Name five films you regret seeing

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I didn’t care for the musical version of ‘Les Miserables’.

Going in to the movie theatre years ago (the one with Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman), I thought it was going to be the kind of film like ‘The Sound of Music‘ or ‘Oklahoma’ of mostly dialogue with some songs mixed in. I guess I didn’t do my homework.

The actors sang all their lines from the get-go. At one point, I leaned over to my wife and sang softly in her ear, “I need to use the restroom. Would you like some popcorn”.
 
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I’m not the biggest Les Mis fan either, let’s be honest it only got the Best Picture nomination because of Anne Hathaway’s “I Dreamed a Dream”.
 
Oh, that would be interminable. It would be like doing LOTR as an unabridged TV show, a ten page song in a fictional language is exactly what audiences want.
 
Inquisitor85 said:
Phantom of the Opera - Dreadfully miscast, and a director who can’t decide whether to push the melodrama and style (ala Moulin Rouge) or go for realism and grit (Les Mis). The result is an awful compromise that is neither fish nor fowl, add to that a domineering creator and you end up with a mess of awfulness.
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To each their own I guess - while I agree that Gerard Butler has a lousy singing voice, I loved the rest of the movie (and own a copy on Blu-ray). It was because of seeing the movie in theaters that I went to see a touring production in Pittsburgh a year later.

Though my preferred version is now the 25th anniversary production at the Royal Albert Hall - picked up that Blu-ray a couple of months ago, after the show was streamed for free on YouTube for a limited time.
 
I am a connoisseur of bad movies, so I can take a lot. Hobgoblins? Easy. Samurai Cop? Classic. If Footman Tire You What Will Horsemen Do? It’s a spectacle in its badness.

I don’t regret seeing many movies… except when they are incredibly boring. I’ve posted this in the past, but I give you just a clop of the one movie that I guarantee you will regret seeing, Gerry:

 
  • Frenzy (1972): I’ve watched most of Hitchcock’s films, enjoying many of them, but this one I couldn’t withstand for more than an hour before turning off.
  • JFK (1991): Did we really need a film masquerading as a serious attempt to bring legitimacy to the director’s conspiracy theory of JFK’s assassination? Distasteful.
  • Cape Fear (1991): I’ve yet to enjoy a single Scorsese film.
  • Casino (1995): See above.
  • LA Confidential (1997): I was hoping for a stylish detective story. Instead I got Danny Devito playing a sleazy tabloid journalist and narrating a rote crime drama, with the only likable character being a sympathetic prostitute.
  • Drive (2011): It was said to be a modern film noir classic. While the opening scene is marvelously shot and edited, the film unexpectedly turns into a hyper-violent mob film lacking in any compelling characters or plot, giving all the violence and artistry no redeeming value beyond the film’s technical merits.
 
I love Gerry and Elephant, both by Gus Van Sant. It helps if you’re familiar with the films he was influenced by (Elephant, Satantango).

God bless you for mentioning Footmen, though. A classic bad movie. If only Judy had converted sooner!
 
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StudentMI said:
Satantango
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I spotted this film yesterday on Kanopy and was immediately intrigued by its premise, resolving to watch it at some later date. And in the last 24 hours, I’ve seen it mentioned twice here on Catholic Answers by two different posters. Are the Fates trying to tell me something here?
 
It’s a masterpiece but beware, it’s 7 hours long split into 12 segments. If you’re not used to long takes in films it will take getting used to but once you do, you’ll be amazed.
 
I liked U571. I did not care if it was historically accurate. It was a movie, and had a good them of love, duty, and sacrifice. I never understood the objection to the DaVinci code movies because they were inaccurate. Now if this stuff was presented as documentaries, like Michael Moore presents his fairy tales, then I would agree they were garbage.

Spoiler alert - Blair Witch Project is not really footage found in the woods.
 
StudentMI said:
If you’re not used to long takes in films it will take getting used to but once you do, you’ll be amazed.
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If it helps, I find long takes from David Lynch and Andrei Tarkovsky utterly mesmerizing. 😄
 
The Shining got me interested in film and Tarkovsky sealed the deal. If you haven’t I recommend checking out Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni as well!
 
I can’t believe this was nominated for an independent spirit award… maybe I’m missing something. Gus van Sant? Matt Damon? Yikes.

Discussion Questions:

Is the guy on the left walking forward or is he standing still?

Is the answer to the first question supposed to be profound? Or merely the product of poor cinematography?

If they wanted whalesong, why couldn’t they get a recording of an actual whale? Why synthesize it?
 
I will have to check the rest of it out, then, and not judge based on the clip!
 
This has to be one of the most popular threads that I’ve started on CAF, aside from the song title and Ban threads. Great discussion folks, keep it going!
 
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That reminds me: I might as well add David Lynch’s film Dune (1984) to the list of film regrets. Daniel Villeneuve has a low bar to leap to surmount this disaster with his upcoming Dune adaptation, but it’ll be a great challenge to fit the complexity and scope of the story and universe on screen, especially when the characters are not human so much as idealized creations whose minds and motives operate in a hyper-state of consciousness. I’m afraid Villeneuve will need to make departures from the narrative in order to give more screen time for humanizing the characters in some way, or else the themes and the universe become baffling novelties that make sense only to those already familiar with the novels. And, it’s not as if Frank Herbert does the screenwriter any favors with his insufferable characters and atrocious dialogue . . .
 
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RogueSemicolon said:
That reminds me: I might as well add David Lynch’s film Dune (1984) to the list of film regrets.
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I love David Lynch. I love his films… I’ve never been able to finish Dune. And I love the novel and read every page.
 
  1. Hearthrob- wife wanted to watch this. I can take any amount of violence between anonymous actors, but this was utterly painful and cringey to see. The nerd with the party girl made zero sense.
  2. Avengers- Exactly the overproduced, too much cgi, formulaic studio piece I thought it would be.
  3. Forrest Gump- this one is a little bit of a bait, but there is zero character development as we watch a mentally disabled guy get taken advantage of by his childhood sweetheart.
  4. The Last Jedi- idpol propaganda served with a side of hackneyed and cynical post modern tropes.
  5. HUD- a sign the Western genre was on its way out
 
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