This is the thread where we "enjoy" terrible "quirky" indie comedies from the 90s/00s

this was on TV last night for some reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYwHuuFfBos

and who could forget this classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xgHBIHUqfc

If Lucy Fell and Party Girl to thread.

I will watch Crispin Glover in pretty much anything but Fast Sofa is just... why did this even get made? The direction is godawful, ridiculous split-screen editing all over the place, terrible camerawork, no sense of pacing. and they cast JAKE BUSEY as the fucking lead? with a Nelson wig? Also Adam Goldberg tries hard to look sexy with his shirt off.

Arizona Dream is a pretty good fucking movie at its 2-1/2 hour Euro length. v approp that Shakey only sees a "quirky comedy"

I'm not sure what it is but it is not good

Gallo's parts are pretty funny

it is, and they are. Jerry Lewis's death, not so much.

feel like this goes here even though it's from '89:
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=950DEFD61F3BF93AA25756C0A96F948260

and this one absolutely:
http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BNTcxODk2NTI5M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTg2MTQ1MQ@@._V1_SY317_CR3,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

Wow True Romance is like horrible ur-text ground zero for this stuff, albeit w an emphasis on dumb violence over laffs. What an awful movie.

I just recently rewatched that for the first time in 20 years. Realized that a) I must've seen it twenty times because I apparently had all of the dialogue burned into a previously-inaccessible nook of my brain and b) yeah, it's really not good. But it's weird to see what's obviously (from this vantage point) a Tarantino movie directed by someone else. The now-familiar tics and references feel very disconnected. Curious to rewatch Natural Born Killers now (which I suspect might be awful).

I finally saw Even Cowgirls Get the Blues a couple of months ago, that was also not very good

Yeah its really clear in hindsight what's from Tarantino and what's from Scott, and they are a poor match that kinda bring out the worst in each other.

NBK is much better/more succesful imo, since it really embraces the cartoonishness.

Xxp

which are the now-familiar tics and references that feel very disconnected?

swears and gratuitous racism

hat-tip to Vigo felt a bit unearned iirc

Brad Pitt's best role until Burn After Reading

Does Very Bad Things count for this? It's still the quickest answer I can think of to "What's the worst film you've ever seen?"

Curious to rewatch Natural Born Killers now (which I suspect might be awful)

funnily enough i started nbk on netflix the other night and had to turn it off about 20 minutes in - i didn't like it much at the time but holy shit it has aged v v badly indeed

Little Miss Sunshine must be the epitome of curdled quirk in this vein

Very Bad Things is amazing wtf?

I am not sure what subset of movies this thread is designed for shitting on. Would it be a bad place to park one's more generalized inchoate rage at the entire Quirky Indie phenomenon?

Round about 2007 I began to dread even seeing trailers for indie movies, because you'd hear the jangly chords of whatever painfully hip Quirky Indie song was in the soundtrack, and you'd see the character who carries a Weirdness Token to signify that he or she is a member of the Wacky Club (see, he always has a tennis racquet because he's Tennis Guy!), and it's like, oh shit here we go again. This year it's "Napoleon Dynamite," but with a pregnant girl! Next year it'll be "Garden State," but with a pet lemur! Then it'll be "Igby Goes Down," but with midgets! Then "Royal Tenenbaums" but on a boat!

For a good overview of "Little Miss Juno Dynamite," see Ann Hornaday, "Indie Chic to Indie, Sheesh": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101000728_pf.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119324/

^

Pretty sure this was terrible, also pretty sure my high school girlfriend, who I was in the process of losing during my freshman year of college, told me that it was great, and I am also pretty sure I tried convincing myself that it was great, and that I was the kind of guy who liked movies like that

That's a natural and normal part of how young people ingest culture, though: am I the kind of person who is supposed to like this kind of thing? Then I guess I do.

If you're not doing that when you're 20, you're either a highly evolved being or you've somehow simply fallen into an idiosyncratic pattern of consuming culture.

If you're still doing it when you're 40, though, you are probably someone whose authentic tastes are not very well defined, and you take your cues from others, possibly to an unhealthy degree.

In the 90s/00s my Quirky Indie friends were always so totally stoked about the Quirky Indie director and the Quirky Indie cast and the Quirky Indie soundtrack, and "have you seen it yet?" So grateful when I had kids and could blame them for why I hadn't.

By 44, you've realized that the fetishization of "authenticity" in taste is something you no longer have need for, and you recognize that identity formation / presentation / performance is always part of what you're doing when you consume culture. There is no alternative.

which are the now-familiar tics and references that feel very disconnected?

from Tarantino you get the aforementioned swearing + racist dialogue, as well as the pop culture ephemera refs in place of characterization (Sonny Chiba, Elvis, etc.) Scott's direction is most obvious in the staging and framing - billowing curtains, steam, drifting feathers, backlit scenes that may take place during the day or at night (who can tell?) Scott has worse taste in music cues and scores too. The styles just don't mesh well imo. Tarantino provides this loose plot framework - within which every character speaks in the same voice (which is a real problem) - but it's totally ridiculous and unrealistic; Scott adapts it as if it's serious melodrama, as if we're supposed to care about these barely-there characters and believe in their "true love", but these two approaches are too far apart to ever work together.

The collision of "edgy" comedy, bungling criminals + violence, and throwaway pop culture joeks make it v quintessentially 90s.

Tarantino? Destiny Turns on the Radio + Sleep with Me

not sure if the gay panic stuff in it is Tarantino or Scott tbh, could be either

xxp