A-List: Unpopular Opinions
By Josh Spiegel
July 22, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I won’t delve into that podcast (though I’m not a particular fan of the episode’s guest, the show is worth listening to), but the critic in question brings up this week’s A-List topic: unpopular opinions. This critic is well known as the contrarian to end all contrarians, but everyone has opinions that aren’t popular. Some people may not like a show like The Wire, they may not like Shakespeare’s works very much, or think that Citizen Kane is overrated (those who think the movie isn’t the best ever are exempt from the categorization). Today, we’ll delve into five of my most unpopular opinions - at least, they’re opinions I assume to be unpopular. Maybe you’ll tell me you agree, or maybe you’ll have some contrarian opinions of your own you’d like to share. Either way, let’s get to this week’s A-List.
Sandra Bullock
Yeah, let’s start out with America’s sweetheart, shall we? I don’t like her. In fact, I pretty much can’t stand her. Before I continue, I’ll get this out of the way: because I am not a heartless person, I think that no one should have had to go through what she did with her ex-husband, Jesse James. My unpopular opinion of her is strictly regarding her movies, which are almost all either forgettable or terrible. You may be charmed by her in the Miss Congeniality films, but I feel ready to throw up when I watch either of them. Yes, you may say, her movies aren’t exactly the best in the world, but is that her fault? Maybe this will say it better: I find her to be disingenuous. Where others find genuine charm and folksy wit, I find nothing but fakery and am rebuffed at her attempts to charm the audience.
As you may or may not remember from articles around the Oscar season, I have not seen The Blind Side; I’m better off for doing so, because I’m predisposed to loathe it. The trailers gave me the impression that I’d be watching Bullock try out her Southern accent for size, like a little girl playing dress-up for her parents. I know that she won the Oscar, but the idea that she won for her years of hard work makes me wonder if the people saying that have looked at her IMDb page lately. All About Steve wasn’t her first clunker. I appreciate that I’m way out on a limb with this one, and I suppose I should be thankful that a female actress over the age of 40 gets to be a star of any kind in Hollywood, but her name associated with a project will likely never excite me.
Ridley Scott
Before you prepare your e-mails, let me qualify my unpopular opinion about Ridley Scott. For Alien and Blade Runner, he deserves medals. After that, I’m not so sure he’s made a wholly good movie, an entertaining, thrilling, thoughtful movie. I’m not against him not making movies equal to the grandeur and complexity of Blade Runner, but I find myself left cold at his films more often than not. The only two movies of his since 1982 that I tolerate, but am still mostly unexcited by, are Thelma and Louise and Matchstick Men. Gladiator, a wildly popular Oscar winner, is one of my least favorite award-winning movies, a murky, dull, and rote sword-and-sandals epic that featured a Russell Crowe performance that paved the way to making Gerard Butler popular; tell me that his lead in 300 isn’t influenced by Maximus in Gladiator, and I’ve got some land to sell you.
Scott is not a bad director, but his notable motifs are mostly in the nitty-gritty of production design, which can be eye-popping and colorful, but not lately. Body of Lies and American Gangster continued the trend Scott has of using the darkest, drabbest palette available, dark blues and browns all the way. He often attracts solid actors (Body of Lies is a weakly plotted film, but Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe do their very best to make things worthwhile), but the scripts he works with are uninvolving to me and rarely rise above cliché. Maybe it’s that Scott started out with two of the biggest studio films ever, movies that resonate now in ways that weren’t even thought of. For Alien and Blade Runner, I’ll always give him a pass, but Ridley Scott has done nothing of note since then.
Rocky
No, I don’t hate Rocky. I don’t get Rocky. Better yet, I don’t get Sylvester Stallone. There’s only a few weeks until The Expendables, his latest action movie, and what interests me about the film (and it’s only mild interest) are the actors surrounding Stallone. Schwarzenegger, Willis, Statham, Li…the cast is amazing, even if it’s still a bit cheesy. But Sylvester Stallone is a movie star whose stardom has constantly baffled me. Rocky is arguably the best movie he’s been in, but for me, that’s still faint praise. It’s not that the story of Rocky - and do I really need to recap it for you? - is predictable. I’m a fan of sports movies, and most of them traffic in predictable storylines. This isn’t a bad thing: we want the home team to win. We want the underdogs to triumph. That Rocky doesn’t triumph in the superficial fashion isn’t disappointing to me. I just don’t know why it’s so beloved.
It won Best Picture, I know. That Rocky won Best Picture in a year when it faced off with movies like Network, All The President’s Men, and Taxi Driver is potentially one of the biggest shocks of Oscar history. Look at those other movies. Network. Taxi Driver! How does a movie like Taxi Driver not win Best Picture? If you tell me it’s because Network beats it, I nod and accept the facts. I wouldn’t immediately compare those two films with, say, the face-off in 2007 of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, but those two movies could have easily canceled each other out at the Oscars, and it wouldn’t have been surprising. Rocky won, and it’s still looked on fondly by many, but the dead-eyed performances from Stallone and Talia Shire, among other things, confuse me. I hate to say so usually, but I don’t understand this movie’s appeal.
Bringing Up Baby
Nine times out of ten, I’m a big fan of screwball comedy. So I should be wildly in love with Bringing Up Baby, a 1938 screwball comedy that’s widely accepted as the greatest of its genre. Starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, and directed by Howard Hawks, what could possibly be wrong with Bringing Up Baby? In some ways, I see Bringing Up Baby as the antithesis of classic screwball comedies like It Happened One Night or The Philadelphia Story. The latter films are tightly scripted, witty, well acted, and feature charming actors. But screwball comedies, when they fail, fail big. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are fine actors, and Howard Hawks is one of the great American directors. So when they get together to make a screwball comedy and end up failing (to me), they fail as big as possible. Thus, we have Bringing Up Baby.
What goes wrong? The characters, as written and performed, are gratingly obnoxious. Grant plays an uptight paleontologist (as opposed to all those wild, loose ones we hear about these days) and Hepburn plays a flighty heiress who, as soon as she sees him, proceeds to get Grant to fall in love with her. As is common, wackiness and love ensues, along with some random elements, such as the titular leopard (see? The Hangover didn’t capitalize the market on wild cats in comedies!). Grant has never been less appealing, as a stick in the mud who doesn’t even loosen up that much when Hepburn’s wiles and charms work on him. What’s more, Hepburn’s mannered style of acting has never made me cringe more. In just about every other movie, these two are great performers and capable of high and low comedy. Here, they shoot for the stars and miss.
Nashville
In the category of filmmakers I am supposed to like but just can’t, the number-one candidate has to be Robert Altman. On the one hand, you could argue that if Altman hadn’t made films like Nashville, we wouldn’t have Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpieces Boogie Nights and Magnolia. There’s no question that Anderson is a major fan of the late director, having gone so far as to provide uncredited help on Altman’s final film, A Prairie Home Companion. But every single film of Altman’s that I’ve seen (and, being fair, I’ve still not seen MASH or McCabe and Mrs. Miller, movies I do want to see) has either bored me to tears or made me want to throw something at the screen. Nashville, widely lauded as his masterpiece from 1975, got both reactions. Set in the titular city on the day of a political convention, Altman gives us plenty of characters and little stories, but no momentum or interest.
What bored me was just that; unlike Anderson’s 1990s-era Altmanesque films, Nashville has no movement. It’s a lengthy film that lies there, jumping from character to character with no purpose or fluidity. What made me want to throw something at the screen was the constant attempt at humor in the form of the British journalist played by Geraldine Chaplin. Chaplin’s character is meant to be a stuffy, know-nothing writer who searches for meaning and deep thought in the silliest places, including a junkyard. What’s the point of the joke, aside from pointing and laughing at a foolish member of the media? I have no idea. Is her character in the film for a reason? Aside from trying to show me a window into the human experience and failing, probably not. Altman is very ambitious in his filmmaking, but his style puts me at arm’s length, never able to embrace the emotions the characters feel. I wish I felt differently, but I don’t.