The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: AlohaDawg on November 22, 2003, 06:24:05 am
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Or, in other words, movies that force you to watch them, regardless of what time it is or whatever else it is that you should be doing.
I'm interested in what movies make you stay up all night on a school/work night, forego cuddling with your SO, neglect your appetite - when your flipping through channels and you see a scene or hear a snippet of dialog and your hooked for at least an hour. As you can see from the list, sometimes it's because the movie is JUST THAT BAD...
Inserted Edit here: [edit]The movies that make you do this might be good movies or bad movies. In my case, quite often they are bad movies but that's just me. I'm wondering what movies make you watch them. [/edit]
Usually, these would be movies on free TV. Generally on TBS, USA, TNN, or latenight local channels. With Commercials. Or in the case of latenight, commercials featuring models enticing you to call a fat woman with a mustache on a 1-900 number.
I can not walk away from:
Big Trouble in Little China
Conan the Barbarian
McQ (this one is a source of shame)
The Maltese Falcon
Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
Food of the Gods
Them (Note that any movie about bugs will probably work)
Empire of the Ants
Phase IV
13th Warrior (more shame)
Midway / The Longest Day
Dirty Dozen
Magnificent Seven
Walking Tall (Bo Svenson one, not Joe Don Baker one)
Any Dirty Harry Movie
I'm embarrassed now, but I'm wondering if any of you suffer from compulsive movie watching as well. If not, I guess I can always try therapy. Or get TIVO and watch them over and over til I am desensitized.
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The Maltese Falcon is not a bad movie.
There are few movies that I can watch anytime even though they're really not all that good. Well, some of them are. But these are a few that I could watch over and over again anyway.
Any of the five Star Wars movies.
Any Die Hard movie.
The Matrix
Top Gun
Days of Thunder (Top Gun in stock cars)
Any James Bond movie
Ghostbusters
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Citizen Kane
UHF
The Dark Backward
Any Kevin Smith film
Fight Club
Any Tarantino film (written or directed)
Of course, I have most of these on DVD and would rather watch them in Original Aspect Ratio.
So sometimes if a movie's playing on late night basic cable I'll pop-in the DVD and watch it on my own.
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Movies I didn't want to watch, but couldn't stop myself, regardless of quality:
Cube
Dude, Where's My Car
The Chase
Point of No Return
Lethal Weapon 2-4
The Punisher
There are more, but damn, why does my psyche torture me so?
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Whenever Total Recal is on tv, I must watch it all the way through. I don't know why.
Shawshank and Silence of the Lambs are like this for me too, which is good 'cause they're excellent movies, but bad 'cause they used to be on all the time.
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Hmmmm.... let's see:
Animal House
Blazing Saddles
Young Frankenstein
Car Wash
Every Which Way but Loose
Groundhog Day
Tampopo
The Longest Day
Patton
The Cowboys
Little Big Man
Most James Bond movies
The Blues Brothers
Sling Blade
Deliverance
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AugustWest, you think Tampopo is a bad movie? I take back my threat to have an internet crush on you and your dachshund.
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Well, in the original post I mentioned that sometimes, it because the moviie is just that bad. Occasionally, it's just that good, I guess
I forgot about Car Wash! That one gets me every time. It's something about Melanie Mayrons enormous boobs and that dude with the HUGE fro.
I should add to the list a few more I just thought of:
Clash of the Titans
The Wash (the recent Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre movie)
Excalibur
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AugustWest, you think Tampopo is a bad movie? I take back my threat to have an internet crush on you and your dachshund.
No! No! No! A thousand times NO!
I guess I missed the BAD movie part. Stupid short attention span... [/size]Pretty much everything on my list I consider a good movie. I love Tampopo. The first time I watched it on IFC I was transfixed.
May I consider our mutual internet crush renewed?
Also, here's an aesthetics question for the philosophy majors amongst us: How can a movie be bad if we enjoy it? Isn't the purpose of a movie (or at least one acceptable purpose of movies) to entertain? So what if it entertains in a crude or silly fashion. If it effectively diverts or amuses us, doesn't that make it a good movie?
Geez, how could you possibly think I thought some of the movies on my list are bad? Patton? Sling Blade? If I ever called Blazing Saddles a Bad Movie, my tongue would leap from my head and run screaming down the street!
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Geez, how could you possibly think I thought some of the movies on my list are bad?
Um, well, possibly because I've only seen - let's see - two of them. I am not a big movie fan. Can't sit still for that long. Please forgive me.
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Um, well, possibly because I've only seen - let's see - two of them. I am not a big movie fan. Can't sit still for that long. Please forgive me.
There's medication you can take for that.
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Um, well, possibly because I've only seen - let's see - two of them. I am not a big movie fan. Can't sit still for that long. Please forgive me.
There's medication you can take for that.
Yeah, but instead I decided to try to get a career where it was an asset instead of a liability. Didn't help the movie-watching thing, though.
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I find basically every filmed version of LotR transfixing this way, even the really horrible ones. The Fifth Element does it too, although that is a beautiful film in every way.
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My Cousin Vinny
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End Of Days
hoo boy there is some bad bad bad good stuff in there
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Real Genius.
Office Space.
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.
I'd add Dolemite II: The Human Tornado here, but I've never actually seen it on TV.
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Dude, Real Genius and Office Space are good movies.
Star Trek III is better than its reputation, too. It was those films after 6 that started to suck suck suck.
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Office Space was good, I thought. I wouldn't go so far as to endorse an even-numbered Star Trek movie though... that's just crazy.
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Dude, Real Genius and Office Space are good movies.
Star Trek III is better than its reputation, too. It was those films after 6 that started to suck suck suck.
Just to point out one last time, as I've also re-edited the original post: These movies can be good movies!!! It's just that in MY case, sometimes, the movie sucks so hard it sucks me in. Barbarella and (oh the shame of it) He-Man (Dolph Lundgren!!) do it to me too.
Great choices, so far! Office Space should be on my list. Only thing I can tolerate Jennifer Aniston in.
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Dude, Real Genius and Office Space are good movies.
Star Trek III is better than its reputation, too. It was those films after 6 that started to suck suck suck.
I know they're good movies. The criteria isn't are they good or bad, it's will you drop whatever you're doing to watch them?
I've seen the Star Wars films and The Matrix so often I can take them or leave them ( or replay them in my head, perhaps while pretending to swing an air-lightsaber around ). But Real Genius and Office Space? I'll stop what I'm doing. Top Secret! used to fall into that category, but then I got it on DVD and the shine wore off.
I think STIII is the best of the Star Trek movies, because it's all one big rescue, and I'm a sucker for the cavalry riding in. The characters pretty much throw away their careers and ultimately destroy the Enterprise just to save Spock. I can overlook the plot holes and dodgy hairstyles for that.
I notice I'm alone, however. Most of the even-numbered ones up to 6 are good, and I liked Insurrection more than I thought I would.
Still, The Human Tornado is the funniest movie ever made. In fact, now I'll have to put it on tonight when I get home.
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Ah, I didn't see that the original topic had changed, although the name of the thread is still "Train Wrecks" which would imply bad.
My bad.
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I took the title "Train Wrecks" to mean that the movie wrecks whatever plans you had for the next two hours, not the quality of the film itself.
Then again, I not smart much.
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I assumed the derivation was from the old saying about "it's like a train wreck -- you're horrified, but you can't help but watch." Presumably this thread is keeping only the "can't help but watch" part.
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Oh, now I get it.
I was just about to add Silver Streak to my list.
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I assumed the derivation was from the old saying about "it's like a train wreck -- you're horrified, but you can't help but watch." Presumably this thread is keeping only the "can't help but watch" part.
What's so bad about train wrecks?
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I assumed the derivation was from the old saying about "it's like a train wreck -- you're horrified, but you can't help but watch." Presumably this thread is keeping only the "can't help but watch" part.
What's so bad about train wrecks?
Presumably the blood and the gore and the fires and the dead bodies and the screaming children. But I might be wrong.
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Not to mention the spilled chemicals and fuel and sparking of them both.
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I assumed the derivation was from the old saying about "it's like a train wreck -- you're horrified, but you can't help but watch." Presumably this thread is keeping only the "can't help but watch" part.
What's so bad about train wrecks?
Presumably the blood and the gore and the fires and the dead bodies and the screaming children. But I might be wrong.
damn right you're wrong. Without all that, there would be absolutely no reason to look at a train wreck.
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I assumed the derivation was from the old saying about "it's like a train wreck -- you're horrified, but you can't help but watch." Presumably this thread is keeping only the "can't help but watch" part.
What's so bad about train wrecks?
Presumably the blood and the gore and the fires and the dead bodies and the screaming children. But I might be wrong.
damn right you're wrong. Without all that, there would be absolutely no reason to look at a train wreck.
Lo, I have been bested, verily!
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The first 45 minutes of Army of Darkness (when I'm watching the DVD, I watch the whole thing; when its on TV, that's all I can get through)
WarGames
Friday
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
Maximum Overdrive
Tremors
The Fly (Cronenberg)
any movie with a large Japanese monster in it
[/b]
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Another one of these just occurred to me: Tank Girl. Objectively horrible, subjectively fun, definitively fascinating. (To me, anyway.)
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Along the same lines, I have found myself watching movies on TV that I own. I once got half way through watching the English Patient with comercials and the naughty bits edited out, when I came to my senses and remembered that I owned it and there was no reason to watch it on TV. I've done it with other movies too.
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I once got half way through watching the English Patient with comercials and the naughty bits edited out, when I came to my senses and remembered that I owned it and there was no reason to watch it on TV. I've done it with other movies too.
People do this all the time. It's because when it's on tv you know other people are watching too, so you get to escape the horrible horrible crushing loneliness of your life, side_show, and feel connected, albeit in a sterile and technological fashion, to your fellow humans.
One of my extremely flakey ex-girlfriends had a theory that everyone's brain waves eminated from their heads like radio waves and that subconsciously we could receive each other's brain transmissions and be affected by them.
Of course, this girl's a spitter, too, so you can't take too much of anything she says too seriously.
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One of my extremely flakey ex-girlfriends had a theory that everyone's brain waves eminated from their heads like radio waves and that subconsciously we could receive each other's brain transmissions and be affected by them.
Of course, this girl's a spitter, too, so you can't take too much of anything she says too seriously.
I don't think the idea of collective unconciousness is entirely flakey, but I ain't no spitter, why that's just plain rude.
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Of course, this girl's a spitter, too, so you can't take too much of anything she says too seriously.
I love your logic Jough.
You should get your own column in New Scientist - where you can debunk new and groundbreaking scientific theory by referencing the author's sexual misgivings.
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When I first started working at my current job newscientist.com was blocked. The only reason anybody could give me was that "maybe they use the word 'breast' too much or something." Except according to Google our own website uses that word 297 times . . .
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I'm not sure I would last very long at a job that treated its employees like children.
Of course, if I did work in a tech job I was usually the one controlling the filter, which meant that I could add myself to the passthrough list. And anyone else in the company for a little extra cashish.