Donnie Darko. Everyone I grew up with raved about it but outside of a couple memorable/weird scenes, it’s not very good.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Very boring to me. Bunch of try hard’s seemed to enjoy it in my circle as lart of their “I do drugs, maaaaaan” identities.
Saving Private Ryan. I loved this movie growing up. Has some amazing combat scenes. I’m a fan of Tom Sizemore and Giovanni Ribisi. Pedo Hanks is great in many films. Edward Burns is solid in it. But the plot is such unbelievable dreck and Spielberg’s depiction of the German’s as either faceless targets or conniving weasels was bothersome. In a movie that long there was plenty of time to give some perspective on the opponents. Perhaps he could have cut back that dogshit scene with Ted Danson and Paul Giamatti. I still like it but I severely overrated it for most of my life.
The original Star Wars trilogy is shit. I loved it as a kid, it’s campy fun, but they just suck. Empire is easily the best. A New Hope is hack garbage but novel for the time. Jedi is hilariously bad. Just a pile of shit.
Forrest Gump. Massive movie in it’s day, many of my friends speak highly of it still. I find it to be cloying garbage with the most infeasible plot of all time until they started making movies where they pretended Seth Rogen was funny.
The Departed. Enjoyable enough but Infernal Affairs was way better. I love Jack Nicholson but he phoned in his performance in this movie. Damon and DiCaprio aren’t great to me. DiCaprio either whispers or yells in every scene he’s ever in, and Damon just bores me I don’t know why.
Speaking of Matt Damon, the Bourne films suck dick too. Damon and Stiles are just awful.
Saw the Shining mentioned. I love that movie. For me it creates an uneasy tension/tone throughout the entire film that I find incredibly hard to achieve. Very elaborate sets that add to the tone. I love the performances by Nicholson and Duvall (even though she often gets shit on for it), and I think it’s a good mystery in the sense of trying to figure out what’s real, what’s a dream or hallucination. It used jump scares sparingly and mostly stayed away from slasher tropes and mostly went with creating a profound sense of unease in the viewer. I personally enjoy that a lot in a horror/thriller. Also, many people read into themes about the moon landing, Vietnam war, wealthy/influential people being pedophiles, corrupt old money in America or the massacre of Natives in the US. I find the lack of clear interpretation to be fun in movies rather than being spoonfed a plot.
I get why some people don’t like it though. The performances are over the top (by design apparently, but still), it doesn’t really fit into the horror genre all that neatly, the plot really makes no sense on the surface because Nicholson began the movie insane, pretty much, rather than being driven insane by the house like in the novel. It also isn’t particularly scary for a horror at all, it’s mostly just unsettling throughout. It’s one of my favs though.
Completely agree on the Dark Knight trilogy sucking and 100% agree on how badly they fucked up Ras Al Ghul. I generally hate superhero garbage anyway, but holy shit is Liam Neeson terrible. He just fucking sucks ass in everything. Wooden as hell. Ledger, as has been stated, carried that franchise on his back. The intro scene to the 3rd movie was a strong action scene with good actors but beyond that is was forgettable trash.
