Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

Except for Kevin Costner, Waterworld was a good movie. Sort of Mad Max on water mixed with Escape From L.A./New York.

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

WATERWORLD...that's the one where, hundreds of years after water has covered the entire planet, they've still got cigarettes, matches, and oil, isn't it?-rolleyes-

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The crazy thing about Waterworld is that no studio would even flinch at that budget now.

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I think grandma's boy is the best "happy madison" production to date! It was awesome!

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison are FAR superior to Grandma's Boy. GB is just trying way to hard to be the "cool, funny indie movie that only the highest level of movie lover can understand." If you try too hard to be cool, you automatically lose.

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

Really? :hscratch: I can't think of a worse way to describe the humor in Grandma's Boy. What makes you say that?

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GB is like this cult movie that people think is so cool just because it doesn't have millions of fans like other comedy, or indeed other, movies have.

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I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Happy Gilmore. I hated Billy Madison. And I totally don't get the "indie movie"/"higher level" accusation.

It never crossed my mind to like it because few others do. It did, however, cross my mind to like it because I actually like it.

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The indie thing.....there are all these movies that people think are so cool because other people say they're cool and they want to be liked, so they say they like them, too. Movies that people think are so funny/scary/etc, but really aren't. They get to this "cult" level for absolutely no reason, crowding out movies that are actually worth something. Sorry about the rambling, but this is a subject that really P's me off. People talking about all these supposedly cool movies whose heads are so far up themselves that they cannot possibly understand how someone doesn't think that the movies are awesome just like they do. Movies that try really hard to "give a message" or do something to try to be different and new just cannot EVER pull it off.

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

Give us some EXAMPLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

Personally I like Martin Lawrence like (I am told) the French like Jerry Lewis. And that makes me feel very guilty, and a little dirty.

Most people hide their porn movies....I hide Blue Streak, Black Knight, National Security, Big Momma's House, etc.

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

Twilight
Slumdog Millionaire
Juno
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Scarface
Superbad
No Country For Old Men
Saw (all of them)
Kick Ass
Scott Pilgrim
Inception
127 Hours
The Godfather
any Quentin Tarantino movie
There Will Be Blood
Let Me In
Going Berserk
American Beauty
American Pie (all of them)
Sixth Sense
Fight Club
The Hangover

Need I go on ?

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

I think you should reconsider thinking of THE GODFATHER that way. You're just being childish there. I'd also take SCARFACE and Tarantino off your list. But you may have a point with the rest of them.

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John Carpenter's Memoirs of an Invisible Man. It seems that most people pretend that the movie never existed. I, for one, love it.
And a bunch of Troma flicks, of course.

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How is stating the fact that Godfather is boring being childish ? Since when is expressing an honest fact childish ? And why would I take Scarface off my list ? It's a horrible movie. Bad acting that would fit right in on Mystery Science. Same goes for Godfather. My point still stand. You ever notice that all the rappers have Scarface posters and dvds and talk about the movie all the time ? It's because they think it's the cool thing to watch. That's it. They don't like it because it's a good movie. It's not. And Tarantino ? Good lord, where do I begin. He's just horrible. He tries way too hard to be funny and, as I said, when you do that, it never works. Pulp Fiction is horrible. It's all "Look at me. I'm being all hip and trendy." I can't stand it. They're all movies that people say are great and the best of all time but when you sit down and watch them, you just cannot fathom how they could get so popular. Drivel. I don't think that that word is used enough in film today.

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Memoirs isn't the best movie that I've ever seen, but it was a lot of fun.

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It sounds to me that your problem is with fans, not the movies. Is it a movie's fault if its fans become pretentious snobs? You need to work on compartmentalizing the art from the audience; you may be surprised by how those barriers have limited yourself.

Regarding The Godfather, I've got a personal theory that you need to be Catholic in order to fully appreciate it. As I'm not, I can admire the movie but it leaves me somewhat cold.

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Don't get "fact" mixed up with "opinion."

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You're right. I hate fans that insist that certain movies are cool when everyone can plainly see that they're not. But I also have a problem with the movies. Sometimes it can be the movie's fault if the fans become jerks. Pretentious, boring, and pointless movies, more often then not, attract those same kinds of people. Just because a movie is popular doesn't mean it's good. Avatar is the most recent that comes to mind. Well, that and Black Swan.

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I'm not. Godfather IS boring. Just because people like the movie, doesn't make it not boring. People watch BBC costume dramas and Masterpiece Theatre, too, and that's about as boring as they come. Popular doesn't equal good. Nor does little known equal bad.

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It's just needs more Micheal Bay, am i rite?

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Art is subjective. "Cool" is an arbitrary characterization. You're not really making much of a case for yourself so far. Fortunately, I'm in a good mood so allow me to take over.

Never mind. I just saw Black Swan tonight and loved it. And for the record, I wanted to see it from the first description I read about it on this very forum nearly a year ago, before there was even a trailer to be seen. I thought Natalie Portman was amazing, especially given that she is in literally every scene and had a physically demanding role. Her performance showed range and depth, the production was gorgeous and the story--a classic ego vs. id struggle, wrapped in a captivating mindfuck--was multi-faceted and thought provoking. In short, Black Swan is why I go to the movies.

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In all honestly, I was felt somewhat the same way as Spottedfeather up until my late 20s. Somewhat in regards to costume dramas and similar things. I didn't like older movies, since they relied less on special effects and action and more on other things. I thought they were boring as heck.

Eventually my tastes expanded and I found all sorts of great movies that I'd otherwise would have bothered watching.

The one category I still don't care for, and I assume Spottedfeather would get insane with rage when people say they like it, are experimental arthouse type crap. I consider most of them to be crap. One popular film, Back and Forth, consists of around 45 minutes of a camera on a device that turns left followed by turning right. Over and over for under an hour. There's no actors/acting but the camera does change rooms from time to time. Sometime you're in an empty room and sometime your in a room where people are sitting around not doing anything.

I also think there's a ton of crappy vampire movies that far outweigh the good ones.

As for indie films, not more mainstream ones like Pulp Fiction, I think a lot of the popular ones are popular simply because there's a flood of garbage indies, so something halfway decent gets elevated by people that hate Hollywood and found something that's not a complete turd. At best, many of them are average or slightly above average at best. Then they sometimes also follow a pattern, just like the Hollywood movies they rage against. Where you have a Hollywood film get a happy ending, when an indie film does the same story, it'll get the sad ending because that's what Hollywood refuses to do.

Obviously there's exceptions to this, so no need to start any fights.

Then there's hypocritical indie companies like Troma that rage against Hollywood, conveniently ignoring the part where they had movies shown in theaters and were popular until around the time of Troma War. Long story short, they made flops which caused theaters to stop showing their stuff, even though they tried to make a comeback which failed. Then they turned into the indie company that hates Hollywood. I still like some of their stuff but I have to roll my eyes at a lot of the stuff Lloyd says in his commentaries.

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

The Twilight Saga & every single Lindsay Lohan Movie (Parent Trap/Labor Pains/Georgia Rule/I Know Who Killed Me/ect). I just LOVE Lindsay Lohan. :D

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Can't stand Michael Bay.

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Natalie Portman can't act worth a damn. Don't know where you got the idea that she could. She acts the same in every movie she's ever been in. When you watch one of her movies, you see Natalie Portman. Other actors, when you watch them, at first you see the actor. But if the movie is good and their acting is good, you soon forget that the actor is themselves and start seeing them as the character. You don't get that from Natalie Portman. Black Swan was nothing but a huge attempt at covering up an unoriginal story with a lot of pretty girls kissing each other. That's all it was. Range and depth ? If you say so. Don't say I don't get it. I do. It was a boring movie. Sure, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are great to look at, but nothing more. There's nothing to them. Both great to look at but completely cardboard cutout performances in every movie. I do not understand how this could get nominated for anything. Everything was just so wooden and flat. Multi-faceted ? No. It was just throwing in stuff from other movies in an attempt to fill space where nothing was happening, which unfortunately was most of the time. You can like the movie. I can understand people liking things I don't. But you can't say something is good just because you like it. It just means that you like it.

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:lol: thanks for the head's up to dismiss any of your "facts" on what constitutes a good movie.

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What about anything I said is funny ? It's the truth. Just because people like a movie, doesn't mean it's not boring. A lot of people like a lot of boring movies. To use one of our previous examples. The Godfather. A lot of people like that. But no one can deny that it's boring...can they ? As well, there are movies that are packed with action that some people may not like. I don't like Die Hard. It's not because it's a bad movie. It's not. It's really good. But I just don't like it. Certain kinds of people like certain kinds of movies. For instance. My grandmother loved boring old hollywood musicals and classic movies. She didn't like action movies. You like what you like. But just because you like something doesn't mean that it's good....as I said before. It just means that you like it. People here have said that they hate the Shrek movies. That's fine. I love them. Well, the first 2, anyways. The third is alright, and the fourth is just meh. They're good movies wether you like them or not.

Re: Guilty Pleasures ?
 

My latest guilty pleasure: Burlesque

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So if the movies I like are bad and the ones I don't like are good, I'm not sure if I should still have guilty pleasures... :hscratch:

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Every accusation you've leveled against Portman and this movie is a matter of taste and opinion. Had you said Portman has a tendency to look rapidly from left to right when other people are addressing her on screen, that could be assessed objectively. You seem intent on painting me into a corner where I'm forced to declare that you "just don't get it" so that you can then throw in my face that I'm the one lacking objectivity. Sorry, but I'm not going there. I stand by my praise of Portman and the film.

Instead, I want to address the bolded statement. The reverse is also true: You can't say something is bad just because you dislike it. It just means that you dislike it. It seems based on your remarks in this thread that you have a pass/fail system for grading movies; either it's great or it's terrible. That's a ridiculously reductive way to come to art (and make no mistake, even the most commercialized tripe is still art on some level). Anyone can knock a movie for things they dislike about it or simply declare that it's "awesome" and leave it at that. Art is deserving of a more critical examination than that, and note that I don't use the word, "critical" in the corrupted sense of being negative but rather the literal sense meaning, "the analysis or evaluation of a work of art, literature, etc."

If I follow Spottedfeather's logic, you should feel guilty for liking anything that anyone else likes because that means you're just a follower. You should also feel guilty for liking something no one else likes because then you're just a pretentious snob. Which begs the question: why admit to liking anything?

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Legally Blonde

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I must be missing something entirely because in all the times I've sat down to watch The Godfather, the word "boring" never crossed my mind.

I can appreciate that a viewer can find any movie boring, but how we leap from opinion to concrete fact baffles me.

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Absolutely the same here. Like all of us, I have seen this movie a LOT. And I still find it tense and exciting at all the right times.

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Just about everything. But not "funny ha ha", "funny -screwy-".

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As a film teacher of mine once said to a student who responded the way you did, "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you're the one that's boring?"

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I learned a long time ago that anybody who can dismiss entire genres of films as being unworthy, isn't to be taken too seriously with regards to film criticism. It also tends to be a function of age, so perhaps their outlook will change in a few years.

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NO! you are not the only one Showgirls rule.

Next of Kin
Road House
Crank 1 and 2

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Now you're an expert on what "all the rappers" think?

And now you're an expert on what "everyone" thinks.

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"Nobody knows how/a rapper really feels/A mindful of rhymes/and a tongue of steel"
--MC Hammer, "Let's Get It Started"

Although, I always wondered if that's not an unintentional indictment of the failure of rappers to communicate, since telling us how they feel should be their stock and trade.