"Smart" movies you think are dumb

[Johnny Impact]

Equilibrium.

So, so, SO many holes in this movie. It completely falls apart as soon as you think about it.

People without emotions have serious trouble with even trivial tasks. Choosing a brand of cereal at the store can utterly paralyze people who cannot feel, as all decisions seem to have the same value.

Taken to its logical end, the idea that people on Librium truly could not care about anything means as soon as you were to take a dose, you wouldn't care enough to take the next one. The threat of being discovered wouldn't mean anything, since you can't feel fear while you're affected. So you'd let it lapse. Then you'd become fearful and shoot up again. All of society would be in a perpetual yo-yo state between total inability to function and paroxysms of fear. I just don't see any way such a system could last.

The idea that people would give up love, pride, ambition, and so forth, even if doing so would also eradicate hate, is patently absurd.

Also, the drug doesn't work. People who really had no emotions wouldn't get defensive about having no emotions, nor would they gloat. They would lack any real drive or ambition, including that necessary to so doggedly pursue and eradicate relics of emotion. Nobody would bother to become a master martial artist. People who were truly unable to care about anything would simply lie down and quietly, complacently starve to death. We are shown so many proofs that the drug doesn't work. Maybe that's the point? All this oppression and it's just a placebo? I don't think so.

And my favorite: Doing a cartwheel does not protect you from the basic principles of physics. I don't care how you explain gun kata, nobody can dodge automatic fire from ten guys at once. The whole point of automatic fire is to fill the air with so many projectiles that a few will hit regardless of the target's actions.

Every David Lynch movie ever made. I'm not saying his movies are bad, because they are very good at being unsettling, skin-crawling creep fests, but smart? Not by a long shot.

Also this.

 

[Sunkore]

Memento: Perfectly enjoyable film, but all it has is a gimmick. Like most any Nolan film, it fails to capitalize on the interesting themes it establishes.

Prometheus: Typically only idiots think this is smart, but I'll include it. Lazily written gibberish, filled with plot holes poorly disguised as complexity.

Inception: You're dealing with the subconscious, a realm of thought and emotion made physical, and you make a movie about guys in suits with machine guns. Anyone who thinks this film is at all mentally challenging would probably explode if sent to a beginner's philosophy class.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

Equilibrium.

So, so, SO many holes in this movie. It completely falls apart as soon as you think about it.

People without emotions have serious trouble with even trivial tasks. Choosing a brand of cereal at the store can utterly paralyze people who cannot feel, as all decisions seem to have the same value.

Taken to its logical end, the idea that people on Librium truly could not care about anything means as soon as you were to take a dose, you wouldn't care enough to take the next one. The threat of being discovered wouldn't mean anything, since you can't feel fear while you're affected. So you'd let it lapse. Then you'd become fearful and shoot up again. All of society would be in a perpetual yo-yo state between total inability to function and paroxysms of fear. I just don't see any way such a system could last.

The idea that people would give up love, pride, ambition, and so forth, even if doing so would also eradicate hate, is patently absurd.

Also, the drug doesn't work. People who really had no emotions wouldn't get defensive about having no emotions, nor would they gloat. They would lack any real drive or ambition, including that necessary to so doggedly pursue and eradicate relics of emotion. Nobody would bother to become a master martial artist. People who were truly unable to care about anything would simply lie down and quietly, complacently starve to death. We are shown so many proofs that the drug doesn't work. Maybe that's the point? All this oppression and it's just a placebo? I don't think so.

And my favorite: Doing a cartwheel does not protect you from the basic principles of physics. I don't care how you explain gun kata, nobody can dodge automatic fire from ten guys at once. The whole point of automatic fire is to fill the air with so many projectiles that a few will hit regardless of the target's actions.

Every David Lynch movie ever made. I'm not saying his movies are bad, because they are very good at being unsettling, skin-crawling creep fests, but smart? Not by a long shot.

Also this.

Was Equilibrium really considered a smart movie? I always thought it was a pure action movie with a slightly heavy handed premise.

I have to agree though - Gunkata was beyond retarded. Bending your spine in 3 places is not how you limit exposure to enemy fire. In fact, limiting enemy fire exposure is something we mastered hundreds of years ago - I hardly think we need a new combat style to deal with it.

Spoiler

Prone

Standing (Side Fire)

Crouching

 

[vid87]

Just in time: Hunger Games.

Keep in mind I'm only basing this on the 1st book and movie so I don't know if they've clarified much else.

Besides the super simple setup of the bad guys being the most basic, easy to hate jerks possible who seemingly generate matter from thin air but give kids the combat training everyone knows is going to come back to screw them, the whole story, for me, falls apart in 2 key areas:

-A premise that involves children killing each other implies ambiguity and life or death compromising of morals. Katniss is *directly* responsible for killing 2 people - one who killed the little girl, the other out of mercy. Everyone else either dies offscreen or pretty much kills themselves for her (I don't really count the hornets nest though I suppose the argument could be made). My point is the story bends over backwards to never leave Katniss with blood on her hands - nothing she does is questionable or particularly disturbing, especially since anyone she directly opposes is 100% evil. It would have been FAR more tension-filled if an innocent 7 year old tried to kill her to survive and she had to make the choice to kill to save herself, or maybe someone like Thresh who shows her mercy but could've had to fight her later. She's a saint in a scenario that simply can't support it.

-The kind of apathy towards the districts displayed by the Capital is, I believe, achieved in real life by a sense of physical and emotional distancing where the sufferers are anonymous and never given a face or voice. The "American Idol" section puts the tributes DIRECTLY IN FRONT of everyone, displaying backstories, hopes and dreams, personalities, everything to FOSTER sympathy and support with the supply-drop system. You're honestly telling me not one person is a little disturbed when someone they've learned about and grown fond of is beaten to death before their eyes? It may be an allegory for reality tv and celebrity competition, but I feel there's a very clear line between watching someone lose a contest and watching them be butchered and know it's real. Maybe if there's a little more time spent in the point of view of Capital residents it might clarify it - I know there's propaganda that District people are traitors and such, but absolutely no one says anything otherwise?

I'm not 100% what I've outlined is actually a strong enough argument, but they're questions that seem to have gone unanswered in subsequent installments (I feel like Bob would've pointed out something like it) and, like a lot of other series, I'm not sure I want to continue to find out, but people keep calling it "smart politics" and I feel like these are gapping, game-breaking plotholes that undercut the scope and drama of everything else.

 

[deleted+75193]

DELETED

 

[Rellik San]

As an aside I think Super is a case study for the opposite of what this thread is about. Super is a smart movie pretending to be dumb.

snip

I literally have nothing to add to that, absolutely spot on there.

First of, let me preface this with saying that The Fountain is one of my personal favorite movies of all time. However, I completely understand people finding it pretentious, overreaching and/or boring. I don't think people who don't like the movie are less intelligent or don't "get it", just that the movie just doesn't speak to them as it does to some people.

But I would like to urge you to reconsider what the movie is actually about. At it's core, I think it's a movie with one simple overarching theme/message, like most of Aronofsky's movies. (Requiem for a Dream = Don't do drugs, Noah = Humanity is flawed, perhaps cripplingly so). The main message of the movie is, in my mind, simply: Death is natural. And the movie is simply a story about a man coming to terms with that.

Spoiler

I think Conquistador Jackman is quite clearly a fiction, created by the Jackman's wife in the present and that present day Jackman is the protagonist. There are two prevailing theories on future Jackman that I have read: One theory is that present day Jackman finds a cure for death and lives for hundreds of years and is the future Jackman, while the other is that future Jackman is present day Jackman's way of finishing his wife's story. Either way, I think the ending is Jackman's character coming to terms with the death of his wife and with death as a concept. I think the main point of the Tree of Life and the Garden of Eden stuff is to say that death is the natural extension of life and that by dying we give life to other things, thus "Death is the Road to Awe".

Sorry for the rant. It's late and I like to discuss The Fountain whenever I can.

No need to apologise, at all, this kind of discussion and thinking is always good, as I say I tend to take a reductionist view almost to a fault, so if someone can bring something more to the table as you have I'm always interested in what they have to say.

As an aside to address your first point, I think you have to go into an Aronofsky film with a certain expectation of pretentiousness, it's just part of his style, the guy loves visual metaphor and dammit, I love him for it, he can say far more with visuals than exposition and it's a skill many more film makers (and game makers) need to learn. I loved Pi, Requiem and Noah, but for me, The Fountain just didn't do it, it's an interesting film, it's a beautiful film, but the way he told the story that time just didn't grip me as the other films of his did. But to be honest if my only real complaint about the movie is "it's far too slow for my tastes," (Although that said, I do enjoy slow movies, one of my favourite Sci-Fi movies is Enemy Mine) it's a well made and well executed movie and if you're interested in film as just Visual this is an absolute must study for that.

(Edited your spoiler tags to only where it would spoil plot elements of the film)

 

[General Grind]

No need to apologise, at all, this kind of discussion and thinking is always good, as I say I tend to take a reductionist view almost to a fault, so if someone can bring something more to the table as you have I'm always interested in what they have to say.

As an aside to address your first point, I think you have to go into an Aronofsky film with a certain expectation of pretentiousness, it's just part of his style, the guy loves visual metaphor and dammit, I love him for it, he can say far more with visuals than exposition and it's a skill many more film makers (and game makers) need to learn. I loved Pi, Requiem and Noah, but for me, The Fountain just didn't do it, it's an interesting film, it's a beautiful film, but the way he told the story that time just didn't grip me as the other films of his did. But to be honest if my only real complaint about the movie is "it's far too slow for my tastes," (Although that said, I do enjoy slow movies, one of my favourite Sci-Fi movies is Enemy Mine) it's a well made and well executed movie and if you're interested in film as just Visual this is an absolute must study for that.

(Edited your spoiler tags to only where it would spoil plot elements of the film)

Ah, great. I completely agree with you on your assessment of Aronofsky and I can totally see why you would find the movie slow if it didn't grip. All his movies needs, more so than other movies, to really grip you to become great. When talking to people about his movies I always seem to get one of three responses: Either they loved it, they hated it or they admired for it's ambition but weren't really "feeling it".

To turn this back to the topic:

Enter The Void by Gaspar Noè
I think it's a very interesting and unique movie for about 75 % of the running time but the last quarter of the movie it really goes way overboard on it's already overflowing pretentiousness and becomes unbearable. Noè really needed someone to cut out all the fat out of that movie and it would've been an amazing movie. I'm getting angry just writing about it.

Also, I think categorizing movies like Memento, Inception and Fight Club as smart movies being actually stupid movies is a classic example of substituting the actual movie for what people read into them. I personally don't think Memento was trying to say anything grand or being smart outside of having gimmicky plot. I am not a huge fan of Memento, but the way the movie is written with regards to the plot and pacing is actually very extremely smartly written. Making that movie come together like that is actually a huge feat of screenwriting, but that does not mean that the movie in of itself is trying to say anything profound. It's just trying to be a very well written thriller.

People also say that Fight Club is a stupid movie because of all the semi-philosophical shit coming out of Tyler Durden, but I think the movie in itself quite clearly wants you to think Tyler Durden is a douchebag, albeit a charismatic one. People thinking Tyler Durden is some kind of genius is not the movie being dumb, but people being dumb or immature.

And Inception is just a heist movie with an interesting premise. You can think it squandered the potential of entering dreams by making it a sterile, action-packed heist movie, but that is you wanting another movie than what you were given, not the movie being dumb.

 

[sageoftruth]

Melancholia

The movie is about rich people who are so rich they no longer feel the need to talk to each other and as all feel alienated/disgruntled/not satisfied with pretty much anything, and with the focus on the illusion of something deeper doesn't even come to the conclusion that these people are all just causing their own issues via their own self interest, its just life is hard when you've got everything you could want combined with no principles and terribly out of whack priorities.

Any other deeper meaning/artistry/etc is a smoke-screen to make it seem more complex than it is. Pretty sure that it has the high-minded positive reviews because the smoke screen confused people, they knew they didn't get it, and so made stuff up to seem like they actually got it. It is the worst movie I have ever watched. I will never watch another movie by Lars von Trier nor trust the movie advice of anyone who liked that overly long pointless piece of crap.

I second that. I wasn't sure whether or not to mention it, because I wasn't certain if it was dumb, or just plain unenjoyable to watch.
I can't imagine anyone enjoying it unless, they somehow get a kick out of mind-numbing depression.

 

[sageoftruth]

I wasn't going to respond to this thread because I couldn't think of a movie. However I was just having a conversation with someone about how America is crumbling, and how London Bridge is falling down...

Spoiler: ...and then I remembered this one

Hands down the most stupid movie that pretends to be smart, I still love the movie but honestly I consider it a guilty pleasure rather than one movie I would recommend.

Goodwin's Law: The movie.

 

[sageoftruth]

Reality Bites:
If Ferris Bueller ever wrote a manifesto, it would be this movie. The basic premise was, "If you have a job or do anything to benefit society, then you are a mindless sheep who needs to learn how to live."

 

[IronSkape]

"A Single Man" with Colin Firth.

I wanted to like this movie. You don't see a lot of gay-centric scripts that manage to get a budget large enough for a big name actor, and the movie got quite a few Oscar and Golden Globe nods.

It was the most boring, pretentious, boring, drawn-out, boring mess I've ever seen.

The only thing I remember about it were these long segments were Colin Firth's character would just look at something mundane in slow motion while violin music crescendos, and the camera would keep panning back to him looking like he just couldn't figure out why that girl was crushing that butterfly and what did it all mean and what did ANYTHING mean and life is a black cauldron of despair, yonder window breaks and Rosebud and....zzZZZzzzz.....

I call scenes like that "art porn", where the director wants to tell a story through metaphor but isn't subtle enough not to slow everything down and zoom in on the paper bag floating in the wind and go "GUYS, LOOK AT THE METAPHOR". And there were like five or six of them in the movie.

 

[YCRanger]

Melancholia

The movie is about rich people who are so rich they no longer feel the need to talk to each other and as all feel alienated/disgruntled/not satisfied with pretty much anything, and with the focus on the illusion of something deeper doesn't even come to the conclusion that these people are all just causing their own issues via their own self interest, its just life is hard when you've got everything you could want combined with no principles and terribly out of whack priorities.

I think what you just said was the point of the movie. The freaking name of the comet was Melancholia. That could possibly tip you off. It was I thought a brutally honest take on depression. Depression causes you to turn inward so much to the point of alienating your friends and family. Kirsten Dunst character has every reason to be happy and content but that's the nature of the disease. She is thoughtless and selfish and taxing on everyone around her. I think the movie is well aware that she is making things worse through her actions and I think her character knows that as well. It's a part of mental illness that is not explored as much but the impact on the family and friends is real and can be extremely frustrating to all involved. I can understand being frustrated with the characters but I think that is the point. That said it is not a "enjoyable' film nor would I even say a necessarily good one.

 

[Jux]

Anything by Woody Allen. How many movies is he going make about neurotic older men falling for younger girls? Same themes, same character archtypes. Zzzz....

 

[renegade7]

I just saw Interstellar last night. I thought it was reasonably good because decent hard sci-fi is rare...until 30 minutes before the end, suddenly general relativity = magic and quantum black holes allow time travel because love.

It's not that I can't suspend my disbelief, but I have a physics education. That kind of babble really puts me off. It would have been a perfectly good movie if it was just a solid adventure story about some people looking for a place to put up a new human colony.

And while I really liked the organ-heavy soundtrack, but at times it felt like the music was unnecessarily loud.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Everything related to the Jason Bourne franchise with the exception of 2002's The Bourne Identity, which I did find to be smart some conveniences aside (powers being present while memories not).

Supremacy and Ultimatum, whose issues begin with having no theme relating to the title (the only ultimatum I can think of was at the end of Identity), get way to caught up in crappy convoluted narratives that always feel they have to one-up each other in ridiculousness. The 1980's movie was just boring and I've already railed on it before. Long story short; Stockholm Syndrome, coincidences and a few plot holes. No decent action means no distractions.

 

[Ravinoff]

Well, with Interstellar it's mostly the ending. When they go through the Event Horizon I think it gets a bit silly (fair enough, nobody knows what's beyond the Event Horizon of a Black Hole) but when the rest of the movie is so grounded in 'hard science' it's a bit off-putting to go into full-on supernatural/pseudo-science fiction at the end.

You know what makes Event Horizon ridiculously good (not that it isn't good already)? If you treat it as taking place in the Warhammer 40k universe. I know, it sounds dumb, but someone pointed it out to me once and damned if it doesn't make sense. In 40k, FTL travel requires passing through a particularly nasty dimension called the Warp. It's basically Hell (and commonly implied to actually be what modern humans call Hell), and to traverse it without various unpleasant consequences like being torn apart or mind-raped by daemons, you have to have a shield called a Gellar field. So the Event Horizon researchers worked out the first part, but didn't have a Gellar field, so the ship and its crew ended up coming back wrong.

On-topic: Clerks. Watched it a few weeks ago after hearing rave reviews for a long time, and hated it. It's a boring, barely funny "comedy" that aspires to art-house nonsense.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Equilibrium is often cited in a few circles as a smart movie. While the action scenes are fun, the message was pretty much "hey, emotions are good". It tries to drive its point to the ground with obvious symbolism.

I find it more intriguing to see people claim its a smart movie than seeing it from a critical standpoint.

 

[Godhead]

When I watched Rubber it seemed to think that it had a point to make. I couldn't tell you what that poit WAS. Though I think it was supposed to be a parody of arthouse movies so maybe that was the point.

Is it supposed to be a parody? When I first watched it, I thought that it was a very good Expressionist film.