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Hates the Infotainment
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
 
2004-05-30, 14:36

In keeping with recent threads about existing summer blockbusters, and after having experienced one of the most painful movies if my life this morning (and afternoon)... I would like to submit - as a service to the community - a thread dedicated to helping others avoid shitty movies on cable or at Blockbuster video.

Now, I don't mean the kind of movies where they are shitty but actually so off-the-wall in some respect as to be entertaining... no. I mean movies that intend for you to take them seriously. Movies that aspire to great things but achieve only great disbelief.

I will start things off by listing a work which as my memory - obviously failing - recalled, was supposed to be one of the more critically acclaimed works of the 1980s.

It's called "Once Upon a Time in America", and it stars all sorts of good actors (James Wood, Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesche, etc). It's supposed to be about kids who grow up on the streets of NY back at the turn of the last century, and grow up to be gangsters together. Well... let me tell you. IT SUCKS.

In an attempt to be clever the director decided to jump back in forth in time, in order to keep you interested and also give context to certain things. Except that the jumps are totally random and end up causing more confusion than answers.

Furthermore, this has to be the worst gangster movie score of all times. I mean it's SAD. There's this annoying, soft flute music littering every other scene, and it is totally out of place. Any minute I expected Yablo to jump out from behind the set and start playing... truly awful.

And in general, the plot was just completely without direction. What's worse, there is evidently an *extended* version - the one I was subjected to for over three hours as I waited in vain for the movie to "get good".

The only thing this movie has going for it is scene when Robert DeNiro gets out of jail and is greated by a nekkid (and rather voluptuous) beauty, pretending to be a corpse. Surprise! On the "things the director should be shot for" side of the coin, there are no less than two rape scenes, one of which is completely gratuitous and makes absolutely no sense in the context of the movie. Charming.

This movie sucked, plain and simple. Don't watch it, because the first 20 minutes are the best and you'll get sucked in to a hellish vortex from which there is no return.

...into the light of a dark black night.
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