The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: Margot At The Wedding
After watching Death Sentence, a terrible movie starring Kevin Bacon as a father in search of vigilante justice directed by Saw's James Wan, Gabe embarked on The Hunt For The Worst Movie of All Time. This is his sad journey.
Oh, white people. Will we ever tire of complaining about the aches and pains of our petty bourgeois existence? Boo hoo hoo, the line at the iPhone store was too long. Boo hoo hoo, the barista got the ratio of espresso to ice in my iced Americano wrong. Boo hoo hoo, the cuff-links I ordered on-line weren't shipped overnight, and then they went to my apartment when I meant to have them delivered to the office, and I don't have a doorman at my apartment, so I had to call UPS and give them an alternate address and they said they couldn't redeliver until tomorrow morning. This is worse than apartheid!
Makes me sick to my stomach (which is full of foie gras and root beer floats and money).
Obviously, pain is subjective, and the pain suffered by the chronically self-indulgent is real. They actually feel this way! But pain is also relative, and the pain that they feel when their mimosa doesn't have enough champagne in it is fundamentally less than the pain of someone having, say, their house torn down in the middle of the night. Does this mean that their stories don't deserve to be told? It absolutely doesn't mean that. It has been told, and The Royal Tenenbaums was a great movie. The end. But if you are going to tell their story (tell it again, because we already have The Royal Tenenbaums, so it's kind of well-worn territory) then at least acknowledge that all suffering is not equal, and also maybe don't make your audience suffer in the watching.
Margot at the Wedding is about Margot (Nicole Kidman) and her son Claude going to Margot's sister's New England house to watch her get married to Jack Black. The two sisters haven't been talking for years, and it might have something to do with an auto-biographical story that Margot wrote years ago that resulted in her sister's divorce? Margot is a "famous" writer and she lives in "Manhattan" and she clearly wants to fuck her 11-year-old son, and she's leaving her husband, and she is sleeping with another writer who lives near her sister, and she's super judgmental and mean and basically just awful to be around. At one point in the woods her sister shits her pants. Also there are next-door neighbors who do things like not wear shirts and have pig roasts and they are Deliverance raper people who want Jack Black and Margot's sister to cut down a tree in their yard. They are creepy and sinister, although they're also just not whiny post-yuppies, which might be what makes them so scary! The day before the wedding it turns out that Jack Black made out with the teenage daughter of the man Margot is having an affair with. He punches Jack Black in the face, and Jack Black cries. The wedding is off. They take a ferry somewhere and go to meet their mom and third sister, Becky, and Margot sends her son off on a bus to meet his father in Vermont but not before her son tells her that he masturbated the night before, because Noah Baumbach has some SERIOUS issues with masturbation, and then at the last minute Margot throws down her sweater (which was tied around her waist, naturally, because she is an upper-middle-class white woman) and also her purse and chases the bus and she gets on the bus like some kind of incestuous homage to The Graduate, and she says "Sweaters and purses? Where we're going we don't need any sweaters and purses!" She doesn't say that, and we are left wondering what will ever happen to her stuff.
Everyone in the movie is completely insufferable and awful to be around. Is that the point? I'm willing to believe that that's the point. But the problem with making a movie where the point is that some people are insufferable and awful to be around is that at the end of that movie I feel like "wow, what a bunch of insufferable awful people to be around, I wish I hadn't been." And it's not like I was confused before the movie about people being selfish, self-indulgent, miserable assholes. I knew that! SPOILER ALERT I live in the world, too.
I liked The Squid and the Whale. Sure, it took itself a little too seriously, and felt like a senior thesis project for an all boy's boarding school. But it had some funny parts in it, and was genuinely kind of compelling. The only funny parts in Margot at the Wedding are Jack Black's parts, until he turns out to be a statutory rapist, which casts a sad, terrible shadow over his entire character. Yikes. And even before that his role wasn't THAT funny. It's like if you order fries from a restaurant that makes terrible fries, and there's accidentally an onion ring in those fries, and you're like, "Bonus! Free onion ring!" but it turns out that the restaurant also makes terrible onion rings. (There is no better way to express that.)
Watch how he "livens up" this white person lunch.
Ugh. Do you know what happens in the very next scene? Nicole Kidman complains that she already has slippers, and she hates it when people give her a present she already has. WELL THEN WHY DON'T YOU JUMP OFF OF A CLIFF, PLEASE. PLEASE DO THAT.
And of course there are the neighbors, who are terrifying "poor" people. Yuck! I wish someone would murder them! They're so poor and they don't even drink white wine all day. It's hahrrible.
Of course, this would all be bad enough if the movie actually trusted its audience to be smart enough to just sit with these characters for an hour and a half and experience their lives for a moment, but it is constantly and pretentiously brow-beating the audience with its self-explanations. Here, Margot does a reading at a book store, because of how she is a famous writer, which we know because people keep saying it (actual movie-quote: "I loved your story in, what was it, Harper's?") (sidenote: the man interviewing her is the man she's fucking [not her husband]):
Aha! She is actually a suffocating narcissist who simultaneously resents and wants to fuck her son! Thank you for explaining what was painfully obvious from the very beginning because when it comes to character development and emotional depth this movie uses broad brush strokes Why Cats Paint-style.
AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF, you can't see a fucking thing in this movie! I know that independent (or whatever) cinema is often made on a very small budget, and I'm sure Nicole Kidman took a huge pay cut for this passion project (Whoops, that's your passion), but seriously? You couldn't afford a single light? These are screencaps from various scenes throughout the movie.
So it's basically the world's most annoying radio play. Because that's also something that you can't see at all.
This is my favorite part of the whole movie, from Wikipedia:
The script's working title was Nicole at the Beach, but it was changed when Kidman signed on.
Huh?
"Change the title to something almost exactly the same or I walk."
--Nicole Kidman
Between Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale, and Margot at the Wedding, it's clear that Noah Baumbach is his generation's great chronicler of bourgeois dissatisfaction. He is intensely preoccupied with the difficulties of having a fair amount of money and an inability to express emotion. Fair enough. That is, after all, what the bourgeois preoccupy themselves with. As for the rest of us, we can only hope that his Upper West Side analyst finally "cures" him and he can move onto something less unbearable. Like drawing room comedies. Or a documentary about caviar spoons.
Next week: Crank. As always, please leave your suggestions in the comments or in an email. And if you haven't done so already, please consult the Official Rules.
Posted by Gabe at 5:45 PM in The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time
Tags: Jack Black | Jennifer Jason Leigh | Margot At The Wedding | Nicole Kidman | Noah Baumbach
rarely do i laugh aloud at the first three words of ... ANYTHING ... but "oh, white people" really did it for me.
now to read the rest of this shit.
Score = 3
Apparently you laughed at one of the only cliched things Gabe has ever written.
Score = -32
direct the snark elsewhere.
funny is funny, pal.
Score = 6
what's it to you? wanna make something of it?
because this can happen right now, pat3537!
Score = 6
Your reply to my comment was much better than my reply to your comment.
Score = 3
I feel bad for Jennifer Jason Leigh. Isn't she married to the director? So she's forced to act in his flaming piles of shit?
Score = 3
Yeah, like Jennifer Jason Leigh's not used to it. Match made in self-indulgent heaven.
Jennifer Jason Leigh. The facts:
-Has become somewhat famous for turning down many roles in some popular movies. (and accepting many other shitty ones in unpopular movies)
-Well-known in Hollywood for the exhausting research she does for each of her portrayals and for her affinity of playing lurid roles. (-hey sweetie...isn't that the girl from movie? -which girl? - you know, the one that does exhausting research for each of her portraits and has an affinity to play lurid roles. -oh, Juliette Lewis?)
-One of her best friends is Paul Thomas Anderson. (Todd Solondz never returns her calls)
-Took the name 'Jason' from family friend actor Jason Robards. (not a good choice for a girl I guess)
-After reading the script for Backdraft (1991), she reportedly told director Ron Howard that she wished she was the fire because it has the best part. (apparently she had been doing exhausting research on the role of the fire for months)
Jennifer Jason Leight: The Words
- "I could never play the ingenue, the girl next door or the very successful young doctor. That would be a bore." (totally, THAT would be a bore)
- "I'd much rather be in a movie that people have really strong feelings about than one that makes a hundred million dollars but you can't remember because it's just like all the others." (right, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Jacket, Dolores Claiborne...classics!)
-"But in mainstream movies the woman's role is mostly just to prove that the leading man is heterosexual. I'm not good at that, and I'm not interested in that." ("I'm more interested in the roles that prove that the leading man is is a closeted homosexual")
-On her best friend, Phoebe Cates: "Your best friend is the only one who would tell you the person you are in love with is a sexually ambivalent man-child." (no, YOUR best friend is the only one who would tell you that)
-I like the comparison to Depp because with him, the way he transforms himself from role to role, he's just this miraculous changeling and people really get behind it. But with me, people sometimes have a problem. (no shit)
Score = 2
Sometimes I like to think we each have one thing that we do better than anyone else on earth. But then I think, what if that one thing were, say, "hating Jennifer Jason Leigh"?
Score = 41
I don't think I know about anything as much as you know about Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Score = 26
try imbd.com
Score = -6
how could you possibly be doing crank? I mean, I get the voting system, but that movie was so good, and it's not like it was pretending to be something it wasn't- it knew. I swear. I also swear I'm not a fourteen year old boy who's just really into action movies. this makes me sad.
Score = 33
I agree. One of the rules is that it cant be intentionally terrible. Not that Crank was neccesarily terrible, but it was intentionally over the top and ridiculous and didnt take itself seriously. And iI was a fun movie to watch, eye candy, if nothing else.
Score = 22
I'm predicting a "Dreamcatcher"-style reappraisal of "Crank" on the grounds of how batshit frootloops cuckoo for cocopuffs it is.
Score = 9
What are you guys so scared of? I've liked movies in The Hunt before and made it clear that they were far from the Worst. For example, Johnny Mnemonic. For example, Dreamcatcher. If your precious Crank is so good, I'm sure that will come out in the wash.
RELAX!
Score = 27
I feel like all of Noah Baumbach's movies are ones that you finish watching and rarely think about ever again. They just sort of happen. This is an actively terrible fucking movie though.
The point you made with The Royal Tenenbaums is a valid one, too, because that was a movie that dealt with suicide, drug addiction, and death in ways that cut across any ethnic or economic backgrounds. If you were to encounter any of the Tenenbaums in real life, you'd probably find them interesting. The characters in Baumbach's movies, however, are insufferable assholes.
Score = 15
While I think Margot at the Wedding is the worst, and the Royal Tennenbaums is great, they are both filled with insufferable assholes. However, the the assholes in Margot at the wedding are terribly pedestrian. The lesson of these films is simple: if you are going to be an asshole, you better be an entertaining one.
Score = 21
Baumbach seriously does have some deeply rooted psychological issues with masturbation. But I'll take a kid wiping his jizz on random things over anything in this movie any day of the week.
Score = 13
So, "Happiness?"
Score = 6
i found it. I FOUND IT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyyjv-oRu0g
Score = 0
I was sort of hoping this was a link to Mad TV's "Pretty White People with Problems" sketch. The theme song runs through my head any time I see one of these "we have so much privledge and money but we're so jaded" movies.
Score = 1
What the fuck.
Score = 3
worst movie of all time. that will be it, mark my words.
Score = 2
also, let's leave the Upper West Side out of this. thanks.
Score = -1
While I made it through The Squid and the Whale, I am glad that last week's netflix snafu cleared up so that I could let you make my mind up about this movie, Gabe. I am going to assume that this film is what Frances McDormand's character kept taking her internet dates to see in Burn After Reading, based on the screen-cap alone.
"Will you get down from there?!" = George Clooney lots of loves!
Score = 4
Oh my god that is exactly what I thought of.
Every woman who went to see this on a blind date ended up fucking the date while they avoided eye contact, desperate to feel anything at all.
Score = 8
CRANK?! Gabe, you really killed that child inside of you...
Score = 4
Wow, thanks for saving me from seeing this one, Gabe-- sounds insufferable.
Now, since Sandra Bullock has been everywhere promoting her latest movie, I want to (dis)honor her by suggesting, yet again, her gem "The Lake House" for the Hunt. Incomprehensible time-travelling love with Keanu Reeves-- only these WMOAT reviews could do it justice.
Score = 14
2nd that shit.
Score = 3
The lone onion ring in a basket of fries metaphor is pure fucking genius. Fo reals, Tom Wolfe just shat twice and died.
Score = 25
There's something about the phrase "Next week: Crank" at the end of a Gabe post that tickles me.
Score = 4
hmmm. i think i was one of two people (the other: noah baumbach) that actually liked matw. nicole kidman really channels everything that's odd and icy about nicole kidman. and i just love that the family is just one big emotional fight club. the scene where the sisters laugh about that girl's rape is one of the casually creepiest things i've ever seen. one complaint that wasn't voiced: the fact that it was designed and shot as if it were 1970. and set in scandinavia. in 1970. pretty much only the cell phones gave away the contemporary setting.
Score = 16
I haven't seen the movie, but I kind of liked the quiet weirdness of that second scene.
Score = 1
Nope, I liked it too, Jeb. Lighting and everything. I had a much longer analysis/defense of this film attempting to argue for the validity of bourgeois sadness, but then I thought, relax technowhiteguy.
Score = 16
I completely forgot I watched this movie once. Very memorable, I guess.
Score = 3
I've been in love with Jennifer Jason Leigh ever since I was old enough to see Fast Times, but seeing her in this is like visiting my Alzheimer's-ridden grandmother: we're strangers to each other now.
Score = 7
I saw this at a free screening and my 70-year old boss was there, so the scene where Nicole Kidman masturbates wasn't awkward or anything. Why is she such a monster?
Score = 3
Gabe, while a few of your sarcastic jokes are humorous, you really are misinformed here. The lighting is supposed to be naturalistic, it's not because he couldn't afford an extra light or two.
Where is it written that a main character has to be sympathetic? It might make for a more challenging viewing but perhaps that was the intention. You not liking it or being made uncomfortable is fine, it's your opinion. However, I think WMOAT should be reserved for the large canon of films that don't even attempt to ideas, stylistic choices, etc. A Nancy Myers film is in such a different league of shitty then something like Margot.
This movie wasn't great, but it wasn't as insufferable as you make it out to be and shouldn't be in conversation for worst movie of all time. Not even in the same ballpark.
Score = -1
Relax technonaturalisticlighting.
Score = 25
Ahh... Videogum. Where someone posts a well thought out, polite argument against popular opinion, and gets promptly voted down and snarked.
I agree with zs, though. It seems Gabe's big beef has nothing to do with story, character, plot, cinematography, lighting, editing, tone consistency, etc. He primarily has a problem with who these characters are as 'people', which is a fine enough reason not to enjoy a film, but hardly ever makes it a "bad film" in and of itself. Citizen Kane, and more recently, There Will Be Blood are neck-deep in deeply loathsome characters, and while I've met my share of people that despise both, that doesn't make them bad films. When you critique art of any medium (though I'm not sure you could call what Gabe does critique), you need to filter out personal preference as much as you can, or at least channel it in a way that's relevant. I understand that this isn't a serious site for film fans, and that Gabe doesn't pretend he's Roger freaking Ebert, but this is Film Criticism 101 here, and apparently I'm Professor Criticism.
But still, I'm a huge horror nerd and Halloween is still one of my favorite films. But is it one of the best movies of all time? Not even in John Carpenter's wet dreams. I also hated Margot at the Wedding. Does that make it one of the worst movies of all time? Not at all.
If anyone is still reading, sorry for the long post.
Score = 11
How unbearable would this site be if there were comments like this on every Keyboard Cat or Real Housewives of (Insert Upper/Upper-MiddleClassBurgHere) post?
Answer: very.
Score = 8
Sorry. I live and breathe cinema, and I spend literally half of my waking life with something related to it. I realize this isn't the ideal place to get serious about movies (or really anything), but film's my passion and my livelihood. Keyboard Cat, not so much.
Score = 0
Amen.
Score = 0
The problem with this argument is that Citizen Kane is great, and There Will Be Blood is also great. Everything has to be judged on its own merits. Always. And I've never said that movies about anti-heroes or unlikable people are inherently bad always, it just so happens that this movie about unlikable people is bad. Sorry.
Score = 19
Gabe, I think we're actually on the same page here. I hated Margot for exactly the same reasons that you did, and I enjoyed the hell out of your piece (twss). I was only trying to draw a distinction between personal taste and calculated criticism. In retrospect, I think the only issue I have with this feature is that the hyperbolic title implies ineptitude in the filmmaking itself, and that's simply not an issue here. Cheers to you, sir.
Score = 4
ZS,
You can't seriously think that I don't know the difference between naturalistic lighting and not being able to afford a light, right? Not really. Not, like, 4 real. Because, come on, we've all taken a year-long seminar on the work of Michelangelo Antonioni.
And just because something is supposed to be naturalistic lighting doesn't actually make naturalistic lighting pleasant to watch. It's muddy and dim and annoying. And if the idea is that we're getting rid of the artifice of the movie-making process, then let's also get rid of this stilted over-dramatic dialog. And also the artifice of Jack Black. And Nicole Kidman's nose/teeth.
Score = 31
Well, I know one movie with naturalistic lighting, stilted over-dramatic dialog, and quite a lot of artifice, yet which still managed to become one of my all-time favorites: Barry Lyndon.
Score = 1
It's also somewhat of a shame that MATW is one of the few Baumbach films lacking his FAVORITE plot device: Angelica Huston abandoning a traditional application of eyeliner for eight quarts of Sharpie ink.
Score = 0
there are movies that look good with naturalistic lighting. The New World comes to mind. if you decide to go that route you just have to make sure you're filming in such a way as to take advantage of that feature. . .if someone is watching your movie and thinking "damn, I want to enjoy this scene but I can't see anything at all" that kind of takes away from the purpose.
Score = 0
The Forgotten, Gabe. The Forgotten.
Score = 7
Because, it takes itself soooo seriously. Because, its sexist. Because, the wallpaper. And because, ALIENS TWO THIRDS OF THE WAY THROUGH THE MOVIE MEANS NOTHING HAS TO MAKE SENSE ANYMORE. Seriously, if you could write a script to show hack writers how to back their way out of a corner they wrote themselves into, without having to fundamentally alter the storyline, you'd get The Forgotten.
Score = 2
It's really been a banner year for "estranged sister comes to town and screws up other sister's wedding" movies. We walked out of Rachel's Getting Married. Should I add that to the list or have we filled the dysfunctional family movie quota already? I think Gabe's suffered enough, personally.
Score = 0
I saw this one in the theatre, and still remember the man in front of me, as soon as the credits rolled, standing up, saying "JESUS!" and storming out.
He gave it every chance he could, yet, it remains pointless and empty.
Score = 12
Relax, beatingthejoketodeath
Score = -5
First Desperately Seeking Susan and now Crank? It's not fun when the movies know they're fun shit and nothing else. It's not like the writers are Crank were sitting around patting themselves on the back and chugging jaggerbombs in celebration for next year's best picture.
Score = 7
I'm just sad Lindsay is going. Can't even enjoy the snark no more. :'(
You're going to take awhile filling the Lindsay-sized hole in my heart, Videogum! I can hardly bear to read THFTWMOAT, this is bad.
Score = 2
Lindsay is leaving? What? When? Why?
Score = -1
Dude, really you take yourself way too seriously. I actually kinda like Baumbach movies and didn't mind MatW. But a movie should absolutely try to be interesting, and if you totally hate the characters they will just get on your nerves. Movies are entertainment, not punishment.
I'll watch an "eat your vegetables" movie from time to time. But I won't say I like it just so I can feel smarter than people who want to enjoy the movies they watch. I've seen enough Cassavetes to know I don't need to sit through another 90 minutes of knock knock jokes and people talking about how much they hate each other. I am stumped how he could have only the best actors and still make them unbearable. Just look at Seymour Cassel in an Anderson or Buscemi movie verses Cassavetes. He is so awesome! Anyway, off topic much.
Also, Crank? That movie absolutely knows that it is crazy and terrible, and awesome!
Score = -7
The closest comparison I have to this film is, seriously, Bergman, and though it doesn't match the master's, uh, masterworks, it does their influence justice. To me, it's a quasi-horror drama that barely empathizes with its own characters, kind of a Chainsaw Massacre of the emotions at Hamptons homes. I love the scares, the darkness, Jennifer Jason Leigh speaking in tongues from rage.
In conclusion, I apologize that it's about rich white people and also good. Not every movie can be The Holiday or America's Sweethearts.
Score = 2
"To me, it's a quasi-horror drama that barely empathizes with its own characters[...]"
That makes a lot of sense.
Score = -5
It does. Thanks. Oops, I commented on this "review" of Margot at the Wedding.
Score = -1
"Of course, this would all be bad enough if the movie actually trusted its audience to be smart enough...but it is constantly and pretentiously brow-beating the audience with its self-explanations."
"So it's basically the world's most annoying radio play. Because that's also something that you can't see at all."
Score = 2
I really can't wait til next week when Gabe is going to make an absolute fool of himself trying to make fun of Crank when little does he know that Crank is funny then anything he's ever posted on this website.
Score = -10
Little DID he know, until you gave it away, dickbag. FOR SHAME!!!
Score = 16
Haha! English!
Score = 8
You've gotta start turning these down, Gabe. You've written that introduction at least twice already.
Score = 0
remember when gabe made an asperger's joke in his reign over me review?
and remember how in this movie all of the characters are constantly referencing asperger's?
and remember how any non-bourgeois/normal american doesn't know what the fuck asperger's even is without wikiing it?
and remember how gabe is a self-hating psuedo-intellectual like the people in this movie, giving himself away with imaginative but ignorant descriptions of movies having "felt like a senior thesis project for an all boy's boarding school" and then immediately following them up with lazy bourgeois descriptions like "genuinely kind of compelling"?
and remember how we all read this crap every week and are failing at life?
Score = -24
And...what do you want us to do? Are you just going to harass Videogum editors again and again? There are plenty of sites on the Internet; are you just going to troll all of them with an undescribed goal?
Score = 10
you want a goal? how's about ridding the world of stupidity and hypocrisy? how's that for a goal, you fucking tube top?
Score = 0
Yeah? Well your comment is a faggot! There.
Score = 1
I think that some kind of wonderful should be in the running really its the worst
Score = 0
Gabe you keep doing movies I haven't seen so I don't have much to add, except for please please do Sex and the City (or as An American Patriot would say, Sex AND THE City). I know it's so easy to mock but there has been a void in my heart ever since The Last Kiss that can only be filled by tearing apart a movie that is just asking to be torn apart.
Score = 15
Good work Gabe! I will not see this ever. I think there should be a category for white people movies called, "My Automatic Starter Isn't Working and Other Terrible Things." The terrible things being these types of movies, of course. Maybe you've suffered enough though Gabe.
Score = 0
You know what I'm really sick of? White people complaining about films about white people.
You know, you can take almost any problem and get reductionist by saying "not as bad as children in africa.' People can't live their lives worrying about their problems in the scheme of things.
If you're going to criticise the movie, criticise it. Don't get bullshit and superior- "oh, white people." Get over yourself. People's problems are people's problems.
Score = 3
i don't think belittling all bourgeois suffering by comparing it to harsher realities like starvation and genocide is the point gabe is trying to make; he's not saying that these people's suffering doesn't matter because it's somehow not hard core enough. the actual point is that it is very difficult to care about the pedestrian concerns of people who are well off; sure, their suffering is real suffering, but that doesn't make it interesting, concerning, or even entertaining. Moreover, we are supposed to care about the suffering of people who are assholes. Sympathy for the pedestrian concerns of a privileged asshole is even harder to come by. And this film doesn't come by it.
Score = 13
"People can't live their lives worrying about their problems in the scheme of things."
Yes they can. It's called perspective, and it helps people to not be a-holes.
Score = 7
Guess I just wanted to stand up for the film, too. I like the Travers line over on Metacritic: Dissenters who see this film as a wallow in self-absorption aren't paying attention. Baumbach is acutely attuned to the droll mind games of smart people who only think they're impervious to feeling.
Score = 3
Good discussion about the autobiographical fallacy and the complex interplay between fact and fiction, Nicole Kidman and Ciaran Hinds. Very (literary) critical.
Score = 1
I mean, this movie is really shitty. That's why he did it. And nice try with the whole "(slobber) Der, yous gots to knows the diffience (slobber) betwuns unlikesable caracters and (slobber) shityyyyy ones." We all know the difference. You're not breaking any new ground here. That's great if you wrote a thesis on the opening shot to "Touch of Evil" or whatever, but you apparently skipped "How to Identify Vapid, Empty Pieces of Trash Made by Morally Bankrupt and Removed From Reality Human Beings 101." Also, to clear things up, Gabe has yet to "review" one movie that has ever been liked by anyone for even one second, so it's not surprising that he hates the characters and the people behind the characters in every single one. And nice try on trying to be civil. Fuck you.
Score = -10
Btw, "American Beauty" is the worst movie of all time. It was "Crash" before "Crash" was "Crash."
Score = 2
No wonder I kept dozing off during the clips, the lights were so dull not to mention this movie is boring as hell. I don't know how drinking more on Sunday nights can get you through this crap Gabe. Again I nominate 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.'
Score = 1
I actually liked Margo at the wedding too! The few the proud. I think its better than the arch brittle and WAY more pretentious Royal Tennenbaus which carries surprisingly little dramatic weight. Not that it doesn't have its charms. THis is a lot messier and yes the characters more unlikeable. Also Gabe, your assessment is unfair. It is heavily suggested throughout the movie that margo and her sister were molested by their dad but I understand why you would leave this out. It cramps your whole white people with too much money schtick. Under the harsh satirical eye of Gabe, everything withers.
Score = -3
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Score = -2
What is going on with the comment voting on this post? It's not matching up to usual upvote/downvote trends. And something about this bland, bland, bland movie is turning this place into essaycommentgum. I blame it on Lindsay's leaving. Nothing's been right since The Dude broke the news!
Score = 8
Not sure if this qualifies, I would like to recommend Hamlet 2. Lord is that a horrible movie.
Score = -3
I was coming here to recommend it! Everyone I know went to see that movie because we live in Tucson (where it's set). Nevermind that they filmed it somewhere in New Mexico and nothing in the film really has anything to do with Tucson. . .anyway, the musical was hilarious in a purposefully making something bad way, but the rest of the film was just godawful. It was trying to be over the top and awful, but instead it was just a really poorly made movie/script. Gabe would have fun with this one.
Score = 0
I loved The Squid and The Whale but this movie was dross. As much as i love the man, I can't take Jack Black seriously when he acting in a serious movie. I just get visions of him spinning around in Walking On Sunshine like he did in High Fedelity and I am just sitting waiting for him to gurn and Kyle Gass to pop out from the corner of the screen.
I loved Crank purely because it was over the top madness and its many, many 'wtf?' moments.
I still give you my nomination for Buster. Phil Collins+ trying to act+ train robber= Excessively awful film.
Score = 0
In that first clip, when Margot is opening the present (How long does it take you to tear open tissue paper!?!) JJL gives the "hurry this along" hand gesture. That's precisely how I felt watching this movie.
Score = 1
It takes more than peeking at my I-pod for the soundtrack...the songs have to be used to absolutely perfect effect...but I like him...at least he was swinging for it...
Score = 0
Gabe: Your comparison of Royal Tennenbaums to Margot @ The Wedding isn't entirely fair.
And I'm speaking as someone who loves BOTH movies.
The main difference between Anderson and Baumbach is:
Wes Anderson basically presents a bunch of hollow and shallow hyper-styalized "white people" whereas Baumbach actually fleshes them out and presents them as fully realized realistic characters.
In Royal Tennenbaums, that particular style worked.
But in Darjeeling Limited, it falls on it's face and the characters illicit NO emotional response one way or another. And Darjeeling limited had a LARGE number of similarities to Margot...(The autobiographical writers, dysfunctional sibling relationships, etc.), but Anderson chose to purposely ignore the depth that lived under the surface of the stereotypical characters that he presented...and thus they remained stereotypes.
I'd rather feel ANGRY towards a fully realized 3-dimensional character (Margot @ The Wedding) than feel completely indifferent towards a hollow and entirely too clever one (Darjeeling).
Also Margot @ The Wedding is a really good movie and people should still see it.
Score = -1
originally, i had chalked it up to a crappy old art house theater projector but nope there it is. it's pitch black.
Score = 0
I also have to defend Margot at the Wedding. I loved how it captured the sad awkwardness of life, and for some reason this family was very realistic to me in a way that most other movie families aren't. It could have been boring with less talented people acting out these roles, but the actors all did such a great job (except maybe Jack Black in certain scenes), that they really owned their parts and made me sympathetic to them somehow. It makes me happy that people like Baumbach are still trying to make movies like this, even if most people don't like them. I think it makes more sense to attack a movie that is intentionally or carelessly bad, because they deserve it more. At least this guy is trying to make something meaningful and good, instead of copping out and saying: "It's shit, but it's supposed to be fun, so whatever!" Why punish the few people who are even trying anymore? I feel like we as a culture do that too much.
Score = 4
the movie is brilliant. funny. awkward. beautiful.
and i really just wanted to say that i've seen it multiple times and never did i experience the "darkness" exhibited in the screencaps. perhaps your display settings are just darker than normal? much like your take on everything. lighten up. you still have a job.
Score = -5
It doesn't sound like you hated this movie. It sounds like you hated the people in the movie. Like you said- "I think that's the point"
Score = 1
Jennifer Jason Leigh ALWAYS plays the role of nasty condescending insufferable white person. I think its safe to conclude that its because she is a nasty condescending insufferable white person.
Score = -2
also, is it too early to preemptively nominate 500 days of summer? probably. plus, then you have to spend the monies, and you suffer enough already as it is.
Score = 4
"Apparently you laughed at one of the only cliched things Gabe has ever written."
Becca: you are full of shit.
Score = -7
"Apparently you laughed at one of the only cliched things Gabe has ever written."
Becca: you are full of shit.
Score = -10
I nominate Pearl Harbor, it's time has come, it is terrible. Michael Bay tries to envoke a Toby Keith sense of patriotism ie if you don't like this melodramatic piece of crap then you are un-american. Nay, Michael Bay I say to you, you have made these colors run and by run I mean run from a viewing of this movie. It is time for Gabe to meet his destiny and confront Michael Bay only then will he fulfill his destiny. Godspeed.
Score = 2
Forgot John Turtturo was in this; I nominate Secret Window. It is definitely the worst movie in the worst horror sub-genre: killer with multiple personalities. I don't know if it's been nominated before; just watch Turturro doing that Southern accent and there's reason enough. Its got to be his worst movie, next to Margot at The Wedding.
Score = 0
What bizarre way to start an article in a series about bad movies. Seriously dude... boo-hoo-hoo, not every movie ever made is great. Talk about being self-reflective to the point of an embarrassment.
Score = -1
These people would have all been killed off in the first five minutes of COLOR OF NIGHT (1994)
Except that their lurid pools of blood would have been grey-green, cos Bruce Willis can't see red blood, because his rods and cones are all repressed from being a bad therapist, and what does he think that big puddle next to the dead guy is -- snot?!? C'mon man, you're like the anti Die Hard. That's what this movie is, approximately and exactly -- the Die Hard antidote.
See it, but only if you want this contest to end right now, because I think I am not telling you something that you do not already know about COLOR OF NIGHT (1994)
Score = 0
I had actually forgotten that I watched this POS until you reminded me. I blocked it out of my memory it was that bad. So, thanks for making me re-live such an awful experience. Though, instead of making a big deal about it, I'm just going to laugh at my misfortune and continue on with my time wasting. I suppose what I learned from this movie was how not to be a dick.
Score = 0
I nominate Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith.
Score = 0
Well, I know one movie with naturalistic lighting, stilted over-dramatic dialog, and quite a lot of artifice, yet which still managed to be one of my all-time favorites: Barry Lyndon.
Score = 1
haven't seen the movie, but i liked those clips and the visuals look gorgeous. nothing about this 'hunt' convinced me this could be a bad movie. thanks for the recommendation!
Score = 0
Hey, have you guys seen Stigmata starring Gabriel Byrne?
I nominate Stigmata.
Score = 0
It's also somewhat of a shame that MATW is one of the few Baumbach films lacking his FAVORITE plot device: Angelica Huston abandoning a traditional application of eyeliner for eight quarts of Sharpie ink.
Score = 0
"I came"
Score = 0
Cold Mountain!!
Score = -1
Signs
Please give the award to Signs, or at least post a review. I hated that movie. And I watched it and XXX in a row. What a wasted afternoon
Score = -2
ENVY. Do ENVY. It is the worst movie ever made. It is offensively horrible, and the fact that you haven't yet reviewed it is a evidence of a severe malfunction in your Awfulometer. If you haven't seen the film, watch it (Netflix has it!) and see how much you hate everyone involved.
Score = 0
Gabe seems intent on letting people know how racist he isn't by making fun of white people.
Score = 0