TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

Lair of the White Worm (1988).  WTF is this shit?  This guy made Altered States and Tommy.  It's clearly a joke, but I don't know about what, or on whom.  Pity, since there's a pretty cool straight movie in there somewhere.  It does earn extra points for the brunette's great nude body and the presentation of that spike dildo.  That was neat.  But this is crap.

C

Trouble in Paradise (1932).  I cannot believe people think this is better than Design For Living.  For most of its running time it's fun enough, with the expected charming performances, though it's rather less amusing than any Lubitsch movie I've seen.  It's not just that the lead-up to Gaston's infidelity is abrupt, but that the ending has really serious problems--why aren't there a cadre of cops descending upon Mlle. Colet's mansion presently?  Why isn't she really furious?  Why does Hopkins' character--and for someone with top billing, she's not in this very much--take him back?  Why is there conversation offscreened?  A real disappointment, and I may be overly harsh with my grade--it's on the high side of fail, but I really did not care for that climax.

C+

[Admiral Yi]

Lair of the White Worm had saucy English minxes dancing around with their bosoms exposed and hanging suspended in their lingerie.

[Syt]

But this is crap.

C

And you wonder why people give you shit about your ratings.

[Ideologue]

Yi: I edited my capsule review to reflect that reality.  But in fairness it's only one of them.  The other two never take their tops off.  (I think in one of the hallucination sequences some of the nuns' breasts may be exposed, but it is very glimpsing if so.  Russell is more interested in his awful papier mache snake and his go-to Jesus imagery, the likes of which was done in Altered States a thousand times better already, and given Russell's penchant for repeated motifs was probably also done better in The Devils if not half a dozen earlier movies.)

Syt: it's the equivalent of a 1 1/2 star review.  That's pretty lousy.  Would you go to see a 1 1/2 star movie?  Would you hire a straight-C student?

[Syt]

Lousy would be a D or an F. As a haphazard passer by I would think, "C = average movie, probably of interest to fans of the genre".

[celedhring]

American Hustle - indeed a hustle. Why does Russell always feel the need to take perfectly good and engaging storylines and pretentiousness-them-up with forced resonance and navel-gazing? That was the same problem I had with Silver Linings Playbook, but at least the characters there were likeable.

[Eddie Teach]

Stop looking at it like a grad student and remember back to high school. C was a passing grade, with no qualifications.

[Admiral Yi]

A C is a slap in the face.  It's a dismal grade. 

[Duque de Bragança]

Lair of the White Worm (1988).  WTF is this shit?  This guy made Altered States and Tommy.  It's clearly a joke, but I don't know about what, or on whom.  Pity, since there's a pretty cool straight movie in there somewhere.  It does earn extra points for the brunette's great nude body and the presentation of that spike dildo.  That was neat.  But this is crap.

C

Perfect so bad it's good material then? The REAL question. I believe it's worth watching, since it ridicules Hugh Grant. Double bill with Four Weddings and a Funeral?

[celedhring]

Lair of the White Worm (1988).  WTF is this shit?  This guy made Altered States and Tommy.  It's clearly a joke, but I don't know about what, or on whom.  Pity, since there's a pretty cool straight movie in there somewhere.  It does earn extra points for the brunette's great nude body and the presentation of that spike dildo.  That was neat.  But this is crap.

C

You started watching the (few) good Ken Russell films and now you're left with only his awful ones. Heck, even bare-breasted nuns eventually get old.

That said, I've never seen his TV work which apparently is pretty great.

[Ideologue]

Well, Altered States is a real favorite.  I also dig Tommy and Mahler, though it has been many moons and I may or may not have watched them in an altered state of my own.  I checked out part of Last Dance of Salome and had a hard time making head or tails of it.  I also have Crimes of Passion in my DVD queue.

Perfect so bad it's good material then? The REAL question. I believe it's worth watching, since it ridicules Hugh Grant. Double bill with Four Weddings and a Funeral?

Oh, it's surely easy to make fun of in the abstract (the snake zombies--there are snake zombies--can be neutralized via bagpipe).  And it ain't long.  But I dunno, I didn't find it that amusing, and since there's clearly a spoofing element to it already what you're left with is a bad, fitfully amusing comedy.  It's not unwatchable, I'll give it that, which puts it above The Happening or Frances Ha, for example.

The most perfect so-bad-it's-good movie I've ever seen was Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.  It made last year's bottom ten, but I also heartily endorsed watching it for ironic purposes.

[Ideologue]

Oh, and Cel: I tried to watch Gothic last night but the audio mix is so fucked up (which I had heard was an issue) I gave up and watched The Life Aquatic instead.  Time better spent?  Almost certainly.

[celedhring]

Altered States is great but a) he didn't write it, but Paddy "Three Oscars" Chayefsky and b) ultimately it's just a "let's make a movie as if all the weird shit we believe when we are high was real".

I haven't seen Mahler. All his flicks and TV works about the lives of artists is something I have to go around to watch some day.

Crimes of Passion is terrible. Poor Perkins.

[The Brain]

Only seen Altered Assholes.

[Ideologue]

Altered States is great but a) he didn't write it, but Paddy "Three Oscars" Chayefsky and b) ultimately it's just a "let's make a movie as if all the weird shit we believe when we are high was real".

I haven't seen Mahler. All his flicks and TV works about the lives of artists is something I have to go around to watch some day.

Crimes of Passion is terrible. Poor Perkins.

Perkins is what sold me on watching it.   Although it's mainly that I'm trying to research Ken Russell a bit more for a piece.

To be fair to Russell, Chayefsky had his name removed from the final work; I doubt whatever he was after would've been appreciably better.