special to me as it once did. Great songs, great performance, not a very great film.
IMDB boards are filled with idiots. I've given up ever clicking on a thread there, because almost everything I read would fill me with rage or disgust. Don't mind them!
amen sister.
mostly the message boards there seem filled with off the cuff an extremely ignorant reactions... kinda like the TWILIGHT maniacs complaining on other boards that Charlaine Harris stole from Stephenie Myers even though the former wrote her books first. ayiyiyiyiyi
another more personal example of IMDB dumbness. There was a whole thread on there at one point that was all "nathaniel at the film experience hates musicals"
it was SO weird. I think it was because I didn't like Johnny Depp's singing in Sweeney Todd?
but the internet is full of stuff like that. I'm not sure what the solution is to internet ignorance since the whole thing revolves around speed but if anyone ever finds it, SHARE!
djh i prefer not to think of FUNNY GIRL as anything but the Babs show and in that respect it's kind of a masterpiece ;)
I'm just gonna mention films fro this decade and an extra one to keep it simple :D
CASSANDRA'S DREAM - After watching it I was like, mmm, it was a solid Allen film. That changed as soon as I realized how bad the plot is...
ATONEMENT - I originally gave this a 17/20, mostly because it was my most awaited movie of the year, I kept on campaigning it for an Oscar nod and I was like: Oh! I'm gonna love this. A few days letter I realized I pretended to like it, but didn't quite. All the way down to 14/20.
RAY - I was quite enthusiastic after exiting the theatre, until I reviewd it in my mind and realized how silly the psychological plot was and how it was basically singing and dancing masking an awful screenplay.
And I jst realized something... My original grades on the following movies have become significantly lower... The Departed (17 to 15), Crash (19 to 15), Chicago (19 to 14), A Beautiful Mind (19 to 13). Notice any similarities between them :D? Oh, and I have a hunch that if I rewatch Crash it's gonna fall even more... mmm...I might watch it tonight.
On the other hand, I wasn't so happy about Ratatouille after watching it, mainluy because I didn't like the opening (giving it a 14)... I rewatched it and it is now my Top 7 for last year :) and my 3rd favourite Pixar (After a tie between Nemo and WALL·E)
Oh! I forgot to say that I loved Citizen Kane when I first watched it, until I realized it was only because I was "supposed to". I still very much respect it but has left my favourites
the moral of the story (so far) seems to be Oscar and December screw things up and HYPE gets everyone at one point or another.
For years, I was a big fan of E.T., but after watching it earlier this year, I didn't like it at all. I didn't have the magical experience I had when I was a child. It just seemed stupid and kind of laughable. The funny thing is, I took it out of my Top 100 a few months before I saw it again just because I didn't feel like I liked it that much anymore. I guess I had some sort of spidey sense kick in.
The Crying Game is one of the few movies, maybe the only movie, that I didn't like when I first saw it. During the days following my seeing it, I couldn't stop thinking about the ending and the story and everything. I ended up really liking the movie and I recommend it to those that have no idea what to expect.
the most obvious case is Haggis' Crash which at first left me in complete shock, i liked it a lot, and as the hours went by I realised I was raped. You know when raped people say they try to wash excessively their body off their rapist's smell or whatever, well I felt the exact same way, the thing is i didn't know how to wash myself. How to get psychologically rid off a movie? Can someone explain me? Watch excellent movies instead?
Another case, but not that extreme, is Moulin Rouge. It was a perfect 10 for me the first time I saw it but after 2 or 3 viewings the plot seemed really silly, the music is 10+ and so is most everything else, the story, I just can't buy it , i dunno, now its an 8+
These are two bad examples -- bad in the sense that they demonstrate my (since reformed, thank God) poor taste -- but I actually thought '28 Days' with Sandra Bullock and 'Proof of Life' with Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan were both great at the time. So great in fact that I bought both as soon as they came out on DVD (yeah, I know). At least 'Crash' was critically acclaimed.
I also for some reason had false memories of 'Ellen' -- that show was hilarious! -- and sprung for it (to the tune of $50) when Hollywood began releasing just about every middling TV show on DVD a few years ago. Oy vey!
The original Elizabeth. I remember loving it at first, but I can't remember why outside of Blanchett and Rush's performances. Doesn't help that the sequel stunk.
Also, about a third of my DVD makes me go "why...?"
For a vice versa, I didn't care for Cabaret at first, now I love it like almost no other.
What I'd like to know is how many of us got shamed into changing our original reactions after reading the film experience. =/
Did some of us get shamed or affirmed after reading everybody else's opinion?
NEMO and Ratatouille!
Was fascinated with them on the first viewing, namely the quality of the drawings, how lifelike they felt! was totally wowed!
But upon a second viewing... I was bored out of my mind! The stories are just too simple, rather on the lame side... and Ratatouille... seemed too much like a video game (those chase scenes, I can just imagine them in a video game, ugh!)
I'm reserving an opinion on Wall*E till I've seen it a second time. Because like the others the first time I was totally blown away and succombed to its magic. But something tells me this one won't fall in my esteem ;o)
When I was a kid I loved the Carry On series of films, especially the earlier black and white ones.
As I've grown older I've realised I only enjoyed them because the family were laughing at them too and prefered the gentler humour in the early films.
Up the Khyber and Cleopatra remain examples of comic genius though.
cluster funk false memories! lol... my friends and I have those all the time.
not necessarily about movies ;)
crazycris i know what you mean about videogame imaginings. that always takes me out of movies. the earliest i remember feeling that way was the lava scene with flying carpet in ALLADIN and sho' enough... it was a level in teh video game. It starting getting really outrageous later in hte 90s and if the action isn't organic or has to many weird obstacles or extraneous bits it just screams -WE NEED SOMETHING THAT WILL TRANSLATE! anyone remember that terrible skiing down a treacherous mountain scene in sinbad
the perfect example of this is the star wars movies though. The original films had fairly organic action sequences. You don't look at the Hoth at-at (names?) sequence and think video game you think "awesome sequence" but anything in the prequels ... like those awful assembly line obstacle courses --jump before your smashed on the conveyor belt Natalie! and you're just right outside the movie and 'when can i buy the video game?
it's dumb.
Waltz With Bashir.
I remember leaving the theater stunned by it's power and little by little me and my sister started to realize it's major flaws, and now it's just... an important film for the Israeli cinema, but not a great one. ( BUT, seeing as most films that get out of here lately tend to be sentimental crap [ except for maybe 5 movies in the last 5 years ], that is some improvment.
.... I still can't get over the fact that we had to present "beaufort" to the academy instead of " the band's visit".
Anyway - people tell me that when pan's labyrinth went out i went Ga-Ga over it but i have no memory not feeling about that movie now.
steel magnolias. boy, is that movie stinkaroo.
I didn't like "Steel Magnolias" when it first came out. didn't cry with Sally in the Graveyard, but since them the movie has grown on me a little.
"Beowolf" was amazing in the theatre with my friends, but alone on DVD, not as exciting. Guess it's a one night stand kind of movie.
High Anxiety was somehow hysterical the firt time around. Again, i was with a bunch of people laughing, but it loses some charm on it's 2nd viewing
I was absolutely appalled with Star Wars:Episode 1. I just couldn't believe someone didn't just erase the highly offensive Jar Jar Binks during editing. now I can slightly stomach it.
I used to LOATHE American Beauty. Then I bunged it into my top 10. Now I'm apathetic towards it.
E.T., surprisingly enough. It used to be able to enthrall me (as it still does with a lot of viewers), but to me, I look at it now as a snoozefest. I really don't know what it is that created the change of opinion. It's been sitting in our VHS library shelf for the longest time and hasn't been watched in more than fifteen years.
The other way, I'd have to go with The Empire Strikes Back. Thought it was initially a snoozefest (couldn't get past the slow opening on Hoth and the Yoda training sequences), but each subsequent viewing has turned me around to declaring it the best of the six Star Wars live action films. The depth and darkness of the movie is right there and right on target. Hasn't been equaled since.
I'm sad to say Crash. I foolishly liked it at first and the quickly realized I must have been on drugs.
easy picks...
Moonraker is a movie I used to love when I saw it at the cinemas when I was a child... it took me 15 years to catch it again and simply thought how could I have ever liked that one, lol... Now i like it in a "so bad it's almost good" way...
On the contrary, two movies I hated on the first viewing where "The Big Lebowsky" and a spanish thriller called "Salto al VacÃo"... a second viewing let me amazed, though... Ironically enough my second viewing of "Lebowsky" was in the period I was living in Amsterdam (though I wasn't stoned!) Lol.
On Oscar hype movies... Crash, Babel and A Beautiful Mind are the worst cases of Oscar nominated movies lately. Crash tries to be anti-racism manifest and it's basically a full-racist film, like the neighbour that says "I'm no racist 'cause I have black pals". A Beautiful Mind is just a bad thriller disguised as a biopic or a bad biopic disguised as a thriller, choose whatever you want. And Babel, despite everything that is great in it - specially the performances of Kikuchi and the moroccoan boys - in the end falls to the ground as the big cheat it is when you consider the imposibility of one of the situations... how can an illegal inmigrant take the children to a wedding in Mexico... if she DOESN'T have a visa to enter back neither the authorization of the parents, risking EVERYTHING? Plus the unlikelyhood that such a supportive community as the mexican wouldn't help her at all to "back her up" with the children so she could attend the wedding. Once you think about it, the whole thing falls without remission. In exchange, I have to say Hairspray, on repeated viewings, appear to me as the best musical of the last decade, closely followed by Chicago and Moulin Rouge! Hairspray is the new "Little Shop of Horrors", if you ask me.
Love to Hate: Flashdance. God, I can't believe I loved this in the 80s. It's embarrassing.
Hate to Love: High Noon. First time I saw it, I was expecting something more conventional, and failed to hook into the way that the personal and social drama unfolded.
About the IMDb: Click through on the Classics board to find the only non-idiots there. They will often discuss newer movies there because they are well aware that discussing them on the "appropriate" IMDb board exposes you to idiots.
Pretty in Pink.
Totally sucks now (if it didn't before). A very condescending film. The only "real" character in it is Steff, the snobby rich kid douche played by James Spader. Funny how adulthood changes your perspective.
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