Is there a film that you enjoy enough to watch time and time again, but has one or two little flaws that bug you no matter how many times you see them? It could be a scene that doesn't fit in or drags on, a twist that you don't approve of, or just that one character you can't stand and will never warm up to.
Here I want you guys to list a movie or two that you'd like to take into the edit bay and mess with a little. I'd say only do movies that you like for now, since we can just name movies we hate that we'd like to mess with till the cows come home. I'd also say no animated movies right now, since I might make a thread for them later.
The first three that come to mind for me are
Psycho- If you know me, you know that I love this movie. I love the twists, I love the acting, I love the tension, and I especially love the script's balance of terror, subtlety and black humor. The writing on Psycho is pretty close to perfect.
Except near the very end. The actual ending ("Why she wouldn't harm a fly...") IS perfect, but the conversation with the psychologist just before needs some editing. I know Roger Ebert has famously mentioned this before, but the whole scene, even the first time I saw it long before I read Ebert's review, never sat right with me. Just take out that little bit Ebert recommended and there you go, an even easier contender for one of the greatest films ever.
Singin' in the Rain- The greatest musical ever? Well, it's not my favorite but I won't argue that claim for the Gene Kelly classic. Just about all the numbers are fantastic and beautifully done, even if they were studio leftovers, the actors are completely sincere in their roles, and it's a damn funny movie especially if you're a fan of old Hollywood.
The only thing that doesn't gel with me is the Modern Musical number. It just doesn't fit in with either the movie they're trying to make or the actual movie it's in. Just an overlong, dragged out dancing number that I don't think anyone could possibly sit through. If the rest of the movie wasn't as fun as it was, I don't think anyone would have sat through it this time, either.
Inglorious Basterds- Here's a more modern film to prove that I'm not just a fan of the oldies. :P
But seriously, say what you will about Tarantino, but the man knows how to pick a cast, and he's able to write his characters fine as well. Christoph Waltz gives a great performance that definitely deserved his Oscar win, but I think Brad Pitt's was sadly overlooked. Aldo Raine and Hans Landa are a great contrasting couple of characters who help make for a fun war picture.
But the dialogue can go on forever, even by Tarantino's standards. One thing is that there are four different languages being spoken in the film, and while I'd like to think he did this as a message to unify everyone during the war, that's too humanitarian for Tarantino, who likes to find the sickest parts of his characters and mutilate them into likability.
There's a few different sequences that I can think of which should be trimmed up a little. Once I get the chance to watch it again, I'll list a few in particular.
My father loved IB, but hated how long it was. Unfortunately, that's Tarantino. The man can't edit anything.
I'd change The Mist. It was a pretty good horror movie except... The ending is all kinds of forced and completely awful. It should of ended on the car drive out. Maybe add some dialogue before or after the scene, but everything after that point is just garbage.
What's funny is that some of the deleted scenes from his movies are probably among his best work.
Have you seen Lance's extended monologue? Worth the fucking price of admission.
Ironically Inglorious Basterds is probably one of the few Tarantino films that I can tolerate, and probably the only one I've ever relatively enjoyed. That said, while I acknowledge it as a movie that's built around its dialogue and characters, I do of course agree that one of its major faults is how damn long the talking stretches out, to the point of having a lot of entirely irrelevant portions of speech at times. That said, I do think that Chapters 1 and 3 (or more specifically just the bar/tavern scene from Chapter 3) were of a necessary length with their dialogue to build-up the tension level. Every other chapter of the film could have had at least a good 5-minutes or so of extraneous talking cut out of it completely without really losing anything (and in fact it probably would have helped the pacing improve, if anything), which would sum up to about 15-minutes or so worth of film being done away with for the better.
As for Psycho, I have to say I disagree with Ebert completely. In fact I actually disagree with quite a lot of his opinions. As much as I respect the guy as a critic (and I sincerely do), I do feel that people have a tendency to treat him like God when it comes to him having opinions on something (and no, I'm not referring to Avaitor, here, but a certain group of people that I've encountered on the Internet), in that a lot of times it feels like they treat what he says as if it were some sort of sacred law or truth. To me, though, its still opinions, not facts. If I agreed with everything he said, then The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly wouldn't be one of my all-time favorite films. As for why exactly I disagree with him about that particular scene, I'll elaborate on that tomorrow when I'm feeling less lazy to write stuff up.
Fair enough on both points. I do feel that the dialogue in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction is more charming than the pieces in IB, but Basterds is a faster paced film aside from that.
As for the Ebert thing, I can see how a lot of his opinions can be argued with (look at his Clockwork Orange review for one- ugh). I do agree with him that the psychologist scene in Psycho revealed a little too much which should have been already obvious, but at the same time, I can see why that could be argued against, since crossdressing wasn't necessarily a big subject in film at the time aside from comedies like Some Like It Hot. That scene always felt a little dragged out to me and kind of lost the effect of the film's subtlety, but that's just what I think.
Perhaps Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs are better made films (they probably are, for all I know), but unfortunately their appeal never truly reached me before. Perhaps someday they will, since I'm always willing to retry popular films which I didn't like before again, to see if they appeal to me any differently than they did before. In some cases I've changed my mind on certain films whereas in others my opinion has remained firm. I'll check both films out again another day. I will admit that I do have a lot more respect for Tarantino than I used to. He doesn't make the kind of films that I'm into, but he does seem to put a lot of his heart and effort into his work, which I can personally appreciate from a creator of any kind.
Its the same reason that I respect Miyazaki even if I'm not necessarily a fan of his particular films.
Wait, I thought you said you never saw Reservoir Dogs.
Yeah, that was quite a while ago, though. I've obviously seen a lot of films since the last time that I mentioned it which I never actually bothered to mention that I watched, and Reservoir Dogs was one of them. If it means anything I do feel that it was one of Tarantino's better films, at least by my judgment, but I suppose I wasn't in the right mood to watch it when I did, which may have hampered by enjoyment of it. I was lucky to see Inglorious Basterds at a time that I really wanted to see and would appreciate a very dialogue and character-heavy film, and for what its wroth I can't help but feel that any film with intense cruelty towards Nazis can keep me interested, even if it has many of its own faults.
You know, as far as Tarantino goes, I can at least respect most of his works, even if they aren't for me. But the only 2 real exceptions to the rule are the Kill Bill films. Those had potential to be so much better than they were, but for whatever reason he decided to make every character completely 2-dimensional, so it was hard for me to sympathize or even find enjoyment with anyone in either of the movies, and to be honest while the other Tarantino films had an element of characters that could be despicable yet strangely likable, I found everyone in Kill Bill to be downright unlikable, including the main protagonist. It doesn't help that he kind of clearly tries to display Uma Thurman's character as actually being more of the "good gal" relative to the people who betrayed her, when he also contradicts that by making it clear that she's just as bad and ruthless as they are. I like it better when he leaves all of his characters in an area of gray, without any real clear good or bad guy (that's one thing I've kind of respected about his films, in that everyone can sort of be judged on an equal level, without any clear black and/or white).
Kill Bill was so incredibly lopsided.
I enjoyed Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, but I'm just not really a fan of this guy. Most of his work just feels boring, and if it's not then he makes it that way because he can't edit properly worth shit.
Quote from: Desensitized on January 21, 2011, 03:24:51 PM
Kill Bill was so incredibly lopsided.
I'm just not really a fan of this guy. Most of his work just feels boring, and if it's not then he makes it that way because he can't edit properly worth shit.
This.
Shit, I opened up the gates when I brought up IB, didn't I?
Here's another one: take out the Asian guy in The Dark Knight. He served little focus and just dragged the movie out even more.
When you think about it, you could really cut a lot of things out of The Dark Knight that served no purpose.
Oh yeah, here's a couple of my own:
Iron Man 2- Remove every subplot and stick to one fucking story. Maybe its OK to include the plot about Tony Stark slowly dying, but other than that the only thing I should be seeing is tension building up to the eventual clash between him and the new villain. Also, remove Scarlett Johansson's character. She literally served absolutely no purpose aside from sex appeal in the movie....well on second though, I don't mind keeping her around too much. :swoon:
Troy- Replace Orlando Bloom with someone who can act and who doesn't sound and look like a complete pussy. Then you have the most entertaining popcorn flick of all time, as far as I'm concerned.
If there's any subplot I would have taken out, it would be the one with Tony dying.
It's only the second movie and we already know that he's going to be in the Avengers, so there was no guessing factor on whether he'd die or not. Save that for the third one or something.
I also thought that the subplot on Pepper taking over Stark Enterprises, while a good idea in theory, didn't turn out as well as it should have. It seemed rushed and unnatural to me. If they handled that a little differently I would have been fine with it.
The subplot with Stark Dying would have been good not because of dramatic tension since its obvious that he would survive, but it could have served as a way for him to develop his character, since he "knew" that he didn't have long left at the time (obviously until he actually found out that he could cure himself), and could have tried to be a bit more mature with his decisions with the time that he thought he had left. Just because you know that he's going to live by the end of the film doesn't mean that it can't be used as a good plot device to enhance another aspect of the film (and the film really needed more emphasis on character, and Stark got absolutely zilch development), and in this case it seriously needed improvement on that particular aspect.
I guess, but it didn't really advance his character like it could have.
Iron Man 2 was mostly build-up towards the Avengers with a couple of cool fight scenes spreaded, which is fine, but it could have also added some development for Tony and Pepper along the way, but they didn't bother with that.
They could have also tried to let us warm up to Fury and Black Widow, but we didn't really learn anything about them, either.
It just felt like one hugely wasted potential of a gateway towards the big one, and while there were some very fun and interesting scenes, it's just not as fresh or enjoyable as the first.
I'm hoping that Thor will be a step-up from that, but who knows. That's going to be a very tough film to successfully adapt for today's audience, and the trailer left me with a blank response.
The Thor trailer leaves me indifferent. It might be good, it might suck, or it might be just mediocre. If anything the trailer has left me thinking that it will turn out to be the last of those 3 options. It just doesn't look all that great, but at the same time not necessarily bad either.
Now, if you want to talk about a trailer that left a bad taste in my mouth and has already gotten me to decide that I don't want to see the movie, that Green Lantern trailer....
Personally, I wish we could have less Avengers stuff in general. They've always bored me and, outside of Iron Man, I've never really enjoyed them much as characters.
On topic: X-Men. Storm's Toad line is atrocious and never should have made it in the movie.
I don't remember that, but Storm never really made me care one way or the other for her.
I never thought that Halle Berry was all that hot, honestly.
Storm is a pretty good character in the comics, but Halle Berry was bland as hell as her. She was way overused in X3, too. (One of that movie's many problems)
I still think Gambit should have been in the movies since the original one. No idea why they held off so long on him but had Rogue in the first one with a central role.
Storm was a big character because Halle Berry had the sex appeal to draw people in.
She's a decently big and popular character in the comics, but isn't one of my personal favorites. I've always been fond of Gambit and Rogue myself, and I really liked the latter's character arc in the first movie.
Speaking of the title of the thread... They really fucked up X-Men.
The first movie was a good start though not perfect, it was a fun movie. The second one was way better with a lot of great set pieces and execution.
Then because Fox waited so long, we lost Singer and got X3 which was a giant mess with no cohesion and like 400 characters yet were still all underused for Wolverine. Not to mention that they killed Cyclops (thus destroying Jean's character), made Rogue human (again, destroying her character), and... that... thing they did to Prof X. They totally blew the Phoenix Saga, too.
Then they did Wolverine which was also a mess.
Such a missed opportunity. And because of X3, we already need a reboot or we'll never get another X-Men movie.
What happened with the X-Men films was a travesty. Two very solid comic book movies which got raped by a shitty third one and a middle-of-the-road spin-off.
The sad thing is that there seems to be a small community which prefers X3 and Wolverine to the first two. All I have to say is WHY?
But we can go on all day with franchises which got fucked up the ass. I know you may want to get to the Alien movies as well.
Heh, If we're taking Alien movies into account, then X3 and Wolverine aren't nearly as atrocious as Alien 3 and Resurrection.
Anyways, the first X-Men film was great minus Storm. X-Men 2 was even better. X-Men 3's problem, more than being a mess, was that it wasn't even entertaining to watch. I was getting so bored that I was fighting to try and stay awake through the movie in theaters. Wolverine was badly written story-wise, but for what its worth it was still entertaining since it at least had cool action scenes going for it. Still, definitely a disappointment when it could have been so much better.
Alien 3 is an abortion that slaps the face of anybody who enjoyed the second movie. There's no fixing 3, everything about it is awful. I've never forgiven them for that and I never will. As far as I'm concerned, the franchise ended at 2.
Movies like that and Terminator 3 feel more insulting to audiences in their execution and disregarding previous films and that's why they usually are terrible.
But since this is about movies we like, I'll just say that Die Hard 2 should have not taken place at Christmas and had so many returning characters and elements. All that stuff makes it feel like more of a cheap rehashing than it actually is. That film also needed a writer to come in and totally re-write the script too, so many bad lines.
All of that weakens the film and makes it the worst one of the 4 (despite still being a fun movie), and also has the least rewatchability.
Hey, Desensitized, don't forget Resurrection in your analysis of abortions of sequels. :sly:
My problem with Die Hard 2 was that it was clearly just riding off of the success of the first movie. Making it take place during Christmas and bringing back a bunch of characters from the first film was clearly showing that the writers were clearly just trying to recreate all of the elements that worked in that film rather than creating something new that still fit in as a Die Hard film, and for that their attempt backfired and the film's quality really suffered.
And as far as going into action movies that we like, I always felt that the Hospital scene in Hardboiled was dragged out WAY too long. Don't get me wrong, the choreography and the cinematography of the entire scene was brilliant. Nobody can come up with a shoot-out action scene from any other film that even comes close to the amazing level of that scene as well as many other action scenes in Hardboiled, without having to rely on CG and other really expensive special effect techniques. That said, even for me the scene got dragged out longer that it should have, and I almost forgot that there was a story that needed finishing up.
Well I really wished Prince of Persia had more elements from the game like wall runs and climbs, pole swinging (Gymkata! okay maybe not), more sick combat moves, and a not so deus ex machina ending where maybe his darker self would start to emerge. Still like the game series.
And they need a moratorium on any scene that has someone about to fall off a cliff side or a building. :gonk: It might have worked with Die Hard but that's the last time I remember it to be worth seeing.
I can't say doing some editing with material I know exists would help any movie I like or dislike.
I know there are a pair of deleted scenes from Re-Animator that I think really made that movie. I don't enjoy the movie but I loved the hell out of these scenes.
The first comes right before the scene where Dan and Meg find the dead cat. Dr. Hill hypnotizes Dean Halsey. Now, it sounds cheesy, but it's a deeply creepy moment which is just a masterpiece of tension. The kind of tension which is actually missing from the entire rest of the movie. The rest of the movie is incredibly stiff but not this scene.
The other scene I adore is where we see West shooting up with his re-agent. I believe this scene comes up right before the moment with Meg in Dr. Hill's office, where he tries to talk her into allowing him to "perform exploratory surgery" on her father.
As for movies I liked, I thought Jawbreaker had a great amount of potential. And it still does- the cast is to die for, the dialogue is smart, the soundtrack is excellent, and the visual style is so good it's like you can lick it and it'll taste like candy.
The problem is the story. It isn't satisfying. It lacks credibility. Courtney Shayne just isn't enough of a bitch. Nor is Vylette (the Fern-Frankenstein creation) anything. She says people love to hate her, but... why? Also, the screenplay's horror influences aren't fully realized. Knowing the director is a fan of a film like Dead Alive (aka- Braindead) just begs for this whole thing to become a zombie film. Then, he could finally make the correlation between the aimless conformity of high school and the living dead who have no use for their own brains.