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Bacchus's Replies
I guess the only people to reply to this thread are Donnie Darko fans. I remember seeing Donnie Darko when it first came out over twenty years ago and thought it was an overhyped, deliberately incomprehensible mess, a movie clearly in love with how clever it was, and that inspired a cult-following of people in love with how clever they were for liking that art-house turd. Apparently there are other edits of the movie where the story makes more sense, or a website that explains what the hell was going on with the wormholes and time-travelling ghosts and whatnot, but I just couldn't be bothered. See it if you must and decide for yourself, but my vote goes to The Butterfly Effect.
What I liked about Butterfly Effect was the underlying theme that so much of a person's life is determined by events completely out of their control, which is a discomforting concept not often seen in film.
One star is pretty generous for this steaming pile of crap. I can't believe anyone is defending this. And before you internet tough guys start squawking "B-but you must be a pussy liberal who doesn't like war movies!" I am the opposite of a liberal and I like all kinds of violent action movies. In this movie the story was idiotic, the acting was amateurish and the action scenes were laughable and boring. If <i>any</i> of the action scenes had been any good I could even have forgiven the first two flaws and called this movie a guilty pleasure, but there was no pleasure in watching this.
I didn't see this movie when it first came out, but when I was a little kid in the early 1970's I saw it on the big screen at a Saturday Matinee in a downtown movie theatre. What a different world it was then, too. Parents didn't take their kids to Saturday Matinees, they just gave you your bus fare and money for your movie tickets and popcorn and sent you on your way. I doubt anyone in the audience was over ten years old. Thinking back, the people who ran the theatre really went out of their way to entertain us kids, they even had a draw for prizes during the intermission so it was important to keep your ticket stubs. I remember winning a jigsaw puzzle at one of these movies. But I digress...
Although the movie was over ten years old at that point we were all amazed by the special effects. You have to remember that special effects in movies were a lot rarer back then, and stop motion animation was cutting edge. It was still in use in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back which was made almost twenty years after Jason and the Argonauts. I surely wasn't a sophisticated cinephile back then, but even I could tell the difference between the monsters in a Harryhausen movie and Godzilla, for instance. I saw a few of the old Godzilla movies at the Saturday Matinees as well, and even though I loved those movies too you could always tell it was a guy in a rubber suit smashing what looked like the model kits and train sets we all used to build. The Harryhausen monsters looked much more realistic. So yes, I think it's fair to say they were the Jurassic Park of their day.
Because the makers of this movie wanted the "Easy Rider" ending that was popular with counter-culture movies of the time.
Nah, it was pretentious crap. A two hour straw-man argument that says "Rich people are evil." Only the dimmest products of a liberal arts education are going to be impressed by this.
Yeah right. You either see the beauty of the Emperor's new clothes or you don't. By the way, I love how you copy-pasted the 'fever dream' descriptor from the review at rogerebert.com. Apparently "Intelligent people with great taste..." can't think for themselves. At least you were right about sounding as pretentious as fück.