"Oh HELL No!" Movie Moments That Anger Up the Blood

[ribboninthesky1]

It was.  I love Danielle, and the movie, but she had PLENTY of chances to tell him the truth when they were alone.  Choosing to come to a public event, and try to get him alone wasn't the smartest move.  She inadvertently made him look like a fool in public, when he deserved the truth much sooner.    

Edited March 16, 2015 by ribboninthesky1

[Sandman]

I find the movie -- you should pardon the expression -- charming, and will forgive it much if only for two moments that are such resonant emotional beats -- two near-perfect things of their kind, as far as I'm concerned -- that they probably don't belong in an Angrying Up The Blood thread: Leonardo's exclamation, both exasperated and heartfelt, to the Crown Prince of France: "She's your match, Henry!" and Danielle's "No, the part where you said my name." Of course, it helps a lot that Henry's sincere apology and Danielle's dreamy rejoinder happen after she has rescued herself from the odious M. Le Pieu. Go, Danielle!

Man, is it dusty in here, or what?

[ribboninthesky1]

Oh, I love the movie, and like Henry and Danielle. I just don't hold it against Henry that his reaction to Danielle's revelation was ill-tempered and unkind. Particularly with Rodmilla stirring the pot by humiliating Danielle.  If Danielle had actually tried to tell him earlier, and he just ignored her words, okay. But she was cowardly about it, which was quite understandable yet no less true. The time to tell him was when she had his undivided attention alone, not at an event when all aristocracy is around, and his parents are watching.  Leonardo kind of annoyed me with his lecturing and proclamation that Henry didn't deserve her, especially since he wasn't there when it went down (which might be one of the few "Um...No" moments of the film for me).   

 

To me, the key is that Henry never pretended to be anyone else.  Danielle got to see and interact with him, flaws and all, in front of others, and reasonably fleece him during his arrogant moments. Henry didn't have the same opportunity.  Alas, she knew she was intentionally deceptive, so it made sense to me that she accepted his apology when he offered it. Especially since at that point, there was no more deception. Just two people in love who made mistakes and were before each other, laid bare.                

[Cobalt Stargazer]

  Leonardo kind of annoyed me with his lecturing and proclamation that Henry didn't deserve her, especially since he wasn't there when it went down (which might be one of the few "Um...No" moments of the film for me).  

To be fair to Leonardo, I think that was at the point when Henry was going on about the obligations he was facing because he was the prince and next in line for the throne. Had the old guy not counseled him to re-think his anger, he might have gone ahead and married the other girl, even though she no more loved him than he loved her. Danielle was the first person he'd ever really been himself with, showed her something else besides the arrogance of someone who was about to ascend to kingship.

[dusang]

Yeah, Never Been Kissed was creepy and infuriating in regards to Rob, but I adore the very end with Michael Vartan's character kissing her on the baseball mound.  It's so sweet.  I just think he's adorable.

 

Agreed -- I can't hate on Never Been Kissed because it introduced the world to Michael Vartan at his cutest.  (That's also one of the reasons I continue to harbour kind feelings toward Drew Barrymore -- as producer she insisted he be cast!)

[Haleth]

he might have gone ahead and married the other girl, even though she no more loved him than he loved her.

 

I love the wedding scene where the poor Spanish princess is wailing away and Henry finally ends up giggling over how absurd the situation was.  Thus they all lived happily ever after.  (Ok, so more of a "hell, yeah" moment than "hell, no.")

Edited March 18, 2015 by Haleth

[Sandman]

I couldn't help thinking that the histories of Spain, France, Portugal, and England probably had a lot more weddings like Henry's to the hysterical Infanta (or whoever) that actually went ahead than like Henry and Danielle's ("Hell, yeah!"-filled) happy ending.

[Spartan Girl]

Getting back to movie moments that make us angry...

 

How about how fast the citizens of Paris turned on poor Quasimodo after he's crowned the King of Fools in The Hunchback of Notre Dame?  They throw fruit at him and then tie him to a wheel.  I know that's not exactly how it happened in the original novel, but still, that's just disgusting.

[Princess Sparkle]

I have always, always wondered why Disney decided to make that into a movie musical.  I know some fairy tales are dark, but good lord, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is not a book for children.  And if you have to fundamentally change the message and ending of the novel, you just shouldn't do it.  I mean, who thinks "Oooh, you know what we should adapt?  That Victor Hugo novel that's an indictment on French politics.  Kids love that, right?  Wait, everyone dies at the end?  Well, we can fix that!"  So just the mere fact that the movie was made is an "oh HELL no" moment for me.

 

Also, I kind of hate that they made Phoebus into a likable hero for the Disney movie.  Book Pheobus is a dick.  GAH, I just hate this adaptation.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Princess Sparkle

[Spartan Girl]

The new musical version is based more on the Victor Hugo story, FYI.  I heard it was pretty good.

[JustaPerson]

https://youtu.be/daK2_m8BfTM?t=486

 

Every person who ever watched Atonement re: Briony

[Sandman]

That there's really more of a "Oh, feck, they're adorable!" moment than a "Oh HELL No!" though.

[Spartan Girl]

I rewatched the Leonardo DiCaprio Great Gatsby recently, and it reaffirmed my complete and utter hatred for Daisy.  I don't care if Gatsby willingly volunteered to take the rap for running over Myrtle, she still shouldn't have let him do it.  And the fact that she just goes back to her wealthy life like nothing ever happened without even having the remorse or decency to send even a flower to his funeral sends me to MY Angry Hulk place...

[Wiendish Fitch]

A slightly obscure one, in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Sissy (Cher) has the utter audacity to get on her moral high horse and lecture Mona (Sandy Dennis) for her misdeeds (Mona does have it coming, but it should have come from someone else), and not one person, not a single person, calls out Sissy on the fact that she married Lester, the man who, as a teenager, attacked and raped her friend Joe. That's right, Sissy married the man who attacked and raped her friend in high school, and not once does she feel a pang of remorse for doing so. In fact, in a flashback, Sissy cheerfully goes on a date with Lester, even though she knows what he did! We're actually expected to feel sympathy for her because Lester turns out to be- gasp!- a bad husband! A man who brutalizes and rapes a classmate isn't such a catch after all?! Go on!

Edited April 14, 2015 by Wiendish Fitch

[BatmanBeatles]

I rewatched the Leonardo DiCaprio Great Gatsby recently, and it reaffirmed my complete and utter hatred for Daisy.  I don't care if Gatsby willingly volunteered to take the rap for running over Myrtle, she still shouldn't have let him do it.  And the fact that she just goes back to her wealthy life like nothing ever happened without even having the remorse or decency to send even a flower to his funeral sends me to MY Angry Hulk place...

When Tom cheats on Daisy again it will serve her right.

[Sandman]

I've always been astounded by the reputation that the The Great Gatsby has as a novel full of romantic yearning. (Is it only starry-eyed high school kids who feel this way?) It isn't. It's breathtakingly cynical. The movie versions cause my blood to boil, but not any more so than the novel itself. These are not decent people, any of them. They're driven by nothing more than shallow whims, and they're essentially monsters -- or they would be, if anyone outside of their inbred little circle had the misfortune to care about them.

Daisy has no compunction about behaving as destructively as she does, because Daisy is an idiot.

[harrie]

I've always been astounded by the reputation that the The Great Gatsby has as a novel full of romantic yearning. (Is it only starry-eyed high school kids who feel this way?) It isn't. It's breathtakingly cynical. The movie versions cause my blood to boil, but not any more so than the novel itself. These are not decent people, any of them. They're driven by nothing more than shallow whims, and they're essentially monsters -- or they would be, if anyone outside of their inbred little circle had the misfortune to care about them.

Daisy has no compunction about behaving as destructively as she does, because Daisy is an idiot.

 

I agree with you, and I think Fitzgerald would too.  Just my opinion, but I don't think he was necessarily  trying to write a nice story about nice people.  For me, his works have held up because they reflect the time in which he lived and to some degree the time in which I currently live -- on the surface, everything's a fun, glossy party, but look a little deeper and you'll notice a lot of cracks and crumbling in the foundation.  I've known a fair share of Tom and Daisy Buchanans, Jay Gatsbys, and assorted hanger-on types in my life; so even if The Great Gatsby is placed in the '20s, I find it timeless in some ways. 

 

I loved the Luhrmann version of Gatsby because I thought it captured much of the spirit of the original work and the forced mania of the times.  But then, my previous frame of reference was the Redford-Farrow version from 1974, which was just a sleep-inducing, torturous piece of work. 

[ChelseaNH]

These are not decent people, any of them. They're driven by nothing more than shallow whims, and they're essentially monsters -- or they would be, if anyone outside of their inbred little circle had the misfortune to care about them.

 

This is how I feel about Wuthering Heights.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

These are not decent people, any of them. They're driven by nothing more than shallow whims, and they're essentially monsters -- or they would be, if anyone outside of their inbred little circle had the misfortune to care about them.

Daisy has no compunction about behaving as destructively as she does, because Daisy is an idiot.

 

 

This is how I feel about Wuthering Heights.

 

There is a strong resemblance between Daisy and Cathy, who destroyed not only herself but Heathcliff as well, who destroyed Isabella in turn out of bitter anger.

[Sandman]

Well, Fitzgerald does allow Nick that line about how Daisy and Tom will "retreat into their money and their vast carelessness," so, yeah -- I think maybe Fitzgerald wouldn't be completely dumbfounded by my feelings about the characters.

[Spartan Girl]

Daisy has no compunction about behaving as destructively as she does, because Daisy is an idiot.

 

 

Being an idiot doesn't excuse you from the laws of common decency.

 

I don't know how much of Walk the Line was dramatized, but the scene where Johnny Cash's father not only blames him for his brother's death and even goes as far to say that "the wrong kid died" made me furious.  I don't care that he was drunk and grieving, you should NEVER EVER say something like that to your own child.  And the fact that he never even apologizes for it just makes me madder.

[BatmanBeatles]

According to a book I read, Johnny's father really did say that.

[Princess Sparkle]

Can I put the entire movie of Serendipity in here?  I have never watched a film with two more unlikable people as the protagonists, especially John Cusack's character.  Newsflash asshole: If you're with someone, but still pining away over a girl you met YEARS ago who you aggressively pursued the day you met her, then you shouldn't be getting married.  And you're a dick for still trying to find this woman up until the date of your wedding, including flying across the country and back the night before your wedding.  And the movie plays this off like it's something admirable.

 

Not that Kate Beckinsale's character is all that much better, but John Cusack's character is just such a raging asshole, and the film portrays him as someone admirable.  

[Spartan Girl]

Not enough words to say how much I agree with you, Princess Sparkle.

 

Thought of some:

 

Fargo: There are many reasons why I loathe this movie, but William H. Macy playing that disgusting, spineless, cowardly excuse of a human being is one of them.  I absolutely despised his character and everything he did.  Watching him blubbering as he was being pinned down by the cops at the end wasn't enough to satisfy me: I wanted to see his son disown him at his trial for everything he did and then see him get the living shit kicked out of him in prison.

 

Say Anything: Diane Court's father was a sociopath.  Meddling in Lloyd and Diane's relationship was bad enough, but then we find out he's stealing money from his terminally ill and elderly patients!  Even worse was how he so blithely justified everything by saying the money was to help Diane, and that his patients basically owed him because he took better care of them than their own families.  What an asshole.

 

Pretty in Pink: I hated the way Andie treated Duckie more like an annoying sidekick than an actual friend.  And calling him a "retarded little dwarf" was awful, even if he was acting like a jerk to her and Blane.  And even when Iona advises her to make up with Duckie because his feelings were hurt, we didn't see her make so much as an effort to make amends.  Remind me, why did Duckie bother to show up for her at the prom again?

[Wiendish Fitch]

Fargo: There are many reasons why I loathe this movie, but William H. Macy playing that disgusting, spineless, cowardly excuse of a human being is one of them.  I absolutely despised his character and everything he did.  Watching him blubbering as he was being pinned down by the cops at the end wasn't enough to satisfy me: I wanted to see his son disown him at his trial for everything he did and then see him get the living shit kicked out of him in prison.

Say Anything: Diane Court's father was a sociopath.  Meddling in Lloyd and Diane's relationship was bad enough, but then we find out he's stealing money from his terminally ill and elderly patients!  Even worse was how he so blithely justified everything by saying the money was to help Diane, and that his patients basically owed him because he took better care of them than their own families.  What an asshole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big word. As much as I love the late, great Roger Ebert, he actually seemed sympathetic to both those characters, which I don't get, because I found them both kind of monstrous. He was also weirdly forgiving toward's Samuel L. Jackson's disgusting father in Eve's Bayou. I just don't get it.

 

Reality Bites: When Lalaina, just to spite her parents (who were generous enough to give her a credit card for gas, despite the fact she's an idiot who can't hold down a job) runs up a $900 credit card bill and gets away with it. I just wanted them to track her down and kick her ungrateful ass.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Wiendish Fitch

[dusang]

Reality Bites: When Lalaina, just to spite her parents (who were generous enough to give her a credit card for gas, despite the fact she's an idiot who can't hold down a job), extorts money and runs up a $900 credit card bill and gets away with it. I just wanted them to track her down and kick her ungrateful ass.

 

Agreed.  Honestly, I hate pretty much everything about Reality Bites.  They all struck me as entitled little brats.

[Mulva]

I want to see the sequel, Reality Bit, where Winona's character is a middle-aged, underemployed loser working two jobs to support her bum boyfriend.

[BatmanBeatles]

I'd love to see them handle the Recession.

[raezen]

I was  only 14 when I saw Reality Bites and a lot of it doesn't hold up anymore to me in my 30's but I'm least bothered by the gas bill, because what hasn't changed for me is that I still despise the parents. The gift of the car and gas card still feels to me like it was done to show off in front of his ex then as an expression of pride at his daughters accomplishments. If he was giving her the car and card to be nice he would have done it alone with her instead of at a dinner, knowing that his ex didn't have a gift also. Asshole.

Edited April 18, 2015 by raezen

[Sandman]

Being an idiot doesn't excuse you from the laws of common decency.

No, but the converse is true: thinking you're exempt from the laws of common decency makes you an idiot.

[Spartan Girl]

Maureen O'Hara's character in McLintock! made me angry. She spends the better part of the movie acting like a snobby bitch to everyone in the whole town, saying that the place wasn't good enough for her and her daughter to live in. And she didn't have any right to be jealous of McLintock and the cook: even if there had been something going on between them (which there wasn't), she gave up her right to be upset when SHE LEFT HIM.

I know the infamous spanking at the end isn't something that would be PC these days, but I can't blame the townspeople for laughing and cheering him on after the way she treated everyone like something she stepped in. And I don't get why he would still want her back after all that.

Don't get me wrong, I love Maureen O'Hara and she's a wonderful actress, she was just so bitchy in this movie.

Edited April 20, 2015 by Spartan Girl

[Bastet]

This is a series of moments, but ...

 

While I adore Steel Magnolias for the friendships and dialogue, so much that I own it on DVD yet still watch it every time I find it on TV, I pretty much hate Shelby.  And I feel bad saying that, because she's based on a real person, and if her family doesn't feel this way about her why should I, but -- while she seemed like a nice, kind-hearted person, what a selfish twit she was when it came down to it! 

 

She knows her body can't handle pregnancy, and doctor after doctor has told her not to have a baby as it may very well kill her, but what does she do -- get knocked up to try and save her failing marriage to an asshole (this only gets hinted at in the film, but it's still there) and fulfill her "but I want to be a 'real' mom" desire.  And then, oh look, her mom has to give up a kidney to try to save her, and ultimately she dies anyway.  So she barely gets to be a mom (they didn't show the fact she spent much of those two years in hospital, where the kid couldn't visit), and now her family has lost her, and her son gets to not only grow up without her, but with the guilt of having been "responsible" for her death.

 

What a waste, and entirely avoidable.  And she knew that, but did it not just to herself, but to her family, anyway.  So I want to throw things at my TV every time I watch that "I'm pregnant" scene; I love M'Lynn's reaction, and feel so bad that Ouiser is the only other person who understands what's at stake here.  Everyone else is all, "Oh, blah blah, kittens and rainbows, I'm sure everything will work out."  No, fools, it won't.  Why would it?  Because she's nice and wants it so bad?  That doesn't negate reality.

Edited April 19, 2015 by Bastet

[Shannon L.]

I agree about Shelby, Bastet.  That kitchen scene, when she tells her mother, gets to me every time.  I also get ticked off at the way her father is so ecstatic over becoming a grandfather without seemingly caring about what his wife was going through.  However, I do feel bad for him the night before the surgeries when he's really worried about his wife and daughter and the kids keep joking about it.  I mean, it's nice that they weren't letting fear get to them, but have some respect for your father's feelings!

 

 

So she barely gets to be a mom (they didn't show the fact she spent much of those two years in hospital, where the kid couldn't visit), and now her family has lost her, and her son gets to not only grow up without her, but with the guilt of having been "responsible" for her death.

I think the one line in her meltdown monologue that hit me the hardest was "will that little boy ever know what his mother gave up for him?!". 

 

And now that we're discussing this movie, while I think it's great that they made a movie that had strong female leads for a change, I really didn't like how all of the men were so weak.  At least one of them being strong and truly present would have been nice (although, I loved it when Sandy challenged Annelle with "For Christ's sake!" and so on, when she confiscated his beer :)

[Bastet]

In the source material (the play), there are no men at all; they're referred to, but not seen.  Heaven forbid Hollywood make a film without men, so when Harling adapted his play into a script, he had to add scenes with the men.  I don't think of them as weak, just as on the periphery.  Which I don't mind, because they're not the point of the story being told (which is why the play worked; just hearing about them was enough).  And I love that Tom Skerritt and Sam Shepard took small, supporting roles (and did such lovely things with them). 

 

Harling wrote the play to keep his sister's memory alive (her husband was remarried within six months, and the child - who had no memory of "Shelby" - was calling her mommy), but when he sat down to write he realized the story was how these women supported each other on a daily basis, not just when shit went down.  The men weren't incidental to their lives, but they weren't the focus.  So that's what he wrote.  And even a sexist ass like Herbert Ross couldn't diminish it.

Edited April 20, 2015 by Bastet

[Cobalt Stargazer]

In the source material (the play), there are no men at all; they're referred to, but not seen.  Heaven forbid Hollywood make a film without men, so when Harling adapted his play into a script, he had to add scenes with the men.  I don't think of them as weak, just as on the periphery.  Which I don't mind, because they're not the point of the story being told (which is why the play worked; just hearing about them was enough).  And I love that Tom Skerritt and Sam Shepard took small, supporting roles (and did such lovely things with them). 

 

To be fair, when M'Lynn is giving her monologue at Shelby's grave, she tells the other ladies that Jackson and Drum left because they couldn't take it, but she stayed because she wanted to be there when her daughter left the world, just as she'd been there when she came into it. "I find it amusing. Men are supposed to be made out of steel or something." I've never read or seen the play, but that was the dialogue from the movie.

[Bastet]

Yes, that’s the dialogue, but I’m not sure what part of my quoted opinion you’re using it to disagree with.  That I don’t find the male characters weak?  If so, I don’t take that dialogue as a statement – by M’Lynn or the narrative – that men are weak.  Just that since men are commonly regarded as the stronger sex, it struck M’Lynn – and gave her a bit of a chuckle in the midst of this horror - that when it came time to take Shelby off life support neither her husband nor father could stand to watch it, but there sat her mother, unable to leave.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

Yes, that’s the dialogue, but I’m not sure what part of my quoted opinion you’re using it to disagree with.  That I don’t find the male characters weak?  If so, I don’t take that dialogue as a statement

 

My bad, Bastet, I quoted the wrong thing, which is what I get for posting on the fly.

[magicdog]

Maureen O'Hara's character in McLintock! made me angry. She spends the better part of the movie acting like a snobby bitch to everyone in the whole town, saying that the place wasn't good enough for her and her daughter to live in. And she didn't have any right to be jealous of McLintock and the cook: even if there had been something going on between them (which there wasn't), she gave up her right to be upset when SHE LEFT HIM.

 

 

Totally with you on this one Spartan Girl!  O'Hara's character DID have it coming.  I was curious where the snobby behavior came from - since she was out on the frontier with her husband, McClintock and dealt with all the things they had to do to survive before the area was tamed.  Plus, they had a great spread and servants and all the modern niceties of the era;  it wasn't as if she left a patch of dirt and a lean to.

[Spartan Girl]

I always hated how insensitively Frank's parents sprang their divorce on him in Catch Me If You Can.  It was horrible enough how his mom made him keep quiet on the fact that she was having an affair, but then Frank comes home one day and out of the blue there's a lawyer (and his grandmother) in his living room and the lawyer not only tells him the parents are divorcing, but puts him right on the spot by asking who he wants to live with.  "There's no right or wrong answer."  Bullshit.

 

And the fact that his mother (in the movie anyway) doesn't make that much of an effort to find him when he runs away, she just marries her new boyfriend and starts a new family.  What a bitch.

 

Speaking of children getting the raw deal in a divorce, while I know She-Devil was supposed to be a black comedy, but the fact that Rosanne torched her house and her children's belongings just so that she could stick them with the dad while she goes off to seek revenge made me angry.  Certainly the nasty cheating husband deserved everything he got, but the kids didn't deserve to have all their stuff destroyed!  Geez!

[ToxicUnicorn]

I agree with all the Batman ire upthread.  Boy, those movies were bad.  As was the Spiderman love interests.  Blech.

 

I have always, always wondered why Disney decided to make that into a movie musical.

 

About Disney:  I have never been so pissed off about an adaptation as I was about Disney's retelling of The Little Mermaid with a happy ending.  That story, sad ending intact, was one of Hans Christian Anderson's most poignant.  I felt like a part of my childhood was being desecrated.  Choose a different title, Disney! 

 

I was really enjoying Avatar until the plot kicked in.  If I had known it was a movie about environmentalist crusading good guys against evil, greedy, capitalist - industrial - military pigs, I would have stayed home and not given my money to evil - greedy - capitalist ....

[Spartan Girl]

I know I already brought up Julienne Moore's whiny, cheating, hypocritical bitch of a character in Crazy Stupid Love, but yet another that made me angry was how she didn't even try to get their son to make up with his dad over the ridiculous misunderstanding he had that he "stole" the babysitter he had a crush on.

Of course that would have required Emily to GET OVER HERSELF and own up to her overall cuntitude (pardon my language) instead of blaming it all on a midlife crisis.

God that movie makes me so mad that ever time I see that it's going to be on, I want to throw something.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

Of course that would have required Emily to GET OVER HERSELF and own up to her overall cuntitude (pardon my language) instead of blaming it all on a midlife crisis.

 

To play devil's advocate for a sec, if Emily is so terrible for cheating on Cal, what then should we make of Cal deciding to use Kate to make Emily jealous? Granted, Kate turns out to be kind of nutty, but even still I don't see how its admirable to drag her into his screwed-up marriage, at least partly because his middle-aged pride was hurt. Yes, he was separated and therefore technically free to see other people, yadda yadda, and yes Kate was a grown woman capable of making her own choices, but if Emily is wrong for sleeping with David, then isn't Cal just as wrong for pulling a fourth party into the situation?

[Spartan Girl]

Not saying Cal was any better than Emily, but Emily was still married when she slept with David, and she never made any effort whatsoever to save her marriage or at least take responsibility for her own actions. What pisses me off more than anything is that nobody in the movie (except for maybe Cal and the babysitter) calls her out on her crap. Even when she was the one that cheated and wanted the divorce, everyone just puts the blame on Cal for giving up so easily.

It's just yet another example of the rom com double standard.

Besides, Emily proved she was just as petty as Cal, since she only started dating David to get back at Cal for going with all those women.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Spartan Girl

[DollEyes]

One thing that really pissed me off about An Officer & A Gentleman was the way Paula's best friend Lynette treated Zack's best friend Sid. While Paula truly loved Zack, Lynette had no problem with pretending to be pregnant in order to trap a military man in order to escape her dead-end life, like the lying skank she was. After a panic attack during a training exercise in the 12th week, Sid finally realized that he had joined the military for the wrong reasons, namely to please his parents and to honor his dead brother, so he quit and spent his life savings on a ring to propose to Lynette, who claimed that she might be pregnant. However, when Sid told Lynette that he quit, she told him that she wasn't pregnant after all, but Sid still wanted to marry her anyway, but instead of being grateful to Sid, Lynette not only dumped him, she cussed him out, which devastated him.

 

  When Zack and Paula confronted Lynette and Lynette dissed Sid, Zack and Paula put her on blast for breaking his heart. Sid was so shattered that he killed himself. Any guy who's willing to do the right thing by a girl whether she's knocked up or not, if he's not a keeper, then he deserves way more respect than what Lynette showed Sid. Lynette's refusal to appreciate Sid said much worse about her than him, as far as I'm concerned. 

Edited May 26, 2015 by DollEyes

[Spartan Girl]

Poor Sid. He genuinely loved Lynette and was still willing to marry her even when he found out that she lied about being pregnant when other guys would have kicked her to the curb. He definitely deserved better than that piece of shit.

[ratgirlagogo]

 

I rewatched the Leonardo DiCaprio Great Gatsby recently, and it reaffirmed my complete and utter hatred for Daisy.  I don't care if Gatsby willingly volunteered to take the rap for running over Myrtle, she still shouldn't have let him do it.  And the fact that she just goes back to her wealthy life like nothing ever happened without even having the remorse or decency to send even a flower to his funeral sends me to MY Angry Hulk place...

 

I've always been astounded by the reputation that the The Great Gatsby has as a novel full of romantic yearning. (Is it only starry-eyed high school kids who feel this way?) It isn't. It's breathtakingly cynical. The movie versions cause my blood to boil, but not any more so than the novel itself. These are not decent people, any of them. They're driven by nothing more than shallow whims, and they're essentially monsters...

I'd suggest that it IS a novel about romantic yearning, about a highly corruptible man who falls in love with a monster, and makes himself into a monster in order to win her.  It's about Lost Illusions and not True Nicholas Sparks Love - i.e., a novel about the perils and dangers and limitations of big-R Romance by a big-R Romantic.

[Spartan Girl]

Ron Weasley pissed me off plenty in the Harry Potter series, but the big one had to be in Deathly Hallows Part 1 when he tells Harry flat-out that he couldn't know why he was so worried about his own family because Harry DIDN'T have his own family.  Could he have been a bigger asshole?  Yes, he was under the influence of the evil Horcrux locket, but that's no excuse for what he did. 

 

And I really hated how petty and jealous he was of Harry supposedly entering the tournament in Goblet of Fire.  I understand that being poor and overshadowed by your older brothers sucks, but things could always be worse.  And he never seemed to really understand that Harry's "fame" wasn't really all that much fun, given the fact that his parents were dead, Voldemort was constantly trying to kill him, and every summer he had to go back to his abusive aunt and uncle.

 

In short, as good a friend as Ron was overall, he could be a real jerk sometimes.

[Princess Sparkle]

Ron Weasley pissed me off plenty in the Harry Potter series, but the big one had to be in Deathly Hallows Part 1 when he tells Harry flat-out that he couldn't know why he was so worried about his own family because Harry DIDN'T have his own family.  Could he have been a bigger asshole?  Yes, he was under the influence of the evil Horcrux locket, but that's no excuse for what he did. 

 

And I really hated how petty and jealous he was of Harry supposedly entering the tournament in Goblet of Fire.  I understand that being poor and overshadowed by your older brothers sucks, but things could always be worse.  And he never seemed to really understand that Harry's "fame" wasn't really all that much fun, given the fact that his parents were dead, Voldemort was constantly trying to kill him, and every summer he had to go back to his abusive aunt and uncle.

 

In short, as good a friend as Ron was overall, he could be a real jerk sometimes.

Goblet of Fire is actually my least favorite of the Harry Potters (book and film) mainly because everyone acts like such a brat in that movie.  Harry is at his most eye-rollingly teenage self in Goblet of Fire, and so it's the one I revisit the least.

[Danny Franks]

I agree with you, and I think Fitzgerald would too.  Just my opinion, but I don't think he was necessarily  trying to write a nice story about nice people.  For me, his works have held up because they reflect the time in which he lived and to some degree the time in which I currently live -- on the surface, everything's a fun, glossy party, but look a little deeper and you'll notice a lot of cracks and crumbling in the foundation.  I've known a fair share of Tom and Daisy Buchanans, Jay Gatsbys, and assorted hanger-on types in my life; so even if The Great Gatsby is placed in the '20s, I find it timeless in some ways. 

 

I loved the Luhrmann version of Gatsby because I thought it captured much of the spirit of the original work and the forced mania of the times.  But then, my previous frame of reference was the Redford-Farrow version from 1974, which was just a sleep-inducing, torturous piece of work. 

 

I remember studying that book at A-level, and the overriding message I got from is was that these rich, frivolous, selfish people were not something to aspire to. Nick calling Tom and Daisy "careless people" is really the indictment of the novel, and while Gatsby started off as something more honest, in his yearning and dreaming, he ended up valuing the same things, because he believed they would win him Daisy (which they did for a while, because Daisy was the worst of them all). Passages in the novel about Daisy clutching both Gatsby's love letter and Tom's pearls in the bath before her wedding, and only one is 'real' and enduring to her. Hint: it's not the letter, which dissolves in the bathwater.

 

Nick is the eye into this closed, insular and protective world of money and lack of responsibility, and I don't think Fitzgerald was being disingenuous in how he presented Nick's eventual abandoning of that world. It's all surface, and none of it really means anything. Hell, Nick is practically engaged to Jordan, yet they appear to feel nothing for one another (though there are theories that both characters are gay, and either in denial or in a complicit engagement of convenience).

Edited June 10, 2015 by Danny Franks

[Spartan Girl]

The whole premise of Chaos Theory pissed me off.  For those that don't know, it's this little known Ryan Reynolds movie where he plays this guy that helps get a pregnant woman to the hospital.  His act of kindness blows up in his face when the hospital assumes that he's the father and call his wife.  The wife completely flips out and throws him out of the house without even so much as giving him the benefit of the doubt.  It isn't until the pregnant woman runs into his wife that the whole misunderstanding is cleared up.  The wife leaves a bunch of messages for Ryan, slightly annoyed that he isn't calling her back.  Well, gee, how rude of him not to return your calls after you treated him like shit for a crime he didn't even commit.

 

Except the reason why he won't call her back is that he was so desperate to prove his innocence that he took a paternity test...and found out that he was unable to have kids.  Meaning that the daughter he had with his wife wasn't biologically his.

 

It turns out his sleazeball best friend is the father -- the result of a brief fling the two of them had (before they had started dating, but still).  When he finds out, the sleazeball best friend actually tries to horn in on the wife, since he's always loved her, blah blah blah....

 

Basically after more details of a comedy of errors, everything is forgiven.  Which I don't buy because why in the hell would Ryan still be friends with that guy after that stunt he tried to pull?!

 

Whatever.  What made me furious is that the whole thing could have been avoided if the wife hadn't acted like such a psycho bitch and assumed the worst of Ryan without even listening to his side of the story.