What movie do you most detest?

Transformers 2 for me....

 

I went for free with a group from work, so it did not cost me anything but my time and my hearing. 

 

     For me, it was a combination of not needed Bay Watch giggle slow-mo, leg humping and jive talking stupid supporting character robots, parents acting way too dumb to be living, and lots of blowing stuff up with high, headache producing  volume. 

 

     Anything that might have been interesting (like giant robots fighting each other) - was filmed so close that you could not tell what was going on. 

 

     And I know that you are supposed to suspend belief on these popcorn flicks - but having normal humans fall in a car from a helicopter at least 5 stories and come out unscratched just is beyond my limits - glad they had air-bags....

I'm always surprised at the dislike some have for Independence Day.  Although it is goofy, schlocky, and unrealistic, I still find it a very enjoyable ride with likable characters and lots of nice explosions. But then some people love my most disliked movie, so it's all a matter of taste....

 

My pick for my most disliked movie is Armageddon.  As a sci-fi/action movie it should be perfect for me, but from the opening chase on the oil rig it just grates on me terribly. 

 

The base concept of the movie, sending oil rig guys into space on 2 weeks notice to blow up an enormous asteroid is ridiculous to start with, then it just gets dumber with the crazy adventures on the asteroid.

 

The characters all feel like stereotypes, the romance is stomach-churning (despite the lovely Liv Tyler), and the pace feels artificially forced to keep things "exciting."

 

I tried to give it a second chance once, thinking maybe I had just been in the wrong mood the first time, but I couldn't get through the first 30 minutes.  I can't stand this movie! 

Pretty much every Michael Bay film - I have an intense dislike for virtually all his films except The Rock. I'll admit that when I am forced to sit down and watch one of his movies I'm already primed with low expectations but then he just manages to lower them further.

 

Single biggest annoyance was The Island because for 30-40 minutes I was actually enjoying it and thought he had managed to make something a little different - and then they escaped!!! :)

The only title I can think of is Avatar. I think James Cameron is good at what he does (bringing mindless popcorn flicks to the big screen) and I even liked Titanic, so what could go wrong? I absolutely hated the movie. Everything in the movie was so predictable, that I cannot fathom that anyone would think it's a masterpiece. We've seen the plot many times (and executed much better) before, the entire planet of Pandora is about as original as its name (it makes you wonder if Cameron just read a 'Creating a fantasy world for dummies' book and started typing), and the characters are astonishingly stereotypical. Even good actors like Sigourney Weaver or Giovanni Ribisi can't save this crap, and you have to wonder why they would accept their parts in the first place. Paychecks, I guess. Anyway, the rant's over. I'm just glad I'll never see it again.

Oh, definitely Armageddon.

 

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/armpitageddon.html

 

- Walter.

Probably a tie between Batman and Robin and Transformers 2.

Shakespeare in Love -how did this win best picture? It is complete crap. And I LIKE romantic (comedy?) films. Saving Private Ryan was THE film that year.

 

Con Air - garbage, wasted time, I want my money and 2 hours back.

 

Armageddon - Bay is talented at blowing things up but far worse at storytelling then anything James Cameron does. I can forgive Cameron's story faults due to his technical precision and ability to make his movies exciting and keep you spatially aware during action scenes. Bay doesn't have the talent for that.

 

Day after tomorrow, Godzilla, just about any Roland Emmerich film of late. I can tolerate ID4, but it is ridiculous and I never find myself wanting to see it again..

 

Poseidon Adventure -remake , horrible.

 

That's just a few, and I am someone who I think is a pretty generous film watcher, willing to give a lot of leeway to find something enjoyable in a movie and say something positive about it. But these movies leave me cold.

 

 

 

 

 

Well, I try to steer clear of movies I suspect I might really dislike, so I haven't seen things like Transformers, for example ( but I like Independence Day).

That said, Dogma is one of very few DVDs I actually contemplated turning off before it was finished, but I saw it through, in hope of there being more Linda Fiorentino, which there wasn't (at least not enough). I will not ever watch that again.

 

Likewise, if I never even see the cover of Happiness again, my life will still seem full and nice. No movie has even made me feel as bad as that one. Even writing about it gives me the creeps...

 

 

Answer: Casino Royale (2006).

 

I was waiting for somebody to ask me that.

 

Do you want to know why?

I'm glad I'm not the only one that hated Casino Royale.  Although I don't know if it'd rise (or sink) to the level of "detest."  I'm gonna have to think about that one...  As for Avatar, wasn't it basically the same as Abyss, but without the charm or interest?  [Ducking eggs and pies now..]

 

Leo

 

No, you've beaten that horse to death plenty of times in the past.

 

 

As for the actual question at hand, my answer is simple: Van Helsing. I'd put Batman and Robin right there with it, though.

Any Stanly Kubrick film, you can pick it.

There have been a bunch of highly acclaimed and awarded movies I hate. Titanic, Casino Royale (or any James Bond ridiculousness), Pearl Harbor, Twister, Sound of Music, Chicago ( I hate musicals anyway), Schindler's List, Sweeney Todd, CATS, Little Shop of Horrors, Grease, Saturday Night Fever.

Single biggest director, writer, producer who I can not watch is Quentin Tarentino. All of his stuff is garbage.

But the single biggest load of crap is anything Twilight. That bitch ruined vampires and werewolves.

And I LOVED Independence Day! Sure it was cheesy, but pretty good nonetheless.
Edited by JoeCool6972 - 12/1/10 at 5:48pm

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

 

Granted, I have never seen the last 20 minutes of this film.  It is just one of the most unpleasant films I've seen and I finally walked out and let my date finish watching the film.  Spent the time in the lobby talking with the theater worker about having to clean up vomit after the film.  I've seen about 3 Greenaway films now and concluded they are just not for me.  I like dark and to some depressing films (love the aforementioned "Happiness"), but I don't need to see dog shit, maggots and a fork in the cheek in the guise of an arthouse film.  I could never understand Roger Ebert's love of this film, but came to realize I leaned more toward Siskel's tastes.

I don't hate any movie, really. I like every film mentioned here.

I have several films I'd put as "MOST" because they are so detested that I will never try to watch any of them again.  But I really want to say I detest most:  GORE PORN.   See films like Saw

 

This falls into the category of what I would call "Gore Porn".   I just find the entire genre unbelievably offensive.  It offends everything to me that this complete gore crap gets an "R" but something beautiful with merit like "Henry & June" gets an NC-17.  I've always felt terrible that real, significant films get edited and hacked up in order to get an "R" to avoid realistic sex or tough sequences, but you can have a film where people get decapitated, gutted, torn apart, mutilated.. all for enjoyment, and it easily gets an "R".   I might guard what my kids watch, but if at 14 I have a choice between a kid seeing something like "Last Tango in Paris" (now NC-17) or "Saw VII"  I would sure as hell prefer they see "Last Tango".  Hell, I'd screen Caligula for them as a preference to this crap. 

 

This doesn't mean I don't enjoy films that have a high level of gore, and there are several that I do.   But I find that most of what I enjoy to that extent tends to be either an attempt to realistically portray (like many war films) or an attempt to stylize the effect to the point of it as an effect.   "Gore Porn" is far more about events in a film which try to mimic the real thing as closely as possible, for as long as possible, with no purpose beyond showing people in agony for the enjoyment of it.   (just to be clear)

 

I always feel a bit sad anytime I see any of the latest Gore Porn hit the top of the box office.  I just despise everything about the genre and wish it would go away, or preferrably, be correctly rated as "NC-17"

Lots of good candidates tossed out already, but I can't really say I actively "hate" the cinema of Michael Bay, for example, because I've grown to just totally disregard it. But I can think of one film I do actively hate...

Superman Returns

I hate this film the way some hate the Star Wars prequels or the Schumacher Batman films. Not because it's particularly incompetent or half-assed...its makers clearly had a vision for where they wanted to go with this iconic character and realized it with technical skill. No, I hate this film because it's a titanic failure of spirit and heart. It hijacks the look and legacy of the wonderful original Christopher Reeve film for its own misguided ends, then proceeds totally oblivious to the point of what Superman's all about. Instead of majesty, optimism and fun, we get a mopey, uncharismatic, alienated hero who flies through fuzzy digital landscapes and "saves" unresponsive digital people. Instead of romance and wit, we get a bitter, bitchy (and horrifically-cast) Lois Lane and a sadistic, dour Lex Luthor (a total waste of some ideal casting). And instead of a story which taps into our hopes and fears and lifts our imaginations, we get the same old crap all over again, just rendered slow and dull. So no, this isn't the absolute worst film I've ever seen, but, dammit, in 2006 the world could've used a good Superman film, and this one utterly failed. FAILED.

Hopefully somebody learned from this.

 

Well, I think plenty of actors would give their left nut to be in a James Cameron film. The guy has pretty much redefined cinema with almost every film he's made. That being said I agree with many of the criticisms of Avatar. It's visually stunning, no one is going to argue that, but IMO it's too preachy, cliched and unoriginal for it to be truly enjoyable.

 

Even though I find it watchable for some reason, I offer "The Lost World" (Jurassic Park). Everything about that movie, other than the dinosaurs, was just inept. The "Environmentalist vs evil Capitalist" angle had enough material to give douche chills to even the most bleeding heart. The worst has to be the Julianne Moore character. In short, she spends a good portion of the movie constantly contradicting just about everything she preaches to the other characters (actions which directly lead to multiple deaths). And who makes dumb jokes when hanging for dear life in a trailer hanging off the side of a cliff?

 

Superman Returns was mentioned. Superman IV is an easy mention, but I find it offensive not because of the abysmal production values or parts of the movie literally not making sense. It's that they took what could have been an interesting idea but wrote it with the naivety of a 5 year old little girl "we shouldn't have nuclear bombs because um......they're bad....and um....they can hurt us"

 

However, I think my top pick would be "Kids" Just an ugly film full of reprehensible and annoying characters. And what a bold message, Kids are out having sex, drinking and getting high.....really, what's this world coming to?!! I don't understand at all the praise the movie seems to get.

 

I'm leaving out films many people love that I don't and sticking to films that were poorly regarded for good reason.

 

I'm no purist, but if 2003's alleged movie version of The Cat in the Hat were a person, I'd gladly go to jail for killing it. I knew it was probably going to be bad going in, but I wanted to see just how bad. I had no idea how bad bad movies could be until I saw them drag Dr. Seuss out of his grave, purée his bones, and flush the purée down a toilet into a sewer that ran through the Ninth Circle of Hell and call it an adaptation of his books. Since The Grinch made so much money (I didn't like that either), Universal decided to pull out all the stops and really eviscerate one of the doctor's masterpieces. The book takes 5 minutes for an 8-year-old child of normal intelligence to read. Even the charming 1971 animated TV version had to pad it out a bit. This 80-minute battering ram to the brain wasn't a movie. It was a hate crime against cinema, literature, childhood, and color theory (I can't tell you how relieved I was to see a primary color when it was all over).

Be Cool

 

The only movie I've ever walked out of at the theatre if I recall.

I second the motion.  Greenaway has made other detestable films, but The Cook, The Thief, his Wife and Her Lover is the most detestable of those I've seen. My opinion of Helen Mirren and the other distinguished Brits in the cast sunk to a new low when I saw this.

 

Even more detestable is Pasolini's Salo. I don't believe in censorship, but some people are just sick, and it would be better for humanity if Salo had never been made. After the first act I saw it in bits and pieces waiting for the others in my party to get as disgusted as I did. My wife stuck with it a little longer, but she was the only one to come out. You could hear the audience cringing in unison from the lobby. Pasolini was murdered by one of his kinky friends after he made this film, which doesn't surprise me.

 

 

 

 

I couldn't agree more. It makes no sense that torture porn like Saw, its sequels, and the inept Rod Zombie horror/ torture porns get an R while adult character studies like Last Tango In Paris and Henry and June get an X. The reasoning defies logic and common sense.

 

I detest masculine deconstructions for political and sexual agendas. These films are essentially exercises in reverse discrimination to please the studio boss:

 

The Missing

The Legend of Zorro

D'Lovely

Superman Returns

Iron Man 2

 

and numerous others, but the single worst offender is of course Casino Royale.

Interesting thread, and interesting comments.  There are plenty of movies I simply didn't like (Avatar, to join the chorus) but in the end it was just a movie and I never have to watch whatever it was again.

 

But.

 

There was one movie that I hated... HATED sitting through so much I was actually getting angry.  Volcano (1997).

 

I gave up trying to find any sort of enjoyment out of this film when Tommy Lee Jones loses his cell phone, finds one in a car, and immediately starts getting calls on it.

 

But it was at the end of the film, when everyone was covered with ash, and the little girl said "Look, Mommy.  Everyone's the same!" to bring to a close the racial tensions of the film that I turned to my (future) wife and said "If this wasn't over, we'd be walking out right now."

 

And I am thankful that this movie was so bad that it never ever shows up on TV.  You all's going to be haunted by Avatar, Casino Royale, Transformers, etc forever.  Volcano has been completely forgotten about (except in my nightmares).  :)

I go back and forth between naming City of Angels and Mission Impossible 2 the "worst movie ever made." Both are so full of cliches that the films don't have any substance, and just use tired formulas that are supposed to elicit emotional responses from the audience. The only responses they succeeded in eliciting from me were revolt and contempt. 

I love Independance Day, but I completely agree with Ron on the Pullman speach scene - what a hokey waste of celluloid!  My kids send my out of the room now when we watch it.  I used to go apoloetic when it came on, now I just just laugh and mock. 

 

Worst film is tough.  Thowing out out all the truly bad films ... I guess I'd have to say Citizen Kane.  And that's because I keep watching it trying to figure out why people like the thing, and I can't find any pleasure in it at all.  (Okay, I confess I like the sympathy pull of "Rosebud".)  I understand how it introduced a lot of modern film techniques, so as a teching tool it's great; but I never feel like I'm drawn into the film.  So I hate it for sucking me into wasting my time every 3 or 4 years.

Re: Volcano

 

Yes, it is awful.  Whenever you see an animal escape harm in a film in what is essentially a throw away scene, while any number of people are dying then you know that you are viewing the work of a hack director.  Volcano and Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor both resort to this manipulative flim-flam.  (Oh, a dog was rescued so we -the audience- can feel good for a moment despite all of the chaos; never mind that scores of individuals have lost their lives in the most horrible ways.)

 

- Walter.

I lik thiss thred. Armoggeddin and the Independents Days is I hate the more. Broos Willys shoud stik to the Leethol Wepons films, he is goot wif the guns not fly in rokket wif Geoff Golbloom.

 

 

 

Oh I can't think of a film I really hate that much, I'm just not a hater... I like (and own) most of the films mentioned in this thread. Let me think..hmmm . Antichrist was a film I saw once and never again, recently I saw Stone which was pretty awful... um Zardoz was a bit of a stinker... I can't think of any more right now...

What's not to love about Zardoz?  A sci-fi adventure-dystopian-satire shot by Geoffrey Unsworth and starring Charlotte Rampling and Sean Connery and the wizard of Oz? I even found the paperback, written by the director John Boorman, a fun read. It could only have been made in the seventies.

 

Oh man was that bad. Every time I'm reminded of that scene, I picture some screewriter patting himself on the back beliving what a "clever" allegory he just wrote. But the other problem is just that there was no need to introduce the racial tension in the first place. Just some hack attempt at social commentary.