RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media Movies you SHOULD have liked, but couldn't...

This is for the movies that have everything you like: your favorite actor or actress, director, or writer. Your favorite genre. They might be based on your all-time favorite novel or comic, or have a great soundtrack, or a smokin' sex scene, or SOMETHING that totally appeals to you. But try as hard as you can, you just can't really get into the movie. And you feel like you should have. If you can relate, please reply with your choices. I have a few:

1. Blade Runner.
A bad-ass movie, by all rights. I'll be the first one to admit the direction is just gorgeous, and way ahead of its time. It still looks amazing, 20 years after it came out. Harrison Ford is always cool, and a movie that combines sci-fi and film noir elements should really grab me. After all, 1998's Dark City is one of my favorites, and then of course there's that Matrix thing.

But I just find Blade Runner to be very slow-paced, to the point of it being draggy and boring. I've tried to watch it on Sci-Fi Channel, but it plods along. I want to love this movie--I actually feel like I should love it. But I think I need to watch it with fans.

2. (No offense, HEROKILLER) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.
I had always been curious about this movie, but people have told me my whole life that it is unwatchably bad, and nobody ever wants to rent it with me. It happened to be on Encore recently, and my dad taped it for me and sent me the video in the mail as a surprise. But the tape had been used to record something previously, and the sound was really fuzzy. It made the dialogue very hard to hear, so maybe I missed some key lines. I guess this is one more reason people love DVDs.

The movie had one of the best ensemble casts I've ever seen, and it had a lot of elements I should have been crazy about. It was an obvious riff on the multi-talented pulp hero Doc Savage, but thrown into the crazed 1980s. Buckaroo Banzai as an adventurer/scientist/neurosurgeon/rock guitarist/leader of a team of heroes, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, who just happen to be his band. THAT IS COOL. It had cool early '80s fashions and one cool instrumental new-wave number, aliens, lots of camp, and Ellen Barkin, who is sexy as hell. Peter Weller, who played Buckaroo, even looked like Adam Ant! But the movie didn't grab me, and I was so hoping it would. Maybe it the poor quality of the videotape didn't help, but I think it just wasn't that great in the first place. What did I do wrong?

[ 09-29-2002, 02:33 AM: Message edited by: Big Bad Voodoo Lou ]

Apokolips Now. I realy tried to like this movie,it was such a slow go nowhere movie. I don't understand why everyone liked it so much.

The road to wellville This movie had way to many bowel movement discusions . I think it was a dry attempt at humor that didn't work for me. It might have been because I was working in health care at the time and it just reminded me of work.

Comic Book Villians and Royal Tenanbaums...both for the same reasons....no likeable characters and tried to be dark humor with a message behind it...doesnt work.

I thought of another one:

Six-String Samurai.
Now this was a movie made on the cheap, an "instant cult classic," if you will. But it had so much potential to be the greatest thing ever, and I just find it slow and irritating.

For those of you who don't know the story, the Russians dropped a nuclear bomb on us in the '50s, turning the U.S. into a vast wasteland with the last refuge of civilization being the kingdom of "Lost Vegas," where Elvis was crowned king. Years later, Elvis has died, and every musician, warrior, and bandit is making their way across the desert to become king of Lost Vegas.

Our hero is Buddy, a guitar-shreddin' swordsman who has seen better days. He wears a black suit, black and white wingtip shoes, and glasses with black rectangular frames. Essentially, he dresses like I do. Of course, he also carries a beautiful hollowbody guitar slung over his back, and a samurai sword. He is your basic wandering adventurer, a masterless samurai, long past whatever glory days he once had, on his way to Vegas for one final shot at glory. (And he is supposed to be Buddy Holly.)

Along the way, he rescues a kid who is THE MOST ANNOYING KID EVER IN ANY MOVIE, beating out Jake Lloyd in Phantom Menace. The kid can't talk, so he only makes loud and obnoxious wah-wah sounds. And the two of them travel together the rest of the way. Along the way, Buddy fights a gang of evil bowlers (played by amazing Russian surf band The Red Elvises, who also did the soundtrack), grunting cavemen, spooky astronauts, a 1950s sitcom-style family who happen to be cannibals, the ENTIRE Russian army (no joke!), and Death himself, who appears as a black-garbed heavy metal guitarist, a la Slash. In the end Buddy confronts Death in the ultimate duel of heavy metal and sharpened steel, and only one can survive.

There are some decent fight scenes, and Jeffrey Falcon, who plays Buddy, could be decent in a similar role in a better movie. The soundtrack by the Red Elvises is outstanding, particularly the opening track "Love Pipe." And as a wannabe rockabilly guy complete with sideburns, bowling shirts, and two-tone shoes, the movie has a lot of really cool elements that appeal specifically to me. It is a post-apocalyptic rock-n-roll martial arts fantasy adventure, but despite all that, it just isn't that good. The pacing is terrible, the lack of a budget shows in every shot, and that little kid makes me want to stick a pencil into my ear. At best, this is a mediocre Japanese anime come to life. At worst, it is a shitty student film (even though it played in several festivals). But it could have been the next Army of Darkness... and that would have been a good thing, trust me.

the whole 9 yards.

its got bruce willis, he's cool as hell. that "chandler" guy -- he's a riot, right? amanda peat is a frickin piece of ass and she loses her top in the movie.

plus, its a cool frickin premise: regular guy has a mob boss as a neighbor, there's nothin left but hijinks!

or is there?

i wanted to see the movie in the theater really bad, but, unfortunately, i missed the 5 hours theaters bothered to show it. i must've been sick that day.

finally, when it came out on video, i gave it a whirl, only to fully realize just how a movie with such a cool cast and great idea behind it could be pulled from the theater faster than most broken reels are.

the. movie. sucked. i woke up just in time to see my amanda take her top off, but after those 10 seconds or so, we were back to the "movie" and i was back to my hell.

y'remember sitting in high school algebra and looking at the clock say "1:00" then looking 4 hours later and the clock says "1:03"? same kinda deal here. i think this movie was under 2 hours, but i coulda sworn i missed the whole summer because of it.

stupid movie. and dont you come back!

Pulp Fiction- This movie was just plain boring.
12 Monkeys- It's thrilling when you first watch it, but it just sucked looking back on it and watching it again.

A note on Buckaroo Banzai :

It is best to experience it by watching the recent MGM DVD.

I've been a long time fan (I was actually one of the 12 who got to see the damn thing during it's theatrical run), and up until now, the only copy I've owned is the 1990 VIdeo Treasures VHS release, whcih is of poor quality. It's sad, because until MGM snapped up the rights of the film about two years ago, there were only two VHS printings, and they were limited, at best.

I've seen the damn thing at least 100 times, but until I bought the DVD, I didn't know that even I was missing out on some key dialouge one-shots. Plus...I believe BB to be something that has to be watched multiple times before it is appreciated. Almost like Brazil ....

2001: A Space Odyssey
Generally I love Kubrick movies, and I'm a big sci-fi fan, but somehow I just didn't get this movie. If I hadn't read the book years later I still probably wouldn't understand what it was even about.

Spiderman
Why this movie broke box office records, I will never know. Bad acting, bad script, not even the special effects could redeem this one. In my mind it's the most overrated movie ever, just because of it's insane popularity. X-Men was far superior.