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BGonline.org Forums
All time best movie (OT)
Posted By: Jake Jacobs In Response To: All time best movie (OT) (Joe Russell)
Date: Monday, 15 July 2013, at 3:44 a.m.
Actually, I have never written it down, so the list changes. And it isn't very long, partly because I never wrote it down. One other member of the hall of shame is Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, a film the critics loved, but was pretentious claptrap. The film that used to be at the top of the list was 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I have tried over the years to talk myself into reconsidering it, and may have succeeded. It is either a masterpiece, or one of the longest, most boring movies ever made. I was enthralled in 1968, and appalled in 1978. after a decade that included the first Star Wars had greatly advanced our appreciation of what might be achieved with special effects. And while my philosophy professor at Roosevelt University, in the fall of 1969, spent an entire class analyzing the movie, I am not convinced that those really were the Platonic ideals our hero saw while whirling through the wormhole. But, I am feeling charitable this morning, so it is back to a masterpiece.
Speaking of boring three-hour movies, we have The Thin Red Line, and ... Well, the last Lars Von Trier movie I sat through was Dogtown, so that will do nicely as representative of his oeuvre. "Oeuvrerated!" says this critic.
And in a special circle of hell, down near the one for the people who package CDs, we have the makesr of the three most painful movies I ever sat through, critics' darlings all.
In third place is Punchdrunk Love, a collaboration between the maker of the worst gambling movie ever (probably an exaggeration, but 2/3 of my party walked out of Hard 8), and one of the most annoying comedians. (While we are punching P.T. Anderson, I liked his later movies better, but they are all somewhat overrated.)
In second place we have Oleanna. You'd have to see it to believe it, so my advice is: don't try to believe it! Actually, you would need to hear it. In every Mamet movie everyone winds up talking like Joe Mantegna, but listening to Oleanna even Joe Mantegna would cover his ears. The plot is totally contrived, shedding no light nor heat on the subject of sexual harassment. It is hard to imagine a writer serving up a worse treatment of the topic than Michael Crichton did in Disclosure, but Mamet shows why he is a giant. And it is hard to imagine a worst female lead than Demi Moore, but again, Mamet has a knack for casting his girlfriends in movies, when we wish he would cast them into the water as bait for a large carnivorous fish.
The worst of the worst is The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Roger Ebert, talking about The Third Man, wrote "...that zither music!" Me, talking about TC,TT,HW,& HL writes: "...that fucking violin!!!" The soundtrack sounds like someone took a saw to a Strad. It is rhythmical, relentlessly rhythmical. Without the violin the movie would only be long and nauseating, but with it? This is a horror show for the ages.
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