Films to be avoided

[Testure]

Steve Martin's pathetic attempts to replicate Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther remakes. The sheer fucking audacity of Hollywood that because something is old they can remake it better than the original. Not this time sunshine . Its was attrocious

and add the same to original foreign fims which end up just saccarine coated shells of the true original

Some more terrible remakes:

The Avengers
The Prisoner

[Testure]

Precisely why I included "You may not know" :-)

Some more
Fitzcaralldo (Herzog)
Aguirre Wrath of God (Herzog)

Love those 2 Herzog films and also Nosferatu the Vampyre

I think your 2 lists deserves a seperate thread

[meninblack]

and add the same to original foreign fims which end up just saccarine coated shells of the true original

Some more terrible remakes:

The Avengers
The Prisoner

That Prisoner re-make was a travesty. I watched the first couple of episodes but just couldn't go on....

[bohemian]

Precisely why I included "You may not know" :-)

Some more

Vertigo (Hitchcock)
Obsession (DePalma - based on Vertigo)
The Secret Lives of Others
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder)
A Mighty Wind (Better than Spinal Tap IMO - hilarious)
Citizen Kane (Of course)
Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore)
Umberto D (De Sica)
Fitzcaralldo (Herzog)
Aguirre Wrath of God (Herzog)

Many many more but that should get you going. :-)

Is this seriously a list of films to avoid? I think not.

[Leonard Smalls]

FILMS NOT TO BE AVOIDED YOU MAY NOT KNOW:

The Passenger (Antonioni)
The Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
Don't Look Now (Roeg)
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich)
Amarcord (Fellini)
Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
Baaria (Tornatore)
Gone to Earth (Powell)
Suspiria (Argento)

And there are many more - "the beautiful fraud" - Goddard

I watched "The Passenger" after reading "best film in the world" type reviews.
And it was turgid shite, I'm afraid. Jack Nicholson and some bird go round Spain being followed by a crap hitman. And nowt happens.
Here's the best scene:
Scene: Hotel room overlooking dry and dusty Spanish square. Jack is looking out of the window, Bird is lying on bed.
Bird: What do you see?
Camera pans over square, Jack continues looking. 10 minutes later
Jack: Dust
Cut to later. Jack on bed, Bird looking out of window.
Jack: What do you see?
Camera pans over square. Then pans over it again. Then cuts to Bird. Then pans over square. Hitman may or may not be in square. After 5 more minutes of no dialogue cut to next scene.

In other words, it epitomises all that's bad about art house cinema. It's tedious, pretentious, terrid pish.

[Professor Chaos]

FILMS NOT TO BE AVOIDED YOU MAY NOT KNOW:

The Passenger (Antonioni)
The Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
Don't Look Now (Roeg)
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich)
Amarcord (Fellini)
Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
Baaria (Tornatore)
Gone to Earth (Powell)
Suspiria (Argento)

And there are many more - "the beautiful fraud" - Goddard

I cried the first time I viewed the final scenes of The Battle of Algiers . . . what a powerful film


Films to be avoided; anything connected to M Night Shyamalan, hackneyed shite.

[Marthas dad]

Is this seriously a list of films to avoid? I think not.

No Bohemian - this is a list of recommended films. ie films NOT to avoid.

[Leonard Smalls]

No Bohemian - this is a list of recommended films. ie films NOT to avoid.

Apart from The Passenger...

[Marthas dad]

I watched "The Passenger" after reading "best film in the world" type reviews.
And it was turgid shite, I'm afraid. Jack Nicholson and some bird go round Spain being followed by a crap hitman. And nowt happens.
Here's the best scene:
Scene: Hotel room overlooking dry and dusty Spanish square. Jack is looking out of the window, Bird is lying on bed.
Bird: What do you see?
Camera pans over square, Jack continues looking. 10 minutes later
Jack: Dust
Cut to later. Jack on bed, Bird looking out of window.
Jack: What do you see?
Camera pans over square. Then pans over it again. Then cuts to Bird. Then pans over square. Hitman may or may not be in square. After 5 more minutes of no dialogue cut to next scene.

In other words, it epitomises all that's bad about art house cinema. It's tedious, pretentious, terrid pish.

I really find it impossible to comment on this post other than to say I find it impossible to comment on this post (although I just have). Well, there's always 'Inception'.
Antonioni - genius - knows the secret of silence (and has a grip on geography). Interesting early cameo from Steven Berkoff too and a camera shot in the league of Omar Shariff in Lawrence of Arabia coming out of the Desert. Bliss.

[Marthas dad]

Ahem - 'Bird' is Maria Schneider who died earlier this year and was renowned for her role in Last Tango in Paris.

[misterpete]

No, you're thinking of "Deepthroat". Deepthrat is completely different.

If I remember, in deepthrat she died of thrat cancer.

[Leonard Smalls]

Ahem - 'Bird' is Maria Schneider who died earlier this year and was renowned for her role in Last Tango in Paris.

To tell you the truth, I found Last Tango in Paris rather dull as well!
Still, I like Mike Leigh fillums (in general), so not averse to films where nowt happens. But I do like some sort of attempt at characterisation, rather than assuming that silence says it all...
To put that into further context, my favourite movies are probably:
The Tin Drum
The Beat That My Heart skipped
The Terminator
Spinal Tap

[Leonard Smalls]

And of course, Bad Boy Bubby...

[Marthas dad]

If you like Spinal Tap then watch A Mighty Wind, a friend of minw who has asthma laughed so much we almost had to call 999

[meninblack]

Rick - Steven Seagal
Ilsa - Jennifer Aniston
Victor Laszlo - Hugh Grant
Capitan Renault - Jean-Claude Van Damme
Major Strasser - Nick Frost
Signor Ferrarri - Ricky Gervais
Signor Ugarte - Jude Law

Dir. M Night Shamalamadingdong

[Valvebloke]

Ken Russell's 'The Devils' should be avoided if you've just eaten. I first saw it more than 30 years ago at the Penultimate Picture Palace in Oxford because my room-mate had encouraged me to go out (he may even have paid me) so he and his girlfriend could, er, 'have the room to themselves' for the afternoon. Anyway at the PPP you queued outside one door while the crowd who'd seen the previous showing came out of the one immediately alongside. I swear they just looked at us and shook their heads. Some of them were green. Others had their hands over their mouths. These days we've got used to films being a bit unsavoury but in 1978 this was A Big Deal. I went in though. It would've been uncomradely to go back home quite so quickly ...

Talking of the PPP and recalling Nicholas Roeg (see above) I went there very late one night - they used to do midnight showings as well as matinees - for 'The Man Who Fell To Earth'. I thought it was excellent despite having David Bowie in it (not really an actor, let's be honest). My opinion might have been coloured a bit by the fact that I and the crowd of friends I was with had been drinking steadily and hard for nearly 12 hours by this point. I could barely see. One of the crowd was a friend I'd signed out of hospital that morning. She'd been in for attempted suicide and we all (including her dad, who'd got into town shortly after lunch) thought she needed cheering up. By the time we got to the cinema we were all much, much more poisoned with alcohol than she had been 48 hours earlier with aspirin.

Last of the PPP memories is 'Harold and Maude'. I don't like the music and in the end the whole film is too naive and sentimental. But it has some of the funniest lines and sight gags I've ever seen:

Psychiatrist: Tell me, Harold, how many of these, eh, *suicides* have you performed?
Harold: An accurate number would be difficult to gauge.
Psychiatrist: Well, just give me a rough estimate.
Harold: A rough estimate? I'd say
[savoring the thought]
Harold: fifteen.
Psychiatrist: Fifteen?
Harold: That's a rough estimate.
Psychiatrist: Were they all done for your mother's benefit?
Harold: No...... No....... I would not say "benefit."

VB

[meninblack]

Harold and Maude is brilliant - the E-type hearse.

[Interzone]

No Bohemian - this is a list of recommended films. ie films NOT to avoid.

Er, so why list them on this thread?????

I thought the departed was a pool of diarrhoea but I know I'm in a minority there....

[meninblack]

This thread has a split personality.

Like Jedward in the upcoming blockbuster, Dr Jedd and Mr Ward

[Jezzer]

Well Jez and I rather disagree on Black Swan (), which I hated, but I definitely agree on Dark Star. Once Upon a Time in the West is an absolute classic. Long, violent in places, but a superb bit of cinema with an incredible score too.

Only because you spoiled the ending for me ya bastard! TBH, Black Swan is 'ok'. It's hardly a classic.

Here's something definitely worth avoiding:

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky - a yawnfest of the highest order and the 'cinematography' is so dark I had to turn the brightness and contrast right up on my telly (not that there was anything worth watching anyway)