I’m a big fan of The Rewatchables, and for me part of the enjoyment is Bill Simmons idiosyncrasies and asinine takes. The one that stands out to me is that Robert Forster’s performance in Jackie Brown is underwhelming.
I refuse to believe there is a human alive that actually believes this. Roger Robert's animation looks *better* today in 4K on Disney+ than it did back in the day.
This misses what made him famous. He was very adept at making references to ‘80s and ‘90s pop culture. This has always been his schtick and what made him an accessible writer. He then got into podcast rather early and on two separate occasions brought a lot of writing and podcast talent together. His success as a sports podcaster and to a lesser extent a movie podcaster are offshoots of this and due to him not wanting to work as hard as a writer has to after decades of grinding.
I don’t hate Simmons at all. I just find his “takes” on things very bizarre most of the time. Like, a jock trying real hard to seem like an intellectual or something. It’s like going to thanksgiving and listening to your uncle or cousin who likes a lot of the same things you do, but has the complete opposite takes on them
He’s the worst part of the Rewatchables. Chris and Sean are both wonderful, especially Sean, and Amanda is usually hilarious and insightful. Van can be really funny and is basically a better version of Bill.
O no I’m actually angry now lol. I’m extremely critical of animation quality (Scavengers Reign is the only new thing that looks perfect) and he’s just objectively wrong about RR. Also Forster is phenomenal in Jackie Brown.
Edit: oops I forgot Arcane
lol yeah Bill primarily judges actresses based on whether or not they give him a boner (I’m not sure if he’s actually doing it consciously). He recently had a truly terrible discussion with Wesley Morris about Challengers and wanted to replace Zendaya with Alexandra Daddario.
Just rewatched Jackie Brown the other day with someone, and we both loved his performance in that. Can't imagine not liking it. Not enough overacting for him?
Love that this has turned in Bill’s horrible movie takes. I got one. He let out a giant “ooooof” after rewatching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in regard to the ending - you know the thing that makes the entire thing make sense.
He wanted it to end on Brad Pitt and Leo killing the Mansons. He thought the part where they go into Sharon Tate’s house was bad. But that’s the whole fairy tale once upon a time aspect that’s essential to the movie.
Oh, he didn’t like *that* part? On reading your first comment I assumed he didn’t like the killing the Mansons part and I was ready to defend that, it was by far the weakest part of the movie for me. But that coda was lovely and like you said, tied the whole thing together.
Oh that’s even weirder, because that’s the grace note. You get to see Sharon Tate pregnant and happy with, theoretically, her life in front of her. That’s literally the heart of the movie’s fantasy premise.
I didn't watch Once Upon A Time In Hollywood until about a year ago when I had a Starz subscription to watch the new Party Down season (which was amazing), and I somehow had lived through the release of that movie without being spoiled. I was filled with such dread going into the ending, and when things started happening, I was fucking blown away. God, what a movie!
This was the one that pretty much got me to back way off of the Rewatchables. I haven’t listened in a long time but when I realized he(and presumably his listeners) felt this way I knew I needed to start distancing.
That was just such a stunningly bad take. An inability to read a character who wasn’t just one-dimensional and surface. And definitely also related to the fact that Diane Keaton didn’t give him a boner.
I think there is a reason that the best episodes of The Rewatchables are the ones with him, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey. Bill Simmons seems entirely interested in the surface details of a movie, which pairs nicely with the other two, because (say what you will about them) they are a little more willing to go into subtext. You get a bit of discussion of what a movie is about but things are still relatively light and breezy.
I was at dinner with friends shortly after Slumdog Millionaire came out when someone mentioned the Jai Ho! sequence during the end credits took them out of the movie.
I went from being anonymous at work, to being the yelling-guy after I lost it on a co-worker who said, and I quote, "Alien Vs Predator is better movie than both Alien and Predator"
>At work the other day, I overheard two coworkers discussing The Truman Show and one of them said “At the end of the movie, Truman walks up the stairs and leaves out the door and I thought to myself, what a missed opportunity to never make a sequel for that! It’s the perfect movie to set up for a sequel!”
...Do you work with Bill Simmons?
Are you at Ringer HQ *right now?*
It's kind of validating to see the Bill Simmons chatter in this thread. While I've known who he is for ages, I was never exposed to any of his content until I recently started listening to Rewatchables. I do enjoy that show and find him to be an engaging host, but half of the fun is his off-the-wall takes and speculations.
This made me do a hearty lol and I can't even say for certain that Bill Simmons is the dorky sports dad with frequently weird takes on women (but I think he is).
I know someone who is a professional film critic but who regularly seems to watch movies broadcast from the Crab Nebula and so their takes absolutely never make sense. And not even in a funny way, but more that they just… will misunderstand a salient plot point and then base their entire argument about why the film fails on that misunderstanding. It’s crazy. This person is harmless so I’m not going to name them (they’ve never been on the pod and the outlet they write for is losing relevance every day) but it’s one of those people who just makes you feel like a cognitive superstar.
My brother used to be obsessed with a random comment on some message board back in the day -imdb maybe?- about Batman Begins. This guy was super excited to share his theory that the mysterious employer Professor Crane refers to is none other than ~Richard T himself~ the Joker! For people who don't recall or never saw it, what's roughly act two of the movie ends with Crane being arrested, then the progression to the climax in act 3 kicks off with the surprise return of Ra's al-Ghul and the reveal Crane was working for him, and then the epilogue is a cute little teaser with a joker card. The best theory we had as an alternative to the guy being one of the worst cases of screen illiteracy ever was that he fell asleep in the theatre at the exact end of the Crane-in-custody scene and came to just in time for the teaser, and so believed that was the ending.
I remember the "Trivia" for The Usual Suspects on there being a complete mess, and the board was hilarious. "You can hear Verbal say, 'I did, I did kill Keaton' when Chazz is accosting him in the office" was one I remember going back and rewinding 20 times to verify, and you can KIND of hear it, but they act like "THAT was the REAL moment of reveal!" as if the whole movie isn't one big slow reveal that Kint is full of shit
One time I stumbled across a subreddit where creeps were talking about how cool all the “operators” were in that movie and how annoying the FBI agents were
I'll never forget going to Victory Bible Camp the summer of 2003 and hearing a youth pastor go on an unprompted tangent about how much he thought Matrix Reloaded was cool EXCEPT for the part where Neo and Trinity have sex. This grown man thought it was unnecessary and inappropriate to see a monogamous couple make love one last time before they both go on a literal suicide mission.
Which, film criticism aside, we were all like 10-13 hearing this monologue. Matrix Reloaded is rated R. We wouldn't be able to see it without parental supervision for a long time. So not only was this guy wrong about Matrix Reloaded, he was basically ranting to children about how upset he was that he almost saw a boob in his kung fu movie.
Over in /r/horror there was a thread about dream sequels, and one person said The Thing, because *every Thing fan* has been waiting for decades to find out whether McReady or Childs is the alien.
There almost was a Syfy Channel miniseries sequel to The Thing in the mid-2000s called Return of The Thing. The screenwriter was on an episode of the podcast Best Movies Never Made to discuss it. It sounds like it probably would have been bad, especially with mid-2000s Syfy budget, but it took big swings (it ends with the Thing escaping and the heroes realizing that the entire world is now doomed to assimilation). To its credit it establishes that neither Macready or Childs was The Thing.
Without that scene, Hammond is far less human and relatable in terms of why he brought JP into existence. Did this person WANT Hammond to be a villain?
Well, if this person was a big fan of the book, then they might have been unhappy how Hammond was portrayed in the movie. Book Hammond was a billionaire dickhole with far too much hubris who got what was coming to him when all those poisonous dinosaurs ate him to death.
It’s the monologue Hammond gives to Ellie about how the first attraction he ever made was a “flea circus” that was a small, motorized circus that kids would think was being used by performing fleas. It led to him wanting to make something real, which eventually snowballed into Jurassic Park. It’s a good character moment.
The Top Gun: Maverick one is the only one I’ll give the time of day because that opening sequence is so bananas, but even that one makes the movie much less interesting same as all these other dream theories.
Dude Scriptshadow is a TRIP. I used to like that moron. I remember my first red flag with him was reviewing Breathless and complaining that Goddard isn't following the rules of structure.
A person who has come into my life recently has been pushing me to watch Human Centipede 2, swearing it's the scariest movie ever made because "the guy is r*****ed so he fucks it all up just like you think he would." I've never seen HC2, but when someone inevitably asks me what the biggest red flag about this guy was, I have my answer locked in.
I celebrate a lot of awful horror movies. Sadly I’ve seen HC2. I have no idea what that guy was trying to tell you but I maintain, that movie is my example of, I don’t really need to see every objectionable movie that exists. Scary? Not at all but it truly broke me.
I sense a kindred spirit in this response. I enjoy a fair amount of horror that's probably questionable as well, but when I was given this particular pitch, all I could think of was those select few who similarly stumped for A Serbian Film years ago. Like, congratulations, you sat through something shocking, but that's more lazy than iconoclastic, and being edgy solely for the sake of being edgy? Not all that special. It's like bragging about staring at the sun longer than anyone else. We all acknowledge that you indeed did do the thing, but no one's actually impressed.
I tend to be annoyed when people are critical of a movie for touching on a political subject but not completely nailing it or fully representing their ideas... Like Barbie could have been MORE feminist, but then again it could have just been Transformers 2
And it's only for lefty political movies. No one is ever like "I didn't like that cop movie because it didn't go full blue lives matter" and yet people will openly just say shit like "Frozen, the kid movie about sisters learning to love each other, is just corporate fem trash. As opposed to interesting feminism."\*
\* taken from a real reply to me.
It does terrible things to your brain when you build your entire persona around hating things. Guy posted a 2:40:56 review of the CGI Lion King and had the audacity to call it "(Part 1)"
Skip to any time code and all you'll hear is: "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy"
Leaving Jason X, this conversation between strangers: "in the last one didn't he go to hell?" "Yeah" "well then... how come when they find him he was frozen. Isn't hell hot?"
Recently googled something completely unrelated and came across this post in r/soundtracks: [Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - Are they by far the worst film score composers ever?](https://www.reddit.com/r/soundtracks/comments/mlvfn4/trent_reznor_and_atticus_ross_are_they_by_far_the/)
I was deep in the NYC standup comedy scene when Joker came out so I was basically required to have an opinion on it. To the extent that I had a dream that “Joker was mediocre”. Surprise! It was.
The (conceptually) funnier but (in practice) way more tedious version of this was the too-online fauxcialists who were bummed that it failed to kick off the Revolution
One of the worst podcast listening experiences I've ever had was when a lefty pod I used to listen to -not a movie pod- had on a guest from an even leftier pod, neither of which I care to recall, who derailed the discussion of the actual topic of the episode to go on the most tedious tangent I've ever heard about how Joker had really let her down by... Well it was almost exactly the joke about the character turning to the camera and explaining that they're the exact type of leftist the viewer is. I can't emphasize enough how much this was not a natural turn in the conversation, I was legitimately kind of shocked it wasn't edited out.
I think part of what makes Joker kinda suck is that it's a lazy Rorschach test that lets people kind of project whatever kind of beliefs onto it, especially since it's already a "What if the movie all took place in his head?" film. So I'm guessing this person was upset this movie wasn't like, the revolutionary wake up call for the sheeple?
That'd never happen cause Todd Phillips is a hack.
Recently one that ground my gears was someone saying the La La Land and Babylon scores were bad and Justin Hurwitz was a composer who didn’t understand what he was doing. The many follow up questions this person was asked to justify this take also provided no further clarity to what the hell they were thinking
love my dad but he’s always telling me the most cinemasins-ass reasons he didn’t love a movie. most recently: The Matrix aged poorly because of the prominent cell phones
It's be no shock to pick Armond White but some recent gems of his are Parasite: The ANTIFA film about Cancel Culture and Killers of the Flower Moon as "Scorsese's First Political Film"
Seriously, why did we ever think this man had valuable opinions? He's always been a dogshit contrarian. What's a GOOD example of his writing?
From his Hangover 3 review:
“In unfunny scene after unfunny scene, Phillips can disguise his craven calculations as “comic craft.” A Hollywood accountant could tick-off each story point: Giraffe decapitation = Phillips’ new pool. Chow parachuting from a Las Vegas penthouse = Phillips’ new Maybach. Phil shouting “What the Fuck!” in every situation = Phillips’ new villa. Stu saying “That was intense!” after each catastrophe = Phillips’ indoor screening room with reclining seats customized with Beats by Dre sound system. Melissa McCarthy doing a cameo as Alan’s sleazy love interest = Phillips’ new private jet. The over-the-top end-credits coda = tuition payments for Phillips’ children”
I’ve had back and forth feelings of ambivalence toward White, but that paragraph I adore.
Is he the one who was caught describing scenes from Cabin in the Woods in his review that never happened in the film? I guess he’s allowed to have a column still?
Now he just works for the National Review ever since he got kicked out of the New York Film Critics Circle for having such an unprofessional hatred towards Steven McQueen.
But I think you'd have a hard time finding conservatives who read him because they like his work. I think he only gets curiosity reads or hate reads.
I actually think there’s a ton of potential in a Truman Show sequel. After that movie came out, “Truman syndrome” became a surprisingly common delusion among the mentally ill. Not to mention the very common “gangstalking” delusion which comes from a similar mindset. And there’s the fact that nowadays there are tons of people who broadcast nearly every aspect of their lives for the world to see.
A sequel could be a psychological drama, set in the same universe, where someone else thinks they’re in a new iteration of The Truman Show, only to be hospitalized and told they’re suffering from delusions… and then it turns out they *are* in a reality show.
Or maybe it’s about Truman himself, living in New York City or whatever, and he starts to think that he never truly escaped the reality show.
I dunno. I just think there is actually some potential in making a sequel.
To actually answer your question - “Revenge of the Sith is the best Star Wars movie” is an increasingly common take that I hate
I have often considered a Truman Show sequel that is the producers basically trying again with a new person or maybe a few people, and of course that fails in all new ways. No Jim Carey though. His character fell off the radar on purpose.
Personally I wouldn’t do a Truman Show sequel at all…but if I did.
I’d have it start as Truman leaves the set building. Follow his story as he tries to create a real life, despite being the most famous man in the world. His confusion about so many social & technological issues because he was brought up without them and in effect trained to behave & expect the world around him to behave a certain way. The real world is lot different than the perfect town built for him
Have it be a psychological study about him trying to not only discover who the real ‘Truman’ is but also if there even is one.
Isn't "Truman syndrome" more that people THINK they are the main character in a story and act as such, with less regard for others? Or am I mistaking that with something else?
Does this count? Gorilla Monsoon on an episode of WWF Prime Time Wrestling, talking about how the critics are saying “Oscar” for Hulk Hogan’s performance in the newly released “No Holds Barred”.
This one takes many forms, I'm sure everyone has heard/read some version:
"Bob wearing glasses in Top Gun: Maverick is a major plot hole".
It has nothing to do with the plot. At *worst* it might be a wardrobe malfunction, but a) you actually can wear glasses in the Air Force, and b) who cares? Let's just say Bob was so brilliant that they let him through anyway.
This one is weird to me because the movie literally ends with "Kids who play with Luke Skywalkers (i.e. us idiots in the audience) are the future's heros"
Rosie O’Donnell thought people should boycott Fight Club primarily bc it took mental illness too glibly. Also consider just about every publicized film take from Dino DeLaurentis.
There’s a bunch. One of his dumber ones is that a werewolf movie should immediately show the werewolf when a movie begins. This argument led to Don Coscarelli leaving Silver Bullet and it becoming well… what it did. Not mentioning anything evil dead as part of Army of Darkness (Medieval Dead is a way better name and an homage to the series). Making Conan a PG movie with less violence. There’s a treasury of Dino fights with director stories with various batshit ideas. It’s counterbalanced by him producing some of the best movies ever made. Nights in Cabiria is a masterpiece. Blue Velvet. Three Days of the Condor. But on the other side of the ledger you get Orca, 70s King Kong, 80s Dune. Laughable dreck. I think Dino could identify who was a great director but then couldn’t help himself from meddling.
your coworker is a moron. the real pitch is: make a TV SHOW that follows Truman "on his adventures in the real world".
Maybe at the end of Season 3 you reveal HE'S STILL IN THE BUBBLE!
Not sure if someone already said this but on Rewatchables episode for Margin Call, writer/director Brian Koppelman said that he would’ve named the movie “Sell, Sell, Sell”
Back when I was in high school one of my edgier affectations was a tendency to show people Funny Games without warning (before the remake, so they hadn't heard of it). I was doing this at a friend's house, with another friend of theirs, and her new himbo boyfriend.
>!After the death of the boy when Susanne Lothar is sitting catatonic in the corner of the frame for an excruciating few minutes, the boyfriend said, "Wow, that's really bad acting. You can't see her face or anything."!<
It was more endearingly ditzy than infuriatingly wrong, but it was probably the stupidest movie take I'd ever heard.
I have a friend who doesn’t get to watch a lot of movies but had the opportunity to see Cats (2019) in early 2020. When I asked her what she thought of it, expecting her to describe her reaction to the (ahem) unusual aesthetic choices on display, she said something to the effect of, “I liked it, but I didn’t like that Taylor Swift was in it.”
I used to work with a guy who had some ridiculous movie takes. He knew I was a big movie nerd so he would try to bond with me/get a rise out of me by sharing his “enlightened” opinion on movies. His two most prominent and oft-repeated sentiments were 1. Gerard Butler is the greatest living actor and all his films are masterpieces and 2. Once a movie is older than 10 years old it’s not worth watching. The latter take I think is something he only came up with to try and get under my skin. I didn’t realize at first that’s what he was doing and tried various arguments to try and get him to rethink this position. He ultimately had to give up that position when I pointed out that his admittedly favorite movie, Law Abiding Citizen, was exactly 10 years old (at the time) and that as soon as we hit the new year he no longer could watch it. Funny enough he stopped bring up the 10 year rule after that lol.
People always bring up Kill Bill when talking about Superman's identity, saying movie's point is wrong about Clark. They also forget or dismiss, that it's not movie making a point, but it's villain, who views Superman through his own warped lenses
Not exactly a bad movie take, but I like reading the Youtube comments looking for other people's insights and I always see variations of the same stupid joke. Something along the lines of "Actor A wasn't meant to kill Actor B in the script. They just went crazy on set and actually shot Actor B, and the cameras happened to be rolling." It physically annoys me that I've wasted more moments reading over the same comment.
The Greatest Showman, despite its name, is just ok. It’s a good “child’s first musical” but not much beyond that. The wildest take I heard, though, was that it was bad because the songs were not period-appropriate and that really ruined the film
"The Fall Guy has big 'the movies are back' vibes. huge. runs way out of gas in the second half but honestly who gives a shit. this is what it’s all about: not a superhero in sight, just chemistry & car crashes & Ryan Gosling wearing a jacket. let’s make it a hit & never look back"
Not to re-open this particular can of podcast fandom worms on this totally normal and chill subreddit, but Sprague the Whisperer had a, shall we say, MID take on Singin' in the Rain on a recent episode of Scott Hasn't Seen.
Parasite shouldn’t have best picture because it wasn’t an American movie. Only American movies like joker and 1917 should be allowed to win. Also, joker deserved to win more than parasite because it talked about class struggle.
(Please don’t downvote me. I don’t believe in any of this stupidity. It’s a genuine movie take. It’s not a joke or a skit. Charlie talked about it in this video).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-yqyfm0xbvk
When I was a manager at a movie theater in the aughts and it was part of the job to preview the new movies to make sure nothing was wrong with the prints, we got three prints of The Departed. I watched one print, my friend/boss watched the second one, and an absolute idiot manager watched the third print. I would find out a few days later that the idiot manager (who is in his 50s and has failed upward in this business) was completely confused by the movie because he didn't realize Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon were different characters.
When I think of the worst movie takes I’m always brought back over a decade ago when I was a huge fan of Doug Walker’s Nostalgia Critic. The one I always come back to though, is that in his Congo review he implied that Joey Pants is a bad actor.
I’m a big fan of The Rewatchables, and for me part of the enjoyment is Bill Simmons idiosyncrasies and asinine takes. The one that stands out to me is that Robert Forster’s performance in Jackie Brown is underwhelming.
His take that Roger Rabbit has bad animation that aged poorly is insane! I find him kinda of fascinating as a human being
I refuse to believe there is a human alive that actually believes this. Roger Robert's animation looks *better* today in 4K on Disney+ than it did back in the day.
Not a Bill Simmons hater, but is he really all that interesting? He’s just some dude confident about his opinions with a radio friendly voice.
This misses what made him famous. He was very adept at making references to ‘80s and ‘90s pop culture. This has always been his schtick and what made him an accessible writer. He then got into podcast rather early and on two separate occasions brought a lot of writing and podcast talent together. His success as a sports podcaster and to a lesser extent a movie podcaster are offshoots of this and due to him not wanting to work as hard as a writer has to after decades of grinding.
Oh I know who he is. I loved what Grantland did. I agree with your point about his accessibility. That’s very true.
I don’t hate Simmons at all. I just find his “takes” on things very bizarre most of the time. Like, a jock trying real hard to seem like an intellectual or something. It’s like going to thanksgiving and listening to your uncle or cousin who likes a lot of the same things you do, but has the complete opposite takes on them
What’s funny is that what’s exactly what made him famous to begin with haha
He's enthusiastic and a sports nerd and his bad takes are amusing when he shows his work
He’s the worst part of the Rewatchables. Chris and Sean are both wonderful, especially Sean, and Amanda is usually hilarious and insightful. Van can be really funny and is basically a better version of Bill.
Ah they are all good
O no I’m actually angry now lol. I’m extremely critical of animation quality (Scavengers Reign is the only new thing that looks perfect) and he’s just objectively wrong about RR. Also Forster is phenomenal in Jackie Brown. Edit: oops I forgot Arcane
Recasting Catherine Keener with Courtney Cox in *The 40 Year Old Virgin* is an all-timer
lol yeah Bill primarily judges actresses based on whether or not they give him a boner (I’m not sure if he’s actually doing it consciously). He recently had a truly terrible discussion with Wesley Morris about Challengers and wanted to replace Zendaya with Alexandra Daddario.
lmao jesus christ Bill
This is like a super reverse bizarro memento mori for stupidity and bad taste: “Someone out there doesn’t think Zendaya is pavement-meltingly hot”
Bills dream movie would have two characters. Sydney Sweeney and Alexandria Daddario
"Is there a way we can also get 80s Michelle Pfeiffer in there too? Like can we de-age her?"
Two good, but pretty limited actors outside of their attractiveness.
Thank God the actresses I simp for are also highly regarded in their craft. No one suspects a thing.
step on me dame judi dench 💦
Yo that shit legit ruined my day
To be fair I would also like to see that
Nothing will ever top recasting Marla in Fight Club with Reese fucking Witherspoon lmao. Like truly the most insane choice I could imagine.
Answering this question with Bill Simmons is cheating. His brain should be studied in a lab.
He’s a pretty standard Gen X dude, he just managed to monetize that to a fantastic degree.
It’s purely gelatinous at this point.
> one that stands out to me is that Robert Forster’s performance in Jackie Brown is underwhelming I'm going to crash my car into something.
Just rewatched Jackie Brown the other day with someone, and we both loved his performance in that. Can't imagine not liking it. Not enough overacting for him?
Love that this has turned in Bill’s horrible movie takes. I got one. He let out a giant “ooooof” after rewatching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in regard to the ending - you know the thing that makes the entire thing make sense.
What? Lmao Also, this means he wanted to see a fictional re-enactment of that Tate - LaBianca murders?
He wanted it to end on Brad Pitt and Leo killing the Mansons. He thought the part where they go into Sharon Tate’s house was bad. But that’s the whole fairy tale once upon a time aspect that’s essential to the movie.
Oh, he didn’t like *that* part? On reading your first comment I assumed he didn’t like the killing the Mansons part and I was ready to defend that, it was by far the weakest part of the movie for me. But that coda was lovely and like you said, tied the whole thing together.
Oh that’s even weirder, because that’s the grace note. You get to see Sharon Tate pregnant and happy with, theoretically, her life in front of her. That’s literally the heart of the movie’s fantasy premise.
I didn't watch Once Upon A Time In Hollywood until about a year ago when I had a Starz subscription to watch the new Party Down season (which was amazing), and I somehow had lived through the release of that movie without being spoiled. I was filled with such dread going into the ending, and when things started happening, I was fucking blown away. God, what a movie!
Robert Forster might be the best part of Jackie Brown.
I’ll never forget his take that Martin Landeau’s Oscar win over Samuel L Jackson was racist
This was the one that pretty much got me to back way off of the Rewatchables. I haven’t listened in a long time but when I realized he(and presumably his listeners) felt this way I knew I needed to start distancing.
It’s a horrific take on SO many levels
Why would you think his listeners agree with him?
Oh man, the way that shitbird harped on Kay in The Godfather was inexcusable
That was just such a stunningly bad take. An inability to read a character who wasn’t just one-dimensional and surface. And definitely also related to the fact that Diane Keaton didn’t give him a boner.
The film bro mind can't comprehend the art of the restrained performance
W O W… that’s such a wild take
I think there is a reason that the best episodes of The Rewatchables are the ones with him, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey. Bill Simmons seems entirely interested in the surface details of a movie, which pairs nicely with the other two, because (say what you will about them) they are a little more willing to go into subtext. You get a bit of discussion of what a movie is about but things are still relatively light and breezy.
Bill sucks at pop culture
On a similar note, every moment of Simmons and Wesley Morris talking about Challengers is an all time bad movie take.
Robert Forster's performance in Jackie Brown is the cement that holds the whole thing together. That is for sure an all time first team bonehead take.
“A Clockwork Orange” should be alphabetized under ‘A.’”
Bingo
Or under "S," for Stanley Kubrick
I alphabetize it under "A" purely to remind myself there's an A in the title.
I was at dinner with friends shortly after Slumdog Millionaire came out when someone mentioned the Jai Ho! sequence during the end credits took them out of the movie.
that part rocks its the only movie where saying the credits are the best part is equally an insult and a compliment
Ngl the Pussycat Dolls remix ruined the song and the film for me though.
I still have the pussycat dolls remix on my running playlist \*ducks\*
I went from being anonymous at work, to being the yelling-guy after I lost it on a co-worker who said, and I quote, "Alien Vs Predator is better movie than both Alien and Predator"
I mean you're getting two for the price of one. That's just smart economics, baby.
Sigh, I better do a Google search for apology bouquet...
Read this in the “I’m the Joker, baby” voice and I highly recommend lol
it's like that scene in Community where Shirley is praising Tower Heist and Brett Ratner while Abed just stews
I think this one takes the cake, folks.
I'm struggling to think of a 'wronger' statement than that. That is absolutely effing crazy.
its hard to say how good AvP is becouse they filmed it without turning the lights on...
That's Requiem! AvP is adequately lit from what I've seen.
I…. I’d have no idea how to even respond to that one. Did they also think it was better than Alien$?
>At work the other day, I overheard two coworkers discussing The Truman Show and one of them said “At the end of the movie, Truman walks up the stairs and leaves out the door and I thought to myself, what a missed opportunity to never make a sequel for that! It’s the perfect movie to set up for a sequel!” ...Do you work with Bill Simmons? Are you at Ringer HQ *right now?*
It's kind of validating to see the Bill Simmons chatter in this thread. While I've known who he is for ages, I was never exposed to any of his content until I recently started listening to Rewatchables. I do enjoy that show and find him to be an engaging host, but half of the fun is his off-the-wall takes and speculations.
Same as his sports shows
This made me do a hearty lol and I can't even say for certain that Bill Simmons is the dorky sports dad with frequently weird takes on women (but I think he is).
I know someone who is a professional film critic but who regularly seems to watch movies broadcast from the Crab Nebula and so their takes absolutely never make sense. And not even in a funny way, but more that they just… will misunderstand a salient plot point and then base their entire argument about why the film fails on that misunderstanding. It’s crazy. This person is harmless so I’m not going to name them (they’ve never been on the pod and the outlet they write for is losing relevance every day) but it’s one of those people who just makes you feel like a cognitive superstar.
You know Rex Reed?
Lmao. I said harmless!
My brother used to be obsessed with a random comment on some message board back in the day -imdb maybe?- about Batman Begins. This guy was super excited to share his theory that the mysterious employer Professor Crane refers to is none other than ~Richard T himself~ the Joker! For people who don't recall or never saw it, what's roughly act two of the movie ends with Crane being arrested, then the progression to the climax in act 3 kicks off with the surprise return of Ra's al-Ghul and the reveal Crane was working for him, and then the epilogue is a cute little teaser with a joker card. The best theory we had as an alternative to the guy being one of the worst cases of screen illiteracy ever was that he fell asleep in the theatre at the exact end of the Crane-in-custody scene and came to just in time for the teaser, and so believed that was the ending.
IMDb was a glorious dumpster fire, a fascinating look at the sheer diversity of bad ideas and literacy there is out in the world.
I remember the "Trivia" for The Usual Suspects on there being a complete mess, and the board was hilarious. "You can hear Verbal say, 'I did, I did kill Keaton' when Chazz is accosting him in the office" was one I remember going back and rewinding 20 times to verify, and you can KIND of hear it, but they act like "THAT was the REAL moment of reveal!" as if the whole movie isn't one big slow reveal that Kint is full of shit
Got into a big argument with a friend who said Emily Blunt's character almost ruined Sicario with her whining.
The most annoying people in the world are the ones who are constantly annoyed, like your friend.
One time I stumbled across a subreddit where creeps were talking about how cool all the “operators” were in that movie and how annoying the FBI agents were
Those dude-bros are the reason we got a sequel without her.
I'll never forget going to Victory Bible Camp the summer of 2003 and hearing a youth pastor go on an unprompted tangent about how much he thought Matrix Reloaded was cool EXCEPT for the part where Neo and Trinity have sex. This grown man thought it was unnecessary and inappropriate to see a monogamous couple make love one last time before they both go on a literal suicide mission. Which, film criticism aside, we were all like 10-13 hearing this monologue. Matrix Reloaded is rated R. We wouldn't be able to see it without parental supervision for a long time. So not only was this guy wrong about Matrix Reloaded, he was basically ranting to children about how upset he was that he almost saw a boob in his kung fu movie.
Reloaded is rated R in the USA?! I saw that bad boy in the theatre at ten years old baby
all the matrix movies are rated R (except for maybe Resurrections? i forget)
That makes perfect sense when I think about it (they’re intense movies!) but everybody I know IRL saw them as tiny kids as they’re not restricted here
Over in /r/horror there was a thread about dream sequels, and one person said The Thing, because *every Thing fan* has been waiting for decades to find out whether McReady or Childs is the alien.
It's like "is Deckard a replicant?" distilled to the point it's no longer legal to sell
There almost was a Syfy Channel miniseries sequel to The Thing in the mid-2000s called Return of The Thing. The screenwriter was on an episode of the podcast Best Movies Never Made to discuss it. It sounds like it probably would have been bad, especially with mid-2000s Syfy budget, but it took big swings (it ends with the Thing escaping and the heroes realizing that the entire world is now doomed to assimilation). To its credit it establishes that neither Macready or Childs was The Thing.
Somebody once suggested to me that if they were in charge of the edit, they’d cut the flea circus scene from *Jurassic Park.*
Wait what??
Without that scene, Hammond is far less human and relatable in terms of why he brought JP into existence. Did this person WANT Hammond to be a villain?
Well, if this person was a big fan of the book, then they might have been unhappy how Hammond was portrayed in the movie. Book Hammond was a billionaire dickhole with far too much hubris who got what was coming to him when all those poisonous dinosaurs ate him to death.
There’s a flea circus in Jurassic Park?
It’s the monologue Hammond gives to Ellie about how the first attraction he ever made was a “flea circus” that was a small, motorized circus that kids would think was being used by performing fleas. It led to him wanting to make something real, which eventually snowballed into Jurassic Park. It’s a good character moment.
That the plot of Tar is just a dream happening in Tar’s head. Cause quote “it’s too improbable for someone to to be that successful and win an EGOT”.
99% of "it was all a dream/in their head" movie theories are boring and lazy.
Wouldn't it be so cool and fucked up if the whole thing you watched just didn't happen??
And part of my problem with the Joker movie is that it almost seems to make that argument about itself.
“The end of Taxi Driver is just a dream and Travis actually died in the shootout” Okay, then how is he dreaming?
a Jacobs Ladder scenario would be my guess (I don't buy this theory but im speculating)
My theory of Jacob’s Ladder is that it all DID HAPPEN.
https://preview.redd.it/fro7dcu9ff8d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7c12f5b9ac0e715168e664f9356e25af1d0bf21
You can practically slap it onto any story where a character has a run into with a dangerous situation where they could have died.
The Top Gun: Maverick one is the only one I’ll give the time of day because that opening sequence is so bananas, but even that one makes the movie much less interesting same as all these other dream theories.
Given people have actually won the EGOT ... er what?
Wait did Tar EGOT in the world of Tar? I definitely forgot that…
Yes! It was mentioned in that (really long) introduction for her on stage interview at the start of the movie!
”Get Out was great because it focused on the fundamentals of horror and didn’t throw a bunch of political stuff in your face.” -The Scriptshadow blog-
I don't know who that is but they're probably mad that Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, and Green Day suddenly went "woke".
Don’t forget The Boys season four!
"Why are Green Day singing about supermarket shootings in 2024 when they could just be singing about masturbating on a couch?" - some idiot
Dude Scriptshadow is a TRIP. I used to like that moron. I remember my first red flag with him was reviewing Breathless and complaining that Goddard isn't following the rules of structure.
"When Rel Howrey's character shows up at the end, it shows that law enforcement really ARE the true heroes!"
A person who has come into my life recently has been pushing me to watch Human Centipede 2, swearing it's the scariest movie ever made because "the guy is r*****ed so he fucks it all up just like you think he would." I've never seen HC2, but when someone inevitably asks me what the biggest red flag about this guy was, I have my answer locked in.
I celebrate a lot of awful horror movies. Sadly I’ve seen HC2. I have no idea what that guy was trying to tell you but I maintain, that movie is my example of, I don’t really need to see every objectionable movie that exists. Scary? Not at all but it truly broke me.
I sense a kindred spirit in this response. I enjoy a fair amount of horror that's probably questionable as well, but when I was given this particular pitch, all I could think of was those select few who similarly stumped for A Serbian Film years ago. Like, congratulations, you sat through something shocking, but that's more lazy than iconoclastic, and being edgy solely for the sake of being edgy? Not all that special. It's like bragging about staring at the sun longer than anyone else. We all acknowledge that you indeed did do the thing, but no one's actually impressed.
I tend to be annoyed when people are critical of a movie for touching on a political subject but not completely nailing it or fully representing their ideas... Like Barbie could have been MORE feminist, but then again it could have just been Transformers 2
And it's only for lefty political movies. No one is ever like "I didn't like that cop movie because it didn't go full blue lives matter" and yet people will openly just say shit like "Frozen, the kid movie about sisters learning to love each other, is just corporate fem trash. As opposed to interesting feminism."\* \* taken from a real reply to me.
I once heard YourMovieSucks say that movies only got watchable and good from the 70s onward.
It does terrible things to your brain when you build your entire persona around hating things. Guy posted a 2:40:56 review of the CGI Lion King and had the audacity to call it "(Part 1)" Skip to any time code and all you'll hear is: "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy"
Why isn’t CRAZY RICH Asians more about poor people’s economic struggles in Singapore
This thread is about bad takes, not extremely based takes.
[Fuck Crazy Rich Asians why isn't there Normal Poor Asians.](https://x.com/91tophtwitch/status/1805018654402302312)
Leaving Jason X, this conversation between strangers: "in the last one didn't he go to hell?" "Yeah" "well then... how come when they find him he was frozen. Isn't hell hot?"
Hell is hot. That’s never been disputed. 🤘🏽
I could do 6000 years in purgatory standing on my head
I dunno, water tight logic as far as I'm concerned.
Recently googled something completely unrelated and came across this post in r/soundtracks: [Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - Are they by far the worst film score composers ever?](https://www.reddit.com/r/soundtracks/comments/mlvfn4/trent_reznor_and_atticus_ross_are_they_by_far_the/)
"Joker is going to start a wave of incel terrorism"
I am all but convinced that WB planted the seeds of that to make their film seem less tame
I was deep in the NYC standup comedy scene when Joker came out so I was basically required to have an opinion on it. To the extent that I had a dream that “Joker was mediocre”. Surprise! It was.
The (conceptually) funnier but (in practice) way more tedious version of this was the too-online fauxcialists who were bummed that it failed to kick off the Revolution One of the worst podcast listening experiences I've ever had was when a lefty pod I used to listen to -not a movie pod- had on a guest from an even leftier pod, neither of which I care to recall, who derailed the discussion of the actual topic of the episode to go on the most tedious tangent I've ever heard about how Joker had really let her down by... Well it was almost exactly the joke about the character turning to the camera and explaining that they're the exact type of leftist the viewer is. I can't emphasize enough how much this was not a natural turn in the conversation, I was legitimately kind of shocked it wasn't edited out.
Desperate to know what pod this is.
I think part of what makes Joker kinda suck is that it's a lazy Rorschach test that lets people kind of project whatever kind of beliefs onto it, especially since it's already a "What if the movie all took place in his head?" film. So I'm guessing this person was upset this movie wasn't like, the revolutionary wake up call for the sheeple? That'd never happen cause Todd Phillips is a hack.
“The Social Network wouldn’t be so popular if everyone didn’t have Facebook”
That’s so dumb it sounds like you made it up.
quoted The Winklevoss Twins
Kyle Kallgren saying that Fritz Lang’s M is a fascist power fantasy.
Poor guy just hasn't been the same since the Trump election.
Have any of us? He still does good stuff, but that Lang take is terrible.
Recently one that ground my gears was someone saying the La La Land and Babylon scores were bad and Justin Hurwitz was a composer who didn’t understand what he was doing. The many follow up questions this person was asked to justify this take also provided no further clarity to what the hell they were thinking
aaah yes "damien chazelle doesnt understand jazz" comments...never not annoying and never justifiable
love my dad but he’s always telling me the most cinemasins-ass reasons he didn’t love a movie. most recently: The Matrix aged poorly because of the prominent cell phones
Thank GOD that fad tailed off! Blasted things.
It's be no shock to pick Armond White but some recent gems of his are Parasite: The ANTIFA film about Cancel Culture and Killers of the Flower Moon as "Scorsese's First Political Film" Seriously, why did we ever think this man had valuable opinions? He's always been a dogshit contrarian. What's a GOOD example of his writing?
From his Hangover 3 review: “In unfunny scene after unfunny scene, Phillips can disguise his craven calculations as “comic craft.” A Hollywood accountant could tick-off each story point: Giraffe decapitation = Phillips’ new pool. Chow parachuting from a Las Vegas penthouse = Phillips’ new Maybach. Phil shouting “What the Fuck!” in every situation = Phillips’ new villa. Stu saying “That was intense!” after each catastrophe = Phillips’ indoor screening room with reclining seats customized with Beats by Dre sound system. Melissa McCarthy doing a cameo as Alan’s sleazy love interest = Phillips’ new private jet. The over-the-top end-credits coda = tuition payments for Phillips’ children” I’ve had back and forth feelings of ambivalence toward White, but that paragraph I adore.
And he's arguably not even the National Review's worst reviewer
Is he the one who was caught describing scenes from Cabin in the Woods in his review that never happened in the film? I guess he’s allowed to have a column still?
Now he just works for the National Review ever since he got kicked out of the New York Film Critics Circle for having such an unprofessional hatred towards Steven McQueen. But I think you'd have a hard time finding conservatives who read him because they like his work. I think he only gets curiosity reads or hate reads.
I actually think there’s a ton of potential in a Truman Show sequel. After that movie came out, “Truman syndrome” became a surprisingly common delusion among the mentally ill. Not to mention the very common “gangstalking” delusion which comes from a similar mindset. And there’s the fact that nowadays there are tons of people who broadcast nearly every aspect of their lives for the world to see. A sequel could be a psychological drama, set in the same universe, where someone else thinks they’re in a new iteration of The Truman Show, only to be hospitalized and told they’re suffering from delusions… and then it turns out they *are* in a reality show. Or maybe it’s about Truman himself, living in New York City or whatever, and he starts to think that he never truly escaped the reality show. I dunno. I just think there is actually some potential in making a sequel. To actually answer your question - “Revenge of the Sith is the best Star Wars movie” is an increasingly common take that I hate
I have often considered a Truman Show sequel that is the producers basically trying again with a new person or maybe a few people, and of course that fails in all new ways. No Jim Carey though. His character fell off the radar on purpose.
Personally I wouldn’t do a Truman Show sequel at all…but if I did. I’d have it start as Truman leaves the set building. Follow his story as he tries to create a real life, despite being the most famous man in the world. His confusion about so many social & technological issues because he was brought up without them and in effect trained to behave & expect the world around him to behave a certain way. The real world is lot different than the perfect town built for him Have it be a psychological study about him trying to not only discover who the real ‘Truman’ is but also if there even is one.
There’s a decent YA novel called “This is Not the Jess Show” with an adjacent concept
Isn't "Truman syndrome" more that people THINK they are the main character in a story and act as such, with less regard for others? Or am I mistaking that with something else?
Does this count? Gorilla Monsoon on an episode of WWF Prime Time Wrestling, talking about how the critics are saying “Oscar” for Hulk Hogan’s performance in the newly released “No Holds Barred”.
I’ve heard some well meaning white people on a podcast call out the “racist” casting of Ben Kingsley in Gandhi.
Have heard that a bunch, didn’t realize he’s half-Indian until now, thank you.
This one takes many forms, I'm sure everyone has heard/read some version: "Bob wearing glasses in Top Gun: Maverick is a major plot hole". It has nothing to do with the plot. At *worst* it might be a wardrobe malfunction, but a) you actually can wear glasses in the Air Force, and b) who cares? Let's just say Bob was so brilliant that they let him through anyway.
"Rian Johnson thinks if you like Star Wars you should kill yourself"
This one is weird to me because the movie literally ends with "Kids who play with Luke Skywalkers (i.e. us idiots in the audience) are the future's heros"
Rosie O’Donnell thought people should boycott Fight Club primarily bc it took mental illness too glibly. Also consider just about every publicized film take from Dino DeLaurentis.
I don’t know any Dino takes, please share
There’s a bunch. One of his dumber ones is that a werewolf movie should immediately show the werewolf when a movie begins. This argument led to Don Coscarelli leaving Silver Bullet and it becoming well… what it did. Not mentioning anything evil dead as part of Army of Darkness (Medieval Dead is a way better name and an homage to the series). Making Conan a PG movie with less violence. There’s a treasury of Dino fights with director stories with various batshit ideas. It’s counterbalanced by him producing some of the best movies ever made. Nights in Cabiria is a masterpiece. Blue Velvet. Three Days of the Condor. But on the other side of the ledger you get Orca, 70s King Kong, 80s Dune. Laughable dreck. I think Dino could identify who was a great director but then couldn’t help himself from meddling.
your coworker is a moron. the real pitch is: make a TV SHOW that follows Truman "on his adventures in the real world". Maybe at the end of Season 3 you reveal HE'S STILL IN THE BUBBLE!
Valerian would be better with Chris Pratt instead of Dane DeHaan
This is for bad movie takes. Anyone would be better than Dehaan in that film
sigh... Austin Butler?
Oppenheimer would be better with Chris Pratt instead of Dane DeHaan... (I'm kidding, just picturing Pratt in that role made me laugh)
I guess anyone that says “The Last Jedi ruined Star Wars.”
Testify! Amen!
Those people got *a looot* quieter after Rise Of Skywalker
They’ve turned their hate to The Acolyte for several “reasons”
Not sure if someone already said this but on Rewatchables episode for Margin Call, writer/director Brian Koppelman said that he would’ve named the movie “Sell, Sell, Sell”
Back when I was in high school one of my edgier affectations was a tendency to show people Funny Games without warning (before the remake, so they hadn't heard of it). I was doing this at a friend's house, with another friend of theirs, and her new himbo boyfriend. >!After the death of the boy when Susanne Lothar is sitting catatonic in the corner of the frame for an excruciating few minutes, the boyfriend said, "Wow, that's really bad acting. You can't see her face or anything."!< It was more endearingly ditzy than infuriatingly wrong, but it was probably the stupidest movie take I'd ever heard.
Batman & Robin is the funniest comedy of 1997
Only untrue because Liar Liar exists.
Don’t wholly disagree! Obviously many successful comedies that year but I do appreciate the intentionally campy elements of B&R.
Re: Avatar, from a former friend: anyone who values visual storytelling is dumb.
I have a friend who doesn’t get to watch a lot of movies but had the opportunity to see Cats (2019) in early 2020. When I asked her what she thought of it, expecting her to describe her reaction to the (ahem) unusual aesthetic choices on display, she said something to the effect of, “I liked it, but I didn’t like that Taylor Swift was in it.”
Lights recently panned Challenges because there was too much slo-mo and Tennis is supposed to be “fast”
I used to work with a guy who had some ridiculous movie takes. He knew I was a big movie nerd so he would try to bond with me/get a rise out of me by sharing his “enlightened” opinion on movies. His two most prominent and oft-repeated sentiments were 1. Gerard Butler is the greatest living actor and all his films are masterpieces and 2. Once a movie is older than 10 years old it’s not worth watching. The latter take I think is something he only came up with to try and get under my skin. I didn’t realize at first that’s what he was doing and tried various arguments to try and get him to rethink this position. He ultimately had to give up that position when I pointed out that his admittedly favorite movie, Law Abiding Citizen, was exactly 10 years old (at the time) and that as soon as we hit the new year he no longer could watch it. Funny enough he stopped bring up the 10 year rule after that lol.
People always bring up Kill Bill when talking about Superman's identity, saying movie's point is wrong about Clark. They also forget or dismiss, that it's not movie making a point, but it's villain, who views Superman through his own warped lenses
I will always remember the guy I worked with who said Life Aquatic looked terrible and Meet the Fockers was “the movie of the year”
Not exactly a bad movie take, but I like reading the Youtube comments looking for other people's insights and I always see variations of the same stupid joke. Something along the lines of "Actor A wasn't meant to kill Actor B in the script. They just went crazy on set and actually shot Actor B, and the cameras happened to be rolling." It physically annoys me that I've wasted more moments reading over the same comment.
The Greatest Showman, despite its name, is just ok. It’s a good “child’s first musical” but not much beyond that. The wildest take I heard, though, was that it was bad because the songs were not period-appropriate and that really ruined the film
When The Little Mermaid remake came out, somebody said it was very Avatar 2-ish at my office and I nearly collapsed from exasperation
"They're both very wet"
A friend told me right when it came out that he wasn’t going to watch dune 1 because dune 2 hadn’t been officially announced.
The hillbillies in The Hills Have Eyes are a metaphor for indigenous people, and their victims are the oppressors. Thanks, In Praise Of Shadows!
Sully is a good movie
Yep. It's basically an episode of Mayday with better production value and a vapid, totally inaccurate, tacked-on 'bureaucracy bad' ending.
"The Fall Guy has big 'the movies are back' vibes. huge. runs way out of gas in the second half but honestly who gives a shit. this is what it’s all about: not a superhero in sight, just chemistry & car crashes & Ryan Gosling wearing a jacket. let’s make it a hit & never look back"
Not to re-open this particular can of podcast fandom worms on this totally normal and chill subreddit, but Sprague the Whisperer had a, shall we say, MID take on Singin' in the Rain on a recent episode of Scott Hasn't Seen.
Parasite shouldn’t have best picture because it wasn’t an American movie. Only American movies like joker and 1917 should be allowed to win. Also, joker deserved to win more than parasite because it talked about class struggle. (Please don’t downvote me. I don’t believe in any of this stupidity. It’s a genuine movie take. It’s not a joke or a skit. Charlie talked about it in this video). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-yqyfm0xbvk
When I was a manager at a movie theater in the aughts and it was part of the job to preview the new movies to make sure nothing was wrong with the prints, we got three prints of The Departed. I watched one print, my friend/boss watched the second one, and an absolute idiot manager watched the third print. I would find out a few days later that the idiot manager (who is in his 50s and has failed upward in this business) was completely confused by the movie because he didn't realize Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon were different characters.
People who think that Last Jedi is either the worst or best movie ever made are equally insane.
At a friend's party a few weeks ago and a woman told me that Dune Part 2 was boring, Parasite was bad, and Back to Black was a masterpiece
When I think of the worst movie takes I’m always brought back over a decade ago when I was a huge fan of Doug Walker’s Nostalgia Critic. The one I always come back to though, is that in his Congo review he implied that Joey Pants is a bad actor.