Movies That Have Had Something of a 180-Degree Critical Reappraisal

I never saw the "more faithful" version, but Garris did a terrible job with "The Stand" so I imagine his "Shining" was similarly bad.

Garris is a poor director. It'd be interesting to see a good filmmaker give "Shining" another shot - at least Mike Flanagan's "Doctor Sleep" was good!

 

Yeah, you gotta be awake for important movies. I have to say, I've gone to late shows where I took a swig of 5-Hour Energy or cappuccino just to make sure I paid attention.

I know of younger people who think Citizen Kane is dull, and I just saw it again over the summer in Blu-ray, and I still think the film movies like a freight train: fast, intense, and mesmerizing. Not boring at all.

 

"Kane" has so much "GREATEST MOVIE EVER!!!" hype that you really need to see it a good 3 times to actually view it "objectively".

Same is true for most of the older classics, really, but especially "Kane". We've been so inundated with the notion it's this stunning work of art that it's inevitable it'll disappoint that 1st time...

 

A lot of these reappraisals come down to who worked on the film. If it's a director with a fan base, there are always going to be fans who are going to try to lift that movie up.

My particular whipping boy on this issue is Billy Wilder's Kiss Me Stupid. Wilder directed probably my favorite movie, Stalag 17, so I'm quite capable of liking his work. But Kiss Me Stupid is not a good movie.

Ray Walston and his friend (Clifford Irving) are part time songwriters who want to make it big. They want to sell a song to a singer played by Dean Martin. Dean Martin here is some sort of sex addict who will apparently go into withdrawal if he doesn't have sex every single day. I do not find this funny, in the context of its time or now.

Walston figures if he can get Dean Martin laid that Dean will buy his song. Walston has a wife, played by Felicia Farr. Walston decides to hire a hooker, played by Kim Novak, to masquerade as his wife, so that Dean can sleep with her. To do this he has to kick Felicia Farr out of her own home. The scenes where this happens are excruciating. Walston eventually decides to defend his "wife's" honor and kicks Dean Martin out of his house. Then goes to bed with Kim Novak for some reason.

Farr, kicked out of her own home, is wandering around her town, friendless and sobbing. She runs into Dean Martin. It's implied they sleep together. Walston eventually sells his song to Dean, and Farr decides to take Walston back, God knows why. Happy ending!

The casting stinks. Jack Lemmon, Farr's husband, was supposed to have Walston's part. Peter Sellers started production, but dropped out due to a heart attack. Walston is awful. He can't play a lead, nor a fool. Don Knotts actually might have had a chance. Walston's just bad. Farr is clearly out of Walston's league as a wife, which just makes me mad as a viewer that he would treat her so shabbily for the sake of his stupid song. The movie might have worked better if Farr had given a comic performance, but she plays it straight, which just makes it worse. I cannot believe this woman has no other options than Walston. They were a completely unbelievable couple.

Here's another movie that came out the same year as Kiss Me Stupid. Honeymoon Hotel. Another sex comedy. Honeymoon Hotel features an interracial romance and is genuinely sleazy, which is an accomplishment, I guess.

Robert Morse gets in trouble with his bride, Anne Helm, by openly leering at other women with his playa buddy Robert Goulet on his and Helm's wedding day. Bride has a point. The wedding is called off.

For whatever reason Morse and Goulet decide to go on the honeymoon together. It's 1964, so no one thinks they are gay. I guess Goulet thinks he'll get laid because it's at a tropical resort, but it's a honeymoon hotel, just couples, no single women.

Goulet sets his sights on the only single woman there, the social director played by Nancy Kwan. Goulet spends his time keeping the lonely Morse away from Kwan and also away from his fiancee, Helm, so Morse will stay at the hotel and Goulet can romance Kwan. Some friend! Later Goulet's boss, Keenan Wynn, shows up with his side piece, Jill St. John, for reasons I don't remember. Goulet, our hero, blackmails Wynn for raises and perks at work. He also decides he is in love with Kwan. This is unconvincing. Eventually Helm shows up and offers to take back Morse. Morse must have turned her down, because at the end of the movie Goulet hands his bachelor pad over to Morse so he can frolic with St. John. St. John's character is too stupid to be attractive. Yes, that is possible.

Of the two, I'd take Honeymoon Hotel, because it achieves its goal and it's in color. But Billy Wilder was involved with Kiss Me Stupid, and Henry Levin, a hack whose highlight was Where The Boys Are, directed Honeymoon Hotel. Guess which one is going to be "reappraised" again and again.

 

I still have not ventured past the Original Trilogy and Im fine with that.

 

Sphere.

nah....

 

It was also condemned by the Catholic League. That alone should have told everyone it was great.

 

I still don’t like it.

 

I wasn't disappointed.

 

Sticking it to one of their own.

 

Ugghh... that would drive me nuts. It's part of the reason I don't see horror films in the theater.

 

It was a bit of performance art, a very rowdy audience. Memorable experience -- my Chicago friend and I have laughed about it many times in the years since.

 

They're sisters, not twins, but everyone assumes they're twins because they're dressed so similarly.

The Shining definitely has a few elements that don't quite work, the most troubling being the excessive/tedious REDRUM repetition sequence, but overall, an absolute masterpiece, including the perfect pacing of Jack's descent from a deeply unpleasant & disturbing character into a despicably evil one. We're told from the beginning that he's unredeemable, but that he falls so much further is still astonishing; he begins at the bottom, and then descends into Hell. It shouldn't work, but it does, and perfectly. (Nicholson was of course horrendously bad as Joker, but that entire film is garbage.)

 

I think people view the "Shining" girls as twins... because they're played by twins!

 

Aaaaaa, close enough. They are called "The Grady Twins." It's not something I'm going to worry about "forever and ever."



Grady Twins

 

Kubrick took some serious license there; the girls aren't supposed to be twins, and I had no idea they were played by actual twins in the film.

SK's overdue for some serious...

...correction.

 

i finally saw "the shining" a few months ago, and thought it was visually interesting, and well-made, but have zero desire to ever see it again.

"eyes wide shut," however, I've loved since i first saw it on release, and it's the only Kubrick movie that I make a point of re-watching periodically (my wife also loves it). I think it's bizarre so many people find it off-putting, it's hilarious.

 

I don't think you'll actually get Citizen Kane unless you see it in the theater. Vickie and I were lucky enough to see it at Chicago's Music Box, a 1930s era theater, and the film was created to be seen in that type of venue. On our very first viewing, we were knocked out.

 

Fascinating.

As many mediocre films as Kubrick made, EWS is by far his worst, and The Shining his best.

You might find Polanski's The Ninth Gate interesting if you liked EWS; it's vastly superior, and just as weird.

 

Titanic is still a beloved film to this day. In addition to being one of the most acclaimed of 1997 by critics (Best Movies of 1997 - CriticsTop10 ), it was preserved in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress.

 

Catholic bashing is inappropriate. As is anti-Semitism. There have been many “Catholic Leagues.” There was a Catholic League in France and a Catholic League during the reign of the Holy Roman Empire. There is a Catholic League formed in the US in the Seventies and there are also sports leagues in the US know as “Catholic Leagues.” Many Italians and Latinos are Catholic. You might be surprised they’re not all members of drug cartels and the Mafia. There wasn’t a Catholic League when Psycho was released.

 

Martin Scorsese, After Hours.

 

Another Blade Runner vote.

 

Films that received negative reappraisals. - IMDb

1. Cimarron
2. American Beauty
3. Crash
4. King Kong
5. The Amazing Spider-Man

The Godfather Part III and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might possibly qualify?

 

Yikes. Probably like most of us here, I've never seen Cimarron, but I unfortunately saw the other four, more or less upon their release (2, 3, and 4 in the theater). My wife and I saw Crash in the theater on our first date!

Crash is the best of the four of them, but indeed it was hugely overrated at the time. I never liked American Beauty, King Kong, or The Amazing Spider-man so I'm fully on-board with the latter-day spanking of all those. King Kong was particularly brutal.