The Most Overrated Movies of 2002

[dave durbin]

1. Chicago

-please read review-


2. The Hours

-please read review-


3. Gangs of New York

-Daniel Day-Lewis sizzled but the script was mediocre and so was the direction. But Marty will probably be rewarded at Oscar time because they've snubbed him so many times before.


4. Catch Me If You Can

-the best things about this film were the opening title sequence, John Williams's score, and Walken's performance. It's nice to see Tom Hanks taking over for Dan Akroyd as well. (Great story though!)


5. About Schmidt

-please read review-


6. Minority Report

-a suped-up, special effects laden, sprawling Twilight Zone episode that looked like it could have been directed by anybody. Great performances from Tom Cruise and Samantha Morton though.


7. The Good Girl

-the acting was fine and the script played by its own rules but they might as well as had someone come out after the end credits rolled and hold up a sign that read 'Don't let this happen to you!'


8. My Big Fat Greek Wedding

-an old man sitting behind me turned to his wife after this movie ended and said "And 'ya see? There wasn't any swearing, nudity, sex, and nobody got killed." Yeah, I saw.


9. Spiderman

- Sam Raimi is a great director but the digital effects were laughably cheap. I forgot about it an hour after I left the theater. Great performance from Williem Dafoe though. (PS- I'd rather watch Superman with Christopher Reeve.)


10. Time Out

-sensationalistic true life story turned into a dull French film about a corporate conformist.


Honorable mention: The Road to Perdition and 24 Hour Party People

[Chris Knipp]

I agree on five of these and that's a good percentage. I would add Far from Heaven (really more irritating than The Hours), and I would move Road to Perdition into the main list instead of one of the ones I personally really liked, like The Good Girl and Time Out or Catch Me If You Can. I think we're all becoming touchy about "period" flicks, especially when that period isn't all that far back. The tendency of American directors to overdo and falsify a period like the Fifties or Sixties, and then get lavishly praised for it, is becoming increasingly annoying. I thought Catch Me If You Can had a relatively light touch with that, but you could still argue that it too was overdone, even when as with the opening credits and Leo's Italian vest outfit and the uniforms, it was fun.

[Perfume V]

I'm surprised Minority Report's ending doesn't come in for more stick. I thought it was much worse than the vilified last half-hour of AI, which at least had some sort of narrative drive to it. With MR, the plot just seemed to stop and there was an agonisingly long twenty minutes that largely consisted of people standing around talking through plot-holes that hadn't yet been closed. It was one of the most stunning cases of sloppy writing I've seen since Godard randomly inserted a PA on the Evils Of America into Elogie L'Amour and I'm amazed that it wasn't redrafted, considering this film had two highly-paid writers.

[pmw]

Agreed, I was disappointed that the movie didn't end with Tom Cruise in a halo. It seemed like a more natural end to such an dark, overreaching system, future crime. Are we to believe that his wife with her husbands eyeballs in ziplock overthrew the regime?

P

[dave durbin]

I don't mean to change the subject but I love it when directors tip their hat to their own work -the Night Gallery episode with Joan Crawford in this case- as well.

[tabuno]

I don't agree with most of your Over-rated list because most of the movies your selected were in my mind great movies. You must have some fascinating criteria for what you consider to be good movies - so far it's a mystery to me, especially when I consider the movies that you do like. Our minds must come from alternate universes - that's what I get for having read so much science fiction when I was young.

[dave durbin]

I think it's safe to say that we're oil and water, yes. But that's cool with me. I respect your choices even though I can't stand most of them -and I hate science fiction by the way- but what a terribly boring world this would be if we all felt the same. Peace, my brother.

[tabuno]

What if we mixed it up and tossed about, what would we have?

[dave durbin]

Pure crap.

[tabuno]

John Stuart Mill, the 18th Century British political philosopher believed that only the full allowance and free flowing debate of combatants of opposite poles would led to the "truth." The correct answer therefore is "truth."

[Perfume V]

I love John Stuart Mill, and his amazing proto-feminist wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. Whenever I try to imagine what the greatest romance yet to be filmed would be, it always materialises in my head as a bipoic of those two.

On another note, I adored Spider-Man as an obsessive fan of both the character and pretty much everyone involved. The CGI didn't bother me because - with a few exceptions - CGI always looks abysmal to these eyes. It must be the most ruinous trait in modern movies.

[tabuno]

Why is it that in Spiderman as well as in Batman and Superman, we can't seem to get something going with the girl? It's so blase. At least Smallville makes for some interesting emotional complexities and relational substance that it seems the more lavish, big-budget movies would rather avoid

[Perfume V]

I must say, if I had one complaint to make about Raimi's film, it's that Kirsten Dunst didn't have much to do. Which is a shame, since from the small amounts we saw, she seemed a more likeable, rounded character than anyone else in the movie. Maybe in the sequel?

If I had to make choices for the most overrated movies of 2002, they would be:

1. Signs - see above. Incidentally, does anyone else think Shyalaman is getting bogged down mainly by his own ego at the moment? When he started out, he was a writer-director who said he made modest little supernatural thrillers. Now he's a writer-director-actor who makes searing investigations into metaphysical issues. With rubber aliens in them.

2. The Hours. Julianne Moore is my favourite actress of all time, but this film is little more than wanking for Oscars.

3. Y Tu Mama Tambien. Neither the best nor the worst product of the Latin New Wave, but certainly the most inexplicably overrated. I was ready to hit someone every time I heard that dreadfully unsubtle voice-over started telling us that everyone in this scene died years later.

Arguably the only good thing about this film was that it got some of the more pretentious critics to make utter fools of themselves discussing the sociological relevance of some jizz in a pool.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding - obviously.

[tabuno]

I have to assume that winning an Oscar means something. It's based on hundreds of people's opinion in the industry and considering the public's opinion isn't always the most highminded or that critics seem to operate on a different plane altogether why are the people that actually have to put up with all the crap not to be counted as relevant in deciding the quality of a film?

[pmw]

It certainly seems to mean a lot to the winners. But I think its more often a reflection of commercial success, paid for by our friends who "aren't always the most highminded", than you'd think. Hollywood is pretty money oriented and if a film does well at the box-office it's likely to get a pat on the back from other industry folks who are trying to do the same thing. "Bigger is better" seems to be the mantra of recent Oscar distribution, with the occassional sentimental award thrown in to stoke suspicious fires of Hollywood's artistic merit.

The FilmWurld Awards are generally thought to be the most representative of good film ;>
P

[miseenscene]

Funny thing about Oscars... they're voted for by the same people who make the movies. Kind of like an MVP award for films. But when most enlightened flimgoers (i.e., folks like us who expect more from a film than Scooby-Doo or The Hot Chick will give us) roundly agree that the bulk of films today are either complete lowest common denominator crap or high-minded, artificial "important cinema" designed specifically to win an Oscar in a vacuum of quality pictures, it's amusing that we stand by the Oscars won by films when they're really doled out by the same executives and talent who make the very crap in the first place. The Academy Awards are a massive self-gratification fest, and highly unappetizing, though great fodder for gossip and anger...

Side note: I agree with most of the films mentioned on this list, and am left wondering -- what were the good films of last year? Personally, I can't think of anything I saw in theaters that I'd recommend to anyone else, save for "Insomnia," which was merely the least despicable of the bunch.

[dave durbin]

Nicely put; I would have said it's just typical Hollywood bullshit myself; you assessed with reserve, grace, and a touch of class. Cheers!

Why don't you have a FilmWurld Awards posting? It could make for a HOTBED of conversation around here! ; )

[Chris Knipp]

There's no doubt that Oscars 'mean something,' and what that meaning is has more to do with popularity and grosses most years than with artistic merit, but isn't it sweet when the two come together in the same year?

Art is after all about emotion, and a movie that has emotional power on an audience has to be well executed to convey that power. If the impulses behind it are authentic and intelligent, and the emotion conveyed is also powerful, a movie's artistic and popular success may coincide and that's when the Oscars are something to be happy about.

Other years a lot of Oscars may mean that "most awarded" coincides with "most overrated," and in those years I just am thankful if at leaast a few really good ones got nominated, and I look to Cannes or somewhere else for rewards to the artistically deserving.

When we really get serious about our critical faculties, even a lot of our high minded uncommercial choices may not seem worth seeing again in the years to come. It's hard to second-guess posterity.

But a Filmwurld vote for the year's best is certainly a good idea.

[dave durbin]

I didn't find last year to be as great of a year in films as most others seem to but they're are some noteworthy mentions:

Far from Heaven
Adaptation
Talk to Her
The Cat's Meow
Sex & Lucia

-to name a few. (I really didn't get a chance to see more of the films I wanted to which is why I pounded out the Worst and Most Overrated lists quickly and easily.) And even though I found fault with the Oscar bait -Gangs, Catch, Hours, Chicago- there were small moments of pleasure in each of them -provided by Day Lewis, Walken & Amy Adams, Moore, Reilly- that I still remember and enjoy discussing. Otherwise I found 2002 to be sort of flat.

[tabuno]

I guess I have to roll out my top movie list again, since it's hidden in the top right hand corner that few people probably know exists. Since my list came out December 15, 2002 and I did manage to see Chicago and The Hours, it needs to be revised abit. 2002 was a good year for films.

1. One Hour Photo
2. Frida
3. Insomnia
4. Death To Smoochy
5. Mostly Martha
6. Chicago
7. The Hours
8. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
9. Secretary
10. Catch Me If You Can
11. Adaptation
12. White Oleander
13. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
14. Spirited Away
15. Road to Perdition
16. It's About a Boy
17. Solaris
18. The Quiet American
19. The Ring
20. Two Weeks Notice
21. Moonlight Mile

[miseenscene]

I didn't see all the films on your list above, some because they didn't strike my fancy -- a failure of the marketing department as much as the filmmakers themselves. Of those I did see, My Big Fat Greek Wedding certainly holds up under the title of this thread, overrated. It was cute, it was nice, but it was nothing I'd expect $250 million to be spent on. Still, it's nice to see a clean indie movie find a huge audience...

The Ring felt uneven, but the climax deserves mention as a great movie moment of the last year... not pretty, but definitely effective...

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was a great trailer. Then I saw the movie. It was a two hour long trailer. There was nothing there that I didn't see in the 3 minute ad. Clooney did a nice job directing, and Rockwell did a nice job acting, but otherwise, it didn't hold my attention -- just a formula tacked on to a supposedly true autobiography. I look forward to seeing what both of them do next, but that film won't be making my top 10 anytime soon (although it DID at least deserve more than the paltry amount of money it made at the box office).

[dave durbin]

I have to say that I have an overwhelming amount of respect for you when it comes to posting your feelings; it's easy, terribly easy, to 'critique' -i.e. rip apart, tear down, trash- a movie but it's incredibly difficult -I think- to really go the distance and say how you were emotionally affected during a film and why. I think it's very brave to put yourself out there like that and I applaud you for your efforts.

Now, the mere mention of a few movie titles can be enough to place me into uncontrollable fits of rage and send me screaming down the street with my hands covering my ears, crying, while dreaming about moving to a private island taking only a few books with me and they are:

The Godfather III
Philadelphia
Mallrats
One Night at McCool's
A Beautiful Mind
The Prince of Tides
Ghost

..................................and Death to Smoochy. Are you kidding me??? A strong sense of humor is a rare and wonderful thing and a good comedy can resonate more deeply than a drama I feel; for instance, what do you think the ratio is for people who want to laugh vs. people who want to cry? I have a comedy on my all-time-favorites list that is disliked and considered boring by many (Shampoo) but I at least got some sort of validation -I felt- when Johnny Depp, Sandra Bernhard, and Julianne Moore all acknowledged it when asked about some of their own personal favorites. I realize your list stands for 2002 but you have got to be scraping the BOTTOM of the barrel in order to use Death to.......God, I can't even write it.......Smoochy as part of your year end wrap-up. My advice: start with the silents (Chaplin, Keaton, etc.) work your way to screwball (Holiday, Bringing Up Baby, The Palm Beach Story or anything by Sturges) throw in a little Lubitsch for kicks, maybe even some Tati -your call. Jury's out on the teams: Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Laurel and Hardy, etc. But, whatever floats your boat. More power to ya'! Next hit the fifties: try early Jack Lemmon, maybe Marilyn at her best, (don't leave out Bogart though -fabulous sense of humor and line delivery), Some Like it Hot or anything by Billy Wilder (except Days of Wine and Roses, it's not the side-splitter it used to be). There's some wonderful stuff in the sixties: The Producers, Lord Love a Duck & The Loved One are highly recommended, Jane Fonda in Period of Adjustment is a favorite, some Neil Simon stuff works for some people, keep it in mind. The seventies focused on counter culture and there really weren't alot of laughs to be found among The Godfather, The Conformist, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest but they did have MASH and Altman's wicked streak, Mel Brooks, Where's Poppa?, Harold & Maude, Little Murders, Smile, Murder by Death, Monty Python movies, etc. The eighties: well, The King of Comedy might suit you, as well as After Hours (both great), some Steve Martin stuff is o.k.(The Man with 2 Brains is a guilty fave) or try The War of the Roses even. (You don't strike me as a 3 Men and a Baby kind of guy.) The nineties, well, that's anybody's call really. I was not a fan of There's Something About Mary or the Kevin Smith films but you can probably take it from there. Hopefully I've given you some food for thought. Take care and have lots of laughs!

ps- never underestimate the wit of Bunuel!

[tabuno]

I don't have a good historical perspective when it comes to comedy. I just know that it's much harder than drama and that I'm stuck in a certain development phase in my comic development. When I first watched There's Something About Mary on the movie screen I thought it was hilarious and a great comedy, I laughed so much. I rented the same movie earlier this year and I was waiting for something to laugh at. I thought it was really terrible. The same thing happened when I saw the first Mission Impossible movie when I hated it and then I saw it again and I loved it.

I'm somewhat afraid to think what will happen with Death to Smoochy if I see it again. Robin Williams I think is a great actor which colors any movie that I see with him in it.

All I can do is give you a copy of an earlier review I did of this movie:

"An Original Adult Comedy

Death to Smoochy pushes the envelope of comedy, only to fail because it couldn't find the right audience. This comedy is amazing for its intensity and biting scenes that run side by side with comedy, there are dark scenes, harder dramatic elements not usually seen in regular comedies. Yet, this fun, entertaining, and cerebral comedy has great elements of timing, acting, and directing. Not for children, but the nature of plot (doesn't automatically capture any other audience), this sleeper comedy is a must see, because it breaks out of the mold of funny comedies into a more sophisticated, grown up form of laughter and comedical relief."

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by tabuno

Death to Smoochy pushes the envelope of comedy, only to fail because it couldn't find the right audience. This comedy is amazing for its intensity and biting scenes
I decided to rent this movie after reading the following comments from fastidious and brilliant critic for the Village Voice(NYC) J.Hoberman: "Who could be the audience for this impressively designed, unreletingly foulmouthed, exuberantly mean-spirited, and increasingly violent send-up of kids' television? Death to Smoochy is often very funny, but what's even more remarkable is the integrity of DeVito's misanthropic vision. It features the most hilariously designed telekitsch since Fellini attacked the world of Silvio Berlusconi in "Ginger & Fred".
I go to the rental store and I always leave with someting else. Maybe Tabuno and Dave Durbin's passionate(calm down DeeDee) posts will convince me to see it.

[tabuno]

It seems like I'll have a chance to know if I have my head screwed on right. Please let me know how the video is.

[Perfume V]

I actually violently object to movies that try to win Oscars, mainly because they're invariably terrible. I mean, no-one I know seriously thinks A Beautiful Mind is a timeless masterpiece, but it won Best Picture on account of its shameless pandering to the Academy. Add to this the fact that most of these films simplify and patronise serious issues such as schizophrenia, blindness, depression etc. and I consider them the most offensive films being produced.

[miseenscene]

If Frida had been about Diego Rivera instead, we'd be seeing it touted for best picture. Make a film about a troubled female artist, though, and you get token nominations.

[dave durbin]

Here, here! I've always found the Academy to be nothing more than a big boys club that's easily turned off by an empowered -or strongly passionate- woman. (I'm not forgetting Chicago; I think it's easy for some heteorsexual men to respond to its females because they're not real.) The Hours is being praised to the high heavens and has lots of nominations but really it's just a slick gloss job that feeds off (some) men's attitudes towards women: they're lonely, they're emotional, they're never happy, they're confused, they're crazy, I don't understand them, blah-blah. The last few years especially have shown that it's obviously a male dominated community (Hollywood) and it only favors stories where the dominant alpha male carries the film: American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, The Green Mile, The Insider, The English Patient, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, Unforgiven, Platoon, Rain Man, Amadeus, etc. If you go back and look at the winners and the nominatees for Best Picture over the past few years you'll see what I mean. A few films snuck in there that had strong female roles (Titanic, Silence, Shakespeare) but otherwise the dawn of feminism has yet to see the light in Tinsel Town. It's a shame because I feel there's more depth and complexity with women and their stories: i.e. compare Frida with A Beautiful Mind or American Beauty or Gladiator.

[miseenscene]

I'll go you two further: Titanic is about a woman who "finds herself" with the help of -- ta-da! A Man! And Shakespeare In Love is about a woman who "finds herself" as a man, for a man. We'll see more films with strong female characters when more women are writing, producing and directing films... and voting for them in the Academy. I'm pretty sure women have more to do in life than be Mothers/Wives/Girlfriends/Objects of Desire/Femme Fatales, all male-dominated impressions of what women are. I'll be amused when Tom Cruise, or some other hot young actor who's just won an Oscar, announces that he'll be playing the "coveted role of The Boyfriend" in the next big action/thriller/drama... Then maybe we can get past the White Boys' Club in Hollywood and start making films that appeal to everyone, rather than making films about White Boys that are sold to everyone.

[dave durbin]

Cheers!

[Chris Knipp]

To Tabuno: Of the items on your list I have not seen Death to Smoochy, White Oleander, and Secretary. I never heard about Smoochy till it was out of the theaters and the other two I was warned off of by friends or reviews, but doubt in my rejections has since grown and I now think I need to rent all three. This is a lesson to me that being "warned off" is a dubious thing. You have to go out there and see things and judge for yourself.

To Oscar Jubis: I have great faith in J. Hoberman (he's a very clever fellow and was great on "The Believer" -- which so few unfortunately have yet seen -- this past year) and if he speaks well of Death to Smoochy, then I need to see it.

[dave durbin]

Yes, always see a film regardless of what the critics say and J. Hoberman is a good judge of solid filmmaking but remember that he did gave a rather blase, slightly stiff review for The Pianist.

[Chris Knipp]

Indeed I do remember that, and nobody can be relied on 100 percent.

[dave durbin]

And he favored The Rules of Attraction. ; )

[Chris Knipp]

Ah.
Well I can't comment because I haven't seen that one.

[tabuno]

I think the nominations that The Hours received comes at an appropriate time because it definitely flies in the face of the Old Boys Club. While an argument can be made about how subjected the women are in this movie, I think that it correctly portrays the opinion of a majority of women across the United States, probably the world in terms of the role that women continue to be given in terms of jobs, pay, and their social roles in society. By promoting this movie showing the progression of women's individual expression from suicide, to escape, to finally liberation, I believe that the Oscars has finally captured some insight into quality films and that by pandering to the Oscars it has elevated the level of motion pictures.

I also think the A Beautiful Mind did a marvelous job of exposing to the general public the difficult concept of schizophenia in terms that the public could identify with and understand. Again by attempting to win an Oscar, this movie projecting a socially important mental illness into the general public. I mean if you want the public to truly understand mental illness perhaps we might just all insist on documentaries and educational programming on PBS. But A Beautiful Mind from a motion picture, entertainment standpoint and also instilling some sensitivity and some understanding on the issue of mental illness did a wonderful job. The movies wasn't supposed to be a college course on the DSM-IV (TR).

Tab L. Uno, Certified Social Worker

[Perfume V]

Tomayto, tomahto. You say A Beautiful Mind presented schizophrenia in an easy-to-understand way, I'd say that A Beautiful Mind presented schizophrenia in the same simplistic, slightly patronising way it presented everything on screen. I've suffered from mental illness, I've had friends who've suffered from mental illness, my mother and my grandmother both work with the mentally ill, and whereas I might be shaky with the hard facts, I do know that schizophrenia can not be cured by the love of a good woman. Even if that woman is Jennifer Connelly.

As Mary Ann Johansen put it:


A Beautiful Mind is pure made- for- Hollywood pap about the mentally ill in which schizophrenia is treated by Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman the way doctors used to treat it in the bad old days before we (some of us, anyway) were enlightened about diseases of the brain: Hey, snap out of it! Get over it! It's all in your head! If Howard had made A Beautiful Liver, about someone who cures his cancer through sheer willpower, or A Beautiful Leg, about someone who mends his broken limb by merely wishing hard enough, he would have been laughed out of the Oscars.

In fact, there wasn't anything in this film that wasn't dumbed down. Howard and Akiva Goldsman assumed the audience wouldn't be able to understand game theory - fair enough, I can't. But did it need to be presented as a way of getting laid at a party? Howard and Goldsman assumed the audience wouldn't be able to understand Nash's tightrope walk between intelligence and insanity, so they presented his mathematical abilities as the result of some indefinable, near-supernatural power. Most poisonously of all, Howard and Goldsman assumed audiences wouldn't be able to sympathise with a bisexual character, so they 'straightened out' Nash in a way that I thought would have died out with the demise of the Hays code.

This won best adapted screenplay? There's barely a word of the book left in it.

[oscar jubis]

There is no way the previous post can more accurately reflect my thoughts and feelings. Thank you.

[dave durbin]

I second that.

[Chris Knipp]

I agree wholeheartedly with Perfume V, Oscar Jubis, and Dave Durbin, and would like to add that as for the "good woman" who saved Nash, in real life she didn't stay with him during that time. She left him, but came back later -- a little detail among many in the biography that Ms. Goldman chose to tweak in the interests of her fanciful, condescending, dumbed-down package. The huge discrepancies between the real Nash and the Hollywood version were pointed out in a New York Times article when the movie appeared.

[dave durbin]

Now that this has degenerated into a disturbing A Beautiful Mind debate, I would like to sum all this up with the words spoken by Ronnie Howard in the beginning of his DVD commentary for Mind: "We had to find a way to make John Nash's story appeal to a mainstream audience."

Case closed.


Here's a depressing and morbid news flash worthy of a spit take:
Anyone else know they've turned Greek Wedding into a new t.v. show called My Big Fat Greek Life?

[Chris Knipp]

I'm not sure I would want Ron Howard to have the last word on Beautiful Mind, but we can always move on. I feel that pushing the right buttons in the "right" way is how movies get overrated, and Beautiful Mind came up for a good reason: The Hours, one of the most overrated movies of the year, is the Beautiful Mind of 2002. This is a real issue, and what's justified in making a "story appeal to a mainstream audience" is a real issue. Case not closed.

[dave durbin]

Yes, it is a real issue -and one to easily address- but with mainstream America happily lapping all of it up, can it be resolved? I don't think so. It's been this way for years and I don't really see an end in sight; if anything, this sort of numbing entertainment has shockingly become more accepted than anyone could have ever imagined. If you go-with-the-flow you're 'safe' and have nothing to worry about, if you dare call attention to the child-like persuasiveness and obviousness of the movies we've been discussing, look out -Hell hath no fury like the mainstream scorned. What answers can you provide or how would you suggest bringing this to greater attention? What answers could ANYONE provide for that matter? I don't feel there is one aside from just trying to champion the smaller films that make the same points and have the same messages.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't have quite your rueful, head-shaking view of things, I guess. I tend to see things in terms of specific movies always. I think Ron Howard's way of working material over for a "mainstream" audience is simplistic and unconsciously condescending, but there are always times when a movie with mass appeal is a nice, well made movie. With all its fakery, I don't think Beautiful Mind is a well made movie. The Hours is pretty well made, but it's based on a book with a dubious premise; it's designed to push buttons, as is Beautiful Mind. Examples of good mainstream movies that don't condescend are Erin Brockovich and Traffic. Those two are both informative and well made, I think. They bring a reasonably sophisticated treatment to themes in a way that may make a mass audience better informed about the drug nexus and corporate pollution coverups. You can say Traffic isn't as good as the English series Traffik that it's based on and that neither is the whole story distortion, but I I learned a lot from Traffik and I thought Traffic was an excellent adaptation. Another example, not of anything uplifting, but of a mainstream movie that is made with a lot of grace, is Catch Me If You Can. If you don't like any of these examples, maybe you can find some of your own. How about The Godfather, for instance? Isn't that a great movie that's mainstream in its appeal? Last year, weren't Lord of the Rings and Chicago good movies with mass appeal?

[dave durbin]

Didn't mean to come off as some sort of bitter old man with a bleak view of the future in that last posting; I agree with your statements about some of the examples you offered and I like your observations overall. It's easy to forget everything and jump on a "fuck the mainstream movies" bandwagon while forgetting that most independents can be just as frustrating. The 'Most Overrated' category sections are always the most interesting to me in that they offer some sort of peace to many film lovers who didn't see eye to eye with the box office receipts, critical accolades, and various award groups.

[miseenscene]

I'm not so sure "mainstream" and "dumbed-down" NEED to go together, but too often they do. And with so many people throwing money at schlock like Men in Black II and other overhyped, overmarketed sequels, it sort of proves its own theory, that people will pay for anything, no matter how badly done or condescending it is, if it's marketed properly. America is a nation of trendy consumers, and it's important for the average moviegoer to see MIB2 JUST SO THEY CAN AGREE ON HOW BAD IT IS. Never mind that twenty great films might be playing in the next theater; MIB2 is the one they've been hearing about on Entertainment Tonight for three straight months.

Look at our newspapers. USA Today is written for a 12th-grade mentality. If that's all we expect of the average American, it should be no surprise that John Nash's story needed to be "dumbed down" for the masses, much less made homogenized like every other Hollywood mainstream production. I'm surprised intelligent films get made at all, since people obviously can't market Adaptation or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (which is moderately intelligent but is certainly badly marketed) to a gross of more than $20-$30 million.

I was born in 1977 so I wasn't around for the alleged '70s heyday of films, but it seems to me from what I've read that audiences were able to embrace more challenging, incendiary material at that time. Can someone who was an active moviegoer before the Blockbuster Era explain to me how audiences have crumbled from discerning, intelligent individuals to the present lowest common denominator herd mentality they've adopted?

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by miseenscene
I'm surprised intelligent films get made at all, since people obviously can't market Adaptation or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (which is moderately intelligent but is certainly badly marketed) to a gross of more than $20-$30 million.

Intelligent films get made partly because they often become profitable when international gross, video rental and sale, sale of television rights, etc. are added to domestic gross.

I wasn't around for the alleged '70s heyday of films, but it seems to me from what I've read that audiences were able to embrace more challenging, incendiary material at that time. Can someone who was an active moviegoer before the Blockbuster Era explain to me how audiences have crumbled from discerning, intelligent individuals to the present lowest common denominator herd mentality they've adopted?

Youth culture was very important in the 60s and 70s. Hollywood eventually realized this and financed films from an unusually talented group of kids such as Scorsese, Coppola, Altman,etc. Hollywood and the Media had yet to refine mass marketing. The big studios did not have quite the monopoly over screens worldwide they have today. In certain circles, the new Godard was as much a topic of conversation as the new Dylan or the Vietnam war. Repertory theatres showed a diferent film or two every day, not only in big cities but also college towns. The screening of an old Mizoguchi or Renoir film was a public event. You could not rent the vhs to watch at home. This would soon change. Cinema would become something increasingly private, experienced in solitude. People would still yearn for community and seek it in places like filmwurld.com

[tabuno]

I can't believe so many posts ask for some sort of miracle film that will somehow compress in two hours in some digestible form that the general public will accept and pay money to go see that accurately and completely explores complex societal issues. Drug and corruption as in "Traffic" was a lot more simple to transfer to film than the difficult, convoluted mental health issues. Those of the general public who haven't been touched by serious mental health illnesses have enough problems just sorting out "split personalties" (an out of date term) along with "schizo-personality" (a non-DSM-IV). "A Beautiful Mind" managed to retain the integrity of what "schizophrenia" is in terms that etched into peoples brains. I think some of the authors of these posts believe that a majority of these movie goers are going to recall more than two or three images from a movie over a six-months or a year's time (without taking any tests or constantly studying or reviewing the material in their hectic lives). I believe that "A Beautiful Mind" stuck to one of the most important, singular images that of what might it be like to have "schizophrenia." Just being able to convey that concept, this one idea, makes "A Beautiful Mind" a triumph and success as a motion picture. Whether or not the treatment of "schizophrenia" was accurately portrayed or not was besides the point. I mean how many people are going to sit through Parts I, II, III, IV for six or ten hours? What about all the affairs John Nash had. Accuracy and realism necessarily go out the window when one sees feature films. If the general public wants education and to learn about real topics, that why we have libraries and schools and the Internet, public service messages, and documentaries.

[miseenscene]

If the general public wants education and to learn about real topics, that why we have libraries and schools and the Internet, public service messages, and documentaries.

Hmm. That's like saying films only exist to give us theoretical views of events, or pure escapism. I think the fact that enough of us on here are complaining about it shows that there's an audience for films that aspire to more than two money shot images in a 90 minute timespan. Catering to the short attention span and abyssmal IQ of the average American is a great way to sell "product," but it's a horrible way to harness the full potential of film as a means of communication.

Beyond that, if leading the public to believe that schizophrenia is basically escapism, in which the afflicted spend their whole lives talking to imaginary friends and going on wild adventures, it seems to disrespect the full range of the disease. I'm not asking for documentary realism in every biography, but I am asking for some kind of honesty or integrity that goes beyond altering facts so as to appeal to the public. Changing the facts so people will be interested is not benefiting anyone except the stockholders of the studios.

[Chris Knipp]

I can understand someone's being taken by Beautiful Mind and loving it. I cannot ever accept that it is a sound treatment of schizophrenia or teaches anyone anything up to date about mental illness.

I also don't buy that mainstream movies are always dumbed down and I certainly don't buy that they have to be. "Average" intelligence is not a state of idiocy, but the average audience may be ignorant of many subjects. That's why intelligent mainstream movies can be instructive as well as entertaining, or, by the old Latin motto, dulce et utile, sweet and useful.

Let's look at some more examples. 1999: American Beauty, Magnolia, Three Kings, The Insider. 2000: Erin Brockovich, Nurse Betty, Almost Famous, Cast Away, Traffic. 2001: Ocean’s Eleven. For 2002, I've already mentioned Catch Me If You Can and Chicago. These are all from my personal USA Ten Best Lists. 2001 is low on mainstream because there were so many great relatively offbeat movies that found distribution, such as Memento, Bully, L.I.E., Waking LIfe, In the Bedroom, and Gosford Park. The others were all smart, well made movies and they reached a mainstream audience.

Ones among the above annual lists that had something instructive to say along with being entertaining are Three Kings, The Insider, Erin Brockovich, and Traffic.

Or else, I may not know what a "mainstream audience" or "mainstream film" are, and if that's the case, frankly I'd rather not ponder too deeply the question of what the "average" moviegoer can "handle." It's not good for an artist or filmmaker to second guess his audience or his market too much. Best to try to get a film made that's the best you can do, and let the audience take care of itself. That means it may take you years to get your idea onscreen. I know it wasn't a pushover to get Three Kings done. But it was done and it's wickedly funny and smart and timely and I saw it in a mobbed auditorium of a big UA cineplex and I didn't see people walking out shaking their heads in bewilderment.

It's true: we don't live in the Seventies. We live in the aftermath of the terrible onslaught of Blockbusters, the Terminators, and we live under the critical reign (insofar as critics do reign) of soundbite judgments by Ebert and Roeper or in print of slick charmers who'd rather read a book like Anthony Lane -- instead of passionate movie lovers like Pauline Kael (who had some people, Scorsese, Altman, Coppola -- to be passionate about).

But my mainstream lists for recent years isn't half bad. And there's always Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings series, which passes muster with the most sophisticated and informed Tolkien fans, and, frankly, goes largely right over my head, though I see its beauty and can appreciate that it's something exceptional -- and it draws in a general audience and enchants children and adults equally.

I believe that if you can get an intelligent mainstream movie made, and clearly you still can, the audience is there for it. No dumbing down is necessary and to think so is a dumb idea -- though clearly there are plenty of people in Hollywood who cling to such thinking, guys who hold the purse strings. But it's they who are the dumb ones, so you can put one over on them now and again and get them to fund something quite good.

[Johann]

I think new filmmakers should take Quentin Tarantino's advice:

"You should ask yourself if your film is NEEDED. Would you be pumped to see your own film if you didn't make it?"

[tabuno]

Any of the movies that I've read on this thread appear to just scratch the surface of the topic they are about - 1999: American Beauty, Magnolia, Three Kings, The Insider. 2000: Erin Brockovich, Nurse Betty, Almost Famous, Cast Away, Traffic. 2001: Ocean’s Eleven.

Traffic attempted to give us three different perspectives on the drug traffic problem in two hours, with the apparent assasination of a leading prosecution witness - how many times has that happened in this country? Erin Brockovich gave us sexy female gets public records by using her body. Almost Famous gave us groupies - a really socially relevant topic that is sure to lead to some important understanding of girls I imagine. Nurse Betty gave us crazy too and a brush off by the typical television star who is not really a human, but a caricature. Three Kings us this believeable story about the last war and how millions of dollars are traded away to save refugees - I'm sure I heard that happening someplace in a newspaper somewhere. And oh, yes...1999: American Beauty is great about suicide and well...The Hours isn't getting the same praise...I guess if a man does it it's o.k. but if women do it is cowardly.

A Beautiful Mind made a great contribution to mental illness because it enabled to general public to take away one image that they'd remember about schizophrenia (most movies can't even offer an image to remember the next day) - that people who act they way they do because they think and believe in the reality of what they perceive. This one singular image held by the public is worth more than most people realize. It begins to create a patch of clarity in a densely dirty window into the human mind. It distinguishes dissociative personality from schizophrenia. It enables people to understand and sympathize with the actions of schizophrenics - not something to be afraid of but something to cope with and try to work through. This movie provided the American public with more technical tools with which to relate to people of mental illness than any of the so-called movies mentioned above offers to public to deal with drugs, with suicide, with corrupt corporations, with war and refugees, with groupies. I mean how many people are going to find themselves marooned on an island? How is the public to treat Nurse Betty who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?

[Perfume V]

But the whole message of the movie was that schizophrenia can be overcome by willpower and love. Hiow is that a helpful message for people to take away? It's exactly the sort of thinking mental health charities have been trying to overcome for years.

[tabuno]

I agree totally with Perfume V. A Beautiful Mind only goes so far and now it the general public really does need to see Part II. It is vital that the public not be left at this point without the whole story about mental illness. Hopefully some movie will go beyond the notion that will power and love alone can beat back the terrible mental illness of schizophrenia.

[oscar jubis]

On the one hand, Ebert despised it and d.durbin said the mention of the title could "place me into uncontrollable fits of rage...". On the other, Hoberman(V.Voice) loved it and tabuno rated it as 2002's #4. (Tab also wrote that A B. Mind "made a great contribution to mental illness" which certainly made me a little loco, but that's another story). I just had to see it.

DEATH TO SMOOCHY is a send-up of children's television shows and everybody who gets rich off them. This satirical material, sharp and funny enough to recommend, is delivered by talented folks like R.Williams, Ed Norton, Cath. Keener and D. DeVito, who directed War of The Roses and produced Get Shorty. Yet I had no difficulty understanding the negative reaction and poor box office.
Death to Smoochy includes a coupla truly detestable scenes. One involves a penis-shaped cookie. It is not used for satire. It is not necessary to advance plot or develop character, and it's not funny.

The best comment I read about Death to Smoochy came from the beautiful mind of tabuno: the creators are to blame for failing to find an audience. Indeed, they have shaped the material for an audience of hip, urban young parents, a small demographic. The film is rated "R", featuring an avalanche of offensive words and references to every violent and sexual act. The tenth time Williams refer to his character as Rainbow Fucking Randolph you realize Death to Smoochy is too desperate to be hip and adult . Most importantly, Death to Smoochy would have lost none of its bite by getting rid of the smut. There's good stuff here about big business, hypocritical Charities, the television and advertisement industries,cheap tabloids, gullible audiences, etc. The material could be shaped to appeal to everybody age 11 and up.

[Perfume V]

This is why I can't understand the limbo that this movie has been left in with regards to UK distribution - how bad can a movie with Edward Norton and Catherine Keener in it possibly be?