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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.156.184.118
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 12:29 am:   

http://www.sfx.co.uk/2013/01/07/sci-fi-fantasys-most-overrated-movies-3/

At least 6 of these films are permanaent fixtures in my top 10 of all time (one of those permanently top 3) 3 of the others I think are very good films and there's only 1 on the list that I actively dislike.

If I say I've never got past the monkeys before sheer boredom sends me to sleep you should be able to work that one out.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 04:43 am:   

10 - incorrect
9 - never saw, don't care to
8 - straw man (who says this is so great?)
7 - I'm indifferent
6 - agree
5 - meh
4 - oh GOD yes!
3 - incorrect
2 - never saw, could care less
1 - well, I've not seen it in years... perhaps it doesn't hold up?...
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.212.230.26
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 10:29 am:   

You do know how to show you know shit all about films craig. Brazil and Donnie Darko are consistantly in my personal top 5 movies of all time. Having said that, one of the reasons this is such a silly list is that nothing can be objectively overrated. To claim something as overrated is to agree you hold a minority opinion, thu you disagree with the consensus. If something was to be officially overrated it would mean the consensus opinion was that the consensus opinion was wrong.
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Rosswarren (Rosswarren)
Username: Rosswarren

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 86.176.27.240
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 11:37 am:   

Bladerunner, Donnie Darko and Matrix certainly wouldn't be considered overrated by me
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 01:22 pm:   

Any film or book rated as a 'classic' can easily be called 'overrated' because not everyone shares the intense enthusiasm on display. I get tired of the hype piled upon merely good films in the horror genre – Carpenter, Fulci and Romero may be good directors but calling them 'great' is rather stupid. Likewise the hysteria around The Matrix and other SF films invites scepticism. But the target of such criticism has to be the fan culture of hyperbole, not the films themselves. And Weber is right: if a film is generally recognised as 'overrated' then it is not overrated, at least not any more.

It's rather like the way, in the 1980s, every halfway decent new horror writer had to be the greatest ever. That put aspiring writers in an impossible position: either they disagreed with their own fans or they bought into nonsense. These days, writers who have published a few short stories in the small press are being acclaimed on fan websites as being among the greatest genre writers of all time. It's stupid and embarrassing. Books and films are as good as they are. The hunger for life-changing experiences can't be satisfied that easily. People who want life-changing experiences might have to (whisper it softly) get up and leave the cinema.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 1.169.137.50
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 02:29 pm:   

Weber, I wouldn't call any of those films overrated. I can see why some may not like them, but that's just different tastes, surely?

Joel, I agree entirely with your second point, and mostly with your first regarding hyperbole, although I must admit I've thought of Carpenter and Romero as 'great' directors at certain times (after watching The Thing and Night of the Living Dead, to be more specific). I'd say they are both inconsistent, but very good indeed when at their best. Good directors who've, on occasion, made brilliant films.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.22.96
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 02:46 pm:   

" People who want life-changing experiences might have to (whisper it softly) get up and leave the cinema."

And avoid Mizoguchi, you mean? Dreyer? Ozu? Bergman? And so (at some length) on...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 04:41 pm:   

Any object of art is "rated" in time, relevant to other works of art. No art arrives once and for all—some last so long in their exalted positions, they seem they will always be there (the works of the Bible, say). To say something is "overrated," is sort of to say, "Soon, soon, the masses shall dethrone this work": it is to opine apocalyptically. DONNIE DARKO and BRAZIL just don't speak to me—they speak in a language I can't understand. Just leave it at that....
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.212.231.85
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 05:27 pm:   

That language being English.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 06:45 pm:   

Ramsey – yes, to see any film by any of those directors you'll need to leave the cinema, or at least the multiplex, but round where I live no cinema at all shows anything like that.
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David_lees (David_lees)
Username: David_lees

Registered: 12-2011
Posted From: 92.22.37.132
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 10:45 pm:   

I only read the first couple of entries but this is probably just clickbait. Publish controversial opinions about much-loved films, wait for angry people to comment and share the link to their friends so they can get angry, go to the advertisers and say "Look how much traffic we got this month!".

I saw an American site do something similar with a retrospective of all the Batman movies where they tried to argue that the Schumacher films were actually the best of the lot.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.31.139
Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - 10:57 pm:   

Alas, Joel! We're not too badly placed here with FACT in Liverpool and the Cornerhouse in Manchester.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.25.8.31
Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 09:56 am:   

In Whitby, we have two cinemas, neither of which is particularly fast off the mark. We're really looking forward to the local premiere of Ghostbusters.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 05:47 pm:   

Here's how I'd rank the above list:

1. (3) '2001 : A Space Odyssey' (1968) by Stanley Kubrick - the finest science fiction film ever made and one of the finest films period! Kubrick's greatest work - nuff said.
NOT OVERRATED

2. (6) 'Brazil' (1985) by Terry Gilliam - a stunning to look at and emotionally powerful visionary masterpiece from the mind of a maverick genius!
NOT OVERRATED

3. (10) 'The Exorcist' (1973) by William Friedkin - the finest horror film ever made and one of the finest films period! Who said that?... It's the probing intelligence of the script and palpable soul terror of the performances married to more traditional scares that makes it stand head and shoulders above all the rest.
NOT OVERRATED

4. (1) 'Blade Runner' (1982) by Ridley Scott - another unadulterated sci-fi masterpiece and the only truly successful translation of Philip K. Dick's vision to the big screen. It remains Scott's finest work.
NOT OVERRATED

5. (9) 'Silent Running' (1972) by Douglas Trumbull - a film that had a profound effect on me as a child and enshrined Bruce Dern forevermore as one of my favourite actors. It stands undiminished as a great work of pure cinema.
NOT OVERRATED

6. (7) 'The Matrix' (1999) by Andy & Larry Wachowski - somewhat overhyped and overrated but still brilliantly entertaining and thought provoking sci-fi/action epic that became too successful for its own good.
A TAD OVERRATED

7. (4) 'Donnie Darko' (2001) by Richard Kelly - a fine and oddly haunting film but completely undeserving of its now legendary status. An engrossing leftfield one-off that, ultimately, isn't as clever as it thinks it is.
OVERRATED BUT STILL FINE

8. (5) 'Akira' (1988) by Katsuhiro Otomo - the only manga feature I've seen on the big screen and I thoroughly enjoyed it, for what it is, but a sci-fi masterpiece belonging on anyone's Top 10 list?!?! I think not.
OVERRATED BUT STILL FINE

9. (8) 'Avengers Assemble' (2012) by Joss Whedon - mindlessly entertaining big dumb superhero action that works as pure crowd pleasing spectacle but not much else.
OVERRATED BUT STILL A BLAST

10. (2) 'Avatar' (2009) by James Cameron - good looking but vacuous and overblown nonsense that doesn't belong in anyone's Top 10. If ever there was a triumph of technology over content it's this vainglory project!
GROSSLY OVERRATED
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Almills (Almills)
Username: Almills

Registered: 05-2010
Posted From: 72.227.139.18
Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 07:01 pm:   

i'm in absolute agreement with stevie, and i'm glad you summarized it as such, because my disagreements with the article have been haunting me for... the past day, i suppose.

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