I present to you “Showgirls”, a movie that at every possible decision point, the creators made the wrong choice. So bad it’s good.
“Battlefield Earth” also falls into this category.
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Well that’s fine. More for me.
So Bad It’s Good is a specialized taste. It might be the only genre of movie where entries cannot be deliberately created. An essential part of their quality is the fact that the resulting value for the audience was an accident.
This doesn’t even require you to think less of the filmmakers, though of course a lot do.
Haven’t seen those, so I couldn’t comment. Battlefield Earth I can’t imagine ever seeing. Showgirls isnt a priority either, though that’s a Verhoeven and I know people (seemingly seriously) debate the actual merits of that one, so I don’t totally rule out trying with that one at some point.
That’s why it’s not a genre!
I’ll just be over here rubbing my temples.
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How can a conceptual framework not exist?
What’s next? Circles?!
Battlefield Earth is so bad it should be burned.
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Jay Kelly was pretty good! The trailer is atrocious and does not illustrate what it’s like to watch the movie.
My favorite part was when Adam Sandler’s character said, “I disagree.”
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The vibes in this post are similar to those of my coworkers this week when I enlightened them with why the Matrix was overrated.
- Cliche trope of Dozer coming to to save the day.
- “Neo, you can’t die, cuz the Oracle told me I’m in love with the one, and I’m in love with you so when you add those two together,
- OST not that memorable.
- I understand that a film has parameters and time constraints, but when you are only limited by your imagination, whipping ass with better physics is a bit of a letdown. Kung Fu Hustle and Ghostbusters say hi. If I hadn’t seen Akira first, which it borrows from, maybe I don’t have this take.
- While still a good film, just based on how elite the idea of the film is at it’s core, it should be up there with films like Blade Runner and Brazil.
There was buzz about potentially nominating Crudup for the Best Supporting Oscar and not Sandler, which would be awful. Hopefully the Globes playing it straight and nominating Sandler and not Crudup is a good sign that’s wrong.
(Crudup is good and all, but c’mon.)
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Excuse me.
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Rewatched Breathless yesterday (had only seen it once 20+ years ago), got my mind blown again. As you say it was of course extremely influential, but still it’s really unlike any other movie. The editing in the first half-hour is so dynamic it’s insane.
Saw the Linklater movie a couple months ago, didn’t think it was that great. It seems a bunch of the dialogue is one-liners that Linklater lifted from some interviews, and the result feels a bit stiff (so, really, not at all “in the style of the movie” ! unlike what the marketing said).
Still it had some fun parts, the cast overall is very good and it’s a cool story, so it’s a good addition to the original movie (certainly enhanced my viewing of it).
For LKJ and others, I don’t think there’s any point in watching it without having seen breathless (or at least without planning on seeing it soon after). idk what the optimal watching order being the 2 would be, but watching them back to back or close must be cool (i wish i’d done that, even 2 months is a bit too long)
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Put me in the camp of just not getting Linklater. I haven’t seen his masterpieces so it’s harder to comment on but I did work for two of his movies, SubUrbia (which I hated) and Last Flag Flying which had horribad (to me) cinematography that completely took me out of the movie and made me feel like I was watching a not great play. I also saw Dazed & Confused which I also hated.
Clovis, you are one of his biggest fans, did you see Last Flag Flying?
A reliable source tells me that you’ve seen one of them.
If that’s one of his masterpieces then I guess he’s just not for me.
He may not be, though I will say that a person could easily hate Dazed and Confused and still love The Before Trilogy. Totally different things that bear no resemblance to each other.
I’m not the biggest Linklater guy either since there is apparently a whole population of people who will tell you that Boyhood is a masterpiece when it’s the very definition of “whatever,” but I do really love his high points. And Blue Moon this year is one of the better offerings we’ve received in 2025 IMO.
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I think he’s good at capturing moments or slices of life in what I’ve seen, I just don’t relate to any of those moments or slices of life at all. I think that’s the real problem for me.
Last Flag Flying was also a very whatever movie for me. It reminded me more of an old person’s version of the Jack Nicholson movie The Last Detail even though that’s probably a horrible description of it. But again I was mainly taken out of the movie by the way it looked. It had a great cast.
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