I was going to bring this up in Mike’s thread, but it was too off topic.
What are some popular or highly regarded movies that you’ve seen, but don’t understand the hype or frankly don’t even like.
This doesn’t count for movies you can’t be bothered to watch and are just assuming they’re bad.
Hopefully there’s a lot of gasps in here.

Dr. Strangelove - I’ve tried watching this three or four times until I finally got through it. Is it supposed to be funny? Cause it ain’t. I just found it annoying, stupid and worst of all boring. Bonus points for Slim Pickens though. Love that guy.

Blazing Saddles - I generally like everyone involved in this (geez Slim again), but for the life of me I don’t get why this one of the greatest comedies of all time. I did laugh and it’s not unwatchable, but it took me multiple attempts over decades and I’m still not there.

the Changeling - This is usually listed as one of the best horror movies ever, but I can’t figure out why. Nothing happens for about an hour and a half, then it gets ramped up to 11 before having some cockamamie ending.

I know I got more in my brain.

I just watched Strangelove for the first time a few weeks ago. I found it to be pretty funny, although I knew a lot of the jokes going in.

The type of movie I just don't get is the "person who hurt a lot of people with their greed is actually a complex human being". Citizen Kane, The Godfather, etc... I can intellectually understand, "yes, everyone is human and makes mistakes" but I don't get the appeal of watching a jerkass for 2hr+.

I think Dr Strangelove and Blazing Saddles were "wild" in their era, and very influential.

The Changeling was a boring dud to me but I know a few people that hold it near and dear. I think it probably had to do with when they originally saw it, sometimes being in the right headspace makes all the difference (I couldn't get through 28 Days Later the first few times I tried it, but it clicked one night when it was on cable, go figure.)

I watched a YouTube reaction video to Blazing Saddles. A lot of the jokes went right past the guy. It isn't funny anymore when a little old lady says, "Fuck you!" or the choir sings, "Our town is turning into shit." Most of what's left is people saying "***********," which has gotten more offensive.

ETA: I just learned that an "N" followed by a bunch of stars is also censored. Huh.

I remember STRANGELOVE and SADDLES being very funny when they came out and very much in the zeitgeist of their eras, but as time has passed, I've had trouble with both of them when I've tried to revisit them. Their humor hasn't aged well. I was ten years old when I saw STRANGELOVE and had just started reading Mad Magazine, so it came as a breath of fresh air that a movie was making fun of atomic warfare so soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it struck me as very cartoonish the last time I saw it, which was a few years ago, particularly the Hayden, Scott and Strangelove characters.

I don’t like this movie at all. Saw it once and I thought it was so overhyped. Just didn’t get the appeal.

David Cronenberg's Crash. It's seems quite popular on this forum.

Any movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There are just too many movies and too many phases that its hard to keep up. Also they feature the same stylized action violence to the point that they all feel the same.

David Fincher is one of my favorite directors and I love Jake Gyllenhaal but Zodiac almost put me to sleep when I saw it in the theater. After hearing all the great reviews, I bought the blu-ray and gave it a second try. It still bored me to tears.

It’s weird because everyone involved plus the story are right up my alley. I just can’t get into it.

I remember when I saw the movie in theaters I went with a few friends and when I went to pick them up they smoked a bunch of weed beforehand. They laughed throughout the whole movie and I only laughed once. One of the most overrated movies of the last 20 years.

Man I fucking hate Napoleon Dynamite

Strangelove isn't funny today because people aren't afraid of global thermonuclear war. Now, if someone did a comedic version of The Stand . . .

I don't get the love for Lord of the Rings movies. They drag. Peter Jackson must have been aware of it, because he added stuff like the scene where Aragon falls off a cliff but later is revealed to be okay or Aragon's courtship in the middle of a war movie. The movies aren't bad by any means, but I don't think they're the best thing of the past 25 years.

I'll go with a very recent movie, Parasite. Didn't hate it at all, but don't exactly get the love for it.

I don't get Vertigo, and am baffled by it seeming to have replaced Citizen Kane in those critic polls of Greatest Movie Of All Time.

I've seen the movie about three times over the years (as a teenager, in my late twenties, in my late thirties) and I've never understood why he's obsessed with this woman, or why that's supposed to be interesting. I have no emotional reaction to the film. I can kind of enjoy it on the level of it being a weird movie, but other than that it's empty to me.

Yet the film clearly works for a lot of people. I used to have a friend, who wasn't that much of a cinephile, normal guy, had a wife and kids. One day he happened to catch Vertigo on TV and wouldn't shut up about for weeks. He was fascinated by the movie.

I'm also astonished by the huge rep The Changeling gets. The cheap Canadian production alone makes it unwatchable for me.

I can enjoy superhero movies that actually do something with the characters, but most of the MCU does not. The Winter Soldier is the absolute best of the MCU, with points going to Ant-Man for Paul Rudd being absolutely charming the whole time. And whichever movie had the first farm house scenes, those were approaching character development but the rest of the MCU just blends together.

That's why I still go back to something like the 1978 Superman - Reeves, Kidder and Hackman were just so fun to watch.

I'm not a huge Godfather fan but I can appreciate the craftsmanship and also the fact that their assholery ends up with most of them dead. I can understand why people don't like movies that glorify assholes without any consequences.


Also, I still find Blazing Saddles funny because it leans into the Looney Tunes style at times, and I grew up on those cartoons (way more than Disney stuff) and that really shaped my sense of humor.

It's impossible to fully appreciate Blazing Saddles without recognizing how outrageous those jokes were in 1974, and appreciating that (intellectually) is still not going to make the jokes funnier 50 years later.
Look back at that era and see what was considered a "best" comedy --movies based on British plays or starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden...ical_or_Comedy

Also, it is nigh impossible for anyone who has lived their life watching movie comedies influenced by something like Blazing Saddles to be shocked and surprised by the groundbreaker that got there first.

Annie Hall is one of the greatest romantic comedies ever made, but if you are watching it for the first time today, it will just seem familiar because you've already watched 40 years of rom-coms that have been ripping it off.

Yes. I can never get past the sheer idiocy of the idea that this guy would instantly become completely obsessed with this woman --to the point where he kind of accepts that she is possessed by her ancestor's spirit, and then have that obsession take over his life, even after she dies.
And then there's the whole question of why Judy would fall in love with Scotty after the charade is over. This really makes no fucking sense!

When I was really young, I didn't get Strangelove when I first saw it.

Dr. Strangelove was much more humorous/insightful after I read more about Edward Teller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller

I’ll go recent and say the John Wick films. I get it that a lot of people have a love affair with Keanu Reeves, but the films are really just a lot of shooting.

Watched the first one on Blu-ray because some friends wanted to see the second in theaters and I hadn’t seen it. I thought it was okay but wasn't overly excited for the sequel. I went because my friends wanted to though and it just did nothing to change my mind. I’ve never bothered with the third.

I mentioned it also in the "movies I haven't finished" thread but Shawshank. It's 2+ hours of boring (yet well spoken by Freeman) dialogue with a story that is uninspired and has no revelations or payoff. I don't understand how anyone can sit through the whole movie.

If you haven't watched it all the way through, how can you say it has no revelations or payoffs? The whole end of the movie is big revelations and payoffs.

I feel like much in the same way that "sports are nerd stuff for jocks", the John Wick films are "world-building action movies for people who don't really like sci-fi/fantasy".

I've seen the whole thing probably 2-3 time collectively. Just never in one sitting. I was determined to get through it when it first came out on disc.