Yeah, Vin Diesel went from convict street racer hijacking semis with shitty Hondas to super human genius spy guy who can defy the laws of physics on a whim, it's ridiculous.
I recently watched the 2015 "Point Break" remake/reboot. It was as bad as you might expect. The world is a worse place for its existence, and the life of everyone who reads this post is worse for knowing that it exists. You're welcome.
This. My friends kept trying to get me to see them. _"It's like a mystery puzzle movie!"_ Yeah, but people endure extended torture in it, right? _"Well... yes... but puzzles!"_
Yeah, no. I'm good.
I’m wearing a Nightmare on Elm Street tshirt right now. But it was a gift, I’m team Jason all the way.
Saw is just garbage. Gore for the sake of gore. Zzzzz
Came in here to say just that. That soundtrack is wonderful.
Whatever special sauce Pearl Jam had that allowed them to make Ten? They still had it for this album. The last two really really good Pearl Jam songs.
“State of Love and Trust” is an S tier PJ song, and I never understood how they didn’t put it one of their first two records. And “Seasons” is Chris Cornell at his finest. I love this soundtrack so. Much.
When it came out there was a group of people i knew who would talk about how deep that corny Ashton Kutcher movie was The Butterfly Effect.
It made me question my friendship with them
Yeah, I thought it was average at best. And up until recently I thought Ashton Kutcher was at least a good person. Fuck him, he’s a piece of human garbage.
[GMA piece on it](https://youtu.be/RWIXocDXLdM?si=2A3I3q5loPMffaXM)
I'm lazy and that was the first YouTube video that popped up on it. Basically, they wrote a character letter for Danny Masterson's defence.
Here's an excerpt from a Vox article with a basic rundown:
"Over the weekend, the celebrity couple issued a video concerning letters they wrote to a judge vouching for their friend and former That ’70s Show co-star Danny Masterson’s character. In May 2023, Masterson was convicted for plying two women with drugs and raping them in the early aughts. In their character letters, Kunis and Kutcher describe Masterson as an older brother figure, a father, and a staunchly anti-drug presence who has only been a positive influence in their lives."
Danny Masterson is a horrible person and scientologist. I had heard about this years ago because one of the women was an ex of his who is now married to the singer of The Mars Volta, Cedric something. She came out with the first allegations of rape against Masterson and the Scientology people started a campaign of harassment against both of them. Including, allegedly, poisoning their dogs. The whole case is just gross.
So, now you know.
Haahahaha-- when it came out, I went with some friends and knew right away it had been a mistake. Many interminable hours later, the old-lady character emoted, "A woman's heart is a Deep Ocean of Secrets..." -- and it was the tipping point for me and I openly guffawed, appalling my weeping friends and the whole theater.
Ooh is this the space where we can hate on Reality Bites?
Hey Lelaina! You're just stealing from your supportive parents and dumping a pretty good dude for an unrepentant douche. You're entitled and spoiled and maybe it's age and the passage of time but you are just the worst.
Oh thank you! I was a young, working class feminist, screaming at that movie. I realized later that I hated the show Girls for the same reason. I couldn't relate.
But Singles - that movie nailed too many of my friends. Band girls, bad roommates, intense relationships, the bar scene. Switch San Francisco and it felt pretty real to my 20s. Except we had the baby.
>I realized later that I hated the show Girls for the same reason. I couldn't relate.
I feel this so much. I watched the first episode, ready to love it but the ending?! Holy shit, I couldn't believe that was written to make people want to watch more.
Also: Singles was digable also cuz it was very similiar to 20 something life in Austin, TX. Bands and drinking and doing whatever messy shit
Nope. It’s not the passage of time. I felt just like that when it first came out. Outside of Stiller, they were very unlikeable, pretentious characters - literally everything I didn’t like about our generation.
At least Dillon was good for some laughs in *Singles*. And the soundtrack was much better.
The movie has some good moments and a great cast...especially Garofalo. She's terrific in the movie and I had a big crush on her back in the day.
Yeah the biggest negative for me about Bites is absolutely Hawke's character. Total prick and Stiller seemed the better of the romantic options by far.
Reality Bites was just awful. Those pretentious, entitled snots didn't represent anyone I knew, and I still have no idea who the movie is supposed to appeal to.
Reality Bites was not a great movie for several reasons, but I was in a relationship at the time that was not working, with an ex that I still really cared about who was terrible for me. I saw myself so much in that movie - after seeing it I got out of the bad relationship, broke off everything with the ex, and moved on. I found happiness with a really great person shortly after and we've been married since 1996. I don't know how long I would have been in the bad relationship if I hadn't seen Reality Bites.
Most of those 90s shows: Friends, 90210, Melrose Place. Just did not identify with them as a poor, recently graduated 20-something woman living in a shared apartment with a bunch of student loans.
Oh I have a pretty significant loathing of the show "Friends". I was trying to stick to movies in my response, but yeah.. don't get me started on that whole genre. I thought the characters were entirely unlikeable.
I'll take "Seinfeld" any day of the week instead of "Friends".
Both those movies made so much money yet I can't think of any lines or scenes that crept into pop culture like other big franchises.
Like no one ever references Avatar ever, except to say it sucks yet it made billions
If you're thinking it's a story about a white dude who meets Other people for the first time, realizes that they have basic personhood, and becomes the main character of their existing society, then yeah, you've got the broad strokes.
I literally fell asleep in the theater (and no it had absolutely nothing to do with the Texas-sized margarita with an extra tequila shot I had had before watching it.) Seriously such a boring, uninteresting movie. I always ask people who say they liked it to name me one character and they pretty much always fail.
I felt like that was the marketing hype talking point they kept pushing at press junkets. “We created this new tech to film with!” Over and over.
The CG was just as wooden and clunky as the acting/story
It looked neat in theaters.
Couldn't name more than a couple of characters. Like other people say, it's a mix of Fern Gully and Dances with Wolves, with a really awesome tech demo.
I came here for this. I don’t know how that movie is so popular, it was uninteresting. I think they have put James Cameron on a pedestal and he can do no wrong. I don’t like any of his movies, not even Terminator.
It is as bad as you've undoubtedly heard. I saw it because a friend had free tickets and if I had paid for it I would have been even more salty about it.
I do not understand the love for this boring movie. The trailer looked so formulaic and melodramatic that i can't even be bothers with the actual film.
The 90-100 super hero movies Hollywood dumped in the last 20 years.
If the 50’s/60’s were remembered as wall to wall cowboy movies - people in 60 years will wonder if there was anything else in the 2000’s/2010’s.
The comic book movies are so boring. I did like the first wave of them in the 90's when it was a novelty. The endless new Marvel movies look like I'm watching someone play a video game. Boring.
In the 2000s there was absolutely other stuff. By the end of the 20-teens it really did seem like there was nothing else left. I saw so many of them and can barely recall anything about any of them, with the exception of Iron Man when the genre was still relatively new and unique.
I was sooo excited when Iron Man and the early Batman movies came out. I was not a huge comic book nerd, but I certainly enjoyed them growing up. The first iron man movie came out and my buddy and I went and we had such a great time.
But it's been overload. Each release I was less excited. There are a bunch I never saw. Recently I turned on the TV and was looking for something to watch. I was looking at the marvel section and literally couldn't even remember which I had seen. They just all ran together in my brain, and the few I was pretty certain I hadn't seen, I just did not care. I watched something else.
I really enjoyed the first X-Men, and nearly all the MCU between Iron Man and Endgame. But they all sort of run together as one big action movie in my head. I think that's why people are hating the current phase, it's not just action movies anymore.
Exactly, both angst-filled crud and ghosts of lost opportunities. If I want to see a early-mid 80's movie about a group like that, I'll watch The Osterman Weekend...
The flight scenes are some of the coolest cinematography I’ve ever seen. Everything *everything* that happens between the flight scenes is so. Fucking. *Stupid.*
I watched a behind the scenes/making of show where they had the real Viper and some of the other pilots who flew the jets in the movie and who were technical consultants. They were laughing and laughing about stuff like “no we don’t play volleyball together and we don’t have locker rooms.” They really laughed about the scene where the classroom is a bunch of little desks on the tarmac and one dude is wearing a cowboy hat.
Fun fact for Harry Potter fans - the real Viper’s name is Pete Pettigrew.
St. Elmo's Fire. All the popular Tom Cruise movies like Risky Business and the one where he is a bartender oh and Top Gun.
Most of the teen or young adult comedies were rapey and sexist.
Growing up watching all these movies it was pretty clear that they were not being told from the point of view of any woman. We were just props and plot devices in those movies.
did you see the retrospective essay written by Molly Ringwald when she watched the film with her teenage daughter having not seen in since she made it. She makes that exact point.
That moment in the Breakfast Club where Bender sticks his hand up Claire's skirt which is played for comedy and then she kisses him in the end is ghastly. But they did accurately portray the life of a teenage girl in the 80s. Its why women of that age group are still so pissed off.
ha ha
Yeah, they are super problematic and don't hold up well even outside the racism, homophobia, and misogyny. That's why I avoid watching them at all costs; nicer that they remain fond memories. (I did risk a recent re-watch of Goonies - it happened to be on - and that seemed mostly okay? It was an edited-for-TV version, though.)
I watched Sixteen Candles last year with my 25 year old daughter (it was on TV at a hotel), and she was…not impressed. That movie did not age well *at all*.
When Harry Met Sally. I hate that movie. The only good thing was Carrie Fisher.
The scene in the deli where Meg Ryan simulates an orgasm that everybody always raves over as being the funniest scene in the movie has always seemed gross and creepy to me.
The Breakfast Club. I grew up in this small town, that was going thru really desperate economic times due to the closure of the steel mills. Everybody's parents were out of work, some families ended up having to move to states where you could still get a manufacturing job. And I'm supposed to feel like I have things in common and like a bunch of middle-class white kids? Not gonna happen. The only one I liked was Bender. The movie does not speak to my high school experience at all.
Pretty Woman hasn't aged well for me. Liked it when it came out. Recently tried to rewatch, and had to switch channels, it was that bad.
I feel like the entire point of the breakfast club is that we all had that one character we could kinda empathize with, and the driving story was how no matter where we come from we're all just people trying to survive the day.
But if we're talking movies from that era centered around high school? Heathers. Just fucking Heathers. That movie understands me as a person.
The point of "The Breakfast Club" (and yes, there was a point) was in the ending sequence's voice-over. They put kids of different cliques (stereotypes?) in a room together, made them interact, talk, disagree, fight, fall in love, commiserate, and ultimately realize that they all had a little bit of "brain, athlete, basket case, princess, and a criminal" in themselves. Sure, it's just a throwaway teen dramedy, but it's an iconic one.
If you liked Bender, maybe you felt his desperation and isolation. I was the Geek. Others identified with other characters, obviously.
[Essay for Mr. Vernon, starts at 1:57](https://youtu.be/DQ1QUK8KLH0?feature=shared)
Unrelated, but I totally agree with you about "Pretty Woman".
I have never seen this movie & have no desire to ever see it either. I remember working at the vid store when it came out & it was so fricking long it was a 2 tape movie.
I loved The Beach when it came out in 2000 or whatever, but when I watched it recently I concluded it was an awful load of wank. There was not one likeable character in that movie and tbh I'd hate to be stuck on an island with those people. The soundtrack is still okay though.
Reality Bites is another one that I found to be 'cool" when I was younger but also found it completely cringey when I rewatched it in recent years.
Dirty Dancing. The amount of time I spent in my tween and teen years sitting in dark living room sleepovers pretending to like that movie has scarred me.
I thought everyone was only watching it to seem “popular,” but somehow that schmaltzy piece of corporate wish fulfillment trash has become a touchstone for half the middle-aged white women I know. I still fucking hate it.
(Now, confidentially to the person above who doesn’t get PeeWee: come fight me bro)
Y'know, after I posted this I thought, "well, the movie itself wasn't \*so\* bad...maybe it was just the hype that bothered me..."
And then you posted this. THIS is why I hate that fucking movie. Can't tell you why, but that catchphrase grates on my nerves like nothing else.
FUCK BABY. FUCK HER CORNER.
(oh wait... BABY WANTS TO FUCK... \*puts on nitrous mask\*)
Singles came out when I was in high school, and my friends and I totally wanted our lives to be like that movie. For a while in my early 20s, I lived at an apartment complex that had a lot of single young people and it was kind of like Singles. That's still my favorite movie.
Forrest Gump. I was in high school when it came out, and all my peers loved it and would quote it. Especially in "Gump voice" which drove me crazy. I like Tom Hanks just fine, but never got the appeal of that movie.
You may have a point.
If the aim of the film is to portray a teen’s desire to appear pale and interesting whilst actually lacking any substance, it does that.
Mind genuinely blown.
>If the aim of the film is to portray a teen’s desire to appear pale and interesting whilst actually lacking any substance, it does that.
Or end up on some government agency's watch list..
I don’t know if this is a hot take, per se, but even when it first came out, I struggled with Reality Bites. The beginning was great, and I loved Sammy (and felt his storyline, little attention as it gets, was the most realistic of the bunch) and Vickie, but Troy was off-putting and by the time Lelaina was running up a $300 phone bill making calls to a damned psychic (and then using her father’s gas card to pay it off, because yeah, all of us Gen-Xers had dads who gave us use of their gas cards for graduation, sure), I felt the movie had gone off the rails.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I wouldn't say I hate it, I don't find it as entertaining like a lot of people do. But I'm not a big fan of musicals either.
Horror movies.
Bathroom humor movies.
Gross-out movies.
Realistic war movies (set in our past or current wars).
I watch movies for escapism and entertainment.
*From Dusk 'Til Dawn.* I just think it's blatantly misogynist and not at all fun. The beginning of the movie, where Quentin Tarantino rapes and murders that terrified bank teller was incredibly disturbing. And then the movie does a left turn into a zany vampire horror comedy. And Harvey Keitel's character is an IDIOT who gets himself and his son killed. And George Clooney's character would be the most punchable face on the screen if Quentin Tarantino wasn't also in the movie. The fact that he survives, and that Juliette Lewis' character, *who just watched her father and brother die horribly,* wants to ride away with him at the end, is the most egregious example of misogynist wish fulfillment fantasy I've ever seen. I really wish young Quentin Tarantino had just worked out his issues in therapy, rather than putting the viewers through that experience. And I can't believe what a nothing character Salma Hayek ended up being. Disappointment all around.
I've long suspected that Tarantino's affection for 'grindhouse' was really just nostalgia for the time when blatant exploitation of women was totally normal and acceptable in society.
I hate that he pretends he's being ironic and making a point about society when really its just an excuse to be a misogynistic prick and get paid for it.
\#1 - "Slasher" films. No "Nightmare on Elm St.", "Friday the 13th", "Saw" etc. I have a gut wrenching hatred of the sound of people screaming, have a low tolerance for the sight of blood/gore, and I get no endorphin rush from being intentionally scared.
\#2 - "Home Alone". I just couldn't get past the stupid behavior of the adults, and the cruelty of the siblings.
\#3 - "Porky's" (and any of the similar "teen sex comedy" movies of the 80s and 90s). So far removed from any reality I knew at the time.
16 Candles. If there was ever a script that lacked substance and had shitty writing, that movie would be the poster child for what subpar screenplay looked like.
I am so proud of my eleven year old self with this movie. I saw it at my best friend’s older sister’s birthday party and was so uncomfortable the whole time. The toxic family, racism, sexual assault. I thought something was wrong with me because all the other girls’ loved it, but now I realize I was right all along
Oh it is so cringe now. I loved it when I was young. We started to watch it with my kid when he was a teen. He turned to me and said it was too racist for him to finish. Had to agree.
I am not a fan of Robin Williams' movies.
Yes, he was a funny man. But almost all of his characters are the same person: a goofy iconoclast who, surprisingly, has an Important Lesson to teach us, which he will impart in a whispery voice that is a notable departure from the zany antics he delights us with during most of the movie, and which the cast will absorb with stunned gratitude, because who could have guessed that an offbeat person could also offer such life-changing insights as "family is important" and "be yourself"?
People always talked about his movies like "Who knew that a funny guy who flouts society's expectations could also have something meaningful to say!?! You know, I think humor might actually be an effective way to get folks thinking about serious things! Genius!"
Uh, really? You mean to tell me that the fool might actually be wise? Get outta here! Next you'll be telling me that hookers have hearts of gold! And that the elderly black person sitting on that stoop over there can turn my crumbling marriage around and heal my relationship with my father with just a few oblique comments about whittling! This is unheard of!
People watch the same movie over and over, and think they're seeing something new every time. It makes me anxious that most of us never notice.
You didn't grow up in a small town. Honestly, I think you need boredom, frustration to be a normal part of your life to like it. In high school, if something unusual happened, people would talk about it for months. That is Napoleon Dynamite. Everyone in the movie is the person who wants to move out of a small town.
I'll get downvoted for this, I'm sure, but Keanu Reeves. Nothing against him personally, and I do like some movies he's been in. I just never thought he was that good of an actor.
I do respect that he dates within his age group and seems somewhat down to earth.
>> I'll get downvoted for this, I'm sure, but Keanu Reeves.
Another admission that will get my GenX card revoked: don’t care for any Bill & Ted movies either
It’s not a movie about GenX, but I refused to watch Titanic and have maintained that stance to this day. Too much hype. Typical GenX… if everyone else is insisting how awesome it is, it can’t be that good.
I recently had a conversation about “Singles” with my Xellenial wife. I contend that it’s utter crap (as I do ant Crowe film), she that it was a good movie. We’ve scheduled a rewatch double feature with “Reality Bites” to see how they hold up.
I was in my early twenties when it came out. I was definitely in the target demographic. It connected with me, the idea of characters with no money and no future just hanging out and mocking the corporate culture. Right movie, right time.
Bram Stoker's Dracula, with Gary Oldman. I disliked it so much that I left the theater I snuck into (ahem...into which I had sneaked) to watch it because it wasn't worth my time. My friends thought Gary Oldman was sooooooo hot in that movie and I just did not/do not see it.
Everything about it irritated me. Just thinking about it now irritates me, lol. I crouched on top of a toilet seat in the movie theater bathroom for 30 minutes to sneak in. I definitely could have been doing something better with my time, like getting a dental cleaning or rotating my tires.
I hated Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. It was a friend’s favourite movie and they were so excited to show it to me. I kept waiting for some kind of storyline or character growth… nothing. Just doped up idiots walking around Vegas. If I want to see that I’ll just visit Vegas again.
Ha! Just watched it last night. No it’s not very realistic but it still pulls the heartstrings in all the right ways and that’s why we’re still watching it almost 40 years later. (It floors me that it’s now as old as Casablanca was then.)
Even as an adult, I recognize Bender acting out because he has abusive parents. Nobody expects anything of him, so he decides to live down to people's expectations.
He needs a shrink as well.
Well, also, he does not look remotely like a high school student. Old man Bender! I can still appreciate the movie, though. It was the only John Hughes I ever liked, even as a kid.
He had a choice. He could have been happy with his lot in life like the janitor (who probably led a more impoverished life) or turn into the miserable bastard he was. I’m so glad they made him three-dimensional enough, however, to show that it was clearly a choice.
The Chucky movies. I walked out of the first one & got a refund. I have never understood all the sequels being made.
And (oh God here come the downvotes) all the Back to the Future movies after the first one. All the Gremlins movies.
The ridiculously stupid Fast and Furious movies
I’m happy to say that I’ve never seen one of these movies. Aren’t they on F&F volume 22: Now That’s What I call Fast…and Furious?
Yeah, Vin Diesel went from convict street racer hijacking semis with shitty Hondas to super human genius spy guy who can defy the laws of physics on a whim, it's ridiculous.
I’m pretty sure we’re all supposed to hate that shit, it’s aimed at stupid millennials that modify their shitty Honda Civics.
As a Subaru WRX driver, I always appreciated the fact that some of the F&F movies feature Subies, lol.
Just watch Point Break instead.
I recently watched the 2015 "Point Break" remake/reboot. It was as bad as you might expect. The world is a worse place for its existence, and the life of everyone who reads this post is worse for knowing that it exists. You're welcome.
Are Xers supposed to like that franchise? Good God.
I can't hate on Vin Diesel, he just seems like a good dude.
The Saw movies. Hey, Jason & Freddy both got a hundred flicks, why can't jiggy? Stupid and pointless goreporn.
This. My friends kept trying to get me to see them. _"It's like a mystery puzzle movie!"_ Yeah, but people endure extended torture in it, right? _"Well... yes... but puzzles!"_ Yeah, no. I'm good.
I’m wearing a Nightmare on Elm Street tshirt right now. But it was a gift, I’m team Jason all the way. Saw is just garbage. Gore for the sake of gore. Zzzzz
The Singles soundtrack however is da bomb
Came in here to say just that. That soundtrack is wonderful. Whatever special sauce Pearl Jam had that allowed them to make Ten? They still had it for this album. The last two really really good Pearl Jam songs.
“State of Love and Trust” is an S tier PJ song, and I never understood how they didn’t put it one of their first two records. And “Seasons” is Chris Cornell at his finest. I love this soundtrack so. Much.
When it came out there was a group of people i knew who would talk about how deep that corny Ashton Kutcher movie was The Butterfly Effect. It made me question my friendship with them
Yeah, I thought it was average at best. And up until recently I thought Ashton Kutcher was at least a good person. Fuck him, he’s a piece of human garbage.
SERIOUSLY. He and Mila seemed ok....but NOPE total scum. Rad.
Honest question, what did they do? I'm out of the loop.
[GMA piece on it](https://youtu.be/RWIXocDXLdM?si=2A3I3q5loPMffaXM) I'm lazy and that was the first YouTube video that popped up on it. Basically, they wrote a character letter for Danny Masterson's defence. Here's an excerpt from a Vox article with a basic rundown: "Over the weekend, the celebrity couple issued a video concerning letters they wrote to a judge vouching for their friend and former That ’70s Show co-star Danny Masterson’s character. In May 2023, Masterson was convicted for plying two women with drugs and raping them in the early aughts. In their character letters, Kunis and Kutcher describe Masterson as an older brother figure, a father, and a staunchly anti-drug presence who has only been a positive influence in their lives." Danny Masterson is a horrible person and scientologist. I had heard about this years ago because one of the women was an ex of his who is now married to the singer of The Mars Volta, Cedric something. She came out with the first allegations of rape against Masterson and the Scientology people started a campaign of harassment against both of them. Including, allegedly, poisoning their dogs. The whole case is just gross. So, now you know.
Oh I love The Butterfly Effect!!
It's not bad then again I love anything time travel related
Titanic
Haahahaha-- when it came out, I went with some friends and knew right away it had been a mistake. Many interminable hours later, the old-lady character emoted, "A woman's heart is a Deep Ocean of Secrets..." -- and it was the tipping point for me and I openly guffawed, appalling my weeping friends and the whole theater.
Never watched it. I already knew how it ended.
Funny, I thought Singles did a much better job than Reality Bites, and I expected more from Winona and Jeneane.
Ooh is this the space where we can hate on Reality Bites? Hey Lelaina! You're just stealing from your supportive parents and dumping a pretty good dude for an unrepentant douche. You're entitled and spoiled and maybe it's age and the passage of time but you are just the worst.
Oh thank you! I was a young, working class feminist, screaming at that movie. I realized later that I hated the show Girls for the same reason. I couldn't relate. But Singles - that movie nailed too many of my friends. Band girls, bad roommates, intense relationships, the bar scene. Switch San Francisco and it felt pretty real to my 20s. Except we had the baby.
Lived in Seattle during 90’s, early 00’s. It was still relatively affordable. Very fun and very, very messy ;)
>I realized later that I hated the show Girls for the same reason. I couldn't relate. I feel this so much. I watched the first episode, ready to love it but the ending?! Holy shit, I couldn't believe that was written to make people want to watch more. Also: Singles was digable also cuz it was very similiar to 20 something life in Austin, TX. Bands and drinking and doing whatever messy shit
Nope. It’s not the passage of time. I felt just like that when it first came out. Outside of Stiller, they were very unlikeable, pretentious characters - literally everything I didn’t like about our generation. At least Dillon was good for some laughs in *Singles*. And the soundtrack was much better.
>At least Dillon was good for some laughs in Singles. And the soundtrack was much better. Plus it had Bridget Fonda.
The movie has some good moments and a great cast...especially Garofalo. She's terrific in the movie and I had a big crush on her back in the day. Yeah the biggest negative for me about Bites is absolutely Hawke's character. Total prick and Stiller seemed the better of the romantic options by far.
Garafalo was a goddess in that movie. I was lucky enough to date a girl who tried so hard to look like a cross between her and Natalie merchant.
I watched it with my brother last spring and thought the exact same. No reasonable grown human is picking Ethan hawke over Ben stiller in that movie.
Yeah and Singles really captured the PNW vibe which I appreciated
Reality Bites was just awful. Those pretentious, entitled snots didn't represent anyone I knew, and I still have no idea who the movie is supposed to appeal to.
Reality Bites was not a great movie for several reasons, but I was in a relationship at the time that was not working, with an ex that I still really cared about who was terrible for me. I saw myself so much in that movie - after seeing it I got out of the bad relationship, broke off everything with the ex, and moved on. I found happiness with a really great person shortly after and we've been married since 1996. I don't know how long I would have been in the bad relationship if I hadn't seen Reality Bites.
Thank you for this. I just had a rewatch because of your post. 🕺💃🎶🎵💕
Most of those 90s shows: Friends, 90210, Melrose Place. Just did not identify with them as a poor, recently graduated 20-something woman living in a shared apartment with a bunch of student loans.
I could not agree more. I never saw the appeal
Oh I have a pretty significant loathing of the show "Friends". I was trying to stick to movies in my response, but yeah.. don't get me started on that whole genre. I thought the characters were entirely unlikeable. I'll take "Seinfeld" any day of the week instead of "Friends".
Oh I loved Melrose Place & lived polar opposite of those folks 🤣
People gave me so much grief for saying Friends was not funny and I disliked the entire cast. They really seemed to take it personally.
God I hated those shows. I’ve tried to watch friends several times and it was so boring. 90210 absolute drivel.
Avatar - 3D Space Smurf Pocahontas Never saw it because the story looked so boring.
It was Ferngully meets Dances with Wolves
I keep saying Avatar is just Dances with Wolves with Aliens. Glad I'm not the only one who noticed.
Ferngully is still the best.
I wish they'd make a television parody of the narrative, directed from the perspective of the Na'vi e.g. "I ****ed an Earthling: Is He the Father?!"
With a side helping of Pocahontas...
Unobtanium? Really?? My eyes rolled back so hard the retinas detached and flipped out into my 3D glasses. Unobtanium…how about gofuckyourselftanium
This was my reaction as well. James Cameron thinks we're all idiots, so fuck that guy.
Both those movies made so much money yet I can't think of any lines or scenes that crept into pop culture like other big franchises. Like no one ever references Avatar ever, except to say it sucks yet it made billions
If you're thinking it's a story about a white dude who meets Other people for the first time, realizes that they have basic personhood, and becomes the main character of their existing society, then yeah, you've got the broad strokes.
We called it Dances With Blue People
Yeah, that first one, after I was like "wait... did I just watch Dances With Wolves again?"
I still think this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.
I literally fell asleep in the theater (and no it had absolutely nothing to do with the Texas-sized margarita with an extra tequila shot I had had before watching it.) Seriously such a boring, uninteresting movie. I always ask people who say they liked it to name me one character and they pretty much always fail.
But wasn't the 3-D cool, at least (asking as someone who never saw it)?
I felt like that was the marketing hype talking point they kept pushing at press junkets. “We created this new tech to film with!” Over and over. The CG was just as wooden and clunky as the acting/story
Incredibly boring story, you could always tell what will happen next - and were right about it. Yawn.
It looked neat in theaters. Couldn't name more than a couple of characters. Like other people say, it's a mix of Fern Gully and Dances with Wolves, with a really awesome tech demo.
I've seen more nuanced villains on Captain Planet. "Just push the joystick forward. They'll move."
I came here for this. I don’t know how that movie is so popular, it was uninteresting. I think they have put James Cameron on a pedestal and he can do no wrong. I don’t like any of his movies, not even Terminator.
It is as bad as you've undoubtedly heard. I saw it because a friend had free tickets and if I had paid for it I would have been even more salty about it.
I will never understand Avatar’s popularity. The masses are a weird bunch. I’m going back to my cave now.
Buddy of mine describes it as Maud’Dib finds the Smurfs and blows up the Giving Tree.
I do not understand the love for this boring movie. The trailer looked so formulaic and melodramatic that i can't even be bothers with the actual film.
The 90-100 super hero movies Hollywood dumped in the last 20 years. If the 50’s/60’s were remembered as wall to wall cowboy movies - people in 60 years will wonder if there was anything else in the 2000’s/2010’s.
I was worn out on all the super hero movies probably 10 years ago. More or less they’re all the same cookie-cutter crap.
The comic book movies are so boring. I did like the first wave of them in the 90's when it was a novelty. The endless new Marvel movies look like I'm watching someone play a video game. Boring.
In the 2000s there was absolutely other stuff. By the end of the 20-teens it really did seem like there was nothing else left. I saw so many of them and can barely recall anything about any of them, with the exception of Iron Man when the genre was still relatively new and unique.
I was sooo excited when Iron Man and the early Batman movies came out. I was not a huge comic book nerd, but I certainly enjoyed them growing up. The first iron man movie came out and my buddy and I went and we had such a great time. But it's been overload. Each release I was less excited. There are a bunch I never saw. Recently I turned on the TV and was looking for something to watch. I was looking at the marvel section and literally couldn't even remember which I had seen. They just all ran together in my brain, and the few I was pretty certain I hadn't seen, I just did not care. I watched something else.
I really enjoyed the first X-Men, and nearly all the MCU between Iron Man and Endgame. But they all sort of run together as one big action movie in my head. I think that's why people are hating the current phase, it's not just action movies anymore.
Hocus Pocus
Ugh. 2 hours of Bette Midler shrieking. I tried once, couldn’t finish it.
Yes!!! I do not get it at all.
The latest Avatar was a hot trash money grab with all the worst tropes of a sequel.
St. Elmos Fire
It always seemed to me that it was the GenX equivalent of The Big Chill. The characters all act like boomers.
I think that's because the cast are all boomers
I was about to say exactly that.
Exactly, both angst-filled crud and ghosts of lost opportunities. If I want to see a early-mid 80's movie about a group like that, I'll watch The Osterman Weekend...
Top Gun. Both of them. I just think Tom Cruise is an insufferable douche.
The flight scenes are some of the coolest cinematography I’ve ever seen. Everything *everything* that happens between the flight scenes is so. Fucking. *Stupid.* I watched a behind the scenes/making of show where they had the real Viper and some of the other pilots who flew the jets in the movie and who were technical consultants. They were laughing and laughing about stuff like “no we don’t play volleyball together and we don’t have locker rooms.” They really laughed about the scene where the classroom is a bunch of little desks on the tarmac and one dude is wearing a cowboy hat. Fun fact for Harry Potter fans - the real Viper’s name is Pete Pettigrew.
>Top Gun. Both of them. It's just a long-form commercial for military aviation and hardware. Reagan's wet dream
Tarantino had the best take on Top Gun.
I remember seeing recruiter tables in the movie lobby. I was appalled.
St. Elmo's Fire. All the popular Tom Cruise movies like Risky Business and the one where he is a bartender oh and Top Gun. Most of the teen or young adult comedies were rapey and sexist.
Growing up watching all these movies it was pretty clear that they were not being told from the point of view of any woman. We were just props and plot devices in those movies.
did you see the retrospective essay written by Molly Ringwald when she watched the film with her teenage daughter having not seen in since she made it. She makes that exact point.
Oh yeah, it's bad when even the star of one of those movies recognizes how shitty the whole culture was.
That moment in the Breakfast Club where Bender sticks his hand up Claire's skirt which is played for comedy and then she kisses him in the end is ghastly. But they did accurately portray the life of a teenage girl in the 80s. Its why women of that age group are still so pissed off. ha ha
Yeah, they are super problematic and don't hold up well even outside the racism, homophobia, and misogyny. That's why I avoid watching them at all costs; nicer that they remain fond memories. (I did risk a recent re-watch of Goonies - it happened to be on - and that seemed mostly okay? It was an edited-for-TV version, though.)
I watched Sixteen Candles last year with my 25 year old daughter (it was on TV at a hotel), and she was…not impressed. That movie did not age well *at all*.
I have no interest in seeing the Marvel/DC movies and tv shows
When Harry Met Sally. I hate that movie. The only good thing was Carrie Fisher. The scene in the deli where Meg Ryan simulates an orgasm that everybody always raves over as being the funniest scene in the movie has always seemed gross and creepy to me. The Breakfast Club. I grew up in this small town, that was going thru really desperate economic times due to the closure of the steel mills. Everybody's parents were out of work, some families ended up having to move to states where you could still get a manufacturing job. And I'm supposed to feel like I have things in common and like a bunch of middle-class white kids? Not gonna happen. The only one I liked was Bender. The movie does not speak to my high school experience at all. Pretty Woman hasn't aged well for me. Liked it when it came out. Recently tried to rewatch, and had to switch channels, it was that bad.
I feel like the entire point of the breakfast club is that we all had that one character we could kinda empathize with, and the driving story was how no matter where we come from we're all just people trying to survive the day. But if we're talking movies from that era centered around high school? Heathers. Just fucking Heathers. That movie understands me as a person.
The point of "The Breakfast Club" (and yes, there was a point) was in the ending sequence's voice-over. They put kids of different cliques (stereotypes?) in a room together, made them interact, talk, disagree, fight, fall in love, commiserate, and ultimately realize that they all had a little bit of "brain, athlete, basket case, princess, and a criminal" in themselves. Sure, it's just a throwaway teen dramedy, but it's an iconic one. If you liked Bender, maybe you felt his desperation and isolation. I was the Geek. Others identified with other characters, obviously. [Essay for Mr. Vernon, starts at 1:57](https://youtu.be/DQ1QUK8KLH0?feature=shared) Unrelated, but I totally agree with you about "Pretty Woman".
Titanic. I’ve seen enough to know it’s hot garbage.
I watched it for Billy Zanes' magnificent mane, and I can report that it was, indeed, magnificent
Taylor Dayne definitely had a mane.
Taylor Dayne's mane was insane.
Zane and Dane are insane in the mem-mane *INSANE IN THE MANE*
Billy Zane's and Taylor Dayne's insane manes do remain the adverse of mundane.
I have never watched just based on how much that dumbass Celine Dion song played on the radio. It was on at least 3x an hr for like 2 years.
I have never seen this movie & have no desire to ever see it either. I remember working at the vid store when it came out & it was so fricking long it was a 2 tape movie.
I haven't seen in either. Don't tell me how it ends as I might see it in preparation for when the sequel comes out /s
I’ll save you the trouble, the ship sinks in the end, and there’s Kate Winslets tits.
Dumb and Dumber... although, it's still probably a better love story than Twilight. The Fast & Furious movies. Seinfeld.
Ugh I hate dumb and dumber so so much.
I loved The Beach when it came out in 2000 or whatever, but when I watched it recently I concluded it was an awful load of wank. There was not one likeable character in that movie and tbh I'd hate to be stuck on an island with those people. The soundtrack is still okay though. Reality Bites is another one that I found to be 'cool" when I was younger but also found it completely cringey when I rewatched it in recent years.
I recommend the book, they removed important pieces for the movie.
Dirty Dancing. The amount of time I spent in my tween and teen years sitting in dark living room sleepovers pretending to like that movie has scarred me. I thought everyone was only watching it to seem “popular,” but somehow that schmaltzy piece of corporate wish fulfillment trash has become a touchstone for half the middle-aged white women I know. I still fucking hate it. (Now, confidentially to the person above who doesn’t get PeeWee: come fight me bro)
It has moments of feminism, but ugh....the dancing is fun
YES! I never got into that one. And even though this is a movie thread, I hated that Time of Your Life song. It is a terrible song for a dance number
It’s relevant now because once again abortions are dangerous.
But without Dirty Dancing, we wouldn't have "nobody puts baby in the corner".
Y'know, after I posted this I thought, "well, the movie itself wasn't \*so\* bad...maybe it was just the hype that bothered me..." And then you posted this. THIS is why I hate that fucking movie. Can't tell you why, but that catchphrase grates on my nerves like nothing else. FUCK BABY. FUCK HER CORNER. (oh wait... BABY WANTS TO FUCK... \*puts on nitrous mask\*)
Singles came out when I was in high school, and my friends and I totally wanted our lives to be like that movie. For a while in my early 20s, I lived at an apartment complex that had a lot of single young people and it was kind of like Singles. That's still my favorite movie.
Forrest Gump. I was in high school when it came out, and all my peers loved it and would quote it. Especially in "Gump voice" which drove me crazy. I like Tom Hanks just fine, but never got the appeal of that movie.
Clerks. It's just annoying as fuck and it makes me cringe when adults my age reference.
Clerks is just boring to me.
Ferris Bueller. Other than Cameron’s character, and maybe Jeannie, the entire rest of the movie is insufferable.
Cameron really is the main character of the film.
Couldn’t agree more. I hated the Ferris Bueller character. Reminded me of entitled manipulators.
Scrolled down to find this so I could feel not so alone.
Scrapple. IYKYK.
Donnie Darko. To me, it’s just gibberish pretending to be deep.
I just recently watched Donnie Darko for the first time and really liked it. lol.
This is the majority viewpoint
I do think it nails being a teenager in the late ‘80s though. And the soundtrack kicks.
You may have a point. If the aim of the film is to portray a teen’s desire to appear pale and interesting whilst actually lacking any substance, it does that. Mind genuinely blown.
>If the aim of the film is to portray a teen’s desire to appear pale and interesting whilst actually lacking any substance, it does that. Or end up on some government agency's watch list..
Well who hasn’t done that?
Thank you, now I know I’m not alone.
I don’t know if this is a hot take, per se, but even when it first came out, I struggled with Reality Bites. The beginning was great, and I loved Sammy (and felt his storyline, little attention as it gets, was the most realistic of the bunch) and Vickie, but Troy was off-putting and by the time Lelaina was running up a $300 phone bill making calls to a damned psychic (and then using her father’s gas card to pay it off, because yeah, all of us Gen-Xers had dads who gave us use of their gas cards for graduation, sure), I felt the movie had gone off the rails.
Hook
Omg, there's two of us!
Three!
Four. Its shite. Casting is awful. Spielberg has done some incredible films but that is a total misfire.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I wouldn't say I hate it, I don't find it as entertaining like a lot of people do. But I'm not a big fan of musicals either.
Yeah, if you don't like musicals, you wouldn't like this musical either.
Rocky Horror at a theater watch party is a BLAST! At home.....nah.
Horror movies. Bathroom humor movies. Gross-out movies. Realistic war movies (set in our past or current wars). I watch movies for escapism and entertainment.
Footloose-the movie and the song. Please don't hate me!
Dirty Dancing and Ghost, Swazye is a good actor, but didn't really like those 2 movies.
I'd throw St Elmo's Fire in the "What Boomers think life is Like for Gen X youth."
*From Dusk 'Til Dawn.* I just think it's blatantly misogynist and not at all fun. The beginning of the movie, where Quentin Tarantino rapes and murders that terrified bank teller was incredibly disturbing. And then the movie does a left turn into a zany vampire horror comedy. And Harvey Keitel's character is an IDIOT who gets himself and his son killed. And George Clooney's character would be the most punchable face on the screen if Quentin Tarantino wasn't also in the movie. The fact that he survives, and that Juliette Lewis' character, *who just watched her father and brother die horribly,* wants to ride away with him at the end, is the most egregious example of misogynist wish fulfillment fantasy I've ever seen. I really wish young Quentin Tarantino had just worked out his issues in therapy, rather than putting the viewers through that experience. And I can't believe what a nothing character Salma Hayek ended up being. Disappointment all around.
I dont really like any Tarantino movies. I could not get through Kill Bill. And even Pulp Fiction was too violent.
That movie was a huge problem from start to finish.
I've long suspected that Tarantino's affection for 'grindhouse' was really just nostalgia for the time when blatant exploitation of women was totally normal and acceptable in society.
I hate that he pretends he's being ironic and making a point about society when really its just an excuse to be a misogynistic prick and get paid for it.
[удалено]
wait what. I still love Back to the Future.
\#1 - "Slasher" films. No "Nightmare on Elm St.", "Friday the 13th", "Saw" etc. I have a gut wrenching hatred of the sound of people screaming, have a low tolerance for the sight of blood/gore, and I get no endorphin rush from being intentionally scared. \#2 - "Home Alone". I just couldn't get past the stupid behavior of the adults, and the cruelty of the siblings. \#3 - "Porky's" (and any of the similar "teen sex comedy" movies of the 80s and 90s). So far removed from any reality I knew at the time.
16 Candles. If there was ever a script that lacked substance and had shitty writing, that movie would be the poster child for what subpar screenplay looked like.
I am so proud of my eleven year old self with this movie. I saw it at my best friend’s older sister’s birthday party and was so uncomfortable the whole time. The toxic family, racism, sexual assault. I thought something was wrong with me because all the other girls’ loved it, but now I realize I was right all along
Oh it is so cringe now. I loved it when I was young. We started to watch it with my kid when he was a teen. He turned to me and said it was too racist for him to finish. Had to agree.
I am not a fan of Robin Williams' movies. Yes, he was a funny man. But almost all of his characters are the same person: a goofy iconoclast who, surprisingly, has an Important Lesson to teach us, which he will impart in a whispery voice that is a notable departure from the zany antics he delights us with during most of the movie, and which the cast will absorb with stunned gratitude, because who could have guessed that an offbeat person could also offer such life-changing insights as "family is important" and "be yourself"? People always talked about his movies like "Who knew that a funny guy who flouts society's expectations could also have something meaningful to say!?! You know, I think humor might actually be an effective way to get folks thinking about serious things! Genius!" Uh, really? You mean to tell me that the fool might actually be wise? Get outta here! Next you'll be telling me that hookers have hearts of gold! And that the elderly black person sitting on that stoop over there can turn my crumbling marriage around and heal my relationship with my father with just a few oblique comments about whittling! This is unheard of! People watch the same movie over and over, and think they're seeing something new every time. It makes me anxious that most of us never notice.
American Beauty: a creepy movie about boomers fantasizing about fucking underage xers... aged like Harvey Weinstein
Napoleon Dynamite. I never understood all the hype. It wasn't funny,
Well, I liked it. But, to be fair ... in our youth he'd been stuffed in a locker.
I still love napoleon to this day.
This one I actually like. It's so absurd. Parts of it don't really work, but overall the sort of inert mundane quality of it makes me laugh.
You didn't grow up in a small town. Honestly, I think you need boredom, frustration to be a normal part of your life to like it. In high school, if something unusual happened, people would talk about it for months. That is Napoleon Dynamite. Everyone in the movie is the person who wants to move out of a small town.
I liked it, and still do. Nacho Libre is also a regular rewatch for me.
I'll get downvoted for this, I'm sure, but Keanu Reeves. Nothing against him personally, and I do like some movies he's been in. I just never thought he was that good of an actor. I do respect that he dates within his age group and seems somewhat down to earth.
>> I'll get downvoted for this, I'm sure, but Keanu Reeves. Another admission that will get my GenX card revoked: don’t care for any Bill & Ted movies either
I fvcking HATE Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and in extension, Matthew Broderick's face, because of that steaming pile
It’s not a movie about GenX, but I refused to watch Titanic and have maintained that stance to this day. Too much hype. Typical GenX… if everyone else is insisting how awesome it is, it can’t be that good.
I still haven’t seen it either.
I recently had a conversation about “Singles” with my Xellenial wife. I contend that it’s utter crap (as I do ant Crowe film), she that it was a good movie. We’ve scheduled a rewatch double feature with “Reality Bites” to see how they hold up.
Seen it multiple times and don’t get it- Wayne’s World.
I get its not eveyones cup of tea, but I think its Party Time, Excellent.
I was in my early twenties when it came out. I was definitely in the target demographic. It connected with me, the idea of characters with no money and no future just hanging out and mocking the corporate culture. Right movie, right time.
Bram Stoker's Dracula, with Gary Oldman. I disliked it so much that I left the theater I snuck into (ahem...into which I had sneaked) to watch it because it wasn't worth my time. My friends thought Gary Oldman was sooooooo hot in that movie and I just did not/do not see it.
That movie was/is trash. And it's not like it was a faithful adaptation of the novel even.
Everything about it irritated me. Just thinking about it now irritates me, lol. I crouched on top of a toilet seat in the movie theater bathroom for 30 minutes to sneak in. I definitely could have been doing something better with my time, like getting a dental cleaning or rotating my tires.
I hated Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. It was a friend’s favourite movie and they were so excited to show it to me. I kept waiting for some kind of storyline or character growth… nothing. Just doped up idiots walking around Vegas. If I want to see that I’ll just visit Vegas again.
[удалено]
Ferris was always a douche. It’s just that we like(d) him.
Who's we? Never liked that smug bitchface Ferris Bueller.
Jeannie?
[удалено]
The archetypes were absolutely at my school. It was quite realistic... except for them becoming remotely friends in the end.
Ha! Just watched it last night. No it’s not very realistic but it still pulls the heartstrings in all the right ways and that’s why we’re still watching it almost 40 years later. (It floors me that it’s now as old as Casablanca was then.)
You could have not done that, you know that right?
True but it does have the iconic line “Smoke ‘em up, Johnny!”
"Shut up bitch! Go fix me a turkey potpie!"
Watch it as an adult and you want to beat the shit out of Bender, that little punk ass bitch.
Even as an adult, I recognize Bender acting out because he has abusive parents. Nobody expects anything of him, so he decides to live down to people's expectations. He needs a shrink as well.
Well, also, he does not look remotely like a high school student. Old man Bender! I can still appreciate the movie, though. It was the only John Hughes I ever liked, even as a kid.
The principal becomes much more sympathetic as an adult. He's got to waste his Saturday babysitting this bunch of spoiled brats.
He had a choice. He could have been happy with his lot in life like the janitor (who probably led a more impoverished life) or turn into the miserable bastard he was. I’m so glad they made him three-dimensional enough, however, to show that it was clearly a choice.
Totally. He actually had some depth, due in no small part to Paul Gleason absolutely owning the role.
Thank you!
Reality Bites
The Chucky movies. I walked out of the first one & got a refund. I have never understood all the sequels being made. And (oh God here come the downvotes) all the Back to the Future movies after the first one. All the Gremlins movies.