Sunday, August 03, 2008
I Report, You Decide
Overrated Gallery Sympatico MSN / Movies: "Here are 12 films that are generally held in high regard by movie pundits and/or viewers, but, in reality, are either highly overrated or just plain rotten. Some of these films even “earned” Oscar hardware – which, admittedly, is hardly the arbiter of great cinema. And even if you happen to enjoy some of these movies, it’s alright...you’re entitled to serious lapses of judgement once in a while."
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9 comments:
I agree completely on THE DEPARTED. The only other I saw was MONSTER not bad, but a downer). I also saw half of MYSTIC RIVER and half of CRASH. I would have seen the other halves, but circumstances prevented it. What I saw, however, I liked.
Castaway
Crash
Ocean's 12
Ocean's 13
School of Rock
The above I haven't seen. The rest I enjoyed, agreeing that Minority Report and The Departed were a bit overrated.
CASTAWAY is the only one I remember seeing out of all of them (I may have dozed through MINORITY REPORT). I disagree with its inclusion. The others haven't even stirred any interest whatever.
Is this the same guy who said BLADRUNNER does not work as a science fiction movie?
Why is he allowed to collect a paycheck as a critic?
Damn, eviljwinter, you took the words right out of my mind. Who is Eric Thaler and why do they pay him for his dumb opinions when I give mine away for free.
I'd say that Thaler is wrong about A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, but pretty spot on about the rest, among those I've seen (why exactly would I waste my time on the OCEAN films?). If anything, too kind about that insult to humanity CRASH, and just about angry enough about MYSTIC RIVER, though he fails to specifically cite Sean Penn's scenery-chewing as particularly embarrassing.
I didn't fall asleep during the INSOMNIA remake, but it was particularly unmemorable, and MINORITY REPORT was nearly everything that was wrong about every Spielberg film, as far as I stuck with it. (It starts with candy-coated dumb and gets worse from there.)
Notable that this list includes two films with the same titles as much better older films, CASTAWAY (with Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed, mostly good because of Donohoe and Nicholas Roeg's director's eye--can't tell a stroy to save himself, but boy he and if he had a cinematographer with him they sure knew how to frame an image) and Cronenberg's CRASH.
Who ever said CAST AWAY was good? No one I know. And I don't remember MINORITY REPORT getting particuarly great reviews either.
And certainly no one ever called the Ocean movies great.
Some of the films listed were OK if overrated, like CRASH and THE DEPARTED.
But where is the hideously awful AMERICAN BEAUTY on the list?
Jeff M.
Jeff, you get my vote. AMERICAN BEAUTY was terrible in precisely the same way that CRASH was just a little bit worse, for me.
So, MONSTER (which I have not seen, btw) is overrated because Charlize Theron is a bit awkward with a Zippo lighter? My, such insight.
Movies I find overrated:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Garden State
Lost in Translation
Ray
Napoleon Dynamite
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