Can a Film Be So Good It's Bad?

The types of movies that come to mind are silent films. Likely a result of the movies I was surrounded by growing up, I never really had this burning desire to watch films like Trip to the Moon, The Cabinet of Dr Calegari, or The Ten Commandments

I have seen Trip to the Moon as well as a very old adaptation of Frankenstein. I like them fine, but I don't see myself putting them on like I would How to Train Your Dragon or E. T. The Extraterrestrial. The lack of audible voices in place of subtitles just creates this disconnection with me that I really wish wasn't there

However, like with all films, silent films deserve to be preserved. They're a part of human history, showing how film started and how far we've come since then. Take that for what it's worth

12 monkeys
so you're telling me that the something is going to happen and it ends up happening? gee what a great twist

I felt a bit of this "so good it's bad" about Children of Men.

It seems like it should be a moving masterpiece, yet I wasn't moved. I struggled to find fault with it; it had smart dynamic cinematography, was well-acted, the story seemed to hit all the right notes... yet it didn't really resonate with me, and I'm not entirely sure why. My best guess is that we didn't get to spend enough quality time with the main characters (less action, more intimate), and so don't really care about their trials & tribulations.

Even that reasoning is suspect (we spend the whole movie with the protagonist don't we?). It still bugs me why I can resonate with a similar film in the same vein like District 9 (despite its obvious flaws) yet didn't resonate with Children of Men (despite having no obvious flaws).

In a weird way it reminds me of Nirvana's music. Yeah they're a super influential band and they had several songs that are staples of the 90s... but I've never met anyone who would call themselves a Nirvana fan. It almost seemed like everyone who liked them only liked them casually.
It might be the same thing with movies: They're objectively well made and performed, but they have nothing that really draws people in and engages people on a deeper, or at least more visceral level. They're films people like and know are good, but not films that anyone would say they love or are fans of.

I agree with Truman show and Et as well
But I loveeee beam stokers Dracula

Lego movie 2 has some great ideas but it removes the simplicity of the first movie.

Man, revisiting the editorials makes me miss them. On that note, I like to add a TV show that just came out to the So good it’s bad list, Andor.

Doug, did you come up with this video's title first before knowing what the video would be?

Here are a few movies which I felt accomplished their goal, but didn't feel to 'special' to me (you WILL be offended):
1- Titanic: It felt too stretched long to me and I almost fell asleep at some parts
2- Avengers: Endgame: I didn't feel the same for Infinity War, it was because there was not the entire roster as it was in Infinity War
3- It: 'It' felt like it was trying too hard to be scary and ended up being a melodrama sorts of
4- The Godfather 2: It was good but it didn't quite capture the charm and spirit of the original imo
5- Shawshank Redemption: It felt too slow and boring, but I have always loved the ending

Breakfast club, sixteen candles, st Elmo's fire, all fit the bill. Lol

Apocalypse Now is one of those movies for me.

Everyone heralds it as a filmmaking masterpiece, one of the greatest films ever made. While there's no doubt it is masterfully crafted, wonderfully acted, and has a story told with a breathtaking finesse that encapsulates the devastating senselessness of war so efficiently, it never grabbed me. I honestly found it boring, dull, and overlong. It's not a bad movie. Not at all. It just didn't stick with me. The documentary about the making of the film, Heart of Darkness, was more fascinating, in my opinion. The hell Coppola went through to make the movie was more compelling than the movie that came out of it. The depths of the suffering he drudged was really inspiring to me because it showed that making a great piece of art is no feeble feat.

Apocalypse Now
The Godfather 1 and 2
I didn't like any of them
Yet I admire them

With the Godfather movies
I was like
They are all bad people
What do I care if they die?

the Insidious films, Coraline, Adams Family 2
I'm surprised that some people hate those films, especially Coraline

I love Bram Stoker's Dracula, I don't even mind Keanu in it. When it begins to tank for me is when Winona's character starts to turn into a vampire and begins to shout and chant towards the end. Then it got a little silly.

1979's Carrie is my favorite movie; it feels REAL how toxic bullying and bad parental influence can be but also has it's flaws How did she get her powers, Why did her mother never tell her, Why does one specific girl hate her so much?
2014's Lucy is my second favorite; it is a Very interesting dive into the question: what can we Really do? but that question obviously comes with some crazy science fiction and I think that's what turns so many people off of it i love the idea because it gives so many 'what if's to interesting questions that make you think.
2007's Freedom Writers is my 3rd; it's an INCREDIBLY powerful true story that opens the viewer's eyes to the things that are kept bottled up, how people aren't all the same with some having it tougher than you can imagine, it not only feels real but IS and that alone can turn people off it can hit too hard, or even make people think "based on an incredible true story" was simply slapped on it so more would watch it because it's so powerful, as if such flaws can't possibly exist
These movies all capture something in me; I was bullied in school too connecting me to Carrie, I love science and like to think outside the box which connects me to Lucy, and I have uncontrolled epilepsy but some people brush off what I go through calling me dramatic which connects me to Freedom Writers.
and they all have their own flaws cause life is messy so why should our entertainment be devoid of flaws? yeah we use movies and TV as a bit of an escape from life for a moment but we need to keep in mind there is no perfection because, eventually, we have to deal with real life again and no matter how great your life may be IT TOO IS FLAWED.

This is actually what I thought of puss in boots the last wish

For me it's not a movie but instead a video game and that game is Breath of the Wild! I know everyone loves this game (it's even most people's favorite game of all time) but for some reason I just couldn't get into it & IDK why!

I guess when it comes to stuff that's so good it's bad the thing feels like a perfect AI was the one who made the thing. Not to say there's no heart put into it, but it feels so desperate to be engaging that for pacific people it somehow feels like instead unengaging. Like it's a template for critics to compare something to.

I think we tend to respect movies that don't play it safe even when in doing so a films "production value" can be put into question. A highly technical movie that doesn't do anything all that unique tends to pique my interest less than a movie that has its own unique charm.

In refeeence to the FGC, one can call them “gesoku”, an inverse of “kusoge”

Somebody finally said it even though it took me all this time to find the
video

YES, sometimes making a movie have SUCH a high production value that it drives away from the actual meaning.

Coraline. That is all that needs to be said.

This is how I feel about Kubrick. I can’t deny the craft, but his films do feel like they lack a humanity.

This is very thematically similar to one of your Dark Toons I recently watched. Weird coincidence.

For me it's Avatar the airbender show

I had this feeling with Oppenheimer. Everybody said it was gonna be amazing, and it gave me EXACTLY what I expected for an hour too long. It didnt personally connect with me at all, because it felt I was watching a movie for everybody else. Constantly saying: See how great this is? with its dramatic and outstanding music tired me. Its an amazing movie, I hated it. Dont have the need to ever see it again

I would personally argue for me the reigning champion of this is Citizen Cain. Highly regarded as one of the greats in cinema, and definitely a competently executed film with great talent. But for me nothing really stood out or made a personal connection. And it’s not like I have an issue with older films, I love films like Wonderful Life, Casablanca, Psycho, To Kill a Mockingbird, Great Dictator, 12 Angry Men, Gaslight, and so forth. But for whatever reason this one just didn’t do it for me the same way

Thats why in my opinion what you view as the greatest movie of all time can be different from your favourite. In my opinion there are a handfull of movies that I have literally 0 problems with, The Princess Bride, Kubo and the two strings, Jojo Rabbit they are all perfect in my mind however my favourite is The Breakfast Club which I fully understand some might find it boring and slow with nothing happening and even I have to say that the ending of allisons character is really bad. However I can love it despite it’s problems because of the strength of it’s characters and how all it needs to tell an engaging story is 5 kids in a room talking about their problems. I believe you cannot fully love anything until you acknowledge it’s problems and look beyond them.

I feel this way about the films of Stanley Kubrick. A Clockwork Orange, 2001, and Dr. Strangelove are technical masterpieces, but I don’t get big emotions watching them, and they don’t really leave me thinking about them much after seeing them. On the other hand, many of my favorite movies aren’t perfect, Mean Girls has some jokes that miss, The Matrix has some dated CGI, and Fight Club has some scenes in the beginning that go on a little long. However, these minor flaws in otherwise masterpieces make them feel human. A next-to-perfect movie can elicit those emotions for me, such as The Shawshank Redemption or Schindler’s List, but more often than not, I gravitate towards those masterpieces with little setbacks, and that just makes me love them even more.

Simple: Oscar bait movies. They’re generally uninteresting and “safe” and you can tell they’re made for the sake of angling for an Oscar rather than the sake of making a good movie in and of itself

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

The animation of 3D movies are so good that it’s kind of bad, it’s not appealing to the eye like Peanuts specials or stuff like that. The animation in them are very simple and that makes me like it more.

As many before me have said in the comments, many oscar baits movies could fill in that category. Though the movie that fits this description the best is "Taxi Driver". But no means a bad movie. It has great direction, an interesting script, fleshed out characters and amazing performances from everyone, including a child Jodie Foster. But for some reason I never got that carried away by it. It was good...but that's about it.

Negative*negative=Positive
Positive*Positive=Positive.
Basoc ,ath-

My two right now is Hereditary and Across the spider verse. I get why people love them. But for some reason they just dont work for me

Well, I can think of some movies that made me feel the same way as you do, Critic.

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Frozen
3. The Lion King (1994)
4. The Matrix
5. Shrek 2
6. Iron Man (2008)

Here's one. Halloween. Yes, it's a great film, but for some reason, I just didn't find that great. For me, I think over-hyped. I came into it expecting something absolutely insane because it had been hyped up so much in my mind, but what I got was... a very good movie. That's it.

I have seen some great movies that I didn't like or want to re-watch. For me, is a matter of taste. For example, I not a fan of romantic movies, so I only like a few romantic movies.

I have to suggest that you watch TCM, although HBO is robbing the classics every time I watch! Either the movie is on HBO or Max or Xfinity is now charging us to watch! What's even worse is Xfinity has a monopoly in Carroll County, Md. You can get any other steaming or for that matter cable in many other counties but not Carroll! Also I have also learned that they charge senior citizens more than any other age group. I called T-Mobile & asked them if I were able to get streaming in Carroll, he said quickly not in that county!

I know this is really controversial but hear me out: I thought Dune was so good that it was bad. I think the reason why was because whilst it did have a decent story and had a lot of incredible scenes and visuals, it didn’t connect with me because it was “too perfect” in a way. It was completely flawless, which made it uninteresting because I couldn’t connect with the movie. The two essentials of a movie are that it has enough flaws to make it connect with you but also enough good to actually deliver a nice experience. And when a movie is only doing one of those two things, I think that’s when you write it off as bad even if it is doing the second thing.

Yes. It's called "Get Out." It's so "good" to the general public that I think it's not worth watching. I already thought it was "meh," but after seeing Rotten Tomatoes give it a godddamned 100%, I genuinely DESPISE that movie. And no, it's not because it's a black horror film. It just simply isn't that good. A REAL good black horror movie would be the Tales From The Hood movies. Specifically 1 and 3. 2 wasn't that good, but it's worth watching for Keith David ALONE! And all 3 are a LOT better than Get Out.

I guess... So Good that Nothing could live up to it, making everything else Bad.

I have an idea for a new video. Movies that you have no idea how to feel about have good parts and really bad parts but the good really makes you feel good but the bad really makes you feel bad. Kind of like the movie American beauty. That movie has such good themes of the disassociation of the American dream and growing up in a family that is fake for the outside world is just doing everything for show. But really they are all fucked up... Oh my God that movie is f**** creepy as all hell it has a subplot of the father crushing on her daughter's friend who is technically legal and at one point they almost sleep together but he thankfully backed out of it because it feels weird. And there's a scene of a underaged topless Thora Birch that is absolutely just not meant to be in a movie

Doug, there's a thing called "personal preferences".

This must be an example of so good it's bad.

I hated Peter Capaldi as the Doctor but I can see that he's objectively a great actor. I hesitate to call him brilliant because he didn't deliver the performance he intended to. He outright admitted this in interviews and confessed that he was experimenting. He's ABLE to deliver brilliant performances but being capable of doing something and actually doing it are two different things. If one of his experiments didn't pay off, he could contradict what a scene intended to convey. For example, people praise this moment...

"Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?"

...but it happened while the Doctor was being hypocritical, self-righteous and lacking self-awareness about the fact that HE had been driving Clara Oswald to her breaking point for the entire season. The fact that she lost her boyfriend was the last straw but Clara would have had enough of the Doctor sooner or later. He was an emotionally and psychologically abusive ass and Danny Pink pointed out that he was "an officer" who just expected Clara to follow him blindly no matter how he treated her.

For example, the Doctor outright betrayed Clara in Kill The Moon, first by sneering that the astronauts should shoot her, then by outright abandoning her when she needed him. And he expected her to be GRATEFUL to him for it, which crossed the line from being an asshole into being an outright sociopathic narcissist. Kill The Moon made me hate the Doctor but it also might be the most underrated episode in the entire era. Hating the Doctor at that point was a deliberate part of the story, though I don't think I was meant to hate him intensely enough to outright WANT him to regenerate. And I know I wasn't supposed to hate him at all in Dark Water.

By the time of Dark Water, I was supposed to have warmed up to the Doctor. And yet I hated him as intensely as I did in Kill The Moon because Peter Capaldi played the "You let me down!" scene like the Doctor was an innocent man with the moral high ground. On paper, the Doctor was as much to blame as Clara and Steven Moffat tried to hint at this with "I'm exactly what you deserve". However, although the self-awareness was there ON PAPER, Capaldi played the moment like the Doctor was waiting for a chance to pretend he's morally superior and pounced on that chance as soon as he got it. For example, there was no guilt or sheepishness when he confirmed that he used Clara as a guinea pig with "I was curious to see how far you would go". He even outright snarled "Cut out the whining" in her face, which was projection and gaslighting since Clara had been quietly allowing him to vent without protest or complaint. Clara ended up coming across as the more adult of the pair because she simply took his rant on the chin and said it was "absolutely fair enough" if he never wanted to see her again. I was on Clara's side in a moment that made it explicitly clear that I was supposed to be on the Doctor's side.

Peter Capaldi went too hard in trying to make the Doctor dark and mysterious, then backpedalled and tried too hard to capture his punk rock youth. He didn't feel like the Doctor until he was halfway through his 2nd season. He felt like the Valeyard on a redemption arc and to be fair, I would have been totally up for that. Heck, I would be calling it outright brilliant IF Capaldi was doing it on purpose. But I can't tell if he was. I lean towards the idea that he wasn't.

I guess the thing I really hate is the uncertainty. Was Peter Capaldi portraying the Valeyard's redemption arc on purpose? Or did he think he was just being another Doctor?

Another thing is that I can tell that Peter Capaldi was thinking too hard about the role, to the point where it sometimes drained him of authenticity. This fed into his Valeyard persona because the Valeyard put on a performance as a rather pretentious but still upstanding Time Lord, only to reveal that he was a monster later on. Even during the stellar "Sit down and talk!" speech, the first time I fully saw the Doctor without any hint of either the Valeyard or Peter Capaldi in a midlife crisis, it was hinted that either the writers or Capaldi himself didn't trust that he could deliver the emotion correctly. He did. However, there was a line later on implying that the Doctor spent the "longest month of my life" rehearsing for it instead of delivering it authentically in the moment.



As for Clara Oswald, I wouldn't change anything about her. Unlike the uncertainty about whether the Valeyard's presence was deliberate or not, I have no doubt that Clara did exactly what she was intended to do. She was the greatest companion in the revived show, maybe even the greatest companion in Doctor Who's entire history. However, she was so good and, more importantly, so real that I fell in love with her. Even her habit of lying, which I normally detest, was something I loved because it was one of the personality traits that made her feel like an actual human being instead of just a character. And a nice little detail in her final episode is that she'd grown out of it, since Series 8 Clara wouldn't have admitted that she was eavesdropping on the Doctor and Ashildr. When Clara left, I had the most emotionally cathartic experience I've ever had in media, at first being happy with how her story ended before ugly crying like a baby because I'd grown so attached to her. I wish I hadn't allowed myself to fall in love with her in the first place.

In conclusion, Series 8 and Series 9 of Doctor Who was a very confusing experience that I both admire and resent at the same time. It's never left my head and I'm torn between wishing it would leave and cherishing it.

for me its defintly "the batman", there isn't a single thing that i hate about the movie but i just cant get into it. i hate calling a movie boring because i think that it isn't a real critique of a movie. but the batman just feels "boring". maybe its the over dramatic tone or the vampire like pacing from Robert Pattinson, but i still cant figure it out

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Mine is jurassic park. Just never liked it