(Edited for wording again)
Napoleon Dynamite. As aptly put by the only review about it I remember, it felt like they were trying to market the film to a group they spent most of their time mocking. For a more personal (and possibly overanalytical) reaction: it felt like they were trying to make a Willy Loman-esque character (Death of a Salesman) - a positively pathetic character - but couldn't understand what makes such a character work is the environment, how that patheticness relates to that environment and how the character strives to overcome it, regardless of whether the outcome is triumphant or tragic. The film spent so much time hammering into our heads that the main characters were walking antisocial loser stereotypes that I felt they had to be going somewhere with it. But no. At the end of the film they'd established at most a half-baked production that made a point of mocking the characters without any actual motive for doing so other than a cheap laugh, compounded by a weak narrative lacking even an arching theme.[footnote]This paragraph has since been edited to [hopefully] better reflect my intended meaning, but as I've gotten several responses about this part of the post thus far, allow me to further clarify: No, I am not comparing Napoleon Dynamite to Death of a Salesman as distinct entitites. My intent was to say that it felt that the former was trying to invoke a character type the latter made famous and failed spectacularly due to its inability to understand what made Willy Loman a compelling character in the first place. Comparing the two on their own merits would be as pointless an endeavor as comparing Titanic the Legend Goes On to James Cameron's Titanic or the Last Airbender to the show from which it got its name. The only grounds for any of these, as far as I'm concerned is to point out the common source material and the failure of one to capture the essence it needed to make its material work.[/footnote]
The Good Shepherd. Honestly, I was looking at my watch within the first 15 minutes. It was that dull for me. The most disappointing thing to me is that while the material was there for a character arc, they never actually pulled one off. You could see the line of work as something that would inspire Damon's estrangement from his family, but no, he's distant by the time of the tryst that decides his wife for him. And honestly, for all the praise it got I found the acting to be painfully lacking. To me Damon didn't come off as a man hiding his emotions, he came off as a man doing a cold reading of the script in front of him. On the flip side, I did think that Jolie and Redmayne handled their roles well enough. My most vivid memory about it, however, was walking out of the theatre wondering if the movie honestly deserved the accolades it was getting or if people simply felt they had to like it because of the political undertones.