dumb movies made by people who think they are smart

David Fincher's movies that suck:
+ Panic Room (2002)
+ Fight Club (1999)
+ Se7en (1995)
+ Alien³ (1992)

vs. David Fincher movies that don't suck:
+ The Game (1998)

and Ridley Scott Legend to the present.

Oh, Adaptation, City of God anything that Sam Mendes has touched, bunch of other crap.

Nor David Fincher, really. And Road To Perdition wasn't any good, but it avoided the bullshitting of American Beauty.

Oh, and I loved Alien 3, but most people hate it. And I hated The Game.

Maybe Jeremy and I can agree to disagree.

But really, American Beauty wins the prize. And there is a pretty good long thread on that as well.

Did the people who made Pay It Forward think they were smart?

Oh wait, Gattica!! (is that how you spell it?) Like a bunch of little kids trying to make a grown-up movie. Wait, it was a grown-up movie, wasn't it? If it was supposed to be YA then I take it back.

No wait, Dorothy Parker & Her Hilariously Inept Circle Of Gen-X Actors Who Look Like They Are Peter Brady Playing George Washington. Hahahahahaha!!! That movie is comedy gold!!!!

Wait, Lost In Translation works for me!

And High Art!

(x-post)

i think richard linklater is pretty smart. but these things are subjective.

but for the sake of the thread, i do agree that noe and m. night do think that they are smart and both of the movies are dumb

Didn't they screw up the golden ratio thing in pi by referring to it as "Theta"? I thought it was represented by "Phi". Maybe there's a theoretical math whiz here who can clear this up.

(though sign me up for loathing requiem)

I meant to elaborate with my comment: I would imagine there's math nerds out there who laugh at Pi for being bad laymans maths. But I thought it did a reasonable job in that someone like me with no grounding in numerology/maths/etc found it fascinating, and really, it was a suspension of disbelief thing anyway - I mean come on, a number being the voice of god? You had to have a level of suspension of disbelief in the entire premise of the film, and if you cant do that, there's no point in enjoying it at all.

I liked High Art by the way. But I got that same feeling from it.

I still haven't seen that movie that the Northern Exposure dude made about some guy with Tourettes. See, actors directing serious movies. This is where you must look for the ultimate answer to the question.

Slacker I have watched way too many times too be objective.
The other stuff is not bad at all.

Discussing Linklater makes me wonder how Whit Stillman is thought of 'round here.

And yeah, the conversations are never gonna replace sitting down by the fire with a copy of Pensees, but I found 'em really engaging. Let's put it this way: yeah, they are largely representations of quotidian college-town-stoner-conversations, but there are largely more interesting than the kind of college-town-stoner-conversations I've had. YMMV.

Anyway, it's more about that brillant, vibrating, pulsating animation as much as anything.

Todd: I see yr point, I dunno if I ever see anyone saying "greatest of all time" about something like Donnie Darko tho. For me, as always, films are a personal thing. *My* alltime fave film is Pi. I cannot really say why, I just love it, it resonates with *my* experiences and *my* likes. I dont go to a film demanding it be great for everyone, or anyone for that matter. Like music or books or anything, all is personal.

I agree on twists though. God, "Wild things" pissed me the fuck off in that regard!

Anyway, I like all the Stillman films. They're of course a representation of the kind of blue blood I've spent a lifetime hating, but there is no denying his craft, especially when it comes to dialogue and teasing out some real good situational acting. I think Disco is the weakest of the bunch by a mile, though.

i personally love pi as well. it was well made and quite interesting. pi is also addictive and extremely watchable. aronofsky's editing style worked better in pi than requiem for a dream because it seemed to blend seemlessly into the film while the rfad editing was almost distracting. all of the films that i mentioned are decent introductions to indie or experimental film-making styles, but they are by no means the alpha and omega that some people make them out to be... and that is what annoys the crap out of me.

actaully i don't dislike pi, i own it on dvd. i just think in some ways its overrated. but you're right, it does a pretty good job of making a complex and confusing subject watchable and interesting.

i guess i was really just being knee-jerk anti-film nerd.

yeah, actually i agree with you there too, sorry for ticking you off.

i've never seen "pi." i thought "donnie darko" was pretty great.

i;m not really too enthused about the ideas behind this thread topic but i'm bored. there are many other, better ways to judge movies. and there are only a few filmmakers i can say with any confidence "think they're smart."

Which leads me to Todd: doesnt that make you frustrated, expecting so much of a film? (sorry, this has kinda derailed the thread... but it was a bit of an odd thread topic).

If that were so, I wish to pay them forward with guns, sticks, knives and other things.

No, they just assumed that moviegoers were gullible and stupid.

anyways, my personality is very judgemental, its just how i am.

maybe i just favor the subject matter in less mainstream films. maybe because they dont follow a formula that i am bored with after two movies that follow it.
i just ask for some originality or something real, something that will move me, something that will stay with me.

I love Fight Club! btu that's just personal taste. I don't konw if I'd call it a Great Movie. I have no idea what I'd call a Great Movie, I'm far too judgemental. There's just stuff that I lvoe is all.

(incoherent dont' mind me)

Julia, that works for me!

hm.. Brian DePalma is the king of goofy entire movies, but I still like him (esp. Blow Out)

i doubt "almost famous" will ever be cool to praise, i've defended it against the knowing taunts of quite a few hipsters. (and incidentally, it's the only film on that list i like)

A lot of these are funny - High Fidelity and Almost Famous, even if you hate them, are hardly trying to be Movies 4 Geniuses. Disliking Crowe/Hornby/Frear's middlebrow tendencies is one thing, but there's no intellectualism there.

Elephant, Gerry, Finding Forrester, Psycho, Good Will Hunting, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

DUMB MOVIES MADE BY PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY ARE INTELLIGENT =

Flicks that have obvious pretenses of intellectual greatness, wit, cultural savviness, neat-o conceits, etc., etc., and totally fail to produce any of these things on careful viewing. At best, most of them are fluffy and insignificant little trifles of cereal-box philosophy and can be entertaining or mildly enlightening and at worst they're condescending, smarmy and mean-spirited exercises in the directorial culture of Look what I can do!. These movies are NOT to be confused with their arch-villain: SMART MOVIES THAT TO A SLOPPY VIEWER LOOK DUMB, cf. Do the Right Thing or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

I couldn't sit through Pi. Part of it was lack of concentration/dizziness, gah.

I felt the same way about Waking Life but it seemed like a movie that might become interesting, so I watched it in little installments and it took forever for me to finish the movie. Seemed like a lot of effort--at the end, I felt like, "oh, is this IT?". I did find the animation techniques and such interesting, anyway.

Most of the movies being mentioned (that I've seen) strike me as movies that aren't what they're trying to be (smart), rather than being outright dumb.

At best, most of them are fluffy and insignificant little trifles of cereal-box philosophy and can be entertaining or mildly enlightening and at worst they're condescending, smarmy and mean-spirited exercises in the directorial culture of Look what I can do!.

Though maybe that definition works more often than not.

Other movies like that (signs, reality bites, p.j. anderson's opus, etc...) I truly hate. One of the worst films evah is "Ken Park", pure pretentious shit.

The problem with Pi is that it's essentially an expression of anti-intellectualism. It's saved by feeling rather warmly towards intellectuals.

oh phooey. I'll double check on that but I'm sure I heard him say "theta".

This is just a jazzed-up "I didn't like that movie cause that character was mean."

not at all. I think the movie is an expression of the director's vision, not that of any of the characters, none of whom I dislike.

Those migraine scenes make me sick, make me clutch whomever Im sitting next to in tension because it hits home so closely - thats a film that has done its job IMO.

RE the theta thing: I'm going from memory here but I recall Max Cohen drawing a graphical representation of the golden ratio and saying "you reach a point thats known as theta" but maybe he said that about the fibonacci sequence now I think about it. God Ive seen the film a dozen times or more, you'd think I'd remember :-/

(NB my maths-savvy bf did agree that he noticed that as a clanger, so it might be true).

The problem with Pi is that it's essentially an expression of anti-intellectualism.

Can you elaborate on this gab? Im not sure how you reached this conclusion. Not dissing you, Im genuinely curious.

"Can you elaborate on this gab? Im not sure how you reached this conclusion. Not dissing you, Im genuinely curious"

Well, the main character does go practically insane from trying to decode all that stuff. And gives himself a momemade lobotamy so he can be happy.

I don't really think the film is anti-intellectual though, it's just that the film says that maybe there are limits to human knowledge. Remember that "when i was a kid i used to stare at the sun" thing throughout the fim?

Um, which is kinda what you just said anyway now I think about it, so never mind me.

I literally laughed out loud at this - I felt the same way, if perhaps with less concrete imagery.

OTM. Seriously, just put the dumb movies behind you.

um no, the problem is that the movie sucks.

Seconded!

Also, anything written by Nora Ephron or Cameron Crowe.

Return of the Secaucus Seven
The Big Chill
Good Will Hunting
that movie with Uma Thurman about cats and dogs co-starring that Garofolo woman
that Ed Burns movie with that chick from Friends
that movie with Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon where they play mother and daughter at odds with the world and each other
almost everything by Mr. Michael Moore
Waterworld

You die now.

Gear!, PDL is PTA stealing from Godard.

he's also "stealing" from tati in that one, btw.

I covet Budnick's red mullet.

Pauly Shore was in the video for Limp Bizkit's "N2Gether Now."

Please stop spreading false rumors about Limp Bizkit. It demeans us all.

Sure, it's silly, but it's not really attempting to be "smart" or "intellectual". Like many of Lynch's other films, it's an exercise in dream logic. I've said this before but I think Lynch is more the eqivalent of a painter with film, using mood, atmosphere, etc. to make his statement rather than through his plots.

I'm sure that sounds rather pretentious, but i believe it's true.

and I just can't get as excited about Hollywood, '50s imagery, stilted dialogue and midgets as Lynch does.

(Warning: rant not aimed at anyone specific, so dont take offense anyone!)

Guess what? Some of my most fave films: Donnie Darko, Pi, Grosse Pointe Blank, Withnail & I, Zoolander, Being John Malkovich, Brazil.

Apparently that makes me a hilarious emo faker who thinks only 50 films exist. Which is funny considering I've seen plenty of Hitchcock, Kubrick, Lynch, Welles, Passolini, Jarmusch, dozens of French and Italian movies, all the obvious auteur stuff. A lot of which I found insufferably boring, even when I could see how well made or clever it was. Some of which I enjoyed very much (Welles's "The 3rd man" comes to mind here).

Does that mean I should be roundly mocked for enjoying fun, thoughtful, clever-but-maybe-clumsy indie films too?

Piss off.

I only get annoyed (and perhaps mock) when people who liked the films assume I missed something or act like hot shit for liking middle-brow art movies. When people are honest about why they dug something its hard to get persnickety at them. When a friend of mine explained his fondness for Mulholland Dr. by saying "I like films where somebody finds a body and it's them" I wasn't remotely annoyed. But when people assume I didn't get it? Then my inner snob starts smearing shit all over the walls.

I am possibly being very defensive ;)

At least no one dissed Withnail & I though, cos then I'da had to'e get nasty on peoples heads.

The titties weren't out in the Silencio theatre scene! But Hot Girl-on-Girl Action might be the only thing that could have made that sequence even better.

Speaking as a critic, and one who largely prefers fun, thoughtful, clever-but-maybe-clumsy flicks - be they 'indie' or not - to both art-house fagfilms and popcorn crunchfests, I can understand your frustration with film-elitists. But at the same time there are many of us who have devoted thousand of hours to watching movies as more than just an avocation. I become incredibly frustrated at undergraduates with one course under their belt telling me about 'indie' films that they've discovered... frequently not indie, frequently not 'discovered' in any sense of the word, and occasionally subpar. In conversations like this I've often felt like I'm perceived as a film-snob for not agreeing with tremendously emphatic exclamations about the relative merits of flick X or Y (where X/Y is your Wes Anderson, Kevin Smith, Ed Burns, Robert Rodriquez, Rob Altman piece) even though I might find the movies quite good. And by the same token I despise when these same BA-types smash on mainstream cinema with real vitriol.

Speaking as an ILXer, I'm a little miffed at the thread myself. I felt that amateur!st's comment that he'd feel that "there were only about 50 films ever made" was 100% OTM, and I'm beginning to develop a totally basic theory about viewership: population Z watches films tailored for population Z and develops theories which exclude films made for populations A-Y. And I think that the perceived, 'indie' or 'underground' or 'artful' canon right now is one of the most obnoxious Zs there is.

this is exactly the same problem I had with Mulholland Dr.. It was pretty clear to me that both films weren't intentionally incoherent so I'd go into fits of fury when people would tell me that I was thinking too hard or missing the painterly point or whatever.

I WAS ACTUALLY NOTICING MORE THAN YOU WERE, FOOOOOLZZZZ < /snob>

The first half was interesting but he left all the stray pilot subplots about the director and the cliched jokes about Billy Ray Cyrus, the "cowboy," yadda, even though there's no reason Naomi Watts would have dreamt about that if it was supposed to be her romantic fantasy about the brunette. If you enjoyed it for the randomness, the inscrutability, the confusion than fine, but don't pretend that's what Lynch was going for.

You all make fair points, I must say. If I had to watch a lot of films as a critic et al I too would probably tire or be bemused by someone going off about a film having some secret amazingness that nobody but them knew.

I find Anthony's MD post interesting. I too spotted a "break" very clearly in the film at one point but beyond that, on first viewing, I had NO IDEA what I'd just seen. I felt like I'd read a strange but very arresting poem.

Then a guy I know comes onto usenet a while later and says "its all SO CLEAR! It isnt even an OBSCURE plot whats WRONG with you people!" and proceeds to lay it out as a very clear, exact, plot right down to the finest detail (the blue key, the monster, why billy ray was the pool man, every damn thing). It made a lot of sense but it destroyed an illusion I'd liked having.

Same with Donnie Darko - I liked it a lot more when I was still musing over why things happened the way they did, assuming the director had left things open ended on purpose... to know he had a very strict logic to the story and felt compelled to explain the whole lot on the website spoiled things a tad.

Still love both films tho =)

Really, I don't think what was or wasn't in the pilot, or the origin of the footage, to be relevant to the film itself, aside from giving critics a good lead for their review.

Further - dumb movies made by people who think they are smart = pretentious films. And I think I'll stick with my original assertions (way, way, way, upthread ... like four posts in or something) that David Fincher is the king of this.

And yeah, it sucks when somebody destroys your process in figuring out (or trying, as is more frequently my case) a flick. A certain unnamable red-headed film critic from Austin did this with Fanny and Alexander to me over dinner, and now I can't watch the movie. And that's how I feel about attemts to explain MD; that they're dismissive and simple, disappointing and (presumably) innacurate. DD is a different case - I just found it scattered.

anyhow, onto more fun subject. That's a great one, Scott.

Bob Rafelson's King Of Marvin Gardens actually features the line "so long, written word" spoken in all seriousness.

Because they were shot on different stock?

(Warning: rant not aimed at anyone specific, so dont take offense anyone!)

Guess what? Some of my most fave films: Donnie Darko, Pi, Grosse Pointe Blank, Withnail & I, Zoolander, Being John Malkovich, Brazil.

Apparently that makes me a hilarious emo faker who thinks only 50 films exist. Which is funny considering I've seen plenty of Hitchcock, Kubrick, Lynch, Welles, Passolini, Jarmusch, dozens of French and Italian movies, all the obvious auteur stuff. A lot of which I found insufferably boring, even when I could see how well made or clever it was. Some of which I enjoyed very much (Welles's "The 3rd man" comes to mind here).

Does that mean I should be roundly mocked for enjoying fun, thoughtful, clever-but-maybe-clumsy indie films too?

Piss off.

-- Trayce (spamspanke...) (webmail), June 21st, 2004 4:33 PM. (trayce) (later) (link)

i have no idea what most of this post has to do with my "50 films" comment.

i wouldnt include stuff like tenenbaums or rushmore or lost in translation because there's nothing to "get" in those movies. what is so intellectual (or psuedo-intellectual) about them? I could see how some people would think DOnnie Darko is dumb and hate it, but i neither hate it nor love it.

when i read the thread title, i think, A beautiful mind, The Matrix, Good Will Hunting, etc.

also, how is Zoolander considered a "smart" movie by anyone? I love it to pieces, but i'd never consider it smart...

This isn't a dumb movie but more importantly Werner Herzog doesn't think he's "smart"