OT: Worst Movie That You Ever Watched

Submitted by Santa Clause on

Simple question. What is the worst movie that you've ever seen? I nominate Howard the Duck, although the more I watch it now the more I laugh from it being so bad. 

Zarniwoop

May 5th, 2016 at 6:01 PM ^

Maybe Johnny Mnemonic without thinking much.

It was just awful.

There was a movie that came out recently that had giant robots in it that were driven by humans.  People loved it.  Guy at work heartily recommended it. I shut it off 10 minutes in because I literally could have out-acted the lead actor if I were on horse tranquilizers.

Edit: Since I posted below - Highlander 2 was awful.  I loved H1 (I was young and the cinematography was outstanding).  H2 was just everything wrong with movies.

ST3

May 5th, 2016 at 7:13 PM ^

Bill Simmons used to write about "unintentionally" funny things. The dolphin in Johnny Mnemonic was the most unintentionally funny thing I've ever seen. It was a serious movie, but I just couldn't get past that stupid dolphin with the head gear in the fish tank.

Mabel Pines

May 5th, 2016 at 6:02 PM ^

The Horse Whisperer and Fair Game.  Just awful.  Cindy Crawford should not have ventured into movies.  Also a couple that "the experts" loved and I hated- True Grit (recent one) and the movie where the guy dragged around attempting to kill Josh Brolin.  I'll think of it...

edit: No country for old men!  

Blue Balls Afire

May 5th, 2016 at 6:47 PM ^

No Country for Old Men is one of my favorite movies of all time.  I think the ending is fantastic.  I know others can't stand the ending, but to me its one of the best ever in cinema.  

Back on topic, one of the worst movies for me was also a Cormac McCarthy adaption--The Counselor.  That fucking movie was so bad and made me so mad it totally turned me off to finish reading Blood Meridian even though I really enjoy the book and only have 20 pages left.  Yeah, The Counselor sucked THAT bad.

MichiganTeacher

May 5th, 2016 at 8:04 PM ^

Got to say I think McCarthy's an over-rated, pretentious hack, right up there with David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, et al. McCarthy's actually better than those two, but he's still in that category, in my opinion. Although I thought the movie for No Country for Old Men was decent, and far, far better than the book. At least it didn't send me running for the poem to restore my appreciation for the title line.

Back on topic, some of the Bratz movies my daughter watches are true torture to endure. Adult movies I tend to skip or walk out on if they're bad. I waited in the lobby for my wife when it became obvious that Marley was going to die. I thought that stinking movie was supposed to be a comedy. 

Everyone Murders

May 6th, 2016 at 8:41 AM ^

I can see the charge of "pretentious" being levelled at any of these authors, because you can always call ambitious works "pretentious".  I'm not even sure it's a damning charge, depending on who's leveling it.

But calling Thomas Pynchon a "hack" suggests to me that you haven't really read him or don't know what a "hack" is.  Gravity's Rainbow is a model of craftsmanship, and it's plain that every word is carefully considered.  The plot structure is intricate, the characters memorable, and the prose beautiful.  It is difficult to read (or at least it was for me), but layered and nuanced.  Pynchon is the exact opposite of a hack.

I am sympathetic to folks who are tired of people mooning over these authors as a means of validating their own literacy.  And I get that each of these authors may not be to a person's taste - I am bored to tears by Tchaikovsky, whereas others lap his music up.  So I understand that Pynchon (or DFW or McCarthy) may not be someone's style.  But to call them "hacks"?  Teacher, please.

As far as No Country For Old Men, I read the book and was amazed at how closely the film followed the book.  The memorable dialogue in that film was mostly direct from the novel.  Same with the character development. 

 

MichiganTeacher

May 7th, 2016 at 5:24 AM ^

Pynchon is the epitome of the hack. He's the academic industry's whore, hired to replace the corpse of James Joyce after the ivory tower's necrophilia was exhausted. He's a lapdog whose reward is gobbets of prestige slobbered from the maws of academes devouring his own work. He's the patronized wordstew porn-provider and procurer of obscurantist literature as a positional good to the effete, over-funded, and solipsistic self-professed scholarly class.

Defending Pynchon is like defending Joyce or Rauschenberg or $5000-a-bottle-wine. The value simply isn't there. And if everyone had it, you can bet the people who have it now would drop it and move the hell on.

Carefully considered? No doubt he carefully considered how his patrons would lick up his verbal extrusions. Like Damien Hirst, his calculus of conceit is exquisite. But hacks do not only work for pennies. 

 

 

MichiganTeacher

May 7th, 2016 at 5:39 AM ^

Maybe because you have a different idea than I do about how kids should grow up? And maybe because you can't imagine that someone can think differently than you do and still be a good person?

And damn right I waited in the lobby. I've got no stomach for watching animals die. If that's entertainment for you, great, it was for my wife too - but I had a lot more fun reading in the lobby. No accounting for tastes, is there?

rambouhh

May 6th, 2016 at 10:40 AM ^

Man, I guess if you only ever tried to read DFW's fiction you may think he is pretentious, but after reading his non fiction and listening to his speech 'this is water' you may change your mind. It's accessible and poignant. 'This is Water' is the best speech I have ever heard. It was a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College in 2005. I implore everyone to go to YouTube and listen to it.

MichiganTeacher

May 7th, 2016 at 6:25 AM ^

I just read the speech. I don't think it's pretentious. In fact, it makes me like DFW a little bit because it does seem to me that he's honestly trying to do his best and help those college graduates by sharing a moment with them in thought.

But honestly my thoughts on the content of the speech itself are not flattering. I mean, it's not the worst. But it tends to the hypocritical (he claims not to be the wise old fish, but he proceeds to dispense wisdom, for example, telling people to find something supernatural to worship); it's a bit simple and trite (my daughter's in kindergarten and I tell her to always think of other people's feelings); and it has its ugly moments (his 'comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life' taken for granted like that smacks of the bourgeois self-centeredness he's elsewhere - not here - railing against, although admittedly it's a good bet for most in his Kenyon college audience).

The main problem I have with the speech is that I can't relate. I've never felt like it's hard to do things that he claims are tremendously difficult. He talks like it's some amazing feat to consider other people's feelings. Like 'making it to 30, or 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head' is a grand achievement. Can't relate to that.

The whole thing strikes me as one of those speeches that make easy things sound hard, so that people can walk away from it with a probably unmerited shot of self-worth, thinking, 'Wow, I do that hard 'this is water' stuff already, so I must be pretty good. Go me.' 

Brimley

May 5th, 2016 at 6:09 PM ^

Coen brothers tend to inspire much love or much bleah, so I get your not liking True Grit and No Country.  That said, I loved every second of them, as I have everything the Coens have done since I saw Blood Simple in the 80s.

As for bad movies, I didn't like The Wall.  Totally heavy-handed even to a very young, very stoned Brimley who laughed most of the way through it.

Clarence Boddicker

May 6th, 2016 at 1:05 AM ^

Miller's Crossing is my favorite Coen Bros film and one of my favorites all time (I didn't like True Grit either but I loved No Country).

The dialog in Miller's is just amazing from start to finish. I mean, this from Eddie Dane: "I get you, smart guy. I know what you are. Straight as a corkscrew. Mr. Inside-Outski, like some goddamn Bolshevik picking up his orders from Yegg Central."