5 most overrated movies ever......

Titanic, Gladiator, Apollo 13, Dances With Wolves and most of all Saving Private Ryan.

Except for the first 10 minutes of action, Private Ryan is an insult to all who served in WW-II. It portrayed many of the GI's in the movie as a bunch of cowardly, selfish, self-centered, spoiled brats. Kind of like having a bunch of politically correct liberal college students from 1999 sent back in time to the 1940s. (Geared I guess to appeal to a modern day audience.)

Apollo 13 because it is an exact copy, word for word, scene for scene, of a PBS documentary that was made 5 years earlier. The documentary showed the real thing and the real people. The movie is a joke watching the actors pretend, after you have see film footage of the real thing. Real men thinking they are going to die; real ground crews and the real mission director working to save them; real spouses thinking they are going to be widows, and their children reacting to what happened and talking about it afterwards. (It is available on VHS.)

What a great group of posts! Much to agree with. Especially those who dislike Braveheart and Gladiator.

Was I really supposed to get all watery eyed when Mel Gibson screamed "freedom" with terrific diaphragmatic support even while his intestines were being spooled ever so diabolically out of his abdomen? Not even filmic, that moment, just pathetically underimagined.

While I thought Pvt Ryan was an amazing accomplishment, the maudlin parts, especially those with Hanks, really took some of my pleasure away. Cast Away had me until the last 20 minutes, when the grit and ballsiness of the concept finally crumbled and they gave in to easy, flaccid sentimentality. I thought they were gonna make it all the way, then they sold out. With extreme embarassment I must admit that all my efforts at hating Forrest Gump have been futile. I really like it. Can't hate Tom Hanks, but bad things do seem to happen around him...

This juror is undecided on Lynch. Agree about the wierdness for wierdness' sake, but that don't mean the movies aren't sometimes amazing anyhow. Sometimes wanting to hate a movie isn't enough, and the movie wins me over.

Like with Stone's Natural Born Killers. 1st viewing, hated it, but loved the sense of dread I got from the prison riot. Subsequent viewings on cable... I think it's kind of amazing, I'm afraid. Platoon has not had as much luck. My vote is with those who think it sucks. Haven't seen "Redux," but "Apocalypse Regular" is the best Vietnam movie I've ever seen.

Reservoir Dogs is compelling but empty. Pulp Fiction is a masterpiece, exaggerated hipness and all. Love it. It's okay if Tarantino only has the one good movie in him. For me Pulp is enough.

Usual suspects is a dog, agreed.

Blair Wich might not have been great art, but it is the most scared I have ever been at a movie. Can't explain.

I love Fargo. Likability is not an issue for me. The inexorable progress of doom in that movie is just beautifully rendered.

Clockwork Orange is a bigger puzzle to me, though I think it is an amazing film. But I'm not sure who's a victim and who's a villain in that one. Everyone's kind of loathsome, and that doesn't really shed much light on things in the end, does it?

And yes, thank you, whoever mentioned Beautiful Mind. I saw this movie before seeing any reviews, and thought it was a disaster. I thought Death to Smoochie was better. I like Ron Howard as a dude, but this movie... so sloppy and confused. Still, I am grateful for the footage of Jennifer Connelly, who is a screen goddess to me.

I'd like to toss "Cinema Paradiso" onto the crapheap, along with "Life is Beautiful."

Tangential but true, ain't it?

I recently saw the most aggresively irratiting film of my life: Memento. A film that tries to have the audience empathize with the main character's (there can be no hero in the eternity of agony the audience must suffer through) short term memory disability by replaying the same scene over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (get the picture?) with the most predictable variations, ever so cutely backwards. Excuse me, but the majority of the audience doesn't suffer from short term memory loss ( perhaps the film maker's plan was to instill it with psychological torture) the constant reminder has the opposite effect, not empathy but disdain! The characters are one dimensional. The morale, people are manipulative sonova bitches. The perfect gift for someone you hate.
My next 4 nominations all have "Rocky" somewhere in the title.

I thought Memento was amazing and inspired.

i thought memento was a great film. that was last year's best on video.

and did someone mention "fargo" as a bad film? that's a good film. but those directors really haven't delivered much since.

the best film i've seen on video this year so far was "heist".

in between the time of memento and heist, the best film was the fast and the furious.

half the films the guy at the video store recommends are horrible. like the movie 13 ghosts. that was truly a pathetic movie.