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I enjoy Marilyn Monroe, but I totally understand why other people wouldn't.

Yeah, same here.  I haven't seen too many of her movies, but when I watched "Some Like it Hot", there was something oddly captivating about her and, at least in that one, I remember that I thought her comic timing was pretty good.  I met a man once, who told me that he saw her once outside a theater.  He was a young man at the time and he said he'd never forget it.  He said that she had this glow about her. I didn't really get that until I saw, believe it or not, Jaclyn Smith. She'd have been about 42 or 43 years old and, while there are prettier women out there (except Farrah Fawcett--I'll never understand how she was considered prettier than Jaclyn), she just glowed.  So beautiful.  Anyway, having said all of that, I do think Jane Russell and Rita Hayworth were prettier. 

 

I hate Mary Poppins, too. Some of the songs are catchy, but the whole movie?  Ugh.

 

Here's one about last year's nominees for Best Picture (keeping in mind that the only one I didn't see was 12 Years a Slave, *sigh*):  While I didn't dislike American Hustle and Gravity, I couldn't believe that they were considered the top contenders with 12 Years a Slave.  Personally, I thought Captain Phillips was the best of the ones I saw--which is something else considering I had no interest in seeing it in the first place. 

Edited by Shannon L.
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Mike Stoklasa of Red Letter Media recently described Johnny Depp as a great performer, not a great actor, and I have to agree with him.  I have always tried to pinpoint what it was about Johnny Depp that didn't quite work for me, but that's it.  Weird roles do not always equal "meaty" ones, and I think that's where JD really flails as an actor.

 

That's a pretty good assessment of Johnny Depp for most of his career, I'll admit (and Red Letter Media is a great site). And I fucking hate the Jack Sparrow character, and the fact that it's so adored. But Depp has given good performances in movies that didn't require him to be goofy and weird. Donnie Brasco, in particular. He can be impressive, but I think he's just lazy and goes for projects that don't require too much effort or defy too many expectations people have for him.

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Mike Stoklasa of Red Letter Media recently described Johnny Depp as a great performer, not a great actor, and I have to agree with him.  I have always tried to pinpoint what it was about Johnny Depp that didn't quite work for me, but that's it.  Weird roles do not always equal "meaty" ones, and I think that's where JD really flails as an actor.

 

Yes, I've never been much of a fan. He was more tolerable back in the day, but I think Edward Scissorhands is the last movie I remember liking him in. And he was the primary reason I saw only the first Pirates of the Caribbean.  Plus, the "I'm part Native American" bullshit permanently turned me off. 

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I only watch The Sound of Music for Christopher Plummer. That's it. He was dreamy. :)

 

I hate the chicken salad sandwich scene in Five Easy Pieces. I've never been a server, but I hate people who order off the menu. Either order what's on the menu or go somewhere else, you prick!

 

I loathed the Veronica Mars movie. Hated it. There wasn't a single good thing about it to me. All it did was make me realize that Veronica's strong-willed persona of the past was just a facade, that she is in fact an indecisive, self-destructive idiot who lacks self-awareness, doesn't know what she wants, and would rather stay in a town she hates rather than venture out into the world where she can put her talents to use. You know what, Mars? You stay in Neptune, and I hope you're crippled with regret about it when you're old!

 

I like Ghostbusters II, and don't get its bad rap. As far as sequels go, I'd say it's pretty damn good!

 

I'm underwhelmed by the Kung Fu Panda movies, because I don't like it when the protagonist's only real virtue is how darn nice they are.  I like my protagonists to be kind and all that good stuff, but if they have no discernible talents outside of being "nice", then that just bores me. The only reasons we're supposed to like Po is because he's a lovable goofball, but that's it. He's no better at kung fu than anyone else, he's just… nice. I much prefer How to Train Your Dragon, because Hiccup is immensely kind and empathetic, but he's also intelligent, insightful, scholarly, and a talented artist and inventor (yay! a competent inventor in a kids' movie for a change!).

 

I'm sick of how land developers are portrayed as evil in movies. Oh, I'm all for nature preservation, and there's no doubt that some indiscriminately demolish areas strictly for profit, but please think of where we live: our houses, condos or apartments didn't grow from a seed, they had to planned… by developers! See why this trope is so problematic?

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(edited)

Absolutely cannot stand Helena Bonham Carter. I thought she was the Adrienne Barbeau of Merchant Ivory movies, and now she's the plague of Tim Burton's movies, which apparently have to be written with at least one leading role she can wear her Sexy Victorian Bag Lady halloween costume for.

Edited by Julia
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Okay heres my UO. I dont like the Sound of Music. Never got why people love it so. Dont really like Maey Poppins either. Sound of Music is the worst to me

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This might be a bridge too far, but I don't think Marlon Brando is all that great.  My mom, who has a drama degree, assures me that if I would sit through A Streetcar Named Desire I would understand more of his appeal, but (doubling-down here) I don't like Tennessee Williams plays either.

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Here's another one of mine:  I don't like the movie Big for one simple reason--he had sex with his coworker.  I was fine with it, thinking it was a cute movie, until that scene.  I don't care if he was in an adult body--he was still only 12 years old!

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Here's another one of mine:  I don't like the movie Big for one simple reason--he had sex with his coworker.  I was fine with it, thinking it was a cute movie, until that scene.  I don't care if he was in an adult body--he was still only 12 years old!

 

 

I like Big, but that scene keeps me from loving it. What also gets me is how okay Elizabeth Perkins is when she finds out the truth. Not that I think she's the villain in any way, but… criminy, wouldn't you all be losing your mind if that happened to you??

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What also gets me is how okay Elizabeth Perkins is when she finds out the truth. Not that I think she's the villain in any way, but… criminy, wouldn't you all be losing your mind if that happened to you??

I agree.  Her response was more like "You're only 12? Damn...".  I probably would've been gagging at just the thought of what we'd done. 

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Add me to the group grossed out by the Big sex. It was awful if you really took the time to think on it.

My UO in the classic section would be that I hate The Wizard of Oz. Hate. Hate Dorothy. Hate the stupid scarecrow, the whiny tin man & the wimpy lion. I hate Dorothy's voice & it makes me want to stab people, specifically her. Hate the Wizard & the saccharine good witch. I'll stop now. It is cathartic but I could probably keep writing for paragraph after paragraph.

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Have I got an unpopular Classic Hollywood opinion:

 

I don't think Joan Leslie's character Velma in High Sierra is in any way bad or evil, and I find it baffling that so many people label her as such. What is her crime, exactly? Let's look at the situation from her point of view:

 

Roy (Humphrey Bogart), an ex-con, is back in society, and falls in love at first sight with Velma. Just so we're clear, Roy is in his 40s, 50s, or even 60s, and Velma is said to be 20 (Leslie was in fact 15 or 16). The two of them become friends and Roy pulls strings to pay for an operation to correct Velma's clubfoot. The operation is a success, Velma thanks Roy… who proceeds to propose to her. Velma, shocked, says no but hopes they can be friends. 

Remember, age difference aside, Roy and Velma are friends who, as far as we know, have never so much as been on a date, and now he's asking her to marry him? Now, if I were Velma, I would think this casts a terrible pall on Roy's initial act of kindness, because it would feel as though the operation had strings attached. I would think, "wait, did he help me just so I'd feel obligated to marry him? Wow… that's a really sick thing to do!" I don't think I'd want anything to do with him ever again after that, because it stinks of emotional manipulation. And even if that weren't Roy's intent, don't you think this permanently destroys the friendship? "Awkward" doesn't really cover it, does it?

 

Anyway, Velma allegedly becomes "corrupted" and "loose" after the surgery. Want to know what her "corrupt" behavior includes? Dancing around her living room with three other people, to music at medium volume. Oh, the horror! Throw her ass in a convent, that'll straighten her out! Good lord, did audiences in 1941 really get the vapors over something like that? She's about as corrupt as Andy Hardy!

 

But what critics take issue with is how "nasty" Velma is when Roy comes to call again, and how she's gotten back with her shallow boyfriend. Yes, Velma should have been classier when Roy showed up… but so what? Roy insults her boyfriend and she's just supposed to stand back and take it? And this is what I take issue with: that Roy is "owed" Velma's love. Rubbish. Velma doesn't owe him a damn thing. She never lead him on, she never asked anything of him. It's a rather sexist, ugly attitude our society has towards women. Women aren't prizes, they're entitled to choose whoever they want, even if they're wrong. You shouldn't have to marry someone you don't love just because they were nice to you. So he offered to pay for her surgery? Imagine if you had a clubfoot or some disability that could be corrected and if someone offered to pay for the operation, you're all telling me you wouldn't pounce on that opportunity? When I read the reviews for High Sierra, Velma sounded like she put on the "nice little girl from the country" act to ensnare Roy, get the operation, then cruelly dump him. Well, either Leslie failed to play Velma that way, or the screenwriters goofed, because I didn't read it that way at all. She seemed genuinely upset at rejecting Roy, and was only pissed to see him again because he was being a jerk. 

 

And one more thing: Roy is a thug and a murderer! Why doesn't anyone criticize him for that? Both Velma and Marie were too good for him!

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12 Years a Slave was mentioned above. While I don't think its Best Picture Oscar was undeserved, I did not understand all the "Finally a film that shows the true horror of slavery!" hype. When reviewers wanted to discuss the sugarcoating of slavery in the Bad Old Days, they always fell back on Birth of a Nation or Gone With the Wind--both over 75 years old. The backbreaking toil, the whippings, the rapes, the families torn apart, the many other humiliations--all were depicted, albeit less bloodily, in Roots more than 35 years ago.

 

I also have found Marlon Brando overrated. I haven't seen all his films, but I thought he was excellent in three roles--the Godfather, Terry Malloy (On the Waterfront), and Stanley Kowalski. Otherwise, I found his performances ranged from unremarkable to hammy. 

 

I never minded the "wheat toast" scene in Five Easy Pieces because I didn't think Bobby's request was all that unreasonable (but I do think that he shouldn't have blamed the waitress for a restaurant policy she didn't make.) The rest of the film left me cold, though. I don't think many of those late 60's/early 70's "anti-establishment" films hold up very well. While they didn't deserve to be shot, I didn't find the antiheroes of Easy Rider particularly sympathetic. And--arguably my biggest UO about films of that time--I didn't like Harold and Maude. I never found Maude cute or funny. Her car thefts just made me angry--what if someone needed one of those cars to drive someplace in an emergency? And while I could believe in Harold and Maude as friends, I just did not find it credible that they would have sex.

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I agree about Big, and I also think that would never happen if that movie was made today. But in 1988, I'm thinking it probably wasn't considered a big deal simply because he was a boy. There's this idea people had (and that still persists with a lot of people today, sadly), that if young boys are with older women, they're "scoring," and not being taken advantage of.

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Yes, I've never been much of a fan. He was more tolerable back in the day, but I think Edward Scissorhands is the last movie I remember liking him in. And he was the primary reason I saw only the first Pirates of the Caribbean.  Plus, the "I'm part Native American" bullshit permanently turned me off. 

 

What part of the Native American thing bugs you? Is he lying? Just curious.

 

I like Ghostbusters II, and don't get its bad rap. As far as sequels go, I'd say it's pretty damn good!

 

Table for two. I don't get the hate either.

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Jeebus Cripes, I certainly don't have evidence, but yes, I think Depp is lying about the Native American ancestry. He's been saying it for years, yet he's not recognized by Cherokee or Creek nations, nor has he provided any confirmable evidence. As rich as he is, he certainly has access to resources to confirm his ancestral claims.  And that he brought it up again to justify his Tonto portrayal in The Lone Ranger remake is another layer of absurdity. Pfft.

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Eh, I don't think Johnny Depp is any different from many people who think that they might have Native American ancestry.  For example you meet a lot of black people from the South, especially from North Carolina where my folks are from, and they will tell you that they've "got some Cherokee" in them.  They don't care enough to make inquiries about it, it's just what they've heard from their relatives.  Same thing with Depp because I read where he said he first heard it from his grandma.  I'm not going to ping him and call him a liar for that.

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Yes, but most regular people don't portray Native Americans in a film, with said justification (paraphrased), "I've got Indian in my family," either.  By that logic, American black actors or actresses could play Native Americans or American whites or European white in addition to blacks; yet, that doesn't happen.

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I must agree. I think Johnny Depp showed he had great talent in the 90s. They weren't all oddball characters. He's squandered that in the last decade in favor of the big checks, it seems. But if that's what he wants, it's his choice. But playing Tonto really soured him for me. Come on. If he had played an African American, imagine the outcry.

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Yes, but most regular people don't portray Native Americans in a film, with said justification (paraphrased), "I've got Indian in my family," either.  By that logic, American black actors or actresses could play Native Americans or American whites or European white in addition to blacks; yet, that doesn't happen.

Somehow "colorblind" casting ends up meaning whitewashing. Suggest that an African American actor could play Peter Parker? Blasphemy. There are lots of roles... rom-coms stick out to me in particular, where there isn't really anything about the character that precludes a non-white actor from playing the part. But no, white is default so generally actors of other races only get parts if you make a big deal about their race. But Caucasian actors can play anyone because that's "acting" nevermind how offensive the black face, red face, yellow face, etc. can get. Who cares about your stupid concerns? You're being too P.C.

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The movie I found this most jarring in was A Passage To India. The whole point of the movie was the destructive effects of cultural insensitivity and appropriation and the Indian character who served as a baseline for the history and traditions of India before the british was played by Alec Guinness?

I thought he did his usual deft job, and maybe the director meant that as irony, but it felt to me like one of the early Hollywood movies where they showed the evils of racism by having it affect a white person.

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Yes, but most regular people don't portray Native Americans in a film, with said justification (paraphrased), "I've got Indian in my family," either.  By that logic, American black actors or actresses could play Native Americans or American whites or European white in addition to blacks; yet, that doesn't happen.

I still don't see the big deal with him saying he's got Indian in his family, if that's what his grandma told him, and I don't see what's wrong for using that as a justification for playing one in a movie.  Hell, Lou Gossett, Jr. played Anwar Sadat in a movie and I didn't see or hear Egyptians calling for his head.

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Non-whites play white characters in theatre all the time. Non-traditional casting means a person of color can play a white role. I just saw a black actor play Clitandre in Moliere's "The Learned Ladies." Obviously, the French character is white, but we can all pretend. I remember seeing a black actor play Thomas Jefferson at something I got taken to when I was a little girl and I understood right away that Jefferson wasn't black and that the actor was pretending.

 

Film is a realistic medium, though, so you have to reimagine the character, which makes it tricker.

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I know this is the UO thread, and there's another thread on race with regard to movies, but I just wanted to add:  Michael B. Jordan, a black actor, is set to play the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four; in the comics, it's a blonde white guy.  Will Smith played a white character, Jim West, in the Wild, Wild West.  Laurence Fishburne played Perry White, the white newspaper guy in the Superman comics.   Those are just the ones that come immediately to mind.  This is just a sample, and it doesn't happen very often, but it's not unheard of either.  

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(edited)

When Native Americans are barely a blip on the radar in the mainstream film world, it's just incredibly tacky, pretentious, and clueless, in my unpopular opinion, for Johnny Depp to "take on" the mantle of representation in "hopes to fix years of Indian misrepresentations in Hollywood" based on so-called ancestry, especially when just casting a confirmed Native American (and presumably writing the part as nuanced) could have accomplished similar goals.  As influential as he is, especially for Disney, surely he could have swayed the casting process.  After all, there were some cast in smaller roles - how hard could it have been to cast Tonto? You know, like it was done way back in the 1930s when Hollywood and the country were even less enlightened?

 

Mind you, I'm not saying that Tonto, as imagined in the 30s, was the ideal.  But if you purport to be concerned with "Indian representation," then do it authentically, and leave the self-deluded ego out of it.  That's partially why I'm not a Depp fan.  Fuck him, and that faux-hipster bullshit he likes to espouse. 

Edited by ribboninthesky1
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What ribboninthesky1 said. How often do you see Native Americans in any prominent roles? Here was a chance to cast a Native American in a leading role in a major summer movie and instead they cast Johnny Depp because his grandma told him he has Native American in his blood. That's just ridiculous in my opinion.

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Michael B. Jordan, a black actor, is set to play the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four; in the comics, it's a blonde white guy. Will Smith played a white character, Jim West, in the Wild, Wild West. Laurence Fishburne played Perry White, the white newspaper guy in the Superman comics.

These are all (I think) instances of changing a character who was white in the source material to a character who is black in the movie, which is a pretty different animal from having a black actor portray a character who is white....
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I've already expressed the main themes I hate about Titanic, but now that it has come up again let me offer up a petty reason behind my dislike:

 

Rose trying to wake Jack up when she hears the life boats coming back.  Fool, he's dead.  I get that you are traumatized and half frozen, but you know he's dead.  So wasting a bunch of time saying his name over and over only leads to you wasting a bunch more time repeating "Come back" until I want to harm either my eardrums or your vocal cords.

 

By the time she gets her shit together and grabs the dead guy's whistle, I'm kind of hoping for her to choke on it.

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I hated that the rich guy was also a meanie and baddie. Would have been a pan interesting choice if he were decent but dull etc. it's just stacking the deck.

Only decent scenes were old couple dying and the band playing nearer my god to the and saying it's a pleasure playing with you.

The irish band were great but rose dancing with them, not, and everyone wading through the water with no flinching when that water should have been freezing really bugged.

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I like Titanic but I will totally admit it's carried by the strength of DiCaprio's and Winslet's performances (and to a lesser extent Billy Zane) and my love of period costumes. Also, Celine Dion. The story can easily be picked apart, the rest of the actors...whew, and my God was it manipulative. Not always effectively so, but definitely manipulative. And yeah, the framing device was terrible. It feels weak the first time you watch the movie and gets progressively more annoying in successive viewings/the more you think about it.

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My biggest issue with Titanic (other than it was overproduced, overhyped, and vastly overrated, in my opinion) is that I felt that Leonardo DiCaprio was a total miscast for the part of Jack.  First of all, at that point in his life, Leo was known to me as "the actor whom Puberty forgot", so I felt that his Jack just didn't quite have the gravitas that I felt the role demanded.  In fact, Jack was one role for which I personally felt Tom Cruise would have been a much better fit from the get-go.  To me, the only reason that Leo got the part was that he was the flavor-of-the-month at that time among the teen and 20-something female set.

 

And Jack himself wasn't really that great a character.  I remember hearing once that in real life, a woman from Rose's background would never have given someone like Jack the time of day, much less adopted his bohemian lifestyle and gotten into a sexual relationship with him (and no, I really didn't need to see them having sex in the back of that car).  It's no wonder that the crew thought Jack was trying to rape Rose even though he was actually trying to save her life at the time.

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+1

By all accounts, the Strauss' were heroes that night, he for giving up his seat in the lifeboat, and she for choosing to stay with him.

I guess it would have muddied the simplistic rich/evil, poor/good theme of Titanic to spend time on them (and opened up the thorny question of how many of the deaths were due to the ship owners and the actions of the crew).

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First of all, at that point in his life, Leo was known to me as "the actor whom Puberty forgot",

I have a friend that had no interest in seeing The Aviator because she "had a hard time seeing Leonardo DiCaprio as a man."  She can get a bit caustic. 

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I hated that the rich guy was also a meanie and baddie. Would have been a pan interesting choice if he were decent but dull etc. it's just stacking the deck.

Agreed. I'm going to date myself here, but when I was growing up, there was a series of YA historical romances called "Sunfire" series. One of those books was set on the Titanic and featured a young woman who was being pressured by her mother to marry a rich man to save the family fortunes after the money has run out. The rich guy was nice and she might've made a match of it, but turns out that the girl had fallen in love with a young man in...wait for it...third class!!! In the end, the rich guy nobly went down with the ship while the guy in third class managed to survive and live happily ever after with the girl.

Makes me wonder if James Cameron ever read that book. Although I suppose there are only so many plots in the world. Just interesting that he chose that one.

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I have a friend that had no interest in seeing The Aviator because she "had a hard time seeing Leonardo DiCaprio as a man."  She can get a bit caustic.

I actually watched The Aviator because I had HBO and Starz and it was on one of those premium cable channels and I was young and foolish and heard Scorsese and DiCaprio and thought it would be a prestige pic. Oy. Let's put aside for a moment that Leo is perhaps physically the opposite of Howard Hughes. I don't know that much about the real man so I can let it go. But Cate Blanchett as fake Katharine Hepburn and Kate Beckinsale as fake Ava Gardner? Absolutely despicable. You know they're on film for those of us who weren't alive in their lifetimes, right? I know what they looked like and sounded like and what their mannerisms were. Grumble grumble grumble. And yeah, I'm just going to assume Leo was a terrible Hughes because he never disappeared into the role.  

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I agree with the sentiment that most Oscar nominated movies are boring, but I actually enjoyed True Grit--which, like I said in another post, is something because I hate both westerns and Cohen Brother movies. 

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(edited)

I like a lot of Tarantino's movies but the appeal of Pulp Fiction is lost on me. (The whole "royale with cheese" conversation does nothing for me). It's fine, but not my favorite. Maybe I should watch it again.. My UO is that Forest Gump deserved the 1994 Oscar and if not that, then Shawshank. (I've never seen Quiz Show)

Streetcar is boring but young Brando is hot so there's that. It's the only thing I remember from the film. To this day, even after watching the film, all I know about A Streetcar Named Desire I learned from when they did a musical version of it on the Simpsons.

I know the movie version isn't the most beloved but people go ga-ga over the stage version so....Rent. Oy. Was I the only one who wanted to yell "GET JOBS! That's how you gonna pay the rent."? And to completely go off the deep end I loathe Seasons of Love. I've already told my friends that if I go first they are in charge of making sure that song comes nowhere near my funeral. I think it stems from when I was in High School, the broadway show was still in it's original run and I knew a lot of theater people who adored that song and I couldn't get away. And I like musicals, just not that particular show/song.

Edited by kiddo82
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Requiem of a Dream is one of the worst movies ever. It is one huge, heavy handed,  seemingly DARE-inspired anti-drug PSA that is insanely ludicrous. The refridgerator scene was like something out of a third rate Monty Python sketch. There's a heroin shortage in NYC? Really? And you can only get it either in Florida or by doing ass-to-ass scenes? They arrest you in the hospital on SUSPICION of being a drug user, arrest your friend, and refuse to treat your arm? Even when it is gangrenous in the prison? Then they chop it off without any form of anaesthetic whatsoever? I'm sorry, this is Reefer Madness of the 21st century, one of the worst and unintentionally hilarious things I have ever seen, and the praise it gets absolutely BAFFLES me.

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(edited)

I've never seen the film, and once I learned it was directed by Darren Aronofsky, I knew I never would.  I've seen enough of his films to know either they won't make a lick of sense, or I'll be bored.  Guess I'm not sophisticated enough for his sense of art. But then, I've never been a fan of surrealism in film. 

Edited by ribboninthesky1
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