Acclaimed movies I did not care for

By Monte January 2, 2011 23 Comments

Requiem for a Dream - I get it, drugs are bad. That's pretty much the only thing that I think of when this movie comes up. The director claims the movie is not entirely about how addiction of drugs is harmful but addiction to ideas and things in general is. While I believe that he is true in his opinion, I don't think the movie shows it at all. The focus is all over the place and the themes aren't very strong. While the famous song is very epic and fits the tone of the movie well, I feel like it was played every ten minutes and had had enough by the end. The concept that the movie starts out pretty normal but slowly spirals down into chaos to reflect the abuse of the characters and the effects of the drugs themselves is great, but I don't find it executed well enough it to be particularly meaningful. It has a ton of style but not enough substance for it to resonate with me. 
 
Magnolia - The reason I don't care for Magnolia is because of its over the top rambling nature  that tries to convey the theme of the movie. It is very similar to Requiem in that it doesn't give the watcher any break or relief. All the stories seem like such a train wreck. Most of all however is that I, as a viewer didn't care. I did not find any reason to care about any of these characters or any of the plot points and how they play into each other.  The whole film is too high concept for its own good and I feel director Paul Thomas Anderson either did not have a clear cut enough vision of the final product or could not manage his ideas into a coherent single piece. Anderson's weakness as a director is that he is not good at striking any emotional points or crafting a strong enough theme to make you sit there and think. I believe this is also true of his much greater film There Will Be Blood, but that film has absolutely stunning cinematography and atmosphere, an amazing soundtrack and one of the best performances by an actor of all time in my opinion. 
 

A Clockwork Orange - First let me say that I adore Stanley Kubrick as a director. The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Dr. Strangelove are all amazing pieces of film and 2001: A Space Odyssey is undoubtedly one of my top five favorite movies of all time. The reason I don't like A Clockwork Orange is not because I find it to be a poor product of film making. I have two problems with this movie. One is that I find the book to do a better job at pacing and a MUCH better job at humor. The second is that I think Alex is a terrible main character because he is not only an unlikable dick with no clear motivation but also a fucking bitch that wouldn't last a week in the real world. I get that he is supposed to love causing chaos and pain but he really seems to have absolutely no redeeming qualities to even make him interesting. He isn't some kind of victim of society or family either so why should I give a damn when he is being tortured. Am I supposed to think he is some kind of deep thinking character just because he likes classical music? The Joker in The Dark Knight is arguably a similar character but he was awesome because he always had an elaborate plan and could outsmart Batman, the police and the mob with minimal resources and really cool quirks. Alex just beats the shit out of hobos. This movie left a bad taste in my mouth.  
 
Slumdog Millionare - I realize I'm not the only one who feels this is overrated. The easiest piece of criticism to make about this movie is that if it were to take place in a western nation, nobody would have given a rat's ass about it. The movie hangs so much on its foreign setting. We've all seen the rags to riches story of a young man who proves himself  and rescues the attractive empty-shell-of-a-character girl done before, and much better. Audiences and critics loved it because it was so 'cultural'. If people weren't so pretentious maybe they would look over that fact and realize that the movie itself is kind of dumb. 
 

Blade Runner - This is actually quite a good movie, but there is a reason I am acknowledging it in this blog. I really love Ghost in the Shell. The movie and the anime are both excellent pieces of science fiction with sublime themes and characters in my opinion. Ghost in the shell shares a lot of its themes with Blade Runner, like the line between a person and artificial intelligence, the definition of a soul, and the effects of technology on human morality. They both have a fair deal of religious symbolism as well. There is no doubt that Blade Runner is more original in these themes as it was released many years before GitS. But I only saw Blade Runner a year ago, after I had been an fan of Ghost in the Shell for quite some time, and I think GitS does a better job conveying its themes and making you think about them then Blade Runner. So, I don't think Blade Runner is a bad movie at all, it was just much less impactfull for me.  
 
 
 
 
 
Sorry if that was a bit long. What acclaimed movies did you not enjoy?

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