'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[swo17]

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
I know there are those who feel the same way I do but there will be just as many who disagree. Again, as a writer I feel I have a deeper routed opinion when it comes to the subtext of this film but in the end it’s only my opinion. For the record though, I do enjoy poetry on occasion and my favourite poem is BOTH SIDES NOW by Joni Mitchell.

[matrixschmatrix]

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a hand slapping a human forehead -- forever.

[zedz]

I like to think that the world won't end with a bang or a whimper, but with a bitchslap.

[knives]

I know there are those who feel the same way I do but there will be just as many who disagree. Again, as a writer I feel I have a deeper routed opinion when it comes to the subtext of this film but in the end it’s only my opinion. For the record though, I do enjoy poetry on occasion and my favourite poem is BOTH SIDES NOW by Joni Mitchell.

What if everything blew up tomorrow and only this paragraph remained to represent us to future generations

On the other hand you'll plotz if you read his semi-homophobic review of Hot Wet American Summer.

[Markson]

The end of Hamilton's 5-starred review of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days:

HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS is a little bit of everything, presented in such a way that it can and will please everyone. Not an easy feat to accomplish. The only sad thing about this movie is how great Matthew and Kate are together. They were a little too great, and as a result got pigeon holed into the “romantic comedy” genre...indefinitely. Bottom line, this flick is brilliant, one of the few films in which I wouldn’t change a thing, it represents the romantic comedy genre at it’s best.

For contrast: his 1-starred Greenberg review.

[knives]

The Deer Hunter (1978).

Jesus Christ, this movie is terrible. The first hour just consists of bunch of guts drinking and playing pool, and then there's the God dam wedding, which goes on, and on, and on, and on, and in real time. Eventually we do arrive in Vietnam, and the movie gets no better.

This movie sucks, this movie sucks, this movie sucks.

2/10.

[matrixschmatrix]

The Deer Hunter (1978).

Jesus Christ, this movie is terrible. The first hour just consists of bunch of guts drinking and playing pool, and then there's the God dam wedding, which goes on, and on, and on, and on, and in real time. Eventually we do arrive in Vietnam, and the movie gets no better.

This movie sucks, this movie sucks, this movie sucks.

2/10.

Rosenbaum?

[knives]

Random schmuck.

[Murdoch]

Rosenbaum?

Can't be, missing shameless Welles reference.

[Alan Smithee]

imdb reviews are too easy. Fish in a barrel. The only commenters who are worse are youtubers.

[matrixschmatrix]

imdb reviews are too easy. Fish in a barrel. The only commenters who are worse are youtubers.

It's funny, you'd think that for the more challenging/obscure movies, the stupid people would weed themselves out- but in my experience, you'll get exactly the same imdb commenters on an Ozu silent as you do on a Lord of the Rings movie, just fewer of them.

[teddyleevin]

101 Things to do list attempt for 'the all time greatest films'

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) – Easily my favourite Python film, I want “Always look on the bright side of life” as my funeral song
-Monty Python and the Life of Brian (1979) – And the only Monty Python film I don’t like

Uhhh.

[matrixschmatrix]

I suppose that it is time to try to talk about the difference of opinion we had on GONE WITH THE WIND.
I suppose what irritated me most was that you and your friend, who is sometimes mentioned in your other column, “Skeins of Thought,” kept saying that I didn’t understand the purpose of your article. Moira was writing about Hattie McDaniel, not GWTW.
Well, of course, I understood that.
I went to college. I wrote many articles myself.
That fact does not excuse making negative comments about a film so many TCM viewers love so much. As I said before and I’ll say again, the whole controversy could have been avoided if you had also made a couple positive comments about the film in your original column.

I'm not sure I can express how funny I find "I went to college. I wrote many articles myself." but it may help to learn that this was posted in a weekly column fully a year after the one he's referring to was posted

[MichaelB]

The first hour just consists of bunch of guts drinking and playing pool

This would be the Jan Svankmajer remake, presumably, though he's normally a bit more concise than that.

[stwrt]

The Deer Hunter (1978).

Jesus Christ, this movie is terrible. The first hour just consists of bunch of guts drinking and playing pool

Think I would pay a lot of money to watch De Niro, Cazale and Walken drinking and playing pool for an hour.

[eerik]

Not exactly a review but I found this on the Studio Canal Collection's Facebook wall:

Dear StudioCanal People, The Third Man is my very favorite movie in the whole world. Tonight, I was so excited to receive a Blu-ray disc of it as a gift. I rushed home to watch it only to find that it was the full screen version. I am crushed. This movie's cinematography is perfection and to see it cropped was really upsetting. Is there any way to trade it for the wide screen version? It was a gift so I have no idea where it was purchased from. Thanks!

I tried exchanging this with Amazon and they sent me the fullscreen version again. Is anyone there?????

Seriously? #-o

[willoneill]

I don't usually support big business, but if I were Amazon, I would have charged that guy for the exchange, just for being ignorant.

[swo17]

I don't see what this guy's problem is--it's fullscreen so it fills up the screen, right?

[MichaelB]

I remember a professional DVD reviewer in a print magazine devoting a fair amount of space to a rant about panning and scanning and a complaint that the film he was reviewing had been "ruined".

The film? Disney's Pinocchio, framed entirely correctly.

[bigP]

Tierna and Tom battle their way through The Times Top 100 films of the noughties; as depressing a read as it sounds.

Number 82: Yi Yi

Taiwanese film about the emotional struggles of a businessman and his middle-class family seen through three generations.

What Tom thinks: “This film has been described as an ‘insightful masterpiece’, but I think ‘pretty boring’ is a better description. Having spent almost three hours of my life watching this, over three separate days, I still couldn’t actually tell you what the plot was. Not a bad film as such, just long and boring. Still better than Morvern Callar though! I’ll give it a five out of ten.”

What Tierna thinks: “I feel like I’ve crossed something off my list of chores! Bit of a dull one. To be honest, I think if the story was condensed into the length of a normal movie, it might have been more interesting. The best part of it was the little boy; he’s a strange kid and I liked that about him! I’d give it a four out of ten.”

A slightly obtuse response left by a reader -

Terrence | May 31, 2010 at 3:41 pm | Reply

5 and 4? Are those your respective ages?

Got an equally tooth-clenching follow-up from Tom:

No, but they’re pretty accurate scores for what is a long and boring movie. If you’re going to make a film three hours long, it better be as good as Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Lord Of The Rings… and not a fairly simple film about the boring lives of normal people. Accuse me of missing the ‘subtleties’ behind this ‘beautiful masterpiece’, but I know a good film, and a good film this ain’t. Tom.

[domino harvey]

I thank God I wasn't posting ignorant shit about great films on the internet when I first started exploring films. I hope one day these two share the collective shame of walking some of these comments back

[matrixschmatrix]

'Boring' has to be one of the hardest criticisms to work around- I think if I ever made a top 100 of my favorite movies, fifty of them could be accurately described as boring in one sense or another, but I never know how to respond when I show someone a movie and that's all they have to say about them.

[Alphonse Doinel]

Self professed "movie buffs" are the worst. This comment in the about section is further evidence of that.

Great Stuff Guys!!!I m too myself a Movie Buff and i watch atleast 3 movies a day and 7-10 on weekends…The movie list u made is really amazing and i m gonna watch all movies u have in ur 100 list

[Murdoch]

Whenever I hear or read the words "movie buff" I picture a bodybuilder bench-pressing a barbell of DVDs, I don't understand how the name caught on although it's slightly better than cinephile which sounds like someone with a weird fetish and, um, I'd rather not picture that.

[Alphonse Doinel]

I was hoping to make a nice joke about Chinphiles, and why we both love Kirk Douglas, but it turns out there is no such thing.