Last (x) Movies you are going to Avoid

I know we all love to waste our lives inside the black box but there is only so much you can tolerate. This is a negative thread so please be that.

Youth (Paolo Sorrentino, 2015)
Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman, 2015) - this looks terrible
Hail, Ceasar! (Coen bros., 2015) - a cast to avoid

I was just thinking this about Anomalisa, like ten minutes ago

I will not allow myself to watch A Bigger Splash. Not that trailers are remotely an indication of how good a film is going to be, but the trailer for this is so pervasively nauseating that it would be a triumph of editing were it somehow to not reflect accurately.

Now that awards season is over, I no longer feel like my avoidance of The Revenant, The Big Short, Mad Max: Fury Road, Room and The Martian is that big of a deal, so I'll just continue quietly avoiding them now.

Youth is the worst Sorrention, and the first he's made in a long time that doesn't at least have that wonderful Sorrentinoesque editing, but it's still fine. Looking forward to A Bigger Splash!

teh danish girl
steve jobs
hateful 8

o yea room also def

Brooklyn

A War! Fuck that propagandistic crap.

Youth was a shade less revolting than The Danish Girl; both movies you can point and laugh at.

will avoid:
Oliver Stone's Snowden thing
X-Men XVIII or whatever
Independence Day 2
Star Trek XXXVIII or whatever
Eastwood/Sully
Magnificent Seven remake
Harry Potter spinoff
Star Wars spinoff

will wait for streaming:
Zootopia
Deadpool, maybe
Finding Another Fish

I thought I was pretty positive & unpicky about films but pretty much everything listed so far I am either avoiding or wish I had avoided

I think the sole exception is Independence Day which I will proooobably see one day even though it looks extremely terrible

Anything Terrence Malick puts out. I have come to accept the fact I find his films shallow and boring, and can no longer be bothered to try.

(I mean, I rarely go to the cinema to catch new films anyway but I don't really see that as actively avoiding films, just... failing to go to the cinema.)

Oh right, now that Oscarbait season is done, Deadpool is thing I give the least shit about.

Might only watch Stone's Snowden thing because of JGL, but still a big maybe.

emil.y, I'm with you on Malick (after Thin Red Line).

what movies have you willingly watched recently that would make you reconsider the actively avoid list by comparison?
(my having watched zoolander2 means I can't really have an actively avoid list anymore)

how is malick "shallow"? of all the ways to go at the guy...

I don't think he's shallow, more like he's got these few things to say and repeats them ad nauseum. I will avoid the new one.

This is supposed to be a solely negative thread, so no defending! Though I guess to me 'shallow' = I appreciate the look of his films but the underlying messages and themes completely fail to resonate with me. I just get nothing deeper than 'oh, I guess that's quite pretty'. You might get something more, but I find myself unmoved.

all of them

Thirding the Malick disdain. Tree of Life felt achingly empty to me. I cannot gel with his very measured, almost clinically literary tone, and don't understand his emotional palette at all. I keep falling for the hype that surrounds him, but I don't think it will happen again.

As usual, you put it much better than I can. I often love "achingly empty" films, but that's normally when the emptiness is intentional. Whereas Malick seems to be desperately trying to impart something, but when I look I find nothing.

Youth is the worst Sorrention, and the first he's made in a long time that doesn't at least have that wonderful Sorrentinoesque editing, but it's still fine. Looking forward to A Bigger Splash!

― Frederik B, Sunday, March 6, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The reason for this thread is that a friend & I were going to see it and then got there and it was sold out. We were both dreading it, knowing it was going to be complete and utter shit but liking some of his previous work.

Another friend dragged me to A Bigger Splash! and it was so banal - this barely disguised ad for the Italian tourist industry (even if good things don't happen) so you should avoid it if you can.

The even bigger reason is that 2016 has been terrible for films. Rams by Grímur Hákonarson looks like this quirky Icelandic film I just don't care for. The Revenant is a complete fkn joke.

In parallel the BFI has been running a Godard season and his work from the 70s onwards (never mind the 60s) has been putting everybody to shame.

Dreading the end of this (next week is the last of it). If I am able to I always like going to the cinema.

I know we aren't suppose to defend film, but Rams is delightful... If you all didn't see Of Horses and Men by Benedikt Erlingsson, you need to do that as well, and they're kinda the same film.

dunno if something can be both quirky and viscerally crushing but this is a thread of hatred so on we go. obv i am never watching The Revenant ever

Even though I set-up the thread no one needs to follow all the rules (not that there are any hard-and-fast rules) so yeah defend if you happen to watch and like it. Obviously I'm saying 'no way' on the basis of a trailer or a review of it or what I hear about it. xp

The rams trailer made it look like quirky deadpan comedy but it's like straight tragedy. I liked it, probably in large part because it wasn't the former - as we were leaving my friend said "imagine if that had been a British film" and we both shuddered at the thought of the fucking michael gambon rhys ifans bullshit that would be

youth really was pretty bad -- glacial male-artist sorrow (certainly the end of something or other, one would sort of have to think), that one guy who only plays quivering bureaucrats as a quivering bureaucrat, all dialogue clearly written but not spoken in esl which gave the whole movie such a stilted uncanny feeling i almost liked it. liked the giant marx tattoo i guess.

anomalisa was perfect on its own extremely limited and unpleasant terms.

the coens have been at the top of their career since burn after reading so i am very excited for this obviously slight one.

anyway, deadpool.

The Revenant, The Danish Girl, the Dakota Fanning trans boy movie, most of the foreseeable superhero movies, Zoolander 2

all of them

― mookieproof, Sunday, March 6, 2016 12:49 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm.

I am the Joey Chestnut of avoiding movies

had no idea stone was making a snowden movie; that's unnecessary. idk if there's a scene in oliver stone's whole oeuvre better than the fire alarm sequence in citizenfour unless it's the one where joe pesci's wig comes off.

Rams should be seen just for the awesome images of Iceland :) They have this whole boom of cheap films filmed around the countryside, using the landscape and many amateur actors. All of the films have names like Rams, Sparrows, Volcano, Virgin Mountain, Of Horses and Men. It's a style, kinda.

Yeah, Youth is pretty bad. Sorrentino has only made 'big-male-sorrow' films. His last three films were male-artist-sorrow, but before that it was politician and mafiosi. It's definitely the biggest failing of his filmography, and Youth is really doubling down on it. The guy is still just 45, why are all his films about men growing old and irrelevant? But he is a good picture-maker, and Youth has good pictures.

When Tree of Life came out the local alt-weekly ran two reviews: "I Saw The Tree of Life, and I Loved It" and "I Didn't See The Tree of Life, and I Hated It." I'll always love Badlands and should get around to watching The Thin Red Line but nothing after that has had much appeal.

The only 'my god what rubbish' reaction I've had to a trailer recently was for The BFG, but after the disaster of Tintin I was unlikely to see another Spielberg kids' movie anyway.

The trailer for Hail, Caesar pretty much gives the entire movie away - and does so in a far snappier fashion than the film itself. Ralph Fiennes is the standout turn in H,C but even that wasn't enough to make me see A Bigger Splash, especially after I read a really arsey interview w/ the director in Sight and Sound.

And yes, Youth was unrecoverable in any coherent critical way as a 'good' movie, but it's not an especially interesting bad movie either. The corollary of its male-artist-sorrow is a gross sexism and general disregard for any of the female characters (Rachel Weisz and Jane Fonda probably give the best performances in the film, but they're marginalised and trivialised when set against mouldy Michael Caine and mumbling Harvey Keitel). Also thought This Must Be The Place was a turd, so yeah, it def feels like Sorrentino loses something quite crucial when working with an English Language script.

The Big Fucken Giant. Never saw Tintin but I will do my duty and watch it as part of the big Spielberg project. But I get to stop at Bridge Of Spies, then my commitment ends, so the BFG can G the F O.
Never watched Avatar, Titanic, Independence Day, any Jurassic Park sequels, I watch a hella lit of bad ibdies but I can't be bothered with that shit.
Still Alice, my mother keeps trying to show me and I am "no thank you"

Fast/Furious films, Saw films, TV spinoffs...

The director of A Bigger Splash is Luca Guadagnino who made the quite good I Am Love, so def seeing A Bigger Splash.

I watched Synecdoche New York two days back and decided to give Anomalisa a pass.

guys if you're not hating on days of heaven you're hating malick wrong

its like if you're really going to hate oasis you can't just start hating with 'be here now'. you have to commit to your hate. it's like hating only the late u2: fuck that.

i am love is a garbage movie for garbage people

oh my god rain on a statues face it looks like the statue is crying fuck me did your 5yo cowrite this thing

anomalisa is a great title for a mediocre mid-90s indie record

dlh's thing on youth and esl kinda makes me want to see it, or at least make a movie that uses the same trick to some effect

Non-english speaking people has been doing this for decades.

'Oh look at this stupid director, he isn't even a native English speaker, and he still thinks he can make a global film! lol, what a weirdo.'

'Meanwhile, isn't Eddie Redmayne amazing as a Dane, let's give him all the oscars!'

i think there was more to dlh's claim than that tbh

Anything with "today's comedy superstars" US version - people I generally find unfunny (Louis CK, Tina Fey, The Amy's Schumer and Poehler) ---everything I've seen them in up to now a resounding dud so no thanks.
Anything by Lanthimos
"Anomalisa" was a real chore.

Also - no more Baumbach. Or Ben Stiller ( he just seems fed up in everything).

Avoiding on squeamish grounds rather than quality control grounds:

DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA
Verena Paravel, 2022
Plunging into the viscera of human bodies, the directorial duo behind Leviathan open up glistening worlds of ecstatic abstraction. Never shrinking from grit or guts, this fascinating documentary surfaces in underfunded Parisian hospitals, where doctors inject a good dose of humor into disrepair.

This weekend I sat through the trailers twice for About My Father and You Hurt My Feelings; this was three times too many.

Extraction 2. Don't even try to fool me with this one, Letterboxd mutuals

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer

I'd watch a Gerwig-directed Oppenheimer.

Juding by box office it seems I'm not the only one avoiding the new Indiana Jones.

I would avoid that, but my sister wants to go. If it's at an Alamo Drafthouse, I can get regularly replenished drinks during the screening.

I'd watch a Gerwig-directed Oppenheimer.

And I would watch a Nolan-directed Barbie. They should have traded movies.

Barbie played by Tom Hardy

Oppenheimer played by Saorsie Ronan.

Wonder if Oppenheimer will cover the goings on in the Congo as detailed in parts of this piece, rather than torturing a guy's conscience for three hours?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n12/kevin-okoth/poison-is-better

First trailer for Ridley Scott’s ‘NAPOLEON’ starring Joaquin Phoenix. pic.twitter.com/Ab301ec9fN

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) July 10, 2023

lots of english actors and Joaquin Phoenix doing stupid 'Allo 'Allo! accents and lots of tedious cgi naval battles... no no no fuck off

lol, will probably still watch it tho!

This'll be better than Joker for sure! idk I'll give Ridley some slack when it comes to a period movie with big epic battles but that's based probably solely on Kingdom of Heaven.

I think I still prefer the never-made Kubrick one.

I continue to be sulky that the 1927 version is still not officially available in Region A. Has Brownlow's work been for nothing?

Gotta get me a polyvision compatible tv.

Sound of Freedom

Yes, not even morbid curiosity will get me to see that. But is there a thread around for discussion of the right-wing media-industrial complex in general, or this specific film's distribution model?

There's always this short-lived thread: Favorite Right-Wing Movies

one of these types of movies comes out every couple weeks now:

Dumb Money is a 2023 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo. It is based on the 2021 book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich and chronicles the GameStop short squeeze of January 2021. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, and Seth Rogen.

yeah lol it's pretty dire

This level of hackery is almost admirable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Mezrich#Non-fiction

'Meanwhile, isn't Eddie Redmayne amazing as a Dane, let's give him all the oscars!'

― Frederik B

holy shit this is the best fucking take on The Danish Girl ever

guys you wanna know the problem with The Danish Girl? eddie redmayne ISN'T EVEN DANISH

We've had what the Red Hot Cheetos movie, the beanie babies movie, tetris, blackberry, what other bullshit am I forgetting?

I'd forgotten all about eddie redmayne

i'm just sick and tired of hollywood's constant perpetuation of negative danish stereotypes. it's not as bad as it used to be, for the most part, but nobody understands or wants to acknowledge just how much harm danephobic stereotypes in the media have done to danish people for decades now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHQojhNjnks

lol beat me to it

Hollywood has always been envious of Danish culture, so they lean on those stereotypes as a sort of Copenhagen mechanism

good lord

We've had what the Red Hot Cheetos movie, the beanie babies movie, tetris, blackberry, what other bullshit am I forgetting?

― omar little, Tuesday, September 26, 2023 4:38 PM bookmarkflaglink

Air Jordans movie, two different Ferrari movies, two direct-to-streaming Fyre Festival docs, various direct-to-streaming miniseries about things that were interesting when someone shared an Atlantic or VF piece on ILX (ex. McDonald's Monopoly scandal) but which cannot sustain unlimited padding, and about four hundred thousand direct-to-streaming docs on justly forgotten movies/shows/toys that would have been unbearable even as twenty-minute YouTube reports by talented amateur video essayists.

docs on justly forgotten movies/shows/toys that would have been unbearable even as twenty-minute YouTube reports by talented amateur video essayists

wait this is pretty much all i watch, if any of these are even a quarter as good as "Ranking Anime Denny's" i'm fucking in

I think doc is more thinking about crap like The Toys That Made Me, the tmnt episode of which I grudgingly sat through. Obviously if netflix gave hazel a deal that'd be rad.

it's not as bad as it used to be, for the most part

https://i.imgur.com/wCyhTqh.jpg

I think doc is more thinking about crap like The Toys That Made Me, the tmnt episode of which I grudgingly sat through. Obviously if netflix gave hazel a deal that'd be rad.

― Daniel_Rf

yeah i remember when that came out and i was like "that sounds interesting" and i never watched it, i guess it wasn't interesting

i genuinely love "wallpaper television" like "how it's made" though. you know, it's like some kids are with videos of construction equipment

that stuff would be ok if it was done "slow TV" style, can't be doing with excitable talkovers tho

see also: Billy Nighy shut up and let me just watch the train journey

yeah, one of the worst things about almost all television is overactive narrators, especially when they're supposed to be funny/cheeky/zany. for example, there are many horrible things about Love Island, but deleting the narrator is the single thing you could do that would most reduce the suffering of watching it, or passing through a room where it's on.

This is quite late but I did see a trailer for Maestro before Fallen Leaves some weeks ago and had a real "who in the world would be interested in this?" reaction.

Also, currently discussed on the anti-semitism thread, had one look at One Life poster at a bus stop and that was enough to know this was going to be one to avoid.

anything directed by bradley cooper
anything directed by matthew vaughn

bradley cooper seems like the new eddie redmayne, the young star oscar voters want to pinch the cheek of

He's 49!

That's almost a budding prodigy relative to many voting members of the Academy.

I can't bring myself to watch Wicked Little Letters despite quite a few people telling me it's good - balanced by one friend walking out of it after less than half an hour.

"Best British comedy film of the year" blurb makes it sound v unappealing.

I seem to remember very very early press was dreadful then suddenly switched arcs to 4* across the board.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_and_the_Purple_Crayon_(film)

Live action and Harold is an adult.

Sounds like somebody decided to make a male Barbie.