Fix a Movie That You Like

[Avaitor]

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.

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.

[Spark Of Spirit]

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.

[Avaitor]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Avaitor]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Avaitor]

Wait, I thought you said you never saw Reservoir Dogs.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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).

[Spark Of Spirit]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Avaitor]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

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.

[Avaitor]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Avaitor]

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.