Here’s a list of movies I have traded in or otherwise abandoned, because I never wanted to see them again:
Bell, Book and Candle – Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs – what could go wrong? The short answer is, alas: Everything. Don’t know if this movie was ever watchable, but it certainly isn’t today.
Blair Witch Project – What was all the hype about? Early example of astroturfing, i.e., manipulating social media to create a fake word-of-mouth groundswell. This movie got mentioned a lot by readers at the Guardian film blog in February 2017 when they discussed movies they had walked out on.
Closer – Supposedly this clocks in at 105 minutes but sure seems much longer. The only enjoyment comes from trying to figure out if this is really meant as a sympathetic portrait of some messed-up Manhattanites or not. It succeeds more as a send-up of them than anything else. Christopher Orr at The Atlantic called it “irretrievably silly, a potty-mouthed fantasy that somehow mistakes itself for a fearless excavation of the dark recesses of the human soul.”
Cotton Club – I remember the great expectations everyone on campus had when this first came out, and our disappointment on opening night. Recently caught it again and tried to approach it with an open mind. Kept waiting waiting for the magic to happen, then had to realize that this movie mistakes gesturing towards greatness for the real thing. Too many people involved were convinced of their own wonderfulness. Over-produced, over-acted, over-hyped.
Criminal Law – “The law is the dark shadow of justice. Not justice itself.” A good line (writer: Mark Kasdan) from a bad movie; it raises real issues only to deal with them in a cartoonish way.
Dances With Wolves – Worst thing about this movie is Kevin Costner and his speech pattern; he sounds like he just strolled in from the beach at Malibu. I don’t know how people really talked in the 19th century, but I bet it was a lot closer to the way Daniel Day Lewis speaks in Lincoln.
The Debt – Okay here’s the pitch: The year is 1965. Three high-minded Mossad agents with relationship issues botch a kidnap job in East Berlin (we’ll shoot these scenes cheaper in Hungary – who’s to notice?). The guy they’re after is a former death-camp doctor; we’ll call him “the surgeon of Birkenau,” now working as a gynecologist. The female agent in the group is able to meet him simply by making an appointment at his clinic. What’s that you say – she claims to be from Argentina, but the doctor doesn’t seem at all bothered that she speaks German with an American accent? Don’t ask.
Act two: Once they nab him, this unreconstructed Nazi turns out to be an eloquent, grandfatherly type. The woman and the agent pretending to be her husband screw up because the more they start listening to grandpa, they more hampered they become by their excessive empathy, and the crafty old bastard escapes after slashing the woman, who was left guarding him alone. The kicker is: They agree not to tell anybody he got away, so on returning from their failed mission they’re treated as heroes!
Act three: Given another chance thirty years later, the righteous Israelis manage to locate the doc again (he’s lying low in an old folks’ home in Ukraine), but still have qualms about killing him. What’s that you say – why have they decided against trying to kidnap him again, when it’d be so much easier to pull off this time around? Don’t ask – it would blow their cover story. They have to kill him now because they said they killed him then. Even so, the ending is contrived so as to obey one of Hollywood’s iron rules: A white hat can only kill a black hat in self-defense, no matter how many thousands he’s murdered before.
Listen, it’s “Eichmann” meets “Munich” with fewer locations but more geriatrics in the final reel. Plus Helen Mirren with a scar! Should make a bundle.
Diplomatic Immunity – “I didn’t know what I was doing.” – “Neither do I.” You might think this bit of dialogue occurred between the producer and the director over a drink after the premiere, but in fact it is spoken by two characters in this ludicrous “thriller”. Doesn’t measure up to the production values of a random episode of Hawaii 5.0. The only plus is the (supposed) Paraguayan setting.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – I had high hopes for this, considering the cast (and the cameraman, who used to work for Fassbinder), but was disappointed upon seeing it when it first came out (1988). Alas, age has not improved it. Arch plus infantile is not a winning combination.
Dunkirk — The sound effects were impressive, but otherwise I agree with Richard Cohen: “It’s a war film for the Trump era. It is deaf to history…. Dolts seeing this movie could conclude the British and the French were fighting the Irish or Latvians. … Not a single reviewer I’ve read faulted [director Christopher] Nolan for removing Dunkirk from its context, or his insistence that ignorance is a cinematic virtue and that politics — which in this case was about who shall live and who shall die — would only muddy things up.” (July 31, 2017) – Like “Saving Private Ryan” and Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center,” “Dunkirk” foregrounds individual heroes and removes the context in which they operated. Can we safely assume the ability of today’s audience to supply this themselves? Over a decade earlier, historian David McCullough told of delivering a lecture on the American Revolution and afterwards being thanked by university students who said they had never realized the thirteen colonies were all on the eastern seaboard. The discontinuity in “Memento” (a wonderful movie by the same director) worked because it reflected the protagonist’s mental condition; still wondering what purpose the a-chronicity of “Dunkirk” serves.
The Fan – This is just painful to watch. Over-acted (de Niro, I’m looking at you), over-produced, in general over-cooked, it reeks of false sentiment. If you’re looking for a movie about obsessiveness, try Big Fan instead. Though boasting no megastars, it’s a superior flick about a New York Giants fan whose hero-worship lands him in trouble when it collides with reality.
Foreign Intrigue, directed by Sheldon Reynolds, draws heavily on The Third Man but is much inferior. Though some scenes were shot in Stockholm and other European locations, this 1956 effort is set largely in a postwar Vienna filled with shadowy spies whose intentions and allegiances are murky. The best critique of this movie is spoken by one of the characters in it, who says: “The first mark of a talented amateur is that he respects the work of a professional.” The key word is “respects,” which is not the same as “imitates thoughtlessly.” The gap between this flick and Third Man is best illustrated by the difference between Alex Karras’ unforgettable zither music and Paul Durand’s repetitive score, which seems to play the same motif over and over for the last five minutes or so.
In the scene where the blind housekeeper goes upstairs and puts her hand on the banister, the whole thing shakes so much I was afraid it was going to collapse and take her with it. Would the usually estimable Robert Mitchum be able to rouse himself quickly enough to catch her? That brief interlude inadvertently provides one of the few moments of suspense.
Gorky Park – Mostly filmed in Finland, which is about as close to Moscow as the filmmakers could get at the time. That said, only the landscape seems remotely Russian; the climactic scene is straight out of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. While it is nice to see Lee Marvin stalking around looking grumpy, by the end you may feel like joining the minks in fleeing into the wild as fast as possible.
The Group – Considering the talent involved, should have been much better. And way too long. Sidney Lumet is capable of more.
Hudsucker Proxy – Similar comment as for The Group.
The Hurt Locker – My nomination for worst Best Picture Oscar winner. Little more than an updated Western. In the old days: Amateur white hats never missed, professional black hats couldn’t shoot straight. Nowadays: Americans in camouflage never accidentally shoot the wrong guy in black head scarf. One of them fires off 20 rounds or so without disturbing nearby sheep as they graze. Who says miracles never happen any more?
The January Man – “They’re all slapping themselves on the back” – this line from the movie is its own best critique. It boasts great actors acting great without creating the slightest suspense and few surprises. Going to waste in this unexciting thriller is a rather impressive bunch of stars: Alan Rickman (aside from the small scene in which he unpacks a picnic basket); Harvey Keitel, Danny Aiello, Susan Sarandon, Rod Steiger. Kevin Kline’s overriding thought appears to be: Why am I in this movie where everyone else is overacting?
JFK – Another Kevin Costner travesty. Oliver Stone throws in every conspiracy theory he’s ever heard of, and who cares if they’re not internally consistent? For a recent take-down, see Max Holland’s article in the Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/29/was-russia-behind-cia-killed-jfk.html
L.A. Confidential – I know some people love it, but IMHO the best thing about it is the soundtrack, the CD of which I did not trade in.
The Loft – Overcooked, too long, full of characters giving each other portentous gazes that lead to more looks of the same kind, this movie drags out so much that while you may have started out sort of intellectually curious as to who did it, by the midpoint you will give up rooting for anyone to be found innocent. With two reels to go, you lose interest in who’s going to take the fall. Given five equally icky jerks, who cares?
Love Actually – When I tried to trade this in at the local used-book store, they wouldn’t take it; said they already had too many.
Marie Antoinette – Why are these giggling valley girls and surfer dudes wearing such funny costumes? Somehow they must have gotten lost on the way to the beach and taken the Versailles exit, along the way ending up in the wrong century y’know? Heroically bad. Audiences should bring their pitchforks and do to this movie what the mobs did in Paris.
1900 – I had fond memories of this Bertolucci film, but couldn’t watch much of it when I tried again recently.
Robin Hood Prince of Thieves – When future generations will watch this, some old geezer will have to explain to the kids that Kevin Costner used to be a big star. Could a version of this be re-shot without him? It’s all he can do to barely pronounce the final “g” in “What are you going to do?” For this, perhaps we should give credit to the dialect coach.
Prospero’s Books – I had to sit through this one to the end because I was the projectionist. Most of the audience (a college crowd) left long before the final reel. In April 2016, I saw an interview with Peter Greenaway on RT, where he actually endorsed the description of his movies as “paintings with soundtracks.” Who wants to sit in one place and look at a painting for two hours? I see that another of his films, “The Baby of Macon,” was listed as among the films critics most frequently walked out on. (Guardian, Feb. 2, 2017) BTW the comment section is more interesting than the article itself. Someone there mentioned “the Emperor’s New Clothes” in connection with Greenaway.
Pulp Fiction – Many people love it, obviously, or at least claim to. The longer I watched it, the more I had to struggle to ignore the voice in my head telling me to get up and leave. Word of advice: When you hear this voice, always listen to it.
Six Degrees of Separation – The plot is plausible, the cast is outstanding, the locations are authentic, so what’s the problem? The writing. Not since David Mamet has anyone written dialogue this artificial. If I ever met anyone at a cocktail party who talked the way these characters do, I would put down my glass of wine (an exquisitely crafted Bordeaux), excuse myself, and climb out the window, fire escape or no.
Synecdoche, New York – Pressed the eject button after 20 minutes. Never looked back. Pretentious.
Sweet Smell of Success – Too self-consciously clever. Hard to decide what is more artificial, the acting or the dialogue? Or maybe it’s the editing…
Teaching Mrs. Tingle. The money must have been good, since I can think of few other reasons to agree to sign the contract. Was Helen Mirren desperate? Unwatchable.
Texas Rangers (directed by Steve Miner) – a perfect allegory for the George W. Bush era (though some people are so historically erudite they think it is about Obama, even though it was made in 2001). Take a bunch of mostly clueless white guys, led by one full of moral rectitude but ignorant of local conditions; add a feisty Hispanic woman and a well-spoken black man. Pin badges on the white hats and let ’em shoot it out with the black hats, most of whom look gratifyingly foreign. After the leader of the Rangers figures out what it’s really all about – and after a lot of folks have died – the world will doubtless be a better place. Or at least Texas will, which is all that matters. Save your time and money and watch “The Magnificent Seven” again. Somewhat similar story but better cast and music.
The World of Henry Orient (1964) – for Peter Sellers to go from Humbert Humbert, a man fascinated by a young girl in Lolita (1962), to Henry Orient, a man whom a young girl finds fascinating, was not much of a stretch. Aside from the orchestral scene, where he plays a concert pianist who can’t find the right key to end the cadenza in, and the shots of Manhattan in autumn, this movie is best watched with eyes closed. Though Humbert might have found it appealed to his predilections.
Just so you don’t think I’m a curmudgeon, check out my much longer list of favorite films sorted by decade. Elsewhere on this site.
(C) Hamilton Beck
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