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Do you give up on bad movies?

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View Poll Results: Do you give up on bad movies?
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Do you give up on bad movies?

Old 02-19-17, 06:35 PM
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Do you give up on bad movies?

Now, I don't mean in theaters. Certainly people with prices nowadays won't easily leave a bad movie. But, at home, will you give up on a bad movie and not see it through?

I used to never do this, no matter how bad the movie. I do the disc program with Netflix, so I get the new releases whenever they come out. It used to be I wouldn't give up because it is sort of throwing money away, but lately with time being more precious, I'll give up on a bad movie and only regret it for maybe a few minutes.

So far with buying movies, I haven't gotten too many duds in blind buys. Been mostly pleased at my picks with absurd buying habits, but that is another discussion.

Anyway, if I buy a dud I will always see it through because that to me is a complete waste of money and while I've been known to be careless, I have to invest the time because I invested the money.

So, with time being of the essence, I can't leave a night on a bad note. I've been trying to watch one a night now because I hadn't been watching anything but tv (Ray Donovan, er, West Wing) before bed because it is smaller time investments and were more or less reliable and I was never disappointed. So I gave up on movies during the week, only sometimes on weekends. But for now, glad to watch more of my passion.

So will you give up or does it depend on situation, purchase, rental, etc?
Old 02-19-17, 06:42 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

I usually just DVR movies these days. If I don't seem to like it after 30 minutes, I'll stop and resume watching it a few hours later or maybe a few days later. If after another 10-15 minutes and I'm still bored, I won't finish the movie.

It's a sunk cost. The 30-45 minutes I already watched should not affect my decision to watch the remaining part of the movie that I clearly have no interest in.
Old 02-19-17, 10:06 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

If I'm watching a movie on cable and it sucks, I decide not to waste my time anymore and I put in a DVD of something I want to watch that doesn't suck.

I've been wanting to watch CABARET for years, so when it came on TCM sometime last year, I started watching it, but after 20 min., I just couldn't take it. I can't even remember now what turned me off, but it was like chalk screeching on a blackboard. If I can't buy the premise of a musical (kind of like with LA LA LAND), it loses me.
Old 02-19-17, 10:25 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

I won't say I never have ...

I watched Jonah Hex today. Jonah Fucking hex.

I guess I have to mark "no" in the poll.
Old 02-19-17, 10:59 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

Theater: No
Rented Disc: Rarely
Netflix streaming: All the fucking time.
Old 02-19-17, 11:12 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

I have no problem bailing on a bad movie. But if it's supposed to be good and just not clicking with me, I'll give it more time.
Old 02-20-17, 06:34 AM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

Stayed with my sister in AZ for a few days, she rented Adaptation. As we were watching it I kept having Ash Ketchum moments with the chalk screeching on a blackboard. I couldn't sit through that movie, it was beyond stupid and I hated every minute I wasted watching it. Very few comedies these days appeal to me, most are just dumb as shit, very few ever actually make me laugh. That one pissed me off for the time I wasted on it.

That's the only one that immediately comes to mind, more thought might generate others but I can't think of any right now.
Old 02-20-17, 07:46 AM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

Theater: no
DVR: no
Disk: rarely.

I might buy a disk then before watching it decide that i don't want it in my collection or realize that while I might watch it, it is way down the list, so I'll trade it or give it away.
If I start watching a movie at night, I might fall asleep during it then finish it the next day.

If I start watching a movie I haven't seen before, odds are I know enough about it to think I'll like it, or think "I should watch this".

The only movie I can think of that I 'gave up' on while watching, never to go back again, was The Royal Tenenbaums, a Netflix disk rental. Hated it, the 20 minutes I watched.
Old 02-20-17, 08:26 AM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

Life is too short to sit through crap... 15 mins if its garbage i am out
Old 02-20-17, 08:28 AM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

The shit sandwich is TERRIBLE. But maybe I should take just a few more bites...

Life's too short. If the movie is that awful, I bail immediately. I think I saw 30 minutes of Transformers 2 in 2010 and haven't seen any of those films since.
Old 02-20-17, 09:13 AM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

It's rare, but I couldn't make it through American Pie, Dumb and Dumber (gave that one about an hour), or the remake of Fright Night (the original is good, however). It takes a really bad movie to get me to turn it off partway through, but those did it.

In all of those cases, I was watching at home on DVD. I have never walked out of a theater before a movie was over.
Old 02-20-17, 09:37 AM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

In the theater or paid money to rent the disc...No I won't. But TV, any of my streaming services even Vudu where I pay for it or a purchased disc, yeah unfortunately all the time. I might give it a second go somewhere down the road like with Vudu, but that's rare. With physical purchases, I just put it in the slush pile to get rid of in some fashion.

Example, I bought the Boss on digital for my wife, we started watching it and I gave up after half an hour (she continued to watch it past midnight). I wish I had enough sense to do that with Neon Demon, but oh no...I actually watched that whole darn thing. Oh, right...I paid $7 bucks for that darn movie on digital. The $2 or $3 I spent on Boss seemed inconsequential I guess.
Old 02-20-17, 02:05 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

I came real close to turning off Suicide Squad. I did start cleaning up the basement during the second half of it though. What a snoozer.

Last edited by DVD Josh; 02-20-17 at 02:21 PM.
Old 02-20-17, 03:15 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

There are simply too many movies available of varying quality to mindlessly watch through out of spite.

I tend to give movies one act these days. If there isn't something I see that looks to have potential, it's dead to me.
Old 02-20-17, 03:46 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

Originally Posted by Hokeyboy
The shit sandwich is TERRIBLE. But maybe I should take just a few more bites...

Life's too short. If the movie is that awful, I bail immediately. I think I saw 30 minutes of Transformers 2 in 2010 and haven't seen any of those films since.
Almost every movie I watch I have at least some idea that I'm going to enjoy it. It's really rare that a movie I think I'm going to like turns out so bad I want to shut it off. Sure not every movie is a personal favorite but I've rarely miscalculated a movie so much that I've had to turn it off.

Speaking of Transformers, the closest I've come to shutting off a movie I thought I'd enjoy is Transformers 4. That's shit was like a slow death. I wasn't sure it was ever going to end. How the hell can a movie about battling robots from space be so fucking tedious?!
Old 02-20-17, 03:52 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

I try not to.

If I rent a Steven Seagal, Michael Jai White or Jean-Claude Van Damme straight to video action movie, I know exactly what I'm getting into.

Have never walked out of a movie in theaters.

If I pay for a $5-7 digital rental, I'll absolutely see it through.

The last video store in my area is closing down for good in a few weeks, but before I would rent there semi-regularly and I very rarely have not finished a disc I paid to rent. I think it was at least 3-4 years since I did that.

I even try to see all the way through a free Red Box disc rental.
Old 02-20-17, 03:55 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

At the drive-in would always sit through the first movie no matter how bad it was. If the second one sucked we were outta there.
Old 02-20-17, 07:32 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

More than anything I'll do something else in the background like play a game on my 3DS or browse on my tablet if I'm not that into something. It doesn't happen that often where I find myself really uninterested to the point of turning something off.
Old 02-20-17, 07:43 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

When my parents rented movies when I was a kid, I watch anything, whether I liked it or not, because those two or three tapes were all you had. We didn't have a movie library of our own, there were only a few channels on TV.

Now that there is a near unlimited amount of stuff to watch, whether streaming, on movie channels, or my own massive DVD collection, I never even think about turning off movies I aren't into.

I'm trying to remember how many times I've walked out of a theatre. I know there's been a couple occasions I left one theatre because the movie was terrible and watched something else in one of the other auditoriums. I know I did that for Teaching Mrs. Tingle, Get Carter, and a couple other times but I don't remember the movie. Of course, this was back in the old days, when there five theatres in the city and I was going three or four times a week. Today I'm pretty selective about what I see in the lone theatre this stupid city has to offer, so unless a shooting breaks out, I can't imagine myself ever abandoning a movie again.
Old 02-20-17, 08:08 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

In the 80s after we first got a VCR, my parents would usually pick out movies to rent and not give me much say in what they were most of the time. I'd then try to watch them but if they didn't hold my interest in the first 15 minutes, I'd head to the other room and watch whatever shows were on TV instead. Eventually I realized I'd bailed on some good movies (like Amadeus and Iron Eagle- that one I STILL haven't seen all of but want to!) and then watched everything. I figured it would be good to see EVERY movie ever made, even if that isn't possible.

I have fallen asleep during a few movies at home, and a few I still fell asleep during after giving them a second try. Technically I was still in front of the TV through the whole movie though, falling asleep was out of my control.

During my 10-year theater career I saw everything that played for free, though I remember the movie "Vertical Limit"- after its prologue I thought to myself "If I were the sort of person who walked out on movies, I'd walk out right now."
Old 02-20-17, 09:31 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

Nope. As a lover of Genre films, you learn to just hang in there with the bad stuff.

I write reviews for a Horror Website/Group/Blog now, so I run into things I don't like pretty often.
Old 02-21-17, 03:13 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

Never in the theater but I give up on rented discs all the time. If I'm bored or hate the first 30 minutes I'll give up.
Old 02-21-17, 04:17 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

If I'm interested enough to start a movie, I do everything I can to finish it, even if that means breaking the viewing up.

I have watched too many movies that turned around my opinion by its ending or overcoming a rough opening 15-30 minutes. I feel like you haven't really seen a movie if you didn't watch it all the way through.

I'll give a good example, one that I know some might disagree with but whatever. The first time I saw Juno, I really wanted to turn it off in those first 20 minutes or so. I just did not like the rhythm of the movie at all, but as I watched, it felt like it quit trying to be so clever and brought me more into the story. Once the movie ended, I was surprised to say I liked it and was happy I stuck it out. I don't list it as an all time favorite or anything glad I saw it.

Another example is The Usual Suspects. Not sure on my mood that day, but I remember being super bored through most of the runtime. Then toward the end, I started to get more caught up with the story just in time for that ending, which made me totally reevaluate what had come before.

If you give up, you might miss the thing that will turn the movie around for you.

Originally Posted by asianxcore
Nope. As a lover of Genre films, you learn to just hang in there with the bad stuff.

I write reviews for a Horror Website/Group/Blog now, so I run into things I don't like pretty often.
There's much truth in this.
Old 02-21-17, 04:36 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

I keep watching Batman vs. Superman and I don't know why. It's gets worse with each viewing.
Old 02-21-17, 04:45 PM
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Re: Do you give up on bad movies?

Originally Posted by Deadman31
I keep watching Batman vs. Superman and I don't know why. It's gets worse with each viewing.
I borrowed the BD from a friend and took me 3 days to watch the extended version. I kept turning it off and resuming the next day. I found it very difficult to just watch it in one sitting.

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