Memorable in an Unmemorable Movie?
by HELEN GEIB
This month’s discussion topic is memorable parts of unmemorable movies. The movie might be bad, indifferent, or simply forgettable, but it had something great about it. A wonderful supporting performance (like Ray Liotta’s in Blow, pictured), costumes to die for, a brilliant concept, a wonderful dance number or thrilling fight scene… anything that sticks with you long after the rest of the movie has faded away. Tell us some of your picks for memorable in an unmemorable movie in the comments.
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Being Julia. Annette Bening was terrific enough to garner an Oscar nom for her performance in that film but it’s a terribly uninteresting and unlikeable piece of dreck.
Also, The Man from Nowhere; a South Korean film from 2010 that told the story of a nobody who lived in the same building as an unfortunate little girl. When her mother disappears, for reasons that I cannot recall, he steps up to help the girl and find out what’s happened to her mother. But he’s an ex… something (I honestly can’t remember; the film left no impression on me). He can kill anyone within seconds and is sought after by the people responsible for the mother’s disappearance. But although the movie is slow paced and, personally, uninteresting, the knife fight that he has with 30 guys in the last 10 minutes of the film was astonishing. Dreck, as well.
And here’s an extra one for you all: most people dislike Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans for reasons that contradict what actually makes the film great. But even those that hate the film claim that Nicolas Cage was nothing short of amazing in it and that the film’s worth watching just for his performance.
Holiday Inn is absolutely one of the worst films I’ve ever seen but I’ve seen – ever diminishing minutes as I perfect the timing – it numerous times so I can catch Astaire’s firecracker dance for the 4th of July. It’s one of my Astaire favorites and I recommend you try to see it with as little of the attached movie as possible.
We could probably name a bunch of action movies that have one or two exciting set pieces but nothing else. The Jet Li movie War was so bad I can’t bring myself to watch it again even for the chase/fight through the stacked pipes. I remember The Rock only for a thrilling car chase very early in the movie as Connery tries to escape.
The Rock is a solid film. Having revisited it a couple of years back, I noticed that the car chase in the film is rather poorly edited and executed. Memory can be quite unreliable. But the performances by Connery and Cage and the story make it, quite possibly, the only actually good Michael Bay film.
…I find. I don’t know of anyone who dislikes it. That is until now. 0_<
@War, I never thought that I'd see a Jet Li film that rips off Yojimbo and yet has no action in it at all. Not a single action scene until the end! But I do remember there being a ridiculously short and pathetic fight (at the end, of course) between Statham and Li because one of them is armed with a shovel and the with an axe. One of Jet Li's many forgettable films.
‘Sometimes a Great Notion’ is a rather dull movie except for one scene. The film stars Paul Newman and was also directed by him and it involves the story of a lumbering family in Oregon. There is one scene where actor Richard Jaeckel’s character gets his foot stuck between two logs while they are hauling lumber across the river. The logs are underwater and he is unable to free himself and his head is just below the water line. Paul Newman comes to his rescue, but is unable to free him. To help him survive Newman is forced to blow air into Jackel’s mouth in fifteen second intervals. They do this for several minutes and it keeps Jackel alive, but the awkwardness of the situation becomes too much for Jackel and he ends up breaking out in laughter, which causes him to suck in too much water and kills him. A very unique scene to say the least and for trivia purposes this was also the very first movie ever shown on HBO when that service started on November 8, 1972.
‘The Gauntlet’ is another bland movie from 1977 that stars Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke. However, the scene where the police shoot-up a traveling bus and put well over a hundred holes in it, is a definite sight to see.
I like The Gauntlet overall.
I haven’t seen ‘The Gauntlet’ in well over 25 years and so it is probably due for another viewing. I am just going by what I remember my impression being of it at the time. Alot of the movies that I am reviewing I have watched before, but I have found that I can remember that I liked a movie, or not liked it, but I can’t remember in a lot of cases why I liked it. That is why I like doing these reviews because it is kind of like a diary of your recollections.
Because I review only good movies (aside from new releases), I get to use my memory. “What movie should I talk about?”, “here’s a hidden gem that no one watched”, etc. But I still always rewatch every film prior to reviewing it just so I don’t get any of the facts wrong and also so that I can have ti fresh in my mind.
Good movies offer us emotional responses that we remember even after a while, be they strong melancholic emotions, happy ones, etc. That’s I find it important to rewatch a film and have it fresh in my mind (although I usually do sleep on it for a day or two just before writing the review up quickly), so that I can review it with the full potential of explaining why said movie it good, or great.
What do you guys think about my strategy? Useful or a form of cheating?
You mean Meryl Streep but yes, her performance made that movie. I liked Stanley Tucci’s performance as Paul Child as well, the two of them had a great on-screen rapport. But the “Julie” portion….
I’m not with you on “The Man From Nowhere.” The knife fight is a particularly good scene in an all-around good movie.
On “Holiday Inn”: So, so true.
One of Gene Kelly’s early musicals, which I watched once about 20 years ago, has a big set-piece number where he dances all over a construction site for a house. I can’t remember the name of the movie or anything much about it except that it was in black and white, but I still remember that number.
“The Rock” was mind-numbing. The only scene I remember with any clarity- and still the context is hazy- is a speech Michael Biehn’s character gives right before the soldiers get taken out.
I have a really hard time reviewing a movie unless I’ve just watched it (say within the last few days or maybe the last week). Even movies that I’ve watched many times before, I still need to see again to kickstart my thinking about what I want to write.
I also have to focus on one movie at a time. I can watch other movies while I’m working on a review but I can’t allow myself to start thinking about another review until I’m finished with the first one. Now I think about it, that’s probably my strongest motivator to actually sit down and write.
I think your stategy is a good one. I always like to make a lot of mental notes about what my thoughts, reactions, and impressions are that I have while watching the movie and then put them into my review. The ladies at the office tell me that my reviews really seem to ‘dissect’ the movie, which I take as a compliment because there can be many different elements and variables that go into making a movie a good one.
@Helen and Richard, how long does it usually take you to write up a review? It usually takes me 60-90 minutes, in one sitting. I sit, write it, check the grammar and structure, find or take snapshots, then send it all to you [Helen].
It usually takes me about 50 minutes to write one. I usually have it already structured out based on my thoughts and reactions that I had during the viewing. Of course with me I write a couple of paragraphs and then I need to get up and pace around for a few minutes and then go back to writing. Somehow pacing around helps my thoughts flow. I pace alot while doing my other writing as well. At my old apartment in Chicago I was on the second floor and it had REALLY squecky floorboards, which would drive the guy living underneath me completely nuts when I paced.
Pretty consistently two hours, wordsmithing included. When I’m feeling good and the words are flowing, or when the movie is trivial, it can come down closer to an hour (never less than that). I usually “write” a mental first draft while taking a walk, because that’s when I do my best thinking; it also makes for productive multitasking.
I find that I think about how I’d review films while watching them, even though I have no interest in reviewing them. Like when I watched Hugo, you (Helen) have already reviewed it for CT but while watching the film, sentences were forming in my mind…
Argh!
I know what you mean, it can be a real struggle to “turn off” and relax into the experience.