The Popular Movie Blindspot Thread

[DFA1979]

From the IMDb's Top 100, my blind spots.

The Shawshank Redemption
The Godfather: Part II
Everything Everywhere All At Once (already on the top 100?)
Interstellar
City of God
The Green Mile
Hara-Kiri
Parasite
Whiplash
The Intouchables
The Pianist
Gladiator
American History X
Grave of the Fireflies
Apocalypse Now
Casablanca
Modern Times
City Lights
Capernaum
Your Name.
Coco
Django Unchained
3 Idiots
The Lives of Others
Das Boot
High and Low
Witness for the Prosecution
Paths of Glory
Sunset Blvd.
The Great Dictator
The Hunt
Inglorious Basterds
Once Upon a Time in America
North by Northwest
Singin' in the Rain
M

I have no plans to watch many of these movies.

I've seen 22.

[DFA1979]

If I'm a six-year-old for enjoying Spider-man, then Baby Doll is a 98-year-old man sitting alone and unshowered in a dark room in front of an old CRT television, eating Nutritional Sludge(TM) with a wooden bowl and spoon, watching The Symbol of the Unconquered for the 176th time and mumbling to himself, "Fun is for kids."

Hey now he's only 76, be nice!

[Spun Lepton]

All of these get five stars from me. The fun ones are bolded.

Parasite
Apocalypse Now
The Great Dictator
Inglorious Basterds
Once Upon a Time in America

All of these are on my "to watch" list. If I can ever overcome my obsession with cheap horror movies, I may someday get around to watching them.

[baby doll]

If I'm a six-year-old for enjoying Spider-man, then Baby Doll is a 98-year-old man sitting alone and unshowered in a dark room in front of an old CRT television, eating Nutritional Sludge(TM) with a wooden bowl and spoon, watching The Symbol of the Unconquered for the 176th time and mumbling to himself, "Fun is for kids."

The thing is the first two Spider-Man movies aren't actually fun, unless by "fun" you mean films that don't make any serious demands on the spectator, lulling them into a coma rather than shaking them up. The puzzling thing about their failure as entertainment is that Raimi clearly knows how to tell a story (A Simple Plan may not be a great movie but at the very least it's a gripping thriller) and he can do pure spectacle (Evil Dead 2), but you would never know that from his Spider-Man films, which would seem to indicate that the restraints imposed by the films' massive budgets ultimately got the better of him. (I can't speak to the quality of subsequent Spider-Man movies, but given that they cost as much or more to produce and advertise, I can't imagine them being significantly better.) It's almost universally accepted that blockbuster movies, as the descendants of turn-of-the-century blood and thunder melodramas, are by their nature disjointed as storytelling, which would be fine if the commercial necessity of getting a PG-13 rating didn't preclude coherent action sequences Ã* la Jackie Chan's Police Story. Thus, instead of delivering the maximum amount of pleasure to the maximum number of people (as Richard Maltby phrases it in Hollywood Cinema, or words to that effect), Raimi's Spider-Man films--and contemporary super-hero movies more generally--provide no pleasure at all, as they lack the very things Hollywood filmmakers typically pride themselves on: compelling narratives and visual razzle-dazzle. In their place, we get a lot of clichéd visual rhetoric designed to give the impression of fun (bright colours and kinetic movement in Raimi's Spider-Man films) or capital-S Seriousness (noirish lighting and a portentous score in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy) rather than the genuine article. There's lots of money on the screen but nothing to buy.

[baby doll]

From the IMDb's Top 100, my blind spots.

The Shawshank Redemption mild
The Godfather: Part II warm
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Interstellar
City of God mild
The Green Mile frozen
Seppuku spicy
Parasite warm
Whiplash
Les Intouchables
The Pianist mild
Gladiator cold
American History X mild
Grave of the Fireflies warm
Apocalypse Now warm
Casablanca spicy
Modern Times spicy
City Lights: A Comedy Romance in Pantomime spicy
Capernaum
Your Name. mild
Coco
Django Unchained warm
3 Idiots cold
The Lives of Others cold
Das Boot
High and Low spicy
Witness for the Prosecution warm
Paths of Glory warm
Sunset Blvd. spicy
The Great Dictator spicy
The Hunt mild
Inglorious Basterds warm
Once Upon a Time in America cold
North by Northwest spicy
Singin' in the Rain spicy
M spicy

[DFA1979]

Oh shit you unleashed the paragraphs long reply Spun. Run!

PS: Well there should have been some paragraph breaks in there somewhere. I'm not really one to talk I can always use an editor.

[StuSmallz]

If I'm a six-year-old for enjoying Spider-man, then Baby Doll is a 98-year-old man sitting alone and unshowered in a dark room in front of an old CRT television, eating Nutritional Sludge(TM) with a wooden bowl and spoon, watching The Symbol of the Unconquered for the 176th time and mumbling to himself, "Fun is for kids."

And what really makes baby doll's snobbery all the more ironic here is, there's literally a moment in Spiderverse that deals with people who hold such close-minded attitudes as him:

[Skitch]

Permission to treat the witness as hostile, your honor?

The thing is the first two Spider-Man movies aren't actually fun

Unusual opinion, but yours to have

The puzzling thing about their failure as entertainment

False, according to majority audience

(as Richard Maltby phrases it in Hollywood Cinema, or words to that effect),

Hearsay

Raimi's Spider-Man films--and contemporary super-hero movies more generally--provide no pleasure at all

So if I don't like 2 cowboy movies then all cowboy movies suck, got it

visual razzle-dazzle.

False. The webswinging was groundbreaking. If it didn't jerk your chain that's fine to have that opinion, but on the FX crew side and the audience side, everyone was blown away.

In their place, we get a lot of clichéd visual rhetoric

False. Yeah all those movies Spiderman copied with their FX, swinging around NYC

[baby doll]

Permission to treat the witness as hostile, your honor?

Unusual opinion, but yours to have

False, according to majority audience

Objection! Majority opinion is irrelevant. In order to persuasively counter the claim that Raimi's Spider-Man films aren't fun, one would need to demonstrate that the films possess some intrinsic virtues that make them fun to watch rather than citing box office numbers or audience surveys. The majority of the audience consists of people who aren't deeply interested in cinema and aren't particularly choosy, discerning, or adventurous in what they watch for entertainment. There's no reason to privilege the opinion of the majority as being in any way indicative of a film's intrinsic worth. Michael Bay's movies are popular but it would be absurd to claim on that basis that he's a better director than Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Hearsay

It's neither hearsay nor an appeal to authority to bring up what other people have said about a topic in order to counter it with a different argument. Maltby's claim is that Hollywood movies--and he uses Titantic as a particular example--are disjointed because they have to appeal to a wide audience, and he calls this giving the maximum pleasure to the maximum number of people: e.g., Cameron's film has romance and spectacle, and each of these things is intended to appeal to different parts of a heterogeneous audience. I agree that some, perhaps most, contemporary Hollywood blockbusters are disjointed as narrative (which is not to say that the majority of Hollywood films overall are disjointed, since Hollywood doesn't only produce blockbusters, and Kristin Thompson has argued that the films that industry discourse holds up as exemplary--e.g., Back to the Future, Groundhog Day, Alien--are tightly constructed), but I disagree that this disjointedness necessarily increases anyone's pleasure, since in the case of Raimi's Spider-Man films, and in contemporary super-hero movies more broadly, nothing very interesting replaces narrative coherence.

So if I don't like 2 cowboy movies then all cowboy movies suck, got it

I'm not making the argument that contemporary super-hero movies are bad because they're about super-heroes (as as I've mentioned elsewhere on this forum, I'm a big fan of Louis Feuillade's Judex, and to a lesser but still significant extent, Georges Franju's 1960s remake). Rather, I'm making the argument they suck because they're bad movies--or at least the ones I've seen (and I've seen what I consider to be a representative sample) don't do anything very interesting on the levels of form and style, certainly nothing that would put them on par with the best Hollywood westerns of the studio era. The Searchers may not be a perfect film, in part because when Ford goes broad, he goes very broad indeed, but he was also capable of incredible subtlety, revealing character through small gestures and glances that are easy to miss on first viewing because Ford doesn't insist on them, for instance, by inserting a close-up. On the other hand, there are no small gestures in Raimi's Spider-Man films, or any other contemporary super-hero movie I've seen, and every important point is placed in the centre of the frame in close-up or medium shot where the spectator can't help but notice it. In other words, Ford knew that you had to balance small and broad moments, whereas contemporary Hollywood films generally--not just super-hero films--lack dynamic range, resulting in visual and emotional monotony.

False. The webswinging was groundbreaking. If it didn't jerk your chain that's fine to have that opinion, but on the FX crew side and the audience side, everyone was blown away.

Technology isn't the same thing as spectacle. A technique might be groundbreaking and still be used in a boring way (e.g., the sound of early talkies). In this specific case, however exciting any individual shot of Spider-Man's web-slinging is for its kinesthetic movement, Raimi is unable to effectively integrate those shots into larger sequences of spectacular action (as, for instance, Jackie Chan did with his stunts in his films of the 1970s and '80s).

False. Yeah all those movies Spiderman copied with their FX, swinging around NYC

When I mentioned clichéd visual rhetoric, I was referring more to the film's use of colour and movement to signify "lightness" and "fun," while actually being heavy-handed and boring, rather than its special effects.

[DFA1979]

I don't care that much about Spider-Man at all but let's be honest here: superhero movies have been popular and widely discussed for decades. Long before message boards. People like talking about them and will like discussing em long after message boards have gone the way of in person meetings and flip phones. Oh wait they still have flip phones I guess.

[Skitch]

I was joking about the hearsay lol.

As for the rest, I will *polite curtsy*, thank you, but no, and I pray for Duke to come back

[Irish]

False, according to majority audience

There's no real way for you to know this. You can only assume, and to do that you'd need to take a cue from like r/movies or social media or boxofficemojo.com, none of which are really instructive of broader sentiments.

They can't be, because they'll never admit most superhero movies are as more or less popular as the loud, dumb action movies ("Twister") or the loud, dumb comedies ("The Waterboy") of the 1990s, because that might make them feel, somehow, less special.

Majority opinion is irrelevant.

Sir, this is a "popular movies" thread.

The majority of the audience consists of people who aren't deeply interested in cinema and aren't particularly choosy, discerning, or adventurous in what they watch for entertainment.

There's no way for you to know this, either --- and even though I may be tempted to agree, thinking so makes cult films and surprise hits impossible. Movies such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Get Out" were well reviewed moneymakers in the U.S. If the audience were really so dull, both would have been rejected at face value.

I think people are as curious as the movies allow them to be. But the problem with franchise filmmaking is that it can only deliver franchise-like results --- nobody wanders into a McDonald's hungry for steak tartar, bok choy, or fresh seafood. The menu is limited by design, and the customers learn to expect it that way.

The Searchers may not be a perfect film, in part because when Ford goes broad, he goes very broad indeed, but he was also capable of incredible subtlety, revealing character through small gestures and glances that are easy to miss on first viewing because Ford doesn't insist on them, for instance, by inserting a close-up.

Curious what you see as Ford going "very broad indeed" in this film. (It's one of my favorites, and I'm always interested in reading a strong criticism of it.)

[DFA1979]

Duke is not coming back, that much I'm gonna say on the whole matter.

[DFA1979]

Hi Irish. How's it going? Also I like this thread and honestly as much as I love cult movies, popular and more well known films will always be discussed more. It is what it is.

[Idioteque Stalker]

nobody wanders into a McDonald's hungry for [...] fresh seafood.

Pusha T over here like, "My man!"

[

Show Spoiler

Everybody knows you go to Arby's for that!

"How dare you sell a square fish asking us to trust it. A half slice of cheese -- Mickey D's on a budget?"

]

[Idioteque Stalker]

Continuing to watch the #1 most popular movie of each year according to LB (if I haven't seen it already).

1918: A Dog's Life. Short and sweet. The Tramp finds funny ways to steal food. He rescues a cute dog and a cute girl, they live happily ever after, and there are plenty of gags along the way. What's not to like? Three stars.

1914: Cabiria. A long, mostly boring spectacle movie. Feels to me like the Avatar of its day. You spend way, way too long reading intertitles. There's this one really cool shot where 30-40 Roman Centurions make a human pyramid-type thing to scale a castle wall. There's also a scene early on where children are tossed one after another into a furnace as a sacrifice to the gods. Doesn't hold up. Two stars.

1913: Suspense. 11 mins. Lois Weber is probably the first major female director. This home invasion short has some nifty suspense-building split screen moments and features a shot that we've all seen a thousand times: the menacing figure slowly climbing the stairs. Pretty cool. I don't rate shorts.

1911: Dante's Inferno. The earliest remaining feature-length film is a horror movie. Countless naked bodies writhe in anguish as they are crucified, tortured by demons, and burnt in lakes of fire. Some spend eternity crawling with the snakes, while others merge with reptiles and become abominations. The dismembered and beheaded wander aimlessly, some with their asses in the front. One man gnaws on the skull of his friend, while nearby Lucifer himself feasts on the most treacherous of men -- chewing ceaselessly, as if on living jerky. People leaving the theater in 1911: "This movie stuff is overrated. I think I'll go to church next Sunday instead!" This was my favorite of the bunch. Four stars.

Next up: More early shorts. Some of these look weird!

[baby doll]

Curious what you see as Ford going "very broad indeed" in this film. (It's one of my favorites, and I'm always interested in reading a strong criticism of it.)

I was thinking of everything with Mose Harper, "Look," and cutting directly from John Wayne saying "Let's go home Debbie" to Ward Bond getting thorns pulled out of his butt.

[Philip J. Fry]

Wait, what happened to Duke?

[Idioteque Stalker]

Wait, what happened to Duke?

Duke mainly hangs out in the MC discord he started. I don't think anything "happened." The link has been shared here before, but randos started popping up so we deleted them. If you're interested in checking it out, I'll PM you the link.

[StuSmallz]

I was thinking of everything with Mose Harper, "Look," and cutting directly from John Wayne saying "Let's go home Debbie" to Ward Bond getting thorns pulled out of his butt.

That's all true, although I'd say the bigger issue with the movie is the way that it [

Show Spoiler

spends so much time setting itself up for a final confrontation with Ethan's hatred and bloodlust for Native Americans... only to essentially "wuss out" from that at the climax.

]

[Irish]

I was thinking of everything with Mose Harper, "Look," and cutting directly from John Wayne saying "Let's go home Debbie" to Ward Bond getting thorns pulled out of his butt.

Can't say I agree. Roger Ebert made a similar point about tone (citing John Qualen's "yumpin' yimmini" routine as immigrant rancher Lars). I think the movie needs that level of comic relief because otherwise it would be unbelievably grim, and the audience would have too much time to think about exactly what happened to Lucy Edwards and her sister.

You mentioned Ford's ability to shift between large and small gestures, and I think this is sorta the same thing. Except in this instance, he can't afford subtlety. The violence in the film is so excessive that only broad humor can counter its effect.

[StuSmallz]

There's no way for you to know this, either --- and even though I may be tempted to agree, thinking so makes cult films and surprise hits impossible. Movies such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Get Out" were well reviewed moneymakers in the U.S. If the audience were really so dull, both would have been rejected at face value.

I think people are as curious as the movies allow them to be. But the problem with franchise filmmaking is that it can only deliver franchise-like results --- nobody wanders into a McDonald's hungry for steak tartar, bok choy, or fresh seafood. The menu is limited by design, and the customers learn to expect it that way.

Yeah, I think this is true to a certain extent; after all, there was an era in American film where movies like The Graduate, 2001, and The Godfather were the top grossers of their respective years, all of which make the "audience-challenging" conclusion of something like Infinity War look like child's play by comparison (and I liked Infinity War). It's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg sort of dilemma, though; how much of what Hollywood puts out is just a response to what general audiences genuinely want, and how much of it is the industry pushing a lowest common denominator product? That question alone could merit its own thread, IMO.

[DFA1979]

I think The Searchers is one of the best movies of all time. Western, also, although that's a well shared opinion. Old Marty has probably seen it more times than anyone else here though.

[Idioteque Stalker]

Is this discussion of The Searchers on topic? Drumroll.......... Yes, it is!

LB's most popular movies of 1956:

1. The Killing 85k views
2. The Searchers 82k
3. A Man Escaped 44k
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much 60k
5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 54k

Seems to me 44k is fewer views than 60k/54k, but hey I'm no mathematician. Regardless, The Killing posting some sweet numbers!

[Idioteque Stalker]

Is the discussion of Raimi's Spiderman on topic? Drumroll.......... Yes, it is!

LB's most popular movies of 2002:

1. Spiderman 1m views
2. LOTR: The Two Towers 930k
3. Catch Me If You Can 788k
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 1m
5. Attack of the Clones 761k

Looks like popularity isn't strictly tied to number of views. I learned something new.