Fess up! I'll start the ball rolling with a picture. (No, I'm not kidding.)
Monday, December 12, 2005
Guilty Pleasures
This is Ginger's suggestion, and an excellent one. Come on, guys: what are the worst movies you secretly love? And no hedging your bets with "ironic" love, if you please. I want ardent devotion to the work of Adam Shankman. I want soft spots for Gigli. I want obsessive repeat viewings of Rob Schneider vehicles.
Fess up! I'll start the ball rolling with a picture. (No, I'm not kidding.)
Fess up! I'll start the ball rolling with a picture. (No, I'm not kidding.)
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22 comments:
Oh my God. I once got a lot of crap from people for LOVING Somewhere in Time, which I don't think is a bad movie, but others tell me I'm wrong. I also love Them! for all kinds of reasons. Somehow neither of these seems bad enough for what you want. I sometimes take some crap for loving Bring it On as much as I do, but then I think of Nick and all is well.
Oh yeah, and Saturday Night Fever? There's some baaad camerawork and dialogue in that movie.
I have an undying passion for "The Fifth Element". I tend to call it a "visionary" work every time my love for it gets too embarrassing. But really the whole diva sequence is quite stunning, you gotta admit. Luc Besson is one crazy dellusional bastard.
I love, love, love, love, love Saved!. It's not necessarily awful, but my absolute, eternal dedication for it is ridiculous.
I am SOOOOOOO there with:
Somewhere in Time
Showgirls
Starship Troopers
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
She Devil
and
Anything With Drew Barrymore
I say this with pride and my head heald high.
See how people are censoring themselves already on this thread? Are the movies really that embarrassing?
I'll put in my next plug for Deep Blue Sea (1999), Renny Harlin's gleefully stupid shark shocker, which I must have seen like 12 times. It has me from the first reel, when Saffron Burrows is being shown around the shark research facility and her tour guide points down to the water and declaims, in all seriousness, "Beneath its glassy surface, a world of gliding monsters." Yes!
Almost all Harlin's films are guilty pleasures for me, especially this, Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight. The shakier his career gets with crap like Exorcist: The Beginning, the more I wish he'd pull another hit out of the hat just so the studios would let him make big dumb nonsense again. I don't care what anyone else says, Renny rules.
I don't usually get embarrassed for loving. Showgirls? Awesome. Bring It On? Great. If I love it. I love it.
OK wait. there is one i'm slightly ashamed about: Pocahontas (Disney version).
Stepmom, which I would actually defend, and Hope Floats, which I maybe wouldn't, have been screened Chez Davis more than... well, a lot.
As far as trash cinema, Showgirls reigns supreme, though I agree with something Nathaniel once posted that it's an awful, awful film that more and more starts to look like a plotted and great one. Maybe the awfulness is just hallucinogenic, but I sort of trust that film.
I do not trust Scorned 2, but I love it extravagantly and have seen it many, many times since first catching it on Cinemax with my college roommate. An "erotic thriller" that features such splendiferous scenes as the buxom, semi-schizophrenic protagonist (scorned!) reaching under a car to cut a rather conspicuous black hose with some wire clippers. This hose represents The Brakes. Later, two people who Scorned the protagonist will get into this car, pull out of their parking spot, brake, pull into the street, and only suddenly lose control of their brakes while driving on a cliff-edge, somewhere between their hotel and an airport. To explain their distress, the soundtrack is literally full of the sound of squealing brakes. Deliriously, unimprovably awesome.
And need I mention that the slain teenage lover whom the Scorned (SCORNED!) woman is avenging is named... wait for it... Robey.
First my Robey, and now Wendy Robie... hmmm...
My mum's name is Wendy Robey. I feel this thread is taking on disconcerting aspects of a Ouija board...
Good call on The People Under the Stairs, Ginger, it's quite something. In a similar vein I'll throw in Romero's Monkey Shines too. Great little film.
And Showgirls fans, Charles Taylor's Salon piece on it is well worth reading - he makes the same point as you and Nat, Nick, only to take it, well, further. Too far. An interesting read though.
Since we're on a horror tip, there is no way I can omit Sleepaway Camp, a truly sublime instance of filmmakers who are sure their bumbling, unintentionally hilarious crap is Really Something Special. But say this for it—and Dr. S can back me up—of all the films that have ever tried to rethink the entire preceding movie with a GOTCHA last shot, this one succeeds the absolute most. Hilariously, and god-awfully, but it succeeds.
Sounds splendid, and similar to the rather wonderful April Fool's Day - anyone ever seen that?
How could I have forgotten Sleepaway Camp. I'm behind you! (Always, but really on this.)
My most recent moment of ecstasy watching a seriously intended drama that totally detonated every five seconds was with Killing Me Softly, in which Heather Graham's English book editor (!!) is romanced but perhaps victimized by Joseph Fiennes' occasionally German mountaineer. Priceless, though I'm not much motivated to watch it again.
I absolutely adore that movie. Here, to prove it, is part of a brief review I wrote at the time of its UK release:
Gasp with foreboding as Heather Graham brushes hands with smouldering stranger Joseph Fiennes on a crowded London street. Swoon with ardour as they go back to his apartment and fling themselves all over it like rampant squirrels. Collapse with uncontrollable mirth as they get married, she begins to suspect that he might be a psychotic rapist, and various dead women from his past look suddenly rather incriminating.
This Rebecca scenario has never received quite such deliriously overwrought handling. All credit to Chen Kaige for his staggering ignorance of trash cliche, and to his leads for keeping schtum: this couldn’t be funnier if it was actually played for laughs.
ie: Rent it NOW.
(Why can't I stop with the typo's??)
As I was saying: it has been staring me in the face through this whole discussion, but I've only now realized it...
Nell.
I'm going to get spat on for this one. Unfaithful. Seriously.
Spat on because you love it, or because you suspect that it's awful? (Hint: it is awful. Aren't I helpful to have around?)
xo, chickabay, &c.
Spat on for not thinking it's awful...
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