Slightly Brown wrote:


I will not hear a word against Soldier. It's an excellent movie, especially when it's 11.30, you've had several beers and you know you should be going to bed, but need some reason to justify emptying the fridge of all alcohol and then go creeping into bed with what you imagine is ninja stealthiness but which actually causes extremely stern words from your other half in the morning.

I really like both Four Weddings... and Notting Hill, and have seen both multiple times - so it's fair to say I'm not at all averse to that kind of film.

Love Actually, however, I just can't bear. Schmaltzy, nauseating, implausible (even in the context of the genre) and most of all downright irritating. It's just terrible.

But the only film I've ever had to actually stop watching halfway through because I physically couldn't make it through to the end is the aforementioned Very Bad Things. An abomination.

And my admission for this thread: I've seen, re-seen, and enjoyed all four of the American Pie movies. Ditto Road Trip.

I love, and stand by, eight Adam Sandler comedies.

Harry Truscott wrote:
City?

I've seen Dear John. Twice.

Twice

Hofzinser wrote:


Funny that. Mrs. Sits is a bit keen on this so we watch it relatively regularly and, now I think about it, perhaps it irritates me a little more each time. The way Keira Knightley simpers as a soppy-faced Andrew Lincoln channels Bob Dylan at her front door. The way Emma Thompson says "Joni Mitchell". The way the boy playing Liam Neeson;s son smiles at the girl who sings the Mariah Carey Christmas song. The Mariah Carey Christmas song (although I prefer the young girls's version). Hugh Grant doing that Pointer Sisters thing everyone thought was so funny.

Anyway, none of this is doing me, or anyone else, any good. Well maybe I feel a bit better.

Hofzinser wrote:


So you've still got the joy of the straight to DVD sequels featuring the neighbour of a cousin of one of the characters in the original films.

Fussbudget wrote:


Ah, it's a state is it? Does the airport exist? If so, are there many airports named after states not cities? That would be confusing.

Hofzinser wrote:


There is a lot wrong with 'Love, Actually' (most of it coming from Curtis directing as opposed to just writing it) which should make it an unwatchable mess but it somehow pulls through to mean more to me than 'Notting Hill' (which I am also a big fan of) , if not 'Four Weddings...' which is his best movie.

To me, his career is very much like Van Halen's: the Blackadders,'Four Weddings...', 'Notting Hill' and 'Bridget Jones' Diary' are his 'Van Halen I', 'Van Halen II', 'Women and Children First' and 'Fair Warning'.

'Love Actually' is his 'Diver Down' , a flawed, all over the place, fragmented work but one whose charming idiocy and general joie de vivre means you return to it more than most of the others.

I'm interested to see what his time-travelling new one will be like (especially after his Dr Who work), it might be his '1984' (please note, for the sake of my Van Halen simile and my own sanity, I have avoided 'The Boat That Rocked').

That kid in Love Actually, aaaargh.

That is so nearly a good film, with some great acting.

I get the joke about gorgeous American girls fancying ugly Brits, but that was overdone.

First date with my wife: Airheadz featuring Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler. We're still together, but it's become a more embarrasing first date movie to tell people as we've got older.

Worst films watched:
Hideous Kinky
Waiting to Exhale (although I only saw the first bit of this)
Rango (again, haven't seen it all)
Barnyard (cartoon)
Meet the Robinsons (Disney cartoon - unwatchable)
Love Actualy for many of the reasons upthread and probably a few more
Clerks II
Batman & Robin (again, not seen it all the way through)

I have say I kind of enjoyed Airheads. If you think about it, it essentially has the same plot as The King of Comedy.

I thought Rango was ace. It went on a bit, but it has some wonderful surrealist touches and it looked fantastic. The John Huston-like character from Chinatown was also nicely done.

Evil Dead is great. Not as brilliant as Evil Dead 2, and with one particularly wrongheaded scene, but it's still one of the best horror films ever. It doesn't belong on anyone's roll of shame. Except perhaps Raimi's, for the aforementioned scene.

Rango (again, haven't seen it all)

Highly watchable, but I think it has trouble making its mind up which audience it appeals to. It's supposed to be a family film, but darn if I know what kind of family it's supposed to be. That said, it's a visual treat.

I've never walked out of a film showing in a multiplex, but I've seen some right old crapola on the telly mostly as a test of my resolve: if I can sit through (insert name of wanky movie here) I can sit through anything. But some movies are a test too far - if it proves too twattish and unedifying a spectacle to endure I turn over to something else.

Fred Claus is an example. It's a big pile of pony anyway, but I gave up when a scene involving lawyers and counsellors arguing over Santa Claus's business affairs turned up. In a kid's film? The tone of the whole thing was so uneven as to appear in the form of a cinematic speedbump. You could feel the hands of a committee underneath the whole thing, putting it together with all the warmth and care of a corpse.

Billy Madison Only Adam Sandler movie I've seen. Only one I ever will see. One day, I might be tempted to see Punch Drunk Love, but that day's a long way off.

Cobra and Rambo: First Blood Part 2 This must've been when I was in a phase where my lack of taste was at its most potent and, for reasons best known to myself, paid to see these chunks of crap that best exhibit Sylvester Stallone's need to indulge in the kind of cinematic ego-trip that he wishes he could fulfil in real life. Those reasons best known to myself I have now forgotten, but, rest assured, taste and discernment weren't involved. Three pints of shame juice, barman.

Cowboys and Aliens When the best Bond in years teams up with the guy who wielded the whip, went to light speed, and was dangled off the edge of a building by a replicant, and when they come up with a title that put two genre elements together and instils a supertanker worth of teasing promise before your needy senses, then you reach for the number of a professional hitman when all they can produce is a shitty, dull and stoutly humourless pile of old cock as Cowboys and Aliens. It's like getting the best orchestra in the world and then asking them to play the Crossroads theme in the style of a pissed old tramp. A waste of near hateful proportions.

The Underworld films. Let's get one thing straight: getting upon one's highest horse, I decree that to have a franchise, one must ensure that at least the characters, story and concept must be attractive and of interest enough to sustain the need to produce more than one film based upon them. That said, all the flash, bang wallop in the world couldn't protect my senses from being plonked into a state of unadulterated narcolepsy by a bunch of snarling, bloatedly boring bunch of vampires and werewolves in eternal conflict with each other. When vampires and werewolves meet in bloody combat, that'll be your insomnia worries flying out the window, because Horror Nytol is now on sale in your local alternative universe, gurning hatefully at you as it tries to make you believe that vampires and lycans battling for supremacy is an epic struggle worth being involved in. No, it ain't. It's an epic struggle to stop your upper eyelids meeting your lower eyelids in a prelude to the most guttural of sounds: snoring. I must have missed the sequence where a battalion of lycans invade an Ovaltine factory and start making cups of malt-based sleepy gloop. I've now seen all four films on telly, mainly because there's a good Saturday night movie concept in there (vampire/werewolf punch-ups), but mainly because I've been hunting for the one element that's missing in all of them that never turns up: humour. That's the drawback when the undead and the vulpine meet - they forget to bring some fucking jokes with them.

And many, many more, etc...

_{I, um, kind of liked Underworld, the first two anyway}

I did once, watch all 3 Cube films, at the same time.

I think I nearly got the point, but I ran out of LSD.

Harry Truscott wrote:

Not sure if there's a Wisconsin airport but that clip suggests the airport is Milwaukee International, which doesn't seem to actually exist either.

Incidentally that clip also makes Love Actually look like the worst film ever made.

ian.64 wrote:

Applause.