I was very dissapointed with the Greatest Show on Earth: one of Stewart's worst performances, an ugly script for its time, poor plot, and it beat out High Noon due to McCarthyism.
I was very dissapointed with the Greatest Show on Earth: one of Stewart's worst performances, an ugly script for its time, poor plot, and it beat out High Noon due to McCarthyism.
American Beauty (1999) was a bad movie that won Best Picture.
[quote]asasf@adfsa.com wrote:
Go down the list of pictures and ask yourself which ones you want to watch again. There are very few on that best picture list.
[quote]
I agree. Some of them may be flat-out bad, but most of them are just forgettable -- at best, a mildly enjoyable two hours of entertainment. A very uninspiring collection of films.
2012xxx wrote:
I am with you on Kane (albeit not a winner and thus not the point of this thread) being overrated. I had heard so much about that over the years, so eventually I rented it expecting to be wow-ed by the greatest movie ever and it was only average to very slightly above average. Far, far from the greatest movie ever.
Most people in this era can't grasp the importance of Citizen Kane. The movie is fairly slow and sometimes boring, but the technical achievements were fantastic. There are all sorts of cinematography tricks, storytelling tricks, stage and lighting tricks that were invented for that film that are standard use today. The story isnt all that great. The achievements of the film are what is great.
sterling rathsack wrote:
TKTKTK wrote:+1
The very next commenter after this used the phrases "utter garbage" and "rubbish," the other two most overused critical phrases on this board. Please, LetsRun message board: no more. These are not definitive evaluative pronouncements; the word "utter" doesn't meaningfully amplify whatever comes next, and it sure doesn't make you sound any smarter. And "rubbish" is a prissy word, a tough-sounding, but ultimately flaccid, way to say, well, "garbage." If you go around using these words, you'll sound like a pretentious adolescent your whole life.
amplify and flaccid might also be considered pretentious...just saying...
Not to mention 'evaluative' and 'pronouncements'. Who the f*ck uses those words in everyday conversation or on a message board discussion?
Talk about pretentious...
Sp!kes wrote:
Anyone who said Chicago was bad is just gay. Nuthin wrong with it but they are gay.
Actually, I think it works the other way around.
It does. Chicago was dreadful. A dance musical that couldn't manage to show dancers' legs. Awful performances by Zellweger and Gere.
From the vantage point of 2013, it's pretty hard to understand how "Driving Miss Daisy" could have been picked over "Do The Right Thing," which they didn't even bother to nominate.
Alls I know is Water World was underrated, I loved it
Chicago was physically painful
American Beauty and Crash were both pretty good
The Matrix sucked
Barry Badrinath wrote:
[quote]TKTKTK wrote:
Huh. Sterling, there's a difference between using vapid words that sound meaningful and correctly using meaningful words with rich connotations. "Rubbish" and "utter" are vacant - there's no there there - but they sound muscular or definitive. That's the very essence of pretension. But "amplify" is exactly the right word - to make more powerful. And "flaccid," connoting impotence and sterility, is also perfect. So please: don't contribute to the dumbing-down of our culture by mischaracterizing vivid rhetoric as pretentious. Big words (which "amplify" and "flaccid" are not) or unusual words (ditto) are not, by definition, pretentious. But any word or phrase, no matter its length or obscurity, used incorrectly or speciously, can be pretentious.
You begin with the pretension of being an authority on what constitutes the idea of meaningful. You then proceed with the pretense of superiority because of your apparent command of the english language. Who are you pretending not to be? You couldn't be a school teacher because after a full day of teaching you wouldn't feel like coming to letsrun to lecture semantics. You couldn't be a writer, otherwise you'd have something better to do. maybe not. I'm guessing english lit undergrad who works at pita pit and comes to letsrun when its slow.
We're here for opinion not "vivid rhetoric". The words "rubbish" and "utter" effectively convey ones sentiments no matter how "specious" or "pretentious" they may seem.
M.C. Confusing wrote:
Most people in this era can't grasp the importance of Citizen Kane. The movie is fairly slow and sometimes boring, but the technical achievements were fantastic. There are all sorts of cinematography tricks, storytelling tricks, stage and lighting tricks that were invented for that film that are standard use today. The story isnt all that great. The achievements of the film are what is great.
I basically agree, although the word "tricks" understates the achievements. It's staggering to think that Welles was the director, producer, lead actor (in the role of a man who aged at least fifty years in the course of the movie), and co-author of the screenplay, all the while dealing with efforts by William Randolph Hearst to suppress the film . . . and Welles was only about 25 years old at the time. Amazing.
90s = crappy era wrote:
Actually, the fact that no one has even mentioned "How Green Was My Valley", winner over "Citizen Kane" (overrated, but still) and "The Maltese Falcon", is proof enough that it's the one we're looking for. No one even remembers it.
Not really. Citizen Kane is the better movie, but How Green Was My Valley isn't a *bad* one. It was definitely one of the biggest Oscar *mistakes*, but that's not the same as being the worst movie to win Best Picture.
The worst movie to win Best Picture is probably The Greatest Show On Earth. The fact that it beat out High Noon, an undeniable classic, is just icing on the cake.
Titanic - horrible. All I was thinking in the last agonizing hour was "Sink, god damn it, sink!"
It just lost out on Best Picture but since this is the closest I'll ever get to a legitimate topic to bring it up, I thought Avatar was terrible. Just Pocahontas/ Dances With Wolves with all the alluring graphics of Final Fantasy X. They didn't even change the Native Americans into anything, they just grew them up and painted them blue. Unobtainium? Really?
More relevant, The Hurt Locker wasn't much better. It wasn't the worst Best Picture winner, but Bigelow must be thanking her stars for such a weak year.
Birdlegs wrote:
spade detector wrote:Chariots of Fire
This is a horrible movie. I've tried watching it several times since it involved track, but have yet to see the whole thing. Absolutely horrible.
Mr. Spade Detector, you are correct.
It is one of my favorite films. I think it is one of the best stories about the different factors that drive us to compete.
I also feel that I am a modern day Harold Abrahams....
2012xxx wrote:
90s = crappy era wrote:Actually, the fact that no one has even mentioned "How Green Was My Valley", winner over "Citizen Kane" (overrated, but still) and "The Maltese Falcon", is proof enough that it's the one we're looking for. No one even remembers it.
I am with you on Kane (albeit not a winner and thus not the point of this thread) being overrated. I had heard so much about that over the years, so eventually I rented it expecting to be wow-ed by the greatest movie ever and it was only average to very slightly above average. Far, far from the greatest movie ever.
There is an entire wide world of film critics and film fans that would disagree with you on that one.
You might want to consider a few things... You didn't see it in a movie theater. Which makes a huge difference.
And it may say a whole lot more about you than the movie, that you only thought it was slightly above average.