~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

First off, I agree that L.A. Confidential lives up to the hype, that was an amazing film. I'm kind of on a middle ground with Titanic, but I know a lot more people who hate than who love it, so I usually wind up sort of defending it. Yes, much of the dialogue between the leads was banal (Cameron needs to stop writing his own dialogue), the film was way too long, and Billy Zane's character was ridiculously over the top, However, in some ways the film delivered things that had never been seen before: the reconstructed Titanic was astonishing, the sinking of the ship was a fantastic sequence that really sucked you in and made you feel like you were there, and at times the film was stirring and epic in a way that few modern movies are. So basically it was a ridiculously inconsistent film that was way overrated by critcs, and won far too many Oscars, but it was by no means outright terrible. I still think that it is certainly worth watching.

As for films everyone loves but me:

First and foremost:

A Clockwork Orange:

Why this film is considered so amazing is beyond me. The only recommendable thing about it is Malcolm MacDowell's excellent performance. Kubrick seems to have forgotten everything he knows about directing for this film... the cinematography and editing totally lacks any sense of style, the camera just sits there while random acts of violence take place on beautiful sets. Many scenes drag on pointlessly for four or five times the length they should last. It's like some random stage director made it. The concept is interesting but it's all taken from the far superior book. And this isn't even to mention that Kubrick completely misses the point of the story, turning Alex into some authority defying hero, rather than the immature, pitiable character he is in the book. Basically the film just sits there, admiring its sets, trying to be shocking, and lacking any reason to exist.

Scarface:

Fun B gangster movie that should've been about 90 minutes long, and realized what it was. Instead it's 3 hours long and thinks it's another Godfather, just because it's got Al Pacino. Pleasurable on the most immediate level (tough guy one liners, tons of violence, hot chicks, great music), but nothing more. Pacino's performance is hilariously over the top as is the whole film. Michelle Pfeiffer turns in the only performance that could actually be called good acting. This is good as a cheesy exploitation film, but a cinematic masterpiece? Really?

Forrest Gump:

Horribly sappy, sentimental film with an embarrassing performance from Tom Hanks. Not to mention it unforgivably took the Best Picture Oscar from the incredibly great Pulp Fiction.

Fight Club:

Excellent performances all around, but the effort is wasted on this dumb story. This is a decent, energetic, entertaining film, but people seem to think it's really deep or something, when it's at least as shallow as your typical Hollywood blockbuster. Not to mention the utterly nonsensical, cheap, cliched twist and the movie's inability to decide whether it's glorifying or denouncing anarchy.

Dark City:

I enjoyed it but it's just not that great. Proyas's The Crow was much better.

Requiem for a Dream:

Not even close to one of the best drug movies ever made. Good perfomances and a great soundtrack, but this lacks focus and the music video style shooting is irritating. Aronofsky is so overrated. Anyone who thought this was eye opening should watch Trainspotting, which blows this out of the water.

Batman Begins and The Prestige:

Decent films but not particularly memorable; certainly not worthy of the immensely talented Christopher Nolan.

Weekend:

Kind of interesting but difficult to watch, and it ultimately just doesn't work. Disappointing film from Godard that makes you wonder if his earlier films were really that great in the first place.

Films that only I love:

Insomnia (remake): Amazing film, one of my favorites, with many wonderful sequences. Slow paced yet breathtakingly intense. Al Pacino turns in one of his best performances, and drives the whole film. Though I realize it's not as good a film as Memento on one level, I like it just as much, if not more. A really visually amazing film. Hilary Swank does a ton with a character that would be boring in anyone else's hands. Sure Robin William's killer isn't as scary as he should be, but when the rest of the film is this amazing it hardly matters, especially since he doesn't really come into play till the second half. I really love Nolan for this and Memento.

INLAND EMPIRE:

For now. I have little doubt that this will be regarded as a cinematic masterpiece in 20 or so years. But then again Blue Velvet has yet to be regarded as highly as it should be...

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

  I know, 90 bloody minutes...and by the time you've listened to that turgid "love" song all you want to do is hack at your own wrists, never mind have a shag.  The best bit of that film was watching the bodies ping about the ship like pinballs - when it finally sank, that is...

...anywho.  Back on topic.  Films that everyone else seems to love and I really don't:

Casino Royale.  Daniel Craig does nothing for me in the role.  I like Bond films, but this was trying too hard for me.

It would be easier for me to do a list of films I love but no-one else does.  There's shedloads of those... 

My theory by A. Elk, brackets, Miss, brackets. This theory goes as follows and begins now. All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end. That is my theory, it is mine, and it belongs to me, and I own it, and what it is, too.

Ange's Odyssey

My thread-inappropriate counterarguments:

A) It's a comedy.

B) The protagonist can't decide whether to glorify or denounce anarchy either, so it's moral tone, or lack, seems fitting to me. In fact, I could argue that this is what the story is essentially about.

C) Considering the uproar over Rosie O'Donnell's on-air spoiler at the time, I could argue that calling the twist cliched in 2007 relies on some hindsight. Bruce-Willis-is-a-ghost is a t-shirt punchline now, but it wasn't in 1999. And I figured out Keyser Soze halfway through my first viewing of The Usual Suspects, which made the rest of the film a lot less fun, but I would still argue that it wouldn't be much of a film without that twist.

It's not a political movie, it's a personal allegorical story about disillusionment, loss of self and the meaningful social context that makes self possible, the inevitability of facing this question in modern western life, and the weird power/powerlessness dynamic that is the unique territory of the young white male of the species.

To me, criticizing Fight Club for being a shallow political movie is a lot like criticizing Lawrence of Arabia for being a poor primer on British policy in the Middle East, or Chinatown for being a lousy exposé of the water authority...

Which is certainly not to say that you should love the movie!

[/rant -- shoulda started a Fight Club thread instead of starting a bad precedent.]

There is this professor at my school who finds a way to teach Fight Club in all of her classes.  It's junk food, you can't eat it all the time.  But yeah. For a while there every guy I dated was all about it and used to get so mad when I called it a "chick flick."

Ok, first off there is no way that David Fincher intended Fight Club to be 100% a comedy, or else he just has an odd idea of comedy. There are funny parts, but I don't think this could strictly be called a comedy... more like a satire. Secondly the split personality twist is just stupid and was certainly way overdone long before Fight Club hit screens... unlike the Sixth Sense twist. Also the Sixth Sense twist doesn't contradict... well anything that comes before it in the movie, whereas in Fight Club 50% of the movie no longer makes sense. And argument C. is a great example of how people attempt to get deep insights out of this movie... the makers of the film were too preoccupied with sensationalist action sequences and clever one liners to imbue this film with any real thought or coherency... it sort of proclaims it's themes loudly only to never really do anything with them. Not to mention the film has that weird homophobic/homoerotic contrast going on which is only getting more popular these days not that 300 has been released. That said I did like the first third quite a bit (which should really have been the opening for a very different, much better film).

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

My last word on Fight Club is a link I've posted here before, and might even have picked up here: http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=29_0_2_0

Un-derailing the thread, I'll nominate Rebel Without a Cause.  I failed to find the film involving or the star captivating.  I remember there were elements of it that I liked, but the fact that I can't remember any of them now speaks to the strength of the impression the movie made on me...

I enjoyed LA Confidential and it got me interested in seeing Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe on down the road in future films.

I liked A Clockwork Orange and enjoy Scarface for its surface value and apparently a lot less than many of my friends, so the reverse of this thread could be said of this one. Love Fight Club, beause as Jaime said, it's a comedy (and I loved your thesis statement which referenced Lawrence of Arabia and Chinatown, that was priceless!)  And Batman Begins, c'mon, Yeah, Nolan might have sold out a little, but it's the best film this franchise has had in eons and The Prestige, I think it is best film post-Memento, a gorgeous looking film that I think is well-acted and all that. (Don't get m wrong, because I really like Insomnia as well)  That is all for now.

p.s. I have heard a few people say they didn't like American Gangster, but only because, I guess, they thought it was going to be action packed and when it wasn't, they found it boring.     

"Every day holds a new beginning and every hour holds the promise of an Invitation to Love." 

Yeah, Sixth Sense still pisses me off to this day. I have a general bone to pick with Shyamalan anyhow. The one movie of his that I thought was worth something was the one shit on by practically everyone (Unbreakable) and the rest of his films are just mindless trite crap. But he's loved by many who will defend his work to their very last dying breath. I'm all about giving us a twist...go right ahead, twist away. But his twists are ridiculously easy to spot galloping at you from a mile away. Not to mention that he likes to "drop hints" throughout his films that end up being more like a brick to the face than a tap on the shoulder. Which pisses me off even more when people get all "OMG How brilliant! THE TWIST! DEAR GOD THE TWIST!" and I'm thinking "You're too stupid to stay upright on your own."
 

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

We are sexy and others are jealous.

Oh man...Lady in the Water. And to be honest, I really wanted to like the film. It sounded like it could have potential (like all of Shyamalan's films, really...in trailers and on paper, they sound like they'd be entertaining!) but it's just like you said...a complete mess. I'm like "Who are you again? Wait, which one is the guardian? Hey, those seven fat chicks aren't going to get naked before they dance, are they?"

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

Crash.  The LA story with all those coinky-dinks. Oh, how I hated that movie!  I didn't even know when I watched it first that the writer-director was a Scientologist.  That information helps me hate it more as time goes by.  It's winning an undeserved Academy Award (like that's rare, huh?) only added to my disdain. I'm settled down on Crash nowadays but for that year when it was buzz city, I couldn't believe my loneliness in hating it. If that film convinced a single LA writer-director to give Scientology a shot, I hate it all over again.

Didn't like the earlier Crash either but that wasn't even close to being a film that "everyone loved."   

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

I am with you, Amanda on Unbreakable. The only M Night film I liked and own.

Fight Club, a comedy? Check out the Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, David Fincher commentary for details.   

"Every day holds a new beginning and every hour holds the promise of an Invitation to Love." 

Yes,

   I hated Crash as well, Thanks Susan

Does anyone else dislike the Rocky Series?????

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!