should get some interesting thoughts and ideas...
I'm still working on mine
Elizabethtown
Spiderman trilogy.
Hostel II
this is tough because you try to blot them out when they're truly, soul-shatteringly disappointing..
The Matrix sequels. i read an ending online that worked better than revolutions in so many ways. kills me to this day how wrong it went.
Episode II. i still held out a hope that Lucas had, as he said, made Episode I for kids simply because it starred a kid. even though it sounded like a shitty made-up excuse. i still had some hope.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. we'll always have the teaser.
Southland Tales. though i was prepared for extreme disappointment looong before actually seeing it.
Death To Smoochy. this was going to be the best movie ever. c'mon! Ed Norton as a kid's show host! Robin Williams looking up in the sky exclaming "WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???" i was pumped.
Birth. from the maker of Sexy Beast comes one of the worst things i've ever, ever seen.
Avatar. that teaser may have been the single most disappointing minute of my movie-watching life. also disappointing: people not disappointed by it.
maybe more later.
clearly "top 20" needs to be removed from the thread's title.
Lord of The Rings : Return of the King was a letdown to me. After the great, great Two Towers, this one felt overly long and I was bored. I fell asleep both times I've seen it, once in the theater once at home.
300, after so many people thinking it's the bestest thing ever, this was disapointing. Though I liked it.
Quantum of Solace : One of the worst ever Bond film after one of the best.
I'm goddamned snippy this morning
adaptation
a shitty ending that's too clever but entirely half-assed and missed its own point.
lost in translation
privileged people doing pale imitations of wong kar-wai
matrix 2 and 3
nobody remembers what happened
american splendor
they need to watch curb
be kind rewind
I still cried at the end - but they could've done much better
ponyo
it's for babies
monster's ball
maybe if I watched it before the oscars I wouldn't've been letdown. no halle berry would ever fuck billy bob, no matter how sad.
batman begins
same ol' shit but shaky camera
shaun of the dead
it was like that peter jackson one except this one argued way too much and had no good setpieces
smoking aces
that trailer was so cool...
old school/ wedding crashers/ the hangover
I hope judd apatow doesn't think they're funny either.
quantum of solace
even cooler trailer+even shittier editing
the president's last bang
korean drama/ satire/ recount that had a really boring ending
bubba ho-tep
a waste of a great cast and premise
Quote from: pete on September 25, 2009, 11:43:17 AM
no halle berry would ever fuck billy bob, no matter how sad.
An Angelina Jolie did...
DEATH PROOF
every valid piece of criticism thrown at the kill bills was glorified tenfold in this poor excuse for entertainment. a lot of respectable people seem to loved it, but i think it's one of the worse movies of the decade. i probably would have liked inglourious basterds more if this didn't exist.
Just about every single Marvel comic book movie sans Iron Man.
Public Enemies - How could you go wrong with Christian Bale and Johnny Depp as leads?
Inglourious Basterds - fuck you and your bullshit grindhouse influence quentin.
Indiana Jones 4 - CGI gophers.
Star Wars Prequels
Fantastic Mr. Fox - mark my words.
Sin City
No particular order:
L'Humanite: This was torture for me.
Pearl Harbor: I didn't imagine this would be too good, but even with that in mind it was beyond preposterous.
A Beautiful Mind: I reallu thought it was going to be less by the numbers than it was.
The Notebook: almost walked away after everyone told me it was great.
Innocent Voices (Voces Inocentes): actually walked out even thought people were telling me it was fantastic.
A Very Long Engagement: turned out a little boring.
Melinda & Melinda: neither too funny or too tragic, right?
The Brown Bunny: beyond words.
Cars: The one and only pixar misfire.
Superman Returns: I don't know what I was expecting, but not this.
300: Turned it off after the first 25 minutes that felt like an hour in slow mo.
Before the Devil Know You're Dead: Just too predictable.
indy 4
The Happening
Benjamin Button
Slumdog Millionaire
Lake Tahoe: After the firs film from this guy I expected a new direction.
The Darjeeling Limited
It's a shame that I can list Wes Anderson's films in order of preference just by listing the chronologically. I know I didn't appreciate Life Aquatic as much as his first three, but it still wasn't evident that Anderson's aesthetic was becoming derivative and formulaic yet. Even if his films were burdened by their own conventions and set designs, they were sill too much, too sweet, and too subtle for be to really notice. That changed with Darjeeling. It's almost like a Wes Anderson homage created by someone who misses the joys of Anderson's films entirely. It's cynical and has no subtlety. There are two terrific sequences in it, though, the opening bit with Murray and the train, and the NY flashback. Those are two great, isolated, short films that could stand with Hotel Chevalier. It's pieces like that, and every film before this one, that will keep me optimistic and excited in Anderson.
Palindromes
It's like second rate Ivan Brunetti, and I'm not even that big of a Brunetti fan to begin with. Just like, Darjeeling, it's weaknesses exposed a director unwilling to expand aesthetic or cultural view. It's petty and myopic, and doesn't do anything Citizen Ruth did way better a decade earlier. Solondz can seem so scathing and incisive, but here it's like he's screaming into the wind saying something we've already heard him say time and time again. Life During Wartime doesn't look like it's going to change that, but it looks like he's found a more authoritative voice to say it in.
Every post- Sweet & Lowdown Woody Allen film, most of which have been hailed by one quarter or another as his "return to form". This has caused me to be let down again and again, except perhaps in the case of Vicky Christina Barcelona, by which point my expectations had become helpfully low anyway.
That was 1999, yo. The best year in cinema ever.
Everything post 'Unbreakable' by M Night
Planet of the apes, fuck off mark wahlberg. and burton for that matter.
a beautiful mind, and everything else ron howard shit out after that.
no one's expecting it to be any good.
Have you seen a Wes Anderson movie? Yes? Well, then you've seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, except in stop-motion. He makes the same movie over and over again. They're fun little movies.
I second Darjeeling Limited and Children of Men.
Also, Manderlay.
Agreed on Manderlay, but Children of Men? What were you letdown by? I think it was one of the best of the decade.
Darjeeling!!! How could I forget that one. The way I was mostly bored and asking myself throughout why wasn't this funny, why it all felt like a deja vu, why I knew 20 minutes in that there would be some sort of dramatic moment a la Richie's suicide at one point...
Quote from: Stefen on September 29, 2009, 02:45:27 PM
Agreed on Manderlay, but Children of Men? What were you letdown by? I think it was one of the best of the decade.
I was amazed by it technically, but Clive Owen's performance is not so much understated as it is boring, the feats and long-shots are too showy to be any good (except the one inside the car, and I'm generally not a fan of these anyway), the writing bored me, I dunno. It left me pretty damn underwhelmed (hell, I think I even put it in my top ten of that year, but these things take time).
Oh, while I'm at it, let me go ahead and add EVERY fucking Harry Potter movie, except for the Prisoner of Azkaban (point back to Cuaron).
fuck you all who mentioned darjeeling.
Leatherheads, The Ladykillers, Shoot 'Em Up, Be Kind Rewind, Smokin' Aces...
Richard Kelly, Alex Proyas, and Bart Freundlich.
People who think Children of Men was a letdown.
Quote from: pete on September 28, 2009, 10:36:25 PM
no one's expecting it to be any good.
Um... I am. I mean, I guess from an animation point of view, it looks really good. I can't really speak for the story yet, and I'm not sure what exactly you expect from a movie based on a children's book with children as its demographic. Who can say if it'll live up to Where The Wild Things Are, which I don't fully expect it to, but the stop motion looks really fucking great in the trailer.
I actually thought the stop motion didn't look very good - they didn't move funny I guess - but I saw the second trailer and I liked it a lot.
I guess this can go here:
Going 'Ballistic' on the Decade's Worst Movies
Movie critics are, by definition, folks with strong opinions about movies. But opinions are personal and subjective, so usually critical response to any movie is split between the positive and the negative. Still, there are a few extraordinary films every year that unite reviewers. When they all uniformly praise a movie, it's probably close to a masterpiece. When they all hate a flick, it probably stinks worse than week-old Limburger.
RottenTomatoes.com, which aggregates the opinions of over 100 professional movie critics and distills them down to a single numeric "freshness" rating, has compiled the "Worst of the Worst," a list of the absolute dredges of cinema over the past decade. By looking at the movies with the highest percentages of negative reviews, they have ranked the 100 worst-reviewed films of the last ten years. The list encompasses a whole range of critically-reviled movies, from the John Travolta sci-fi fiasco "Battlefield Earth" in 2000 to Sandra Bullock's unfunny stalker comedy "All About Steve," which opened just a few weeks ago.
Looking over the list, there are plenty of memorably terrible flicks listed: Mariah Carey's first (and hopefully last) leading role in "Glitter," Madonna's most recent (and hopefully last) star turn "Swept Away," three "Larry the Cable Guy" movies, and Eddie Murphy's "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," which ranks as one of the all-time biggest box-office bombs. Even "Gigli," the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez catastrophe that's currently Yahoo! users' lowest-rated film of all time, only ranks 73rd on their list. Think about that: 72 movies are actually worse than "Gigli."
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer -- who Slate once called "evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline" for their relentless output of depressingly disposable parodies like "Epic Movie" -- tied German schlock auteur Uwe Boll ("Bloodrayne") for being responsible for the most movies on the list, cranking out four each.
Carmen Electra, who has been in all of Friedberg and Seltzer's movies, has appeared in a whopping six stinkers on the list, the most of any other star. However, you don't have to be a D-lister to wind up in a dud. A surprising number of Oscar-winners found themselves in critically savaged films, from Robert De Niro ("Godsend") and Al Pacino ("88 Minutes") to Diane Keaton ("Because I Said So") and Ben Kingsley ("A Sound of Thunder").
So what wound up being the worst of the worst? That honor goes to the 2002 explosion fest "Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever," starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu. The movie -- which earned a rare 0% freshness rating -- was described by critics as being "an ungainly mess," "loud and boring," "flat, stale, confusing and lazy," and "a picture for idiots." Though the flick damaged but didn't completely ruin both Banderas' and Liu's careers, Thai-born director Wych Kaosyananda (aka Kaos) hasn't directed a movie since.
Here's the bottom ten from RottenTomatoes's "Worst of the Worst":
10. Witless Protection (2008)
9. Redline (2007)
8. 3 Strikes (2000)
7. Strange Wilderness (2008)
6. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)
5. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (2004)
4. King's Ransom (2005)
3. Pinocchio (2002)
2. One Missed Call (2008)
1. Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever (2002)
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/guides/worst_of_the_worst/
Quote from: polkablues on September 29, 2009, 11:14:54 PM
Leatherheads, The Ladykillers, Shoot 'Em Up, Be Kind Rewind, Smokin' Aces...
Richard Kelly, Alex Proyas, and Bart Freundlich.
People who think Children of Men was a letdown.
At least I'm up there with Alex Proyas (lest we forget, I loved Know1ng).
There Will Be Blood (but still pretty good)
BLASPHEMER!