Guilty Pleasures Again

[pmw]

Say Anything, Pootie Tang (not that guilty - this is a great movie!), Sixteen Candles...

[Chris Knipp]

Yeah, you're not a guilty pleasure kind of guy. We all like watching movies we know are not great, but that's just being occasionally conventional and undemanding. One can't watch nothing but imperishable classics--it's nice to relax once in a while. You can't drink Chateau Lafite every night. There are beer or Coke nights. But beer or Coke don't qualify as guilty pleasures.

I'm just beginning to look through my videotape collexction to look for guilty pleasures. Gregg Araki's movies might qualify. I am willing to watch them more than once and for the most part they are kind of trashy. But his last one, Mysterious Skin, is a good movie. I love to watch Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break, with Keanu Reeves, but though I might consider that a guilty pleasure, I actually just think it's a good but underrated movie. But looking it up on rottentomatoes I see that Rich Cline of Shadows on the Wall says it's a "brainless guilty pleasure," so I guess Im n the ballpark. I would not say it's a great masterpiece, but it's rip snorting good entertainment, and that's a heck of a lot more than I can say for Boys.

I'm not sure what "a fantastic epic coming from a polar political sensibility than its predecessor" is supposed to mean, but if you think it's great, then it's not a guilty pleasure. Most critics seem to think it's a spectacular failure. You obviously don't care about the distasteful aspect of The Deer Hunter. If you did it would turn you off to Cimino, even if Heaven's Gate is something completely different. As I said, if it had gotten better reviews I would have probably seen it, but the bad reveiws combined with my extreme distaste for what Cimino did in The Deer Hunter, which again would not matter if it wasn't a powerful film with good actors, were more than enough to keep me away. I believe in avoiding movies on principle. I see that the 2004 Heaven's Gate revival, which might have drawn me in if I'd been in lower Manhattan since I like Film Forum so much, was the occasion for Michael Atkinson to say a number of glib, chic things. It gives him a chance to completely dump on mainstream Hollywood, without actually praising the film very highly. He doesn't really describe it in enough detail to make you want to go see it, but as I said, if I had been there, since it was at Film Forum and it was an uncut version, I might have suffered through it. The popcorn at Film Forum is the best.

[Chris Knipp]

Say Anything, Pootie Tang (not that guilty - this is a great movie!), Sixteen Candles...

Our entries crossed I guess, but I was actually thinking of you and of Eighties youth flicks. You think they're a gulity pleasure, and for you maybe they are. Why not for me? Well, because I say so. As for Pootie Tang it's more where the now respectable Eighties youth genre, anthologized and lionized today (http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/bratpack.php), was back then when the Bosley Crowthers and Janet Maslins didn't approve. Cause if you look up Pootie Tang on "Metacritic" you find they give it a 36. But you can't really claim Brat Pack flicks as guilty pleasures as a cinephile in 2006, because they've been categorized as classics, at least Say Anything and Sixteen Candles most certainly have. Stick with your guilty pleasures long enough, and they become respectable, as bad paintings of earlier decades start commanding high prices at auction.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Yeah, you're not a guilty pleasure kind of guy.

That's it, uh? I'm beginning to feel inadequate due to failure to come up with a genuine guilty pleasure. I watched de Palma's Phantom of the Paradise repeatedly as a teen, but perhaps it's only the soundtrack that sucks. How about Small Soldiers or Linklater's The Newton Boys? Aghh, I give up!

Gregg Araki's movies might qualify. I am willing to watch them more than once and for the most part they are kind of trashy. But his last one, Mysterious Skin, is a good movie.

Very good, I'd say.

Most critics seem to think it's a spectacular failure.

That's why I brought up Heaven's Gate but it's not a guilty pleasure because I think those critics are myopic or worse (unless by "failure" they mean commercial not artistic failure).

The popcorn at Film Forum is the best.

I like Film Forum but I do NOT eat popcorn. I think eating while watching a movie is distracting and noisy. My fave local cinema (the Cosford) forbids bringing any drink or food inside. I don't sound like a "guilty pleasure kinda guy", do I? I do love King Kong, Dumbo, LOTR and Titanic which I think makes me look almost human :-)

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, you are almost human. Or almost a plebe. But your failure to achieve guilty pleasure guy status marks you as a virgin in some areas.

There are snooty film buffs at the Film Forum who glare at people who eat popcorn, but they're just trying to support the place. It's more civilized maybe to follow the old European custom like in Italy to have an "INTERVALLO" in the middle of the movie where it stops and food is sold and consumed. My London friend sneers at people whom he considers Americans or proto-Americans who buy tubs of disgusting greasy popcorn and noisily consume it at the Leicester Square cinemas -- but he sneers at a lot of things, and one can only say that if he did it, it would be alright, and probably classified as Upperclass.

[pmw]

Youre right. Nothing guilty about loving John Hughes. I'll add to Pootie Tang and say Friday is also a guilty pleasure. I guess though that I dont feel guilty about liking these either... or do I? I take pleasure in these films because they take the white-media's perception of the black community, amp it up, and shove it back in our faces as raucously fun entertainment. Yeah! Is that a guilty pleasure? What is when your guiltless...
P

[HorseradishTree]

Originally posted by oscar jubis


I like Film Forum but I do NOT eat popcorn. I think eating while watching a movie is distracting and noisy. My fave local cinema (the Cosford) forbids bringing any drink or food inside. [/B]

I usually make popcorn for me and my parents so that they won't talk. It's a fair trade, in my opinion.

One of my crowning guilty pleasures is Kull the Conquerer, starring Kevin Sorbo. With a metal/classical fusion soundtrack, the badassery ensues from beginning to end. It's a cookie-cutter sword-and-sorcery adventure made great by cool production design and, put simply, the greatness that is Kevin Sorbo.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by HorseradishTree
I usually make popcorn for me and my parents so that they won't talk. It's a fair trade, in my opinion.

Makes sense, although I might try putting powdered rohypnol in their drinks first ;)

One of my crowning guilty pleasures is Kull the Conquerer

I looked into this movie and concluded I would probably enjoy watching it, and Dylan (13) would too.

[HorseradishTree]

I hope I'm not derailing too much by asking what you disliked about The Deer Hunter.

[Chris Knipp]

This is what I said on the prevous page. The thing that never happened was the lurid, disturbing travelling road show of a forced Russian roulette game.

The Deer Hunter. This is a powerful film with a host of great actors who at that time were quite young and just beginning to show what they could do. But it was despicable to falsify the Vietnam experience by focusing on a lurid event that never occured. Vietnam veterans wrote letters to the editor to protest and then I realized that, though I had not been in Vietnam, I was not alone in being offended and outraged. So in my mind, Cimino is a director of very questionable taste and morals. I think his grandiosity is what increases my dislike of him.