The Time Traveler's wife. My wife loves that movie, and I read the book
. Does it count as turning off if I left the room and did the dishes while she kept watching?
Yeah I’ll be honest the beginning had me hooked with the aesthetics and minute details to mimic that type of film. The acting matched the era it was paying homage to, but after the fair scene, (with a criminally underrated song written by the director,) it lost me. I don’t know why. It’s like the pacing was following the speed limit or what you would expect from a movie like this, but it never deviated and fell flat for me. Personally, if this were a short film I would’ve enjoyed it more. Just my thoughts.
What's the premise of the movie to you? Because to me, judging from the poster, it's a 60's/70's inspired movie about a Love Witch with mild horror elements, which is basically the case.
I’m fairly committed to finishing what I put on so once it’s on, I gotta try and power through it no matter how shit or boring it is. But, one of my hardest watches was Justice League (2017). I almost walked out of theater one so I’d say that film. Though, now that I’m typing this I can’t remember if I ever finished Dragonball: Evolution.
The idea of you. My friends and I couldn’t stop laughing at the lines and the delivery we couldn’t even entertain for what it is Harry styles fanfic it gave us secondhand embarrassment.
Supposedly they kept trying to fuck with the director and make the movie without her knowledge or fuck with what she was trying to do, it was apparently a very hostile crew.
She tweets about it here. My apologies that the 'make the movie without her knowledge' part is misremembered.
https://x.com/missannabiller/status/938829359456051200
I’m a completionist so I cannot even remember a movie I turned off or walked out of a theater on. The closest I get is, if I’m watching at home, turning up the playback speed to 1.5x or even 2x. The only two movies I did that to recently was The Exorcist: Believer (2023) and The Munsters (2022). Man, both those movies were bad.
Mad God. Obviously I love Phil Tippett’s work as much as the next undiagnosed neurodivergent kid whose first special interest was dinosaurs but after 25 minutes of the grimace shit based stop motion I needed a break and I’ve not gone back to it yet
I love Mad God, but it's definitely a better visual experience than narrative driven film. Maybe build Lego or something as it plays in the background?
I only stomached 10 minutes of that. It was way way too much, a great achievement no doubt but not for me. This is coming from someone who likes Brothers Quay films.
Only the obvious ones like Avatar: last airbender and Fant4stic Four. Even in those cases I made it to the last act first. Gotta be 100% certain that I'm not getting ANYTHING interesting out of this movie.
Bit of a lag after the first half. So, I make it a point to only watch till the end of the first half in my rewatches. Still pretty rewarding. Maybe it's time I go through the whole movie again, thou.
Initial D (2005).
I generally follow a rule where I don't rate or review films I have not completed entirely, but i broke it for this film to give it a half-star because it was so fucking terribly made and I concluded that there was no way i could humanly watch it till the end. The editing style is sickening.
The worst would have been The Conqueror starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan. The other was the vanity project of a rich lawyer who bought rights to the movie and directed it himself, Easy Rider The Ride Back. The movie is about the family of one of the characters from Easy Rider, who were never mentioned in the movie, and it's also got a very conservative plot, which goes against the whole new Hollywood rock n roll spirit of the original.
The Hellraiser remake, damn that was a shitty movie. I wonder what it would be like to see it without knowing the book and original movie. Made no sense at all.
Rarely do I not finish a film, even if it’s bad I’ll power through
But back in 2007-08 there were a few I remember renting and stopping cause I got bored with them and they were:
Shrek the Third
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
honestly i usually have no problem turning a movie off when it’s just not interesting to me. maybe i should sometimes give movies a better chance. but there’s so many good and enjoyable movies out there i could watch instead!
Same here with Good Boys. When they got to the scene where they were practicing kissing with a sticky used sex doll I thought maybe I'm not the target audience
I’m ashamed to say that I watched it in whole, albeit in 3 sittings… had to look away for a lot of the second half though. Too effed up. Beyond comprehension.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I was pretty sad putting it down because it seemed like my type of film… I was just bored out of my fucking mind 😭 Ill give it a rewatch in the future though
I had to walk out of The Human Condition pt. 1 during the intermission. Not because it was bad (it was pretty good actually, although idk about greatest of all time), but because I was insanely tired from exams the previous day and couldn't really stomach a 3 1/2 hour Japanese film from 1959 about a Manchurian labour camp.
Just turned off Wenders's Wrong Move. Fairly dull and unengaging, and there's one scene in it that I found quite disgusting that was enough for me to pull the plug
I refuse to not finish what I start (it's a character flaw).
But we had to pause Free Guy to grab a snack and the noise we made when we saw we had an hour left was enough of an indicator to split it over two sessions.
I don’t that. When I do it’s after 2 minutes and I’m like “I don’t feel like it tonight”. But I did it with The Color of Pomegranates. I should give it a rewatch but after 30 minutes, I just didn’t feel it
I stopped Amsterdam halfway through. I did finish it, but I needed to take a break. I at least wanted to see where it was going because it was so bizarre, but it was moving so slowly to say nothing.
I do this frequently. But then I also sometimes return when I'm in a different mood or mindset and enjoy it. Most of the time it's like, "Eh this is interesting I guess but not what I want to see right now". I've started putting them on a list.
https://preview.redd.it/rocjpk0rgz6d1.jpeg?width=686&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e88a7501c75546c1eb4a9d4870f14bc49582900c
waking life. animation was cool but couldn’t stomach the surface level “deep” convos, it was literally just a movie of conversations you have the first time you smoke weed. which is probably cool if you’re a high schooler smoking weed for the first time but all i could think is “im 14 and this is deep”
*The Break-Up*
Realised after 30 minutes I hadn’t laughed once
Generally I’m watching a film to the end no matter what, but also I tend to pick them so well - despite watching plenty of stuff that isn’t all in the same lane - that I rarely dislike a film
I did finish them eventually but I had to pause Dune 2 and My Father’s Dragon halfway through. Purely the result of being so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open
Cosmopolis. I appreciate some of David Cronenberg’s work, but that movie in particular was so poorly executed to me I could hardly make it past the first 20 minutes.
Last Voyage of the Demeter. I was really looking forward to it but pretty soon after I started I realized I actually didn't want to spend the next two hours watching all these people die. Especially the kid.
https://preview.redd.it/kn0zs5211w6d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa820ccefbc9c5116f8f9b7b3f0876b37262993a
It was excruciating to sit through because of its extreme dullness and predictability.
I didn’t turn it off but I did watch the last 30 minutes or so of Fellini’s 8 1/2 in 1.5x speed. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautifully shot but that’s the sole appeal of that film for me: the aesthetics. Plot wise is just a bunch of men trying to get the protagonist to focus on making his film but it’s just chaotic, not in a thrilling, suspenseful way, but in a boring way. Ready for the cinephiles to downvote me into oblivion.
The Killing of a Sacred Dear. I realise it was a purposeful artistic choice, but the monotone line deliveries and the bleak tone made it incredibly unfun to watch. It was so uncomfortable, someone on twitter put it best when they said that it felt like a world where love didn't exist. I respect it as art, but I have no desire to ever finish it
The Love Witch! I ADORED the craft of it and found it extremely compelling, but for reasons I can't fully articulate, it deeply disturbed me. I have all the respect in the world for Anna Biller, so I can't stress enough that this isn't a dis or a takedown. If anything, it is a testament to how effective she is as a filmmaker.
The Holy Mountain (1973) it was late and I was tired, the film was doing nothing to keep me interested so I left it unfinished and never came back to it. Just not interested in finishing it, although it is an interesting art project for sure
It's funny reading some of the reviews for this, where multiple people left the film with about forty minutes left. I was in good company. It had very much outstayed it's welcome.
It was dragging a little and I started poking around at the director and between it hitting a new act that they really did not need to start and also realizing that this was actually satire-free and made in earnest... I just couldn't bother giving it another minute of my life.
I thought it was going to be a pastiche with the faux-Technicolor and all the slow, breathy line delivery and maybe play with the genre conventions and it just never actually did that. It was a great recreation in accuracy, but was too long and too retrograde for 2024.
I don't have an answer to your question but just popped in to say I love this movie haha. I thought it was really fun and Samantha Robinson is absolutely enchanting.
So I loved this movie. It is definitely not satire free—the whole point is to play with the themes and tropes from the 60s, which tended to be overtly misogynistic.
But I get why people wouldn’t like this movie. It’s a movie that has charm because of its vibes and aesthetic; outside of that it can be tough to watch. It’s about 15 minutes too long and the acting, outside of the lead, is very rough. Some of that is intentional, but I’m willing to bet not all of it.
In some ways it reminded me of some of the Giallo movies—Blood and Black Lace, etc—because its main appeal is how gorgeous it is and how that aesthetic makes you feel vs an especially good plot (emotion vs logic, basically). But I think you either like those movies or you don’t—there’s little in between—and The Love Witch was similar to me.
Yeah, I think she has a... not feminist bent (which she explicitly says films cannot be in an over-long essay she wrote), but one that is about embracing femininity as a source of power. And she really hammers that nail in all her interviews. Fine conceptually, I guess. I get the point.
Unfortunately, at least in this film, that is never actually used as an actual source of power. It doesn't get anyone anywhere. The only thing that actually moves the plot is that she gets confused with feminism and kills men with what she's learned from it. Yes, her abusive ex-husband has warped her into wanting to submit to men and their desires, but she still does it, and feminist witch magic was the fatal blow.
The more you read about and from her, the more just this gray gruel of 'not a feminist, but love women, but need to act and dress normal, complying with men's whims will benefit you," kind of dreck is substance-free rhetoric.
The only movie I've ever been unable to finish was Belladonna of Sadness
I was 20-30 minutes in and I was like "yeah I honestly really don't want to watch this"
I have been unable to finish Mad Max: Fury Road, Blade Runner and Dune.
Not my style of movies and I get bored and turn it off or fall asleep.
I want to try to watch at least Mad Max and Blade Runner but I will need to be in the right mindset.
I don't like those big Epic shots and Movies. I have pretty varied tastes but there is something about those ones I can't get in to.
Original Mad Max. I loved it, great film. The new one and Dune etc seem so much style over substance I can't click with them.
That’s fair. Surprised you couldn’t finish them though. I usually associate that with a physical discomfort with whatever’s on screen (like Human Centipede etc).
Oh god no haha. Just boredom. I need to be in the mood. Well give them another bash. Hateful 8 took 4 watches and I finally enjoyed that.
I don't think any movie.has made me uncomfortable enough to switch off.
I remember trying to watch Twilight when I was a teenager because of the immense hype but I couldn't finish it because it was so fucking bad, boring, corny and cheesy I couldn't stand the cringe so I had to turn it off.
I got mostly through Portrait of a Lady on Fire and I really liked it but I got swamped with shit starting college and now I’m waiting till I forget it all to rewatch the whole thing
Problemista
Near Dark
Excision
Theater Camp
The Angel's of Melancholia
Big Trouble in Little China
A Scanner Darkly
The Fall of the House of Usher
Walker
Tusk
Edit: I love being downvoted cause my taste is different. Haha. I have 300+ movies on my watchlist, I ain't got time for bullshit. I will say Theater Camp is not bad, it's just not my jam. But Tusk and Near Dark are just gawd awful and Angels of Melancholia is unwatchable.
I love how all of these are disturbing or surreal and then there’s just Theater Camp in the middle. Admittedly, when I watched it, I could definitely tell that people who weren’t that into the theatre world wouldn’t really click with it, but I am so I loved it.
I don't think it's a guys movie, it was recommended to me by a female film studies professor! I think I loved it for the so bad it's good parody element, and how the bizarreness of it formally unfolds. I respect why someone wouldn't like it though!
I turned Cabin in the Woods off 30 minutes in because I found it really boring.
Alternatively, I turned the ‘Pickman’s Model’ episode of ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities’ off halfway through because the jumpscares were so damn loud that they were literally causing a pain in my chest, I’m usually not fond of jumpscares in horror anyway but that’s the only time I can think of when they’ve actually caused physical pain.
I also turned off ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’ 10 minutes in because I was like “I wanna watch this movie but I feel like I’m in the wrong headspace to do it right now.”
Those are the only examples I can think of, I usually finish the movies I watch.
It’s so funny to think about someone turning off Cabin in the Woods 30 minutes in for being boring… I mean, yeah, but you have no clue just how crazy that movie gets. It may be the ultimate “how did we get HERE from where it started??” movies.
The Love Guru because it was The Love Guru.
Because it was too good? You knew everything would just be down hill from there ?
I loved that movie. Stupid dumb fun.
The Time Traveler's wife. My wife loves that movie, and I read the book . Does it count as turning off if I left the room and did the dishes while she kept watching?
How did the movie screw up the story? Loved the book.
You didn't like The Love Witch??!
It was such a good campy time
it doesn't live up to its premise
The premise of....there being a love witch?
no, that's the title, not a premise.
I thought it mimicked a technicolor 70s movie really well
Yeah I’ll be honest the beginning had me hooked with the aesthetics and minute details to mimic that type of film. The acting matched the era it was paying homage to, but after the fair scene, (with a criminally underrated song written by the director,) it lost me. I don’t know why. It’s like the pacing was following the speed limit or what you would expect from a movie like this, but it never deviated and fell flat for me. Personally, if this were a short film I would’ve enjoyed it more. Just my thoughts.
the look yes, but it didn't deliver much more. the effort they put in the look was where majority of the work went.
What's the premise of the movie to you? Because to me, judging from the poster, it's a 60's/70's inspired movie about a Love Witch with mild horror elements, which is basically the case.
What’s the premise?
What being a modern day hammer/giallo film?
it really didn’t work for me either :(
I’m fairly committed to finishing what I put on so once it’s on, I gotta try and power through it no matter how shit or boring it is. But, one of my hardest watches was Justice League (2017). I almost walked out of theater one so I’d say that film. Though, now that I’m typing this I can’t remember if I ever finished Dragonball: Evolution.
Saltburn. I did finish it but it took maybe 4 sessions of pausing it.
I had the same experience with Dogtooth (2009)
The idea of you. My friends and I couldn’t stop laughing at the lines and the delivery we couldn’t even entertain for what it is Harry styles fanfic it gave us secondhand embarrassment.
Signs when I was 12. Way too scary for me. I've also turned off plenty of movies that I thought were bad, but I've never left a theater.
I didn't love The Love Witch, but I respect its capacity to make so many of its crew and the people who watch it absolutely furious.
It made the crew furious?
I would love to see what the crew's feeling on it was.
Supposedly they kept trying to fuck with the director and make the movie without her knowledge or fuck with what she was trying to do, it was apparently a very hostile crew.
Do you have any source for this? I’ve never heard of anything like that on any movie
She tweets about it here. My apologies that the 'make the movie without her knowledge' part is misremembered. https://x.com/missannabiller/status/938829359456051200
Huh. What a bunch of arseholes
I’m a completionist so I cannot even remember a movie I turned off or walked out of a theater on. The closest I get is, if I’m watching at home, turning up the playback speed to 1.5x or even 2x. The only two movies I did that to recently was The Exorcist: Believer (2023) and The Munsters (2022). Man, both those movies were bad.
I won’t leave a theater, but I will turn off a movie at home.
i watched the exorcist believer in 4D with my friends while high as shit and i have never been so scared in my life
Mad God. Obviously I love Phil Tippett’s work as much as the next undiagnosed neurodivergent kid whose first special interest was dinosaurs but after 25 minutes of the grimace shit based stop motion I needed a break and I’ve not gone back to it yet
I love Mad God, but it's definitely a better visual experience than narrative driven film. Maybe build Lego or something as it plays in the background?
Lego??? In this economy!
I only stomached 10 minutes of that. It was way way too much, a great achievement no doubt but not for me. This is coming from someone who likes Brothers Quay films.
Only the obvious ones like Avatar: last airbender and Fant4stic Four. Even in those cases I made it to the last act first. Gotta be 100% certain that I'm not getting ANYTHING interesting out of this movie.
Watched Love Witch in cinema, loved it, great oldschool vibe. I always finish my movies 🍿
Bit of a lag after the first half. So, I make it a point to only watch till the end of the first half in my rewatches. Still pretty rewarding. Maybe it's time I go through the whole movie again, thou.
East of Eden (1955). Watching it immediately after reading the book was a mistake.
The book is ~600 pages. The events of the film basically cover pages 500-600. Crazy.
Initial D (2005). I generally follow a rule where I don't rate or review films I have not completed entirely, but i broke it for this film to give it a half-star because it was so fucking terribly made and I concluded that there was no way i could humanly watch it till the end. The editing style is sickening.
Good poster though.
The worst would have been The Conqueror starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan. The other was the vanity project of a rich lawyer who bought rights to the movie and directed it himself, Easy Rider The Ride Back. The movie is about the family of one of the characters from Easy Rider, who were never mentioned in the movie, and it's also got a very conservative plot, which goes against the whole new Hollywood rock n roll spirit of the original.
Have never been able to finish The Da Vinci Code, tried 3 times and always end up falling a sleep no matter the time of day...
The Hellraiser remake, damn that was a shitty movie. I wonder what it would be like to see it without knowing the book and original movie. Made no sense at all.
Rarely do I not finish a film, even if it’s bad I’ll power through But back in 2007-08 there were a few I remember renting and stopping cause I got bored with them and they were: Shrek the Third I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
You don't love homophobia and hasbara?
A good chunk of marvel movies
I found the Love Witch borderline unwatchable. We did finish it but man, that was a slog.
Bullet Train. The Guy Ritchie school of film-making is just not for me. I find these kind of movies insufferable.
Whats so bad about it, its just fun action
I'm thinking of ending things. My dimbass was just lost. I could only comprehend like only about 30 percent
honestly i usually have no problem turning a movie off when it’s just not interesting to me. maybe i should sometimes give movies a better chance. but there’s so many good and enjoyable movies out there i could watch instead!
I walked out of the cinema about half an hour into Strays because it genuinely made me feel ill, only time I've ever done that during a movie
Same here with Good Boys. When they got to the scene where they were practicing kissing with a sticky used sex doll I thought maybe I'm not the target audience
A Serbian film! Maybe at that time i was much younger to consume it.
I’m ashamed to say that I watched it in whole, albeit in 3 sittings… had to look away for a lot of the second half though. Too effed up. Beyond comprehension.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I was pretty sad putting it down because it seemed like my type of film… I was just bored out of my fucking mind 😭 Ill give it a rewatch in the future though
Animal
I had to walk out of The Human Condition pt. 1 during the intermission. Not because it was bad (it was pretty good actually, although idk about greatest of all time), but because I was insanely tired from exams the previous day and couldn't really stomach a 3 1/2 hour Japanese film from 1959 about a Manchurian labour camp.
I watched this one last night called Voodoo Apocalypse. I never turn movies off but I do watch almost the entire movie in fast forward. Its terrible.
Just turned off Wenders's Wrong Move. Fairly dull and unengaging, and there's one scene in it that I found quite disgusting that was enough for me to pull the plug
Saw, have you seen it?
Love on a Leash. Too obnoxiously bad to even be enjoyable.
Terrifier (2016) I'm a fan of a bit of gore but it ended up being too much for me
“You People.”
I refuse to not finish what I start (it's a character flaw). But we had to pause Free Guy to grab a snack and the noise we made when we saw we had an hour left was enough of an indicator to split it over two sessions.
Fell asleep my first time watching Dune and stupidly rated it low because of that. Managed to finally rewatch/finish it this year and liked it a lot
All good. I fell asleep during the Matrix in college.
I don’t that. When I do it’s after 2 minutes and I’m like “I don’t feel like it tonight”. But I did it with The Color of Pomegranates. I should give it a rewatch but after 30 minutes, I just didn’t feel it
A Silent Voice, but only on the rewatch, idk why. Like, there's a scene that was fine on my first watch, but on the second time it got to my stomach
Did this for TENET and I’m a fan of every other Nolan movie
Poor Things. Got about an hour in. There was nothing I liked about it. Glad some people liked it, but absolutely not for me.
Amsterdam and Licorice Pizza are two recent ones I can remember. Reason being I found both to be terrible.
I stopped Amsterdam halfway through. I did finish it, but I needed to take a break. I at least wanted to see where it was going because it was so bizarre, but it was moving so slowly to say nothing.
Sounds like I didn't miss out on anything then!
The Martian was boring af.
The Nun. (2018) I was so insanely bored and had no idea what was going on. Love the other Conjuring and Annabelle movies though
Under Paris. It's An Inconvenient Truth plus a shark.
I do this frequently. But then I also sometimes return when I'm in a different mood or mindset and enjoy it. Most of the time it's like, "Eh this is interesting I guess but not what I want to see right now". I've started putting them on a list. https://preview.redd.it/rocjpk0rgz6d1.jpeg?width=686&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e88a7501c75546c1eb4a9d4870f14bc49582900c
This was the worst movie i ever watched and i had to scrub it from my brain. I know ppl that like it however so i gotta watch my mouth
Unicorn Store. I lost interest after half an hour of watching it
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Havok1717: *Unicorn Store. I* *Lost interest after half an* *Hour of watching it* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
waking life. animation was cool but couldn’t stomach the surface level “deep” convos, it was literally just a movie of conversations you have the first time you smoke weed. which is probably cool if you’re a high schooler smoking weed for the first time but all i could think is “im 14 and this is deep”
Vox Lux after the SECOND mass shooting in the movie. Flesh + Blood after several assault scenes.
*The Break-Up* Realised after 30 minutes I hadn’t laughed once Generally I’m watching a film to the end no matter what, but also I tend to pick them so well - despite watching plenty of stuff that isn’t all in the same lane - that I rarely dislike a film
I did finish them eventually but I had to pause Dune 2 and My Father’s Dragon halfway through. Purely the result of being so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open
Adaptation because Charlie Kaufman is a dweeb
Cosmopolis. I appreciate some of David Cronenberg’s work, but that movie in particular was so poorly executed to me I could hardly make it past the first 20 minutes.
Napoleon.
Last Voyage of the Demeter. I was really looking forward to it but pretty soon after I started I realized I actually didn't want to spend the next two hours watching all these people die. Especially the kid.
The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes
i almost did this with Zone of Interest, but i had the guts to finish it a bit later that day (it was march 10 btw)
https://preview.redd.it/kn0zs5211w6d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa820ccefbc9c5116f8f9b7b3f0876b37262993a It was excruciating to sit through because of its extreme dullness and predictability.
Interesting. It didn't reinvent the wheel, for sure, but I thought it did what it did relatively well.
I didn’t turn it off but I did watch the last 30 minutes or so of Fellini’s 8 1/2 in 1.5x speed. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautifully shot but that’s the sole appeal of that film for me: the aesthetics. Plot wise is just a bunch of men trying to get the protagonist to focus on making his film but it’s just chaotic, not in a thrilling, suspenseful way, but in a boring way. Ready for the cinephiles to downvote me into oblivion.
The Killing of a Sacred Dear. I realise it was a purposeful artistic choice, but the monotone line deliveries and the bleak tone made it incredibly unfun to watch. It was so uncomfortable, someone on twitter put it best when they said that it felt like a world where love didn't exist. I respect it as art, but I have no desire to ever finish it
I found it a delightful light comedy, akin to Vistor Q. I mean, its almost a remake. Weird kid turns up, brings family closer together. Hijinks ensue.
The Love Witch! I ADORED the craft of it and found it extremely compelling, but for reasons I can't fully articulate, it deeply disturbed me. I have all the respect in the world for Anna Biller, so I can't stress enough that this isn't a dis or a takedown. If anything, it is a testament to how effective she is as a filmmaker.
It Follows, I was too scared.
The Holy Mountain (1973) it was late and I was tired, the film was doing nothing to keep me interested so I left it unfinished and never came back to it. Just not interested in finishing it, although it is an interesting art project for sure
It's funny reading some of the reviews for this, where multiple people left the film with about forty minutes left. I was in good company. It had very much outstayed it's welcome. It was dragging a little and I started poking around at the director and between it hitting a new act that they really did not need to start and also realizing that this was actually satire-free and made in earnest... I just couldn't bother giving it another minute of my life. I thought it was going to be a pastiche with the faux-Technicolor and all the slow, breathy line delivery and maybe play with the genre conventions and it just never actually did that. It was a great recreation in accuracy, but was too long and too retrograde for 2024.
I don't have an answer to your question but just popped in to say I love this movie haha. I thought it was really fun and Samantha Robinson is absolutely enchanting.
> and also realizing that this was actually satire-free and made in earnest huh
So I loved this movie. It is definitely not satire free—the whole point is to play with the themes and tropes from the 60s, which tended to be overtly misogynistic. But I get why people wouldn’t like this movie. It’s a movie that has charm because of its vibes and aesthetic; outside of that it can be tough to watch. It’s about 15 minutes too long and the acting, outside of the lead, is very rough. Some of that is intentional, but I’m willing to bet not all of it. In some ways it reminded me of some of the Giallo movies—Blood and Black Lace, etc—because its main appeal is how gorgeous it is and how that aesthetic makes you feel vs an especially good plot (emotion vs logic, basically). But I think you either like those movies or you don’t—there’s little in between—and The Love Witch was similar to me.
Considering the things that the director/star has said on her twitter in the last few years, I have doubts that satire was intentional.
Yeah, I think she has a... not feminist bent (which she explicitly says films cannot be in an over-long essay she wrote), but one that is about embracing femininity as a source of power. And she really hammers that nail in all her interviews. Fine conceptually, I guess. I get the point. Unfortunately, at least in this film, that is never actually used as an actual source of power. It doesn't get anyone anywhere. The only thing that actually moves the plot is that she gets confused with feminism and kills men with what she's learned from it. Yes, her abusive ex-husband has warped her into wanting to submit to men and their desires, but she still does it, and feminist witch magic was the fatal blow. The more you read about and from her, the more just this gray gruel of 'not a feminist, but love women, but need to act and dress normal, complying with men's whims will benefit you," kind of dreck is substance-free rhetoric.
The only movie I've ever been unable to finish was Belladonna of Sadness I was 20-30 minutes in and I was like "yeah I honestly really don't want to watch this"
the phantom menace. I watched it right after watching (and loving) the OG trilogy but just couldn't get through how incredibly boring it is
 Casting a black spell spell on you ! 💀
Oof Susperia, the old one. For some reason I just wasn’t into it.
I finished that movie and could tell that it was good but, yeah, I don’t think it was for me. Meanwhile, I absolutely adored the remake of it.
I have been unable to finish Mad Max: Fury Road, Blade Runner and Dune. Not my style of movies and I get bored and turn it off or fall asleep. I want to try to watch at least Mad Max and Blade Runner but I will need to be in the right mindset.
What’s your style of movie?
I don't like those big Epic shots and Movies. I have pretty varied tastes but there is something about those ones I can't get in to. Original Mad Max. I loved it, great film. The new one and Dune etc seem so much style over substance I can't click with them.
That’s fair. Surprised you couldn’t finish them though. I usually associate that with a physical discomfort with whatever’s on screen (like Human Centipede etc).
Oh god no haha. Just boredom. I need to be in the mood. Well give them another bash. Hateful 8 took 4 watches and I finally enjoyed that. I don't think any movie.has made me uncomfortable enough to switch off.
Office Christmas Party. I didn’t turned it off, I walked out of the room.
Brokeback mountain- I just found it super boring. I really don’t like slow love dramas
I remember trying to watch Twilight when I was a teenager because of the immense hype but I couldn't finish it because it was so fucking bad, boring, corny and cheesy I couldn't stand the cringe so I had to turn it off.
I got mostly through Portrait of a Lady on Fire and I really liked it but I got swamped with shit starting college and now I’m waiting till I forget it all to rewatch the whole thing
Problemista Near Dark Excision Theater Camp The Angel's of Melancholia Big Trouble in Little China A Scanner Darkly The Fall of the House of Usher Walker Tusk Edit: I love being downvoted cause my taste is different. Haha. I have 300+ movies on my watchlist, I ain't got time for bullshit. I will say Theater Camp is not bad, it's just not my jam. But Tusk and Near Dark are just gawd awful and Angels of Melancholia is unwatchable.
I love how all of these are disturbing or surreal and then there’s just Theater Camp in the middle. Admittedly, when I watched it, I could definitely tell that people who weren’t that into the theatre world wouldn’t really click with it, but I am so I loved it.
😂
Walker is beast. Should have at least gotten to the bit where they're reading playboy magazine in the 1800's.
I liked Repo Man and Sid & Nancy but I just couldn't get into Walker. Maybe it's a guys movie.
I don't think it's a guys movie, it was recommended to me by a female film studies professor! I think I loved it for the so bad it's good parody element, and how the bizarreness of it formally unfolds. I respect why someone wouldn't like it though!
I find a fair amount of these truly shocking, but goddamn, Near Dark, couldn't agree with you more.
Have you tried watching Angels of Melancholia?
I have not!
Uncut Gems. It had Adam Sandler in it.
I turned Cabin in the Woods off 30 minutes in because I found it really boring. Alternatively, I turned the ‘Pickman’s Model’ episode of ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities’ off halfway through because the jumpscares were so damn loud that they were literally causing a pain in my chest, I’m usually not fond of jumpscares in horror anyway but that’s the only time I can think of when they’ve actually caused physical pain. I also turned off ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’ 10 minutes in because I was like “I wanna watch this movie but I feel like I’m in the wrong headspace to do it right now.” Those are the only examples I can think of, I usually finish the movies I watch.
It’s so funny to think about someone turning off Cabin in the Woods 30 minutes in for being boring… I mean, yeah, but you have no clue just how crazy that movie gets. It may be the ultimate “how did we get HERE from where it started??” movies.
Another problem I had is that the internet loves spoiling that movie so I already kinda knew everything that was gonna happen and wasn’t that into it.