What's the *worst* movie you've ever seen?

I’d put a vote in for A Canterbury Tale.

It’s a slight plot, a bit stilted, and it meanders a little; but (to me at least) it has a magical feel to it.

Sadly, yes. I probably shouldn’t be on this thread, it just makes me sad.

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My arms are exhausted just looking at that!

So beautiful…thanks!

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I hated Star Trek (2009) so very deeply that I had absolutely no expectations for Into Darkness, which I watched on Netflix long after its release.

What they’ve done to Star Trek reminds me of what they’ve done to Bond.

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I really enjoyed FotR (probably mostly because of Sean Bean), and RotK, in the main, but I just cannot stand TTT (which is my favourite of the books). And I know I mention this every time Donald starts a film discussion.

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Oh… I have separate list for movies that are both bad, and hilariously scientifically stupid. Armageddon and The Core are right at the top of the list.

Armageddon starts off okay, but then promptly goes off the rails when they propose that instead of nuking the surface of the asteroid (which might actually work if done early enough) they need to nuke the inside of the asteroid and turn it into many smaller asteroids… that will still hit the earth. The way the asteroid split in two halves was just jaw-dropping in the worst way:

Look at this terribleness. I had forgotten how cheesy it was, too.

The Core was no better. The scene where the birds lose their ability to navigate by using the earth’s magnetic field is laughable:

I think the writers and director thought, “Birds are scary, right? Didn’t Hitchcock show us that?” Apparently birds don’t have eyes, and can fly only using their long range navigation apparatus.

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It is awful but at least it isn’t a rehash. The part that makes it for me is when the invaders are in a hotel bar acting odd they get asked were they are from and respond ‘Seattle’.
Zontar is just the actors phoning it in and is paced even slower than the movie it is remaking. Even more so for Creature Of Destruction (remake of She-Creature) where you can tell the actors are deliberately pausing to pad out the film. It is does get to be hokey fun though where Zontar is just painful.
But unless you are into bad, the best advice for a Larry Buchanan film is to just avoid it.

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I think that before anyone makes a LotR movie, they need to read Tolkien’s essay On Fairy-Stories.

Tolkien was very fond of a concept he dubbed eucatastrophe — that is, a “happy catastrophe”. Yes, everything works out in the end, but, at the same time, your life has been turned upside-down.

Maybe you can go back to the place home used to be, but you can’t go home again after a eucatastrophe: you’ve changed, and the place itself has changed, and you just won’t fit in the same way that you used to.

I could live with them cutting out Tom Bombadil (although giving his lines to Treebeard in the Extended Edition was a low blow), and even having Faramir tempted by the Ring (though that dulled the whole point that Faramir was the better man). However, by cutting out the Scouring of the Shire, and just having the hobbits return home with nothing more than a sneer at Merry and Pippin (who, as a Took and a Brandybuck, probably got their fair share of sneers before they left), it yanked out the whole concept of eucatastrophe, which was a great disservice to Tolkien.

I think that the movies are visually stunning, and quite enjoyable, but, without the Scouring, I can never think of them as “true enough” to the books.

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I got obsessed with this particular performance after seeing a clip of her practicing in a dance film about ballet in Russia. I watched every variation of that piece that is out on YouTube and the way she moves her arms and legs is so birdlike. She does not even look human with her arms when she is on the floor. It’s like her arms are detached and are actual wings. Glad you also appreciated it!

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Well, it worked. That movie is freaking great.

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FYI, I am a dance documentary nerd and find the genre is sadly very sparse. The very best dance film ever is this one.

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Not seen, or mentally blocked: Robogeisha.

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Wow…thanks for the heads-up!

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Sadly, from what Jackson’s said, it was purely a time issue. There’s simply so much material to cover, and when he tried to fit in the Scouring, he found that it’s such an intense, dense chapter of the book that there was no real way to trim or simplify it. To do it justice would have added another 20-30 minutes onto an already nearly-four-hour film and add another ‘ending’. I agree that I’d love to see it, and that Saruman’s death seemed very goofy. But we probably would’ve needed a “RotK part 1” and “part 2” for it to be feasible.

The LotR films are a great example of movies that people already had in their head before they saw them. For people who wanted to see film versions of Alan Lee/John Howe drawings and who went in knowing Peter Jackson’s sense of whimsy, they were wonderful. But I think a lot of people had exactly what kind of movie they wanted to see in their head, going in, and when elements were missing from that vision, they wrote the movies off.

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So hard to pick the single worst movie I’ve seen…

My award for “Stinky Mega-Blockbuster” goes to: The Matrix trilogy. I confess I did enjoy these, but I remember walking out of the first one, still high, laughing at how bad (but equally entertaining) this movie was. The Wachowskis seem to have a particular talent for making visually stunning tripe.

“Most Unworthy Sequel”: The Godfather Part 3. Some may argue that this only looks bad in comparison to the first two, and it isn’t really all that bad a film if taken on its own merits. Sure, if you ignore minor details like writing and acting.

Worst reboot: (Abrams + Star Trek) x 2 = -∞.

For “WTF Were the Critics and/or Academy Thinking?” I nominate The Town, with runner up Argo. I just don’t get, at all, what anyone likes about Ben Affleck’s acting and directing. Seems so wooden and contrived to me. I remember rolling my eyes and/or laughing derisively all the way through The Town. Argo admittedly is not exactly terrible, but were it not for the patriotic angle it would just be a nice bit of Saturday afternoon fluff. Best Picture? Seriously? Plus, it offends me as a Canadian.

Almost so bad it’s good, but not quite: Freddy Got Fingered. What do you get when you give a Hollywood budget to a gross-out comedian who rose to stardom via cable-access TV? This… this… thing. Runners up: Every Adam Sandler movie ever, except Punch Drunk Love and Funny People.

Worst movie by a superstar man-child that’s supposed to demonstrate his ability to be serious for a change: Punch Drunk Love.

Worst beloved holiday classic: It’s A Wonderful Life. I just can’t sit through this one more time.

So bad it’s wonderful: obviously, The Room. Cool story.

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Still doesn’t beat James May’s attempt that lost him his job at Autocar.

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Honestly, I can see both these things. There is lots of love and respect for Tolkien’s world to be found in those movies, mostly in the form of lovingly crafted details. The over-all structure, though, diverges more and more from the tone and nature of his stories. For instance, not only is nimelennar right about the scouring of the shire, but between that and the ghosts-do-it-all battle I’d say the whole nature and point of the victory has become entirely different.

If we care about the opinion of Tolkien scholars, well, here is one of the finest:

But while I understand his view, it’s still not mine. Like nungesser’s scholar friend, I really am fond of the first movies, especially The Fellowship of the Ring. Sure, it may be a question of just good scenes and actors, but they were more than good enough to win me over. I’ll especially second Boromir for being a great reading of the character, more subtle than most people I know had noticed from the book. If that’s just fooling me into liking it, well then, well played.

From there, though, the incoherence and point-missing really does build. By The Battle of Five Armies I think Abe may actually be overly generous – to me it was only “not the worst” in the most literal sense. By which I mean, it was one of only two trilogies I couldn’t quite finish, but I’d say the other one still does come closer to this title.

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Oh yes! I so want to see that one. I have seen Machine Girl and Karate-Robo Zaborgar. Noboru Iguchi makes super crazy bad and fun films. Anything from Sushi Typhoon can be a fun viewing Alien Vs. Ninja I got on a whim from the library and just giggled as the absurdity of it the whole time. These could get old if you marathon watched them but if you like over the top crazy action/gore they are quite fun.

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Isn’t it just! It’s one of those magical films (including a few Powell & Pressburgers) I keep coming back to.

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Maybe cut out the Oliphant surfing?

I cannot take Jackson’s “there wasn’t enough time” proclamations seriously when he took the battles that were ~5% of the book and made them into ~50% of the movie.

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