5 Movies You'll NEVER Watch Again... (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

(To turn the question on its head).

More than 99% of stuff I have watched, will never be watched again by me.

Too many to list, which ends up being interchangeable with one another.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Walter, at first glance I thought the four films you listed were those you’d never watch again, then read through more carefully and understood what you were saying.

The last three you listed (including the 1951 version of The Day The Earth Stood Still) happen to be among my favourite films, so I thought if my tastes are so diametrically opposed to yours, then I’d better get hold of The Arrival too, as it’s one I’ve not seen before. Well, maybe I ought to get it anyway.

As was pointed out in post #34, I erred in adding The to the title of the film. While I sort of like The Arrival from 1996 (which most certainly does not feature benevolent aliens, BTW), the film I meant to list is Arrival from 2016. One of the better first contact stories I've seen committed to film.

- Walter.

 

[JohnRice]

Man, you guys take movies much too personally.

YaThink?

I don't think there is a single movie I can say I will refuse to ever see again. There are plenty I don't plan to see in the first place, or don't plan to ever see again, but that doesn't really mean anything other than having the ability to choose how I use my time.

Sometimes I just don't "get" a movie the first time around. I remember how much I hated American Beauty the first time I saw it. When I did see it again, I realized my initial interpretation was completely wrong. There are many others like that.

The bottom line for me is, if I come away despising a movie that much, the flaw probably isn't really with the movie, but with me. Someone mentioned God's Not Dead, and I'm recalling that one has Kevin Sorbo in it. His silly (actually, hateful) portrayal is worthy of eye rolls, but it's so comically ignorant, and hate filled, I find it difficult to take seriously enough to be upset about, and I don't want his hatred to rub off on me.

So my answer to the question is...

There aren't any.

 

[JPCinema]

Parasite
The Shape of Water
West Side Story ( 2021)
Reservoir Dogs
Women Talking

 

[Tino]

Of films I’ve liked? None
Of films I’ve hated? All

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Well, I probably won't watch these again...

Gone With the Wind - Never been a fan of the picture. Watched it several times to try and at least be able to discuss it. I understand the place it holds in film history. However, I never gained more appreciation for the film, really just have liked it less and less each time. No urge to ever return to it.

Gentleman's Agreement - I've seen this twice and part of a third time when I just could not sit through it again. I like Mr. Peck but this picture just has not aged well. It's a well-meaning film where a guy that is not Jewish pretends to be Jewish to get some perspective and write about what it is like to be Jewish. Sadly, this has all the nuance of a sledgehammer to the forehead. At the time it was probably seen as thoughtful but now it sort of plays as absurd. Not a fan, won't return to it.

Prometheus - Love Ridley Scott. Love his original Alien film. I tried and tried to find a way to like this one. Even just to like it a little, just could not do it. I've probably seen it about 7 times. Viewed with commentary on, with sound off, against a piece of unrelated music (this was the best viewing). I like maybe the first 30 minutes of the picture. When the crew wakes up on the ship this thing crashes hard. I can't see myself watching it again with so many other things out there I really want to see. To this end I gave away my Blu-ray copy of it. Bring on Napoleon!

The Devil and Father Amorth - This was William Friedkin's final film. It is supposedly a documentary but seems to be about as much of a documentary as The Wizard of Oz. Friedkin I guess decided to visit this Father Amorth person, who is the exorcist to the Vatican, I believe. Amorth agrees to let Friedkin film an exorcism. Then Friedkin gets sort of in a beef with the family of the person that was being exorcised. I will describe this in the blunt terms William would use to describe a lot of pictures, it's a pile of shit. I am a huge fan of Mr. Friedkin and until he made this, I had his picture The Guardian listed as the abomination on his resume. Well, this topped it. Amorth died, I think, during the making of this film. Won't ever return to this one as when you have pictures from Friedkin like The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, To Live and Die in LA...why on god's green earth would you spend any time with this crap.

Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles- Alright, so like a lot of people probably, I watched this for the first time because it topped the Sight & Sound poll as Greatest Film Ever Made. I had known about it. Always meant to watch it. Just every time I looked at it, I felt like watching something else. Then it was suddenly named the Greatest Film Ever Made and I thought, well, now I have to watch it. It's a well-made if fairly static picture. Lots of locked off camera. Lots of allowing you to gaze at a woman going through her day-to-day routine. It is not a bad film, it is a slow one, and I am fine with slow cinema BUT this was a one timer. Glad I saw it, not much there to draw me back to see it again. I don't regret seeing it. I don't think it is the greatest film ever made by any stretch. I really feel that for something to be considered the greatest film ever made, it has to have the quality of making you want to see it again...and again...and again. This, for me, did not have that quality. So, it was a one timer. Honestly, of the films on this list, this is the best of them, in my opinion, so there is that.

So there are five. I'm in my mid-fifties so I am at the point where I just don't want to spend time with pictures I don't really care for anymore. I am kind of like Gleeson's character in The Banshees of Inisherin in that way. It just seems not at all worth the time I have left to try to reexamine these films anymore. I am much more likely at this age to call a film a one timer.

 

[SD_Brian]

There are many that I will never watch again, but these are 5 I won't watch again because I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated them the first time:

1. The Girl Next Door (2007) - I suppose it's technically a well-made movie, but it's deeply disturbing and depressing as all hell.
2. Into the Wild - Spent the entire movie impatiently waiting and rooting for the main character to shut up and die.
3. Cannibal Holocaust - Awful movie with several scenes of un-simulated animal cruelty that I can never un-see.
4. Love and a .45 - One of the early Tarantino rip-offs. Dreadful on every level.
5. Straight to Hell - I almost never turn a movie off before it's done but, try though I might, I just couldn't make myself finish this one.

 

[uncledougie]

I cannot tolerate torture porn like the Saw films and countless other gruesome odes to the worst in humanity, nor films with animal cruelty like the Cannibal this or that, just NO! There are, however, some excellent films that would be hard to sit through again, even though I know where they lead having seen them in theaters the first time: Schindler’s List, which has been mentioned, and which I have watched once on video in order to share it with good friends after visiting the local Holocaust museum; Brokeback Mountain, which left me speechless and depressed; Sophie’s Choice, likewise, but I’d recorded it on the DVR to watch and the device crapped out losing all the recorded programming and had to be replaced. I wanted to see it again only to confirm my original opinion that Meryl Streep gave as good a performance as any I’ve seen in a film, but the story is just devastating and an emotional ordeal. I’ve wasted time on mediocrities I’ve regretted bothering with, but try to avoid the Marvel and DC comic book films in the first place. Usually from the few I’ve seen it’s just a special effects orgy with confusing interwoven plot lines and characters I have no interest in trying to decipher.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I would add about my list, I don't hate any of the pictures on it. The question was to name 5 films I would not watch again. So, those 5 were the easiest to come up with for me because in conversations with people about film I frequently bring them up. They either were disappointments, or the subject matter did not appeal to me, or the presentation of the subject matter I thought was poor. If the question was 5 films I really hate, I probably would have given a different response. I think the only film on my list I got close to hating was that Friedkin picture. Wow, it just was terrible and I was kind of shocked it was offered up as a documentary.

Most likely there are a lot of films I will never watch again because there just are a lot of one and done films. If I think a picture looks like something I would not like, I tend to just avoid it.

 

[Thomas T]

Tree of Life
Last Tango in Paris
Nutty Professor (1963)
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Magnolia

Five of my very favorite movies of all time. I guess we won't be going to the movies together anytime soon

 

[Robert Crawford]

Five of my very favorite movies of all time. I guess we won't be going to the movies together anytime soon

 

[bmasters9]

One more: The Batman (last year's absolute dud w/Robert Pattinson)-- nowhere near the fun of Adam West's signature role of Batman in the 60s ABC classic by that name (and outside of the 1989 Keaton Batman film, practically none of today's Batmen have been).

 

[Polbroth]

The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp is the worst film i have seen in the past 20 years. The English Patient put me to sleep.

The English Patient!

(But I'd watch it again on a dare.)

 

[Dick]

I only have one to NEVER see again and it's not a criticism but because I was too thoroughly terrorised to face the ordeal a second time:

DON'T LOOK NOW - aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh......................

I rewatch DON'T LOOK NOW every few years, having been really shaken up by a 1973 theatrical showing. Made a huge and lasting impression on me. One of the most cinematically and editorially interesting films ever to my mind, and Nick Roeg's best work. So, each to his own.

5 films (among hundreds of others) I would never watch again:

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (utter sewage)
IRREVERSIBLE (interesting, but the violence is too much for a rewatch)
ROSE RED (t.v. miniseries from Stephen King, and an insufferable bore.)
BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK (3D) (Ang Lee's follow-up to the magical LIFE OF PI has none of that film's sense of wonder, and I find it to be a dull slog).
EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE (Wim Wender's incredibly insipid 3D venture).

And, of course, turning 73 today, I imagine there are many, many superior movies I look forward the watching a second time, but won't ever get around to!

 

[Dick]

About a scene or film that’s so creepy or cringe-inducing- my inclusion is The Vanishing (Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland). What happens to Kiefer’s character near the end is something I don’t need to watch again.

Check out thre original version!

 

[uncledougie]

I found a copy of the original Vanishing which I haven’t gotten around to yet. Guess I need to try it. I found Don’t Look Now quite disturbing as well, but compelling, and need to open that Criterion release to view now that it’s been brought up. I did watch the first 3 Hostel films when they were released cheap on a single Blu-ray; that is a never again disc that is in a box to sell off.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Tree of Life
Last Tango in Paris
Nutty Professor (1963)
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Magnolia

Interesting. Tree of Life was weird, but I could easily see it again, just to see what I missed.
Magnolia is one of the greatest movies I have ever seen, not just one of the best of PTA's.
The rest I haven't seen.
Really interesting the difference in taste we all have.

Anyway, not sure I have five of the top of my hand, but I know that I will never again watch:
1) Tideland - I love Gilliam, but this was too weird even for me
2) Dogma - never saw such sh*t ever
3) Pitch Black - not surprising, it was bad, but I never knew it would be THAT bad
can't think of any other real stinkers right now, but I understand Schindler's List, I have it on my shelf, and have had it since it was released. Just never seem to be in the mood to see hours of suffering and pain, and knowing Spielberg, I know he will press all my buttons and I will feel wretched, so good as I understand it is, and important as the subject is, I don't know if I will ever watch it.

 

[Jeffrey D]

Check out thre original version!

Swedish film, right?

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Filmmakers are just telling a story, it's up to individuals to determine how seriously they want to take that story.

Well, I beg to differ. Oliver Stone's JFK, or Comandante, just stories? I think not. There are probably many more examples, Battleship Potemkin being probably the first with Triumph of the Will a second.
Films matter, and can change people's minds.

Wow, a lot of hatred for Independence Day. It may not be the best film but I thought it was a very fun, escapist, popcorn movie. I really enjoyed it at the Drive In the summer it was released.

Just revisited it the other day, after not having seen it for at least ten years, and it's still as stupid, and as fun, as that day way back I saw it theatrically. Sure, Emmerich is no Coppola or Scorsese, he is not even a Bay, but he is still fun, and there are some great one liners there.
That's what I call a close encounter!

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Swedish film, right?

The Vanishing? No, Dutch, I think. Spoorlos, no?

The Vanishing (1988) - IMDb

The Vanishing: Directed by George Sluizer. With Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus. Rex and Saskia, a young couple in love, are on vacation. They stop at a busy service station and Saskia is abducted. After three years and no sign of Saskia, Rex begins...

www.imdb.com