Terrible Movies Everybody Thinks Are Great

In the previous post, Pete made the great point that Easy Rider, though critically lauded and generationally “important,” is a rollicking piece of rock-hard shit. He’s completely right, Easy Rider is a terrible movie. It’s offensively bad. Like, that scene around the campfire, when Peter Fonda introduces pot to Jack Nicholson with that haughty “This is grass, man” bullshit? Ugh, Easy Rider makes me never want to smoke pot ever again. But it is truly inexplicable that this movie is revered by some. Were hippies that excited to finally have some sort of Hollywood representation that they didn’t mind that the movie is turgid nonsense? I guess so. Dear hippies, go fuck yourselves. Best regards, America.

But more importantly, Pete’s post led me to think of many other movies that are universally hailed, but which are, in fact, terrible. And that gives me the excuse to break out another list!

Scarface – Brian De Palma, 1983
Fuck this movie. The fact that every asshole brah has this poster on their dorm room wall just solidifies my argument. This movie is a textbook of clichés and stereotypes. Pacino’s accent seems to come from the same school where Robin Williams got his 70s black guy voice. It is probably the dumbest movie ever made.

Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola, 1979
Pete disagrees with me about this movie. That’s fine. I accept that intelligent folks often differ in their reactions to art. That’s cool. And to be fair, is Apocalypse Now as intellectually offensive to me as, say, Avatar or Transformers? No, it is not. It’s a film that is trying for something. It has ambition and pretense and lofty aspirations -- all great things for art to have. But Apocalypse Now fails miserably in its reach. It’s a film with some great parts, but when put together, those parts don’t mean anything. It wants to make important statements about war and power and the evil within everyone, all while trying to channel Joseph Conrad for a post-Vietnam and post-Watergate America. It wants so much to be important and to say something, but it ultimately ends up saying nothing. However, I highly recommend Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. It’s incredible how much it shows Coppola’s struggle to make this film, with all his fears, doubts, worries, and panic right out in the open.

Magnolia – Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999
When I worked at that video store, there was no more divisive movie than Magnolia among the staff. People either loved it completely or hated it vehemently. Guess which side I was on. Anderson’s opus about broken people in L.A. shares at least one thing with Apocalypse Now: hubris. For Apocalypse, Coppola had just come off making the first two Godfather films and The Conversation, three of the best films ever made. He had power and influence, and he wanted next to make something grandiose. Same thing with Anderson: his first two films, Hard Eight and Boogie Nights, had set him up as the next big director, a kind of GenX-Scorsese, if you will. So with Magnolia, he went for big and epic. And that’s my first problem with it: dude needed someone to reign him in, someone to tell him that he was going too far off the rails. There’s a good movie in Magnolia somewhere, but as it stands, that good movie is lost in a marathon of overacting and ham-fisted conflict. Magnolia is so ponderous, religious, and bloated. There's a black child Christ representation (who also raps!), and both characters that had sexually abused their children are dying of cancer in their old age. That's right: cancer is God's revenge for pederasts. Brilliant! Almost all the scenes involve bottled-up characters slowly losing their shit and actors chewing scenery as they crumble in front of us. And holy fuck, the frog plague ending. Jesus Fuck Me Christ.

Here’s the thing that really bothers me about Magnolia: it has two of the best sequences in modern film history. The opening sequence, a prologue about coincidence and fate, is maybe one of the best openings to a movie I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing how efficiently and effectively it tells three disconnected stories. It’s a marvel of concise filmmaking. And then it’s followed by the opposite of concise storytelling for its remaining 170 minutes, which is so baffling and frustrating. The other amazing part is the sing-along montage. Each character, bitter and alone, sings along with Amy Mann’s “Wise Up” playing on the soundtrack. It’s a magical moment, one that breaks the fourth wall and adds pathos to each character in a stunningly beautiful way. Then it’s over, and we go back to a scene in which Julianne Moore again screams at somebody and says “cock” a lot. Epic fail.

E.T. – Steven Spielberg, 1982
I could have put any Spielberg movie on this list, but this is the one that pisses me off the most. Almost all Spielberg movies are about searching for a father figure, and in E.T. that theme is constantly hammered down the audience’s throat. Lonely boy misses his dad, finds an alien, calamity ensues, and the happy ending is sugar coated by his mom finding a new boyfriend. Awwwwwww. Spielberg finds comfort in patriarchy, and that is a gross, overly simplistic, and downright banal way of thinking.

Rebel Without A Cause – Nicholas Ray, 1955
James Dean acts in this film as if he has a tack in his shoe, and all he has to do to be happy is to take the tack out, but he’s such a douche he does nothing about the tack. The movie supposedly gets to the heart of a new generation and explores the dissatisfaction of people who white, privileged, and good looking. There is nothing about this movie even remotely interesting or real. It feels like it was written by a 40-year-old trying to make fun of kids today, but nobody knew it was supposed to be funny. Dean just sulks and whines and bellyaches for two hours, with no motivation or the slightest bit of development or character arc. So shitty.

The Shawshank Redemption – Frank Darabont, 1994
It’s about time somebody called bullshit on this movie. Yes, it has a terrific ending, and the last 20 minutes are great. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that the previous 2 ½ hours are filled with a completely boring collection of prison movie clichés. Bird metaphor, check. Imprisoned innocent man, check. A group of cell block rapists, got it. Movie-themed posters, double check. An evil warden, yep. A plan to escape, check and mate. This movie gets great after Tim Robbins escapes and Morgan Freeman gets paroled, but before that, this movie is bullshit.

The Usual Suspects – Bryan Singer, 1995
Same thing goes for The Usual Suspects. It has a very clever ending, but that doesn't atone for two hours of shitty acting, hackneyed characters, and Chazz Palminteri. Plus, the shitty Baldwin and Kevin Pollack acting like a tough guy. The worst!

The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Titanic, Avatar – James Cameron, 1989 – 2009
Yes, these movies are technically impressive, but so fucking what? The characters are all one-note, the plots are borrowed from somewhere else, and the writing is wooden and laughably silly. If Cameron could just admit to himself that he’s a fucking awful writer, then maybe he could hand over his ideas to somebody competent at story structure and character development, and finally make a good film. But why would he care? His movies print money, and he can do whatever he wants for the rest of his life, which I assume does not include the desire to make at least one decent movie.