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most over/under-rated movies

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Everyone knows who Wes Anderson is, yet I think his films are still under-rated. He's seen as this off-the-wall, bizarre director for snobby Art School students and the like, when actually, his films are great examples of what a film should be: not cinematic plays, but visual-auditory treats. They make use of their medium, through repeated imagery, well-placed music, developed characters, but most importantly, an idea that Ayn Rand recognised as being important (I forget who she was quoting): 'Nothing here is accidental'.

To get an idea of what I mean, check out this little ad he did for AmEx, which really skewers what he does and why he's good:

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When speaking of under-rated movies I always come to think of "Bicentenial Man". This is a movie about a robot who by accident starts to develop a mind of his own, and from there the story takes us through a journey of the robots desire to experience life and become human. As far as I know many people have seen the movie and liked it, but it never really got much attention - which it deserves. This is just such a fantastic story.

It is a great story. But the movie is terrible. Read Asimov's original novella, which can be found in "The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories." That's a much better treatment of the core idea and theme, done much better. There's a novelization of the story by Robert Silverberg, "The Positronic Man," which is also better than the movie but inferior to Asimov's work (BTW Silverberg's novelization of Asimov's "Nightfall" is superb).

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What is your source for this claim? Nobody but Lucas' closest friends saw the movie a few months before the release, and at that time most of the special effects, and even the score and some sound effects were still missing. Are you saying that he read the script, thought it was terrible, decided to do the film anyway as long as he was whacked, and given small roles in the next two films? Are you saying he saw it after the release but forced it to be remade? Saw the movie in the middle of making it and had his part refilmed? How did he have an opinion of the movie before he saw it?

Are you saying that in the middle of filming he decided the film sucked (not very characteristic of Alec Guiness) and convinced George Lucas to change his script accordingly (absolutely, positively not something George Lucas would ever do).

Now in Alec Guiness' autobiography, written shortly before he passed away, he did state that he regretted making those films because he got sick of answering kids questions about his role and the movies in general. He felt that any spirituality the films may have had was lost in the minutia of trivia in its fantasy world. Guiness, it may be noted, was a devout Roman Catholic.

I know the making of that film in detail, and that claim flies in the face of everything I know about it, and its maker.

From his Wikipedia article:

Guinness' role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1977, brought him worldwide recognition by a new generation. Guinness agreed to take the part on the condition that he would not have to do publicity to promote the film. He was also one of the few cast members who believed that the film would be a box office hit and negotiated a deal for two percent of the gross, which made him very wealthy in later life. His role would also result in a Golden Globe Nomination and Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Despite all this, Guinness was never happy with being identified with the part, and expressed great dismay at the fan following that the Star Wars trilogy attracted. In the DVD commentary of Star Wars: A New Hope, director George Lucas says that Guinness was not happy with the script re-write in which Obi-Wan is killed. However, Guinness stated in a 1999 interview that it was actually his idea to kill off Obi Wan, persuading Lucas that it would make him a stronger character. Lucas agreed to the idea, but Guinness confided in the interview, "what I didn't tell [Lucas] was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo." He continued by saying that he "shrivelled up" every time Star Wars was mentioned to him.[4] Despite his dislike of the films, fellow cast members Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher (as well as Lucas) have always spoken highly of his courtesy and professionalism on and off the set; he did not let his distaste for the material show to his co-stars. Lucas credited him with inspiring fellow cast and crew to work harder, saying he was instrumental in helping to complete filming of the movies.

Guinness has been quoted as saying that the royalties he obtained from working on the films gave him "no complaints; let me leave it by saying I can live for the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to, that I have no debts and I can afford to refuse work that doesn't appeal to me". In his autobiography, Blessings In Disguise, Guinness tells an imaginary interviewer "Blessed be Star Wars!", while in the final volume of the book A Positively Final Appearance (1997), he recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the fan promised to stop watching the film, because as Guinness put it "this is going to be an ill effect on your life." The fan was stunned at first, but later thanked him. Guinness grew so tired of modern audiences seeming to remember him only for his role of Obi-Wan Kenobi that he would throw away the fan mail he received from Star Wars fans, without reading it.[5]

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Are you basing this on Hollywood stuff, or are you including the films of Bresson, Tarkovsky, Bergman, etc? I think that most popular American films are fairly shallow when it comes to philosophical/conceptual issues regardless of which decade youre in, so I could definitely understand if you think that 'classics' like Citizen Kane/Metropolis/etc are overrated since they tend to rely on visual effects and technical stuff which isnt as impressive now as it was back then since its a lot easier to do these days as technology has developed. But I really dont see how you could make the same argument about (largely European) art films such as Persona, The Pickpocket, or Roshomon, which are highly conceptual and pretty much timeless.

Just hollywood stuff. I haven't seen anything else.

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  • 4 months later...

Not necessarily underrated, because I guess most critics liked it, but it wasn't talked about at all, and it really should've won everything at the Oscars last year: "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (directed by Sydney Lumet). It's easily the best movie of the decade (which is not saying much, unfortunately)

Overrated:

"There Will Be Blood" --good acting, decent style, but the movie is useless-it was made just to pile on the oil guys, when there already was a campaign against them in the news. If it at least had a message that went against the mainstream, I would've had more respect for it, even if I didn't agree with it.

Really overrated:

"The Dark Knight"--Heath Ledger was good (considering the role-as great as he was, he's still wearing paint on his face, and using a voice that reminded me of Al Pacino in Devil's Advocate)

--everyone else is horrible. Special mention for Cristian Bale, who's voice is ridiculous while he's Batman, and who is incredibly stiff as a millionaire playboy. (otherwiseamazing actor-see American Psycho)

--the substance of the movie: if I didn't know any better, I would think Nolan is an objectivist who is making a parody of altruism, that's how far he takes this obsession with sacrificing the heroes for the sake of a stupid, moody mob, dominated by frivolous emotions and amorality.

"Ironman" --went in expecting a great movie , but ended up seeing a Robert Downey Jr. at his most mediocre, in a movie so predictable that I had guessed the final scene to the last detail in the first 10 minutes, even though I had never even heard of Ironman the comicbook before.

What happened to all these great actors? The most briliant actors of our generation are running around in front of green screens, being chased by imaginary special effects, or spewing horribly written party-line dribble most of the world doesn't even care about.

I'm not even gonna bother seeing Edward Norton in The Hulk or Robert Redford and Merryl Streep in Lions for Lambs. Why even bother anymore?

I'll just stick to Tarantino movies. At least in his movies everybody dies:)

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Overrated:

"There Will Be Blood" --good acting, decent style, but the movie is useless-it was made just to pile on the oil guys, when there already was a campaign against them in the news. If it at least had a message that went against the mainstream, I would've had more respect for it, even if I didn't agree with it.

Agreed. Outstanding acting and production values, but virtually no plot. I watched this movie for 2 and a half hours, waiting for something to happen. I ended up watching the last 20 minutes or so on 1.5 speed, b/c I couldn't bear it anymore. I will now summarize the plot of this movie in the most verbose way I can think of:

A man goes to Texas and opens some oil wells.

Edited by Moose
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Over-rated (at least by some of my co-workers): The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

It was two hours and forty minutes of my life I will never get back.

Virtually every character in this movie was a complete scumbag. Brad Pitt's acting in the title role was so wooden and half-hearted you could have sworn he phoned it in. Casey Affleck, playing Robert Ford, was a bizarre, creepy "gay stalker" type who idolized Jesse James in a contemptibly obsessive and totally second-handed way. None of the characters showed any sort of redeeming quality, which is a bit of a relief because they were a murderous gang of bandits. Ten minutes into the movie I thought to myself "This movie is full of scumbags all of whom deserve to die violently." The only problem is that there was no one in the movie who was heroic enough to be worthy of pulling the trigger on said scumbags. They mostly killed each other in an escalating series of betrayals and ambushes, usually in bedrooms and living rooms with women and children cowering in terror nearby.

To make matters worse, the plotting and pacing was slow and naturalistic. The whole film has a pinkish color cast, with green skies. So in effect, you are looking at completely contemptible scumbags through rose-colored glasses for two hours and forty minutes.

If you want to spend over two hours looking into a sewer of nihilism, watch this movie.

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One of the most underrated movie I've ever seen has to be an old James Cagney comedy "One, Two, Three". Its about a Coca Cola executive in west Berlin during the height of the cold war. Most of the jokes are about how inept USSR is. Its extremely fast paced and at times dizzying, made in the days when they still made smart comedies. Its one of the movies were every time I see it I catch a new joke.

Here are some great quotes:

C.R. MacNamara: Cigarette? Cigar?

Peripetchikoff: Here, take one of these.

C.R. Macnamara: Thanks. Hm, 'Made in Havana'.

Peripetchikoff: We have trade agreement with Cuba. They send us cigars, we send them rockets.

C.R. Macnamara: Good thinking.

C.R. MacNamara: You know something? You guys got cheated. This is a pretty crummy cigar.

Peripetchikoff: Do not worry. We send them pretty crummy rockets.

Scarlet: Do you realize that Otto spelled backwards is Otto?

Phyllis MacNamara: How about that?

Scarlet: You'll like him. He looks just like Jack Kennedy, only he's younger and he has more upstairs.

Phyllis MacNamara: More brains?

Scarlet: More *hair*. And of course, ideologically, he's much sounder.

Phyllis MacNamara: Maybe we voted for the wrong man.

Scarlet: That couldn't happen in Russia.

Phyllis MacNamara: They don't make mistakes.

Scarlet: They don't *vote*.

Peripetchikoff: No formula, NO DEAL!

C.R. MacNamara: OK, NO DEAL!

Borodenko: We do not need you! If we want Coca-cola, we invent it ourselves!

C.R. MacNamara: Oh, yeah? In 1956 you flew a bottle of Coke to a secret laboratory in Sverdlosk. A dozen of your top chemists went nuts trying to analyze the ingredients. Right?

Mishkin: No comment!

C.R. MacNamara: And in 1958, you planted two undercover agents in Atlanta to steal the formula. And what happened? They both defected! And now they're successful businessmen in Florida packaging instant borscht. Right?

Peripetchikoff: No comment!

C.R. MacNamara: Last year you put out a cockamamie imitation "Kremlin-kola!" You tried it out in the satellite countries, but even the Albanians wouldn't drink it. They used it for SHEEP DIP! RIGHT?

Mishkin: No comment!

C.R. MacNamara: So either get down to business or get off the pot!

Edited by Rearden_Steel
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  • 3 weeks later...
Over-rated (at least by some of my co-workers): The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

It was two hours and forty minutes of my life I will never get back.

Virtually every character in this movie was a complete scumbag. Brad Pitt's acting in the title role was so wooden and half-hearted you could have sworn he phoned it in. Casey Affleck, playing Robert Ford, was a bizarre, creepy "gay stalker" type who idolized Jesse James in a contemptibly obsessive and totally second-handed way. None of the characters showed any sort of redeeming quality, which is a bit of a relief because they were a murderous gang of bandits. Ten minutes into the movie I thought to myself "This movie is full of scumbags all of whom deserve to die violently." The only problem is that there was no one in the movie who was heroic enough to be worthy of pulling the trigger on said scumbags. They mostly killed each other in an escalating series of betrayals and ambushes, usually in bedrooms and living rooms with women and children cowering in terror nearby.

To make matters worse, the plotting and pacing was slow and naturalistic. The whole film has a pinkish color cast, with green skies. So in effect, you are looking at completely contemptible scumbags through rose-colored glasses for two hours and forty minutes.

If you want to spend over two hours looking into a sewer of nihilism, watch this movie.

I grow so weary of people using "nihilism" to describe any movie that they don't like. If it's based on a true story, nihilism isn't the right word...it would be "realism." This movie does move too slow, but I still enjoyed it thoroughly. I don't understand the attitude whereby realism is thought to be bad because it doesn't necessarily display "the ideal." Yes, the characters in this movie are all scumbags. The same can be said of the characters in The Godfather, virtually any movie made by Martin Scorsese (widely recognized as one of the best directors of all time), and even Office Space. The point of movies about the mafia or, in this case, old west gangsters is to show the other side of the story. I fail to see anything wrong with that.

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  • 8 months later...
I don't see that. There is no question as to what's real, once Laurence Fishbourne reveals the deception the lead character has been living under.

In fact, they missed a great stylistic option by making the look and feel of reality and fantasy to be the same. They shouldn't be. Consider the differences in "The Wizard of Oz," or "Pleasantville."

A few things about the Matrix: When the characters are in the matrix, all the colors but green are subdued a little so you know what "world" they are in, whether it be the computer generated one or not. Now that you know this, re-watch any of them and you will notice. I'm not sure but I think there are more things besides this that the directors used to make the fantasy look more artificial and fake. These facts are in the commentary for one of the movies, I'm not sure which one.

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and even Office Space.

We found the most under-rated movie, that's good.

A really over-rated one might be Titanic. (it is so nihilistic the way they recreate historical events in it :) ) And I can't figure out why people over-rated it, by showering it with so many Oscars, and watching it over and over again. But there are plenty of over-rated movies on that Oscar list, new and old.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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A few things about the Matrix: When the characters are in the matrix, all the colors but green are subdued a little so you know what "world" they are in, whether it be the computer generated one or not.

So there's no possibility of mistaking the real world from the virtual one. Thank you.

BTW subdued colors aren't much of a stylistic difference.

Now that you know this, re-watch any of them and you will notice.

I can't quite decide whether to illustrate my views on that by either a ridiculous exaggeration or an outrageous package deal. Suffice it to say, then, that re-watching The Matrix, or watching any of the sequels, are in my list of things to avoid at all costs.

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So there's no possibility of mistaking the real world from the virtual one. Thank you.

*sigh* Watch the movie again. The point isn't whether or not you, the audience, are able to differentiate between the 2 worlds. It's whether or not the people living in them can. I'll bet you're the type of movie-watcher who finds no suspense in movies like United 93 because you already know how they end. I can't speak for everyone but, when I watch a movie, I prefer to let it envelop me to the point that I can see things from the vantage points of the characters, rather than with the omniscience of someone who already knows what's going on.

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*sigh* Watch the movie again.

Exaggeration then: I'd rather watch a soccer match (I can't believe I said that).

The point isn't whether or not you, the audience, are able to differentiate between the 2 worlds. It's whether or not the people living in them can.

Well, the bulk of the fictional population wasn't aware of more than one "world." All the rest have no problem telling both "worlds" apart. So what is the issue then?

I'll bet you're the type of movie-watcher who finds no suspense in movies like United 93 because you already know how they end.

You show an unhealthy amount of concern for divining my opinion.

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I'm hardly concerned about it. That doesn't mean I can't be irritated when someone expresses an asinine opinion. And, yes, your opinion is asinine. If you want to say you think the movies were made poorly or had bad philosophy, fine...I might actually agree with some of your points. But watching The Matrix and saying that it raises no philosophical issues is like watching Braveheart and concluding that it was about the Italian Mafia.

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I'm hardly concerned about it.

Then perhaps you ought to quit probing.

That doesn't mean I can't be irritated when someone expresses an asinine opinion. And, yes, your opinion is asinine. If you want to say you think the movies were made poorly or had bad philosophy, fine...I might actually agree with some of your points. But watching The Matrix and saying that it raises no philosophical issues is like watching Braveheart and concluding that it was about the Italian Mafia.

You mean Braveheart wasn't about the Italian mafia? I'm speechless. :o

Look, any film showing a wrong philosophical viewpoint, which is to say nearly every movie, can be said to "raise philosophical issues" merely by advocating said viewpoints. For example, any Soviet propaganda film which shows teh USSR as a worker's apradise "raises the issue" of how Communism could possibly produce what you see on screen.

Since it can't, then there's no use debating it.

A movie that showed a wrong viewpoint in science, like a claim the Earth is a flat disk, would also be "raising a scientific issue" that's no use even considering.

Now, you claim The Matriz raises "issues" in metaphysics. Assuing this is so then 1) the issue is wrong and isnt' worth considering and, 2) since the characters in the movie are aware of what's real and what isn't, then it isn't even much of an issue.

You want a better treatment of such an "issue" then go and watch The truman Show. Sure, the characters all know they're actors in a TV show, and the audience knows, but Truman doesn't know. He has to discover it for himself and then act on that knowledge. It's also a much better movie than The Matrix.

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I've seen the Truman Show. The Matrix does the same thing, but with Neo. At first, he doesn't believe it, then gradually comes to accept it. The sequels suck, so I won't even address those, except to say that they launch into outright philosophical sermons.

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I've seen the Truman Show. The Matrix does the same thing, but with Neo. At first, he doesn't believe it, then gradually comes to accept it.

It's just a plot element. Neo needs to be told what's real in order to set up the movie's premise. In "Truman" the premise is whosn to the audience and Truman is left to discover the truth.

I'll tell you again: The Matrix is nothing more than a holodeck episode writ large. At that there have been better holodeck episodes than The Matrix, too (The two with Professor Moriarty in TNG, and one with aliens who are convinced the holodeck characters are real but the Voyager crew are an illusion. Hell, even the Planet X episode was better in a campy/nostalgic kind of way).

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And I'll tell you again. Your opinion, as originally expressed when we first had this conversation, is indefensible and asinine.

For someone whose entire argument boils down to "If you'd been a teenager when you saw it..." that's quite a statement.

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It's just a plot element. Neo needs to be told what's real in order to set up the movie's premise. In "Truman" the premise is whosn to the audience and Truman is left to discover the truth.

I'll tell you again: The Matrix is nothing more than a holodeck episode writ large. At that there have been better holodeck episodes than The Matrix, too (The two with Professor Moriarty in TNG, and one with aliens who are convinced the holodeck characters are real but the Voyager crew are an illusion. Hell, even the Planet X episode was better in a campy/nostalgic kind of way).

The Truman Show was good, but I thought malevolent. What kind of people do to a human being what was done to Truman?

Regarding The Matrix, I enjoyed it. It had plausibility to it. It wasn't pure fantasy, as it were.

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The Truman Show was good, but I thought malevolent. What kind of people do to a human being what was done to Truman?

It's worse. What kind of people watch what was being done to Truman?

On the other hand you also have a man who wants to attain certain values, and he does so even while, literally, the whole world is set against him.

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I think you're missing the point of The Truman Show. What kind of person watches it? I do, because it's called a dystopic movie that shows what will/can happen to the RIGHT values when the WRONG values subvert them. And if you value the privacy of your life, then you will see how relevant The Truman Show still is. It presaged the awful Reality TV show craze, and the growing lack of privacy in public matters.

One movie that you can't call underrated because hardly anyone knows about it, is The Jack Bull. Total individualism and respect for the mind and natural law. Also an incredibly sad movie. It really did make me cry it's so brilliant.

I would also suggest Buckaroo Banzai. Most fun I've ever had watching a movie.

Edited by Krattle
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