Bad Cinéaste

I have a confession to make. Though I consider myself quite the erudite film scholar, in many ways I have no cause to place myself above the average lumpen moviegoer.

I confuse the name ZaSu Pitts with Zuzu Petals, a minor character from the execrable Andrew Dice Clay comedy The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.
I am inexplicably incensed at the sight of the cover of the film Metropia, and Audrey Tautou’s picture on the front of Amélie. To date, I have not seen Amélie, even though it’s from a director I like, thanks to its coy, nauseatingly precious cover shot.
I haven’t seen Precious, except on YouTube, because apparently I laugh at the wrong things.
I can’t stand whispering in movies any more than I can in the theater. A notable exception would be 1982’s Poltergeist. M. Night Shyamalan has abused whispering so much his actors should be forced to use air horns.
I’ve never seen Avatar. Any movie that uses a default computer font for its title isn’t worth a billion dollar budget, let alone my attention.

I saw The Shining when I was 9, but I didn’t see Full Metal Jacket until I was 32. I didn’t see Apocalypse Now until a few years ago. I was better off experiencing them as an adult. Horror is one thing; horrors of war another.
I became unruly at a screening of the restored Walt Disney/Salvador Dali collaboration Destino. I honestly believe it was an unfinished copy with bad audio. I don’t experience things like that in public anymore. I’m too uppity when it comes to art mixing with corporate mentalities.
After decades of supporting George Lucas’ changes to Star Wars, I stopped loving Blade Runner after Ridley Scott changed “fucker” to “father”.
I liked the Star Wars Special Editions because up until 1997, I’d primarily seen the original trilogy on television, stretched out to three hours to accommodate commercial breaks, and even on VHS they looked like complete shit. I’d seen all the Indiana Jones movies on the big screen, and they looked and sounded great. Seeing Star Wars during the original run was more trouble than it was worth. The Han Solo fanboys ruined it then just as they have now. It’s practically a psychological complex: “Han Solo Syndrome”. Move over, Peter Pan.
I used to like American Beauty, a total shitpile of a film, only redeemed briefly by Thora Birch exposing her tits. It has all the emotional depth of Donnie Darko, another movie I detest and consider overrated. When Drew Barrymore said “cellar door”, it was all I could do not to hurl a tomahawk at the screen. That’s “deep” if you were recently birthed inside an incubator.
A common element in movies I like: everyone is covered in blood and firing shotguns at each other. Oftentimes they scream the word DIE.
I found Martin Scorcese’s The Departed absolutely impossible to follow, and could not tell Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon apart. I couldn’t recall a single line Jack Nicholson said. All I remember is at the end, everyone shoots each other before an overplayed Flogging Molly song. I don’t think anyone yells DIE.
I avoided Inception because I knew it would stink, and it did. I’ve bent circuits since the 90s; as soon as that throbbing started up, I knew it was slowed-down opera. It got louder and louder until I screamed “OKAY! I GET IT! ENOUGH!”, and turned the DVD off. Later, when I gave the movie a fair shot, I was treated to the sight of Marion Cotillard killing herself. Cotillard is a beautiful woman who happens to remind me a lot of my ex. Inception stinks, and I’m on to Christopher Nolan’s tic of starting every title with “In”. Insomnia, Inception, Interstellar, in the dictionary there are other words.
The act of putting your arm across a girl’s shoulders in a theater is something I invented, and there’s no way to do it without your arm falling asleep. As for the penis-in-the-popcorn gag, you get salt and oil all over your pubes, and if you make the hole in the bottom too cleanly, you risk paper cuts on your wang. All of this is considered rape in 2016 anyway.
Despite more than one attempt, I have never been able to stay awake for the duration of Gone With The Wind or The Powerpuff Girls Movie.
I saw Alien at a young enough age to put me off of crab and lobster forever. I live far away from any beaches, thanks to Jaws. I don’t hate the ocean, but I do believe it’s a vast organism beyond our understanding, and that I should really just stay the fuck away from it.
The transporter accident in Star Trek: The Motion Picture traumatized me. Then David Cronenberg’s The Fly made it worse, and if some asshole manages to invent teleportation in our lifetime, I will gladly disembowel them with a sharpened banjo.
For some reason I sat through The Fly II with Eric Stoltz, another misguided sequel like Alien3 where a dog is obliterated. Look, a Mars Attacks! card is one thing; nobody wants to sit and watch while a pooch explodes or turns inside out, in real time. Scorcese’s Cape Fear remake had the good sense to make Jessica Lange describe the dog’s suffering and death, which puts it in the realm of human emotion rather than extended torture porn.
Literally the solitary time I’ve seen the death of a dog pulled off successfully, aside from The Plague Dogs.
I thought it was a smooth idea to share Trainspotting with my dad, and when the dead baby appeared in the crib, he let out this awful “ohhhhhh god”, and I felt like garbage. I have no idea what I was thinking.
My favorite movie is Irréversible. I am a gentleman, in that I have never watched it with a female. You take that shot alone or not at all. There’s better films to enjoy with ladies than the one with nine minutes of anal rape. It’s the only film I’ve ever seen that forced me into my “happy place”. Pretty fuckin’ powerful filmmaking, in my book.
After seeing Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover I experienced uncontrollable dry heaves. Not because of the grody cannibalism, but because holy shit that is the most goddamn pretentious thing I’ve ever seen, and I saw Antichrist (which I liked). Lars Von Trier lensing a child falling from a window like a cologne ad has nothing on Helen Mirren spattered with rotting carrion.
Until Pierce Brosnan, I disliked and avoided James Bond movies. I found the deaths to be off-tone and grotesque. When I was a teen, Sean Connery was known for Highlander and Time Bandits. Roger Moore was James Bond on The Muppet Show.
In the late 80s, if a Roger Rabbit short played before a movie I didn’t care about, I would pay for the ticket and leave after the short. I used to hop theaters, before ticket prices skyrocketed and it became an easy way to get brained with a flashlight.
In 2007, before the first Transformers, a trailer for Across The Universe would screen. During this trailer, a friend moved closer to say hi, and I said flatly, “I HAVE AIDS. I NOW HAVE FULL-BLOWN AIDS.” I later realized this statement came completely out of nowhere, as he did not share my disgust for this Beatles adaptation (or at least, he concealed it better).
I violently hate musicals.
I’ve seen Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, that’s why.
Oh, that’s for sure.
A friend once tried to make me watch Moulin Rouge and I threatened to aerate a vein. Any time I offer an honest opinion about Baz Luhrmann I end up hurting some girl’s feelings and I feel like a bag of shit.
I’ve seen Clue and Battleship. Two movies based on board games. To be fair, Clue is worth it. Battleship could have been a re-cut of Skyline or Battle For Los Angeles and no one would have noticed. I can’t really ridicule these movies, when I guarantee you forgot all about them until I brought them up.
My introduction to the legendary Ennio Morricone was Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, with Kevin Costner. The only Italian composer I love more is Angelo Badalamenti. He did Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and Twin Peaks, among many others. He spits coffee into a napkin in disgust in Inland Empire, which I was apparently alone in liking.
I don’t like True Romance or Reservoir Dogs, and in fact have no reverence for them at all. If I want a fine steak, I don’t go to Burger King. That’s about all I have to say about Tarantino. He got Morricone his Oscar, I’ll give him that.
I think Casino is Scorcese’s best film. I don’t think Joe Pesci’s characters in Goodfellas and Casino are similar at all, other than being played by Joe Pesci. The guy he played in Casino looked just like him, anyway.
I don’t think Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Hugo were fairly received by audiences, and I can be a real dickhead about it.
I’m secretly glad that theater prices are so high, because it keeps people from using their phones, talking, or otherwise being disruptive (for the most part). I’m intolerant of disrespecting the house while the film is rolling, for any reason. And if anyone present is under 13, I’m already pissed off. Children really don’t belong in theaters. We’re just forced to accept it because we don’t feel like getting into a fight with another miserable, projecting parent. As you suffer, so must we all. Your weak pullout skills uber alles.
As the end credits rolled for Jackie Brown and Back To The Future II, I stood up in the theater and screamed epithets at the screen. In both cases I was accompanied by females who were absolutely mortified at this gesture.
I have kind of a love-hate relationship with the movies.