By Keith Uhlich
Mike D'Angelo's turned it into an art form. Several colleagues claim never to do it. I prefer to stick it out, but often find my professional moral code bending irrevocably in the wake of the truly, truly godawful. Todd Solondz's intentionally crude Palindromes drove me off after its Freaks-inspired dinner scene. Oliver Stone's The Doors so pummeled me with its sensory bombast that I ran screaming for cover. The insipid animated musical FernGully: The Last Rainforest lost my goodwill after Robin Williams's Dolby-thudding rap interlude. Not to come off all high-and-mighty, for I suspect that these examples reveal more about my personal hangups and foibles than I normally care to let on. The question (with resultant self-analysis) is therefore begged: What movies have driven you to legs-in-motion revolt?
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Q: What movies have you walked out of? A:
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94 comments:
I walked out of Jumanji in sheer terror when I was younger, but "younger" was actually alarmingly old to be afraid of evil boardgames. (Several years before that I also ran out crying when a friend put on a tape of Nightmare on Elm Street 3. It's probably a good thing that I don't watch much horror now...)
More recently, Dancer in the Dark. Twice, in fact. I hated the style, and the whole thing seemed like a horrible exercise in creating the most depressing story possible. Made it through the third time, though, and the last five minutes made the rest worthwhile.
Ghost World. Slow, monochromatic, unfunny, and mean joke about psoriasis (sp?).
Chuck & Buck
There's Something About Mary
I don't walk out often, but the most recent time was Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. I could only get through about half of it. Seeing that my onetime hero Albert Brooks had fallen so far -- from Defending Your Life through The Muse is basically a free-fall -- depressed me beyond words. Trite, smug, Hollywood-liberal-Oscar-night b.s., and not even funny.
I've never walked out on a movie in a movie theater (yet), but there was one movie I remember watching on TV and then turning off out of disgust: Maniac, that 1980 William Lustig sleazefest with Joe Spinell---supposedly a respected character actor before that point---playing a depraved killer of women with some Mommy issues. But then, I'm fairly certain many people with taste would have found it fairly easy to walk out on such a sicko movie. (If you're a fan of Tom Savini's gruesome gore effects, though, there's a doozy of an effect involving a gruesome blown-off head.)
I hate turning off videos or walking out of the cinema, but sometimes a film like A Girl is a Gun, Histoire du Cinema, the 1990 Lord of the Flies, or The Gospel According to St. Matthew is just so tedious, stupid, amatueristic or plain awful that I have to escape it to save my sanity.
Never have. I pretty much never go to films that are gonna be so mediocre as to deserve a walk out, while the films I despise are pretty much always worth enduring if only to guarantee I have a complete and cogent argument against 'em.
But, of course, there have been dozens of dvd's and video's that I've given the heave-ho. Desptie several tries, I've never made it past the first hour of Farewell My Concubine, for instance.
Jackie Chan's Mr. Nice Guy.
Leolo, by Yves Simoneau. This was a dreamy yet highly-disturbing film from a French-Canadian version of David Lynch. I escaped just before a drugged-out kid attempted bestiality with a cat.
My father and I walked out of Lords of Flatbush when I was about 10. It was the second half of a double feature at a repertory theatre and the beginning of the film was painfully slow and amateurish and we had no patience for it. Since then I've pretty much stuck around for everything I've seen in the theatre. I do have plenty of DVDs I've quit on though - most recently I stopped watching 2046 about half way through. My wife was adamant we put something else on and I never got around to watching the end.
For the record, Ghost World is a great movie.
Dan: Andrew Dignan and I talked about this same issue: Is it necessary to sit through the entire film to be able to state an opinion on it? Or is walking out an opinion in and of itself?
Other movies I left prematurely as a casual moviegoer: At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Hellraiser 2. I would have walked out of Toys, Jimmy Hollywood and Renaissance Man if I hadn't been with a friend who made them bearable. And I would have bolted Vatel and The Eighth Day if I hadn't been assigned to review them.
Also, Kyle: Histoire(s) du Cinema? Really? It's a committment, to be sure, and dense as hell, but worth the effort.
Also, did you mean Girl with Gun (2006), Two Brothers, a Girl and a Gun (1993) or something else? There are a lot of movies with variants of that title.
I'm a projectionist, so I have to sit through a lot of films I wouldn't ever choose to watch. But as a willing and (initially) enthusiastic audience member, the two films I've walked out on are the Kevin Kline _Midsummer Night's Dream_ and the recent critical darling _The World_. In the first case, I gave nearly an hour of my life to it, and in the second almost 90 minutes, and in both experiences I was rewarded only with a deepening conviction that I had been scammed out of my time by directors and films with utterly no merit, no skill, no artistry. Artistic failure is one thing: at least in order to fail you have to be trying in the first place. These are con-games, though.
On the other hand, I've watched, and really liked, many of the films already mentioned here: Ghost World, Dancer in the Dark, There's Something About Mary, Leolo, Farewell My Concubine.
The only times I walked out of a film were when I was seeing a double bill, and the first film was SO GOOD that trying to sit through a mediocre film immediately afterward turned out to be impossible.
So I walked out of Aelita after just having watched Solaris, and I walked out of Les Carabiniers after having just watched Masculin-Feminine.
Oh, and I walked out of Broken Arrow when the sound was massively screwed up (surround channels blaring out of the screen left speaker) and they wouldn't do anything about it.
Matt:
Since our last discussion I in fact watched Looking For Comedy. Let's just say you're forgiven for bolting.
But yes, I have never walked out of a film in a movie theater, partially because I'm cheap and something about the idea of giving the filmmaker my $11 (or whatever their cut is after the theater gets theirs) and not getting my full "money's worth" is anathema to me. Also, something about enduring a really awful film just so you can go bitch about it all over town is its own special sort of reward. I desperately wanted to walk out of 3000 Miles to Graceland but somehow I knew the vitriol would be that much lessened if I left the theater before that stinker ended.
Now, that being said I have shut a number of films off on video and dvd, never to return to them, most memorable being Michel Gondry's lesser known first film Human Nature. Something about all that cloying, unchecked whimsy being shoved down your throat… I didn’t really hate it, but imagine a Bjork video that was 2 hours long and you get the idea. Doesn’t exactly have me looking forward to Science of Sleep.
ps.
Blogspot's log-in stinks this morning. If this goes through it'll be after the tenth attempt.
I saw nearly an hour of Titanic.
And Armageddon.
i've enjoyed or at least tolerated most of the films already mentioned, but in the mid-70's i walked out on "Les Valseuses" (Going Places), the Bertrand Blier film with Depardieu, Deware, Miou-Miou, and Jeanne Moreau. i've happily sat through hundreds of worse films, but as a young feminist Going Places was just too much. i should check it out now; i don't hate Blier's later films, and it may have aged well. Generally i'll watch anything, if only to mock it later.
Anybody who considers themselves a critic - even if they're not getting paid - has a professional obligation to stay until the credits. If for no other reason than to see how it plays out (the last five minutes of Dancer in the Dark being a good example - but the fleeting satisfaction I get at the very end of that movie still doesn't make up for the rest of it to me).
I've never walked out of anything. Fallen asleep, yes, but I cherish my rage when something turns out to be bad.
(and Palindromes is a great movie.)
I walked out of Crash and 21 Grams, and the reason I walked out was because I had seen enough & didn't want to spend anymore time with these films.
Obviously Crash has turned out to be an incredibly divisive film. I'm one of those who thought that it was badly written, badly acted, and badly directed. When I got the awards screener in the mail, my husband & I put it in to see if we were wrong, because we'd been told that we just had to give it a chance. After watching the whole thing, I think we were right, and the disc went promptly in the trash where it belonged.
21 Grams was a big style-over-substance so-what for me. I was very bored and not connecting with any of the characters, as was the husband, so we walked out.
Come to think of it, back when Film Forum was doing their Fassbinder retrospective, we went to see almost all of them (I think we only missed the Dirk Bogarde one), and did walk out of 2 of them, Effi Briest and The American Friend.
i walked out of Corky Romano, but honestly, i'm not sure why i even walked in.
I walked out of Night at the Roxbury, the SNL Will Ferrell vehicle before Will Ferrell broke out. That being said, I didn't actually pay for Roxbury -- it was a free screening -- so I'm not sure if it counts.
I'm afraid that once I break the seal and walk out of a movie I paid for, I'll have no compunction about continuing to do it.
(Now that I think about it, as a kid I walked out of the egregious Star Wars knockoff Wizards of the Lost Kingdom. But that doesn't count either...I was barely cognizant at that age.)
I would separate films that I walked out that I was seeing on my own (like Brian De Palma's "Snake Eyes") to films I walked on while there to review, which I wrote about leaving in the review such as "Speed Zone" and "The Big Green." Once, I walked out on John Singleton's "Baby Boy," but it wasn't the film's fault -- the audience was so obnoxious I couldn't concentrate on the film.
Fun idea for a post...it's also worth mentioning that I get either my money back or a pass to another movie when this happens. My feeling is that the movie theatres are delivering a product. If I'm not happy with said product, they owe me a new prodcut.
I'm not sure if these are just the most recent in my memory, or if I've just become more impatient in recent times, but...
DARK BLUE with Kurt Russell. I get THE SHIELD for free whenever I want it - didn't feel like paying to sit and watch a second-rate Vic Mackey. (And it pains me to type that, as I've never, EVER walked out of or turned off a Kurt movie before.)
The remake of THE FOG - excruciatingly dull.
But the Number One movie that had me bolting for the door, the flick to which nails on a chalkboard would've been considered Mozart if placed next to...
MUST LOVE DOGS. This is a movie I hated so much I'm pretty sure I would've come down with a physical ailment had I finished it. I ended up calling it MUST LOVE DOGSHIT & have referred to it as such ever since. And this comes from the guy who worships LOVE ACTUALLY, so it's got nothing to do with me being averse to so-called chick-flicks.
I never review anything if I haven't seen the whole film. That just seems fair to me. If I walk out, and it's happened once or twice, I don't write about it. What Mike D'Angelo does is perfectly acceptable, I think, because he doesn't ever pretend that he's reviewing a whole film when he writes those little anti-blurbs.
I remember wanting desperately to walk out of Blues Brothers 2000, but they were showing it on a bus.
When I was 12 and my little brother was 11, we both walked out of Last Action Hero to hang out in the parking lot and wait for our mom to pick us up.
Maybe SPOILER ahead...
I, too, am more of a sleeper than a bolter. I dozed soundly through a DEAR WENDY screening last year, and awoke to find that almost everyone else had fled in boredom. It left me without the energy for movement, as bad films, or films that just aren't clicking for me, often do. TIDELAND had much the same effect on me, but I somehow managed to stay awake for more of that (your "reward" is a big train crash tableaux toward the end).
Some movies do pick up after a slow start, but if machine-tooled Hollywood product isn't working within the first 20-25 minutes it's never going to get off the ground. Hello, DA VINCI CODE, no matter what the gross was. There are whole blocs of movies I know better than to attend, like teen and "ethnic" comedies, PG-13 horror films aimed at the kids, etc.--which basically means I see very few Hollywood films that open in the Jan.-Apr. desert. And the studios wonder where the adults are.
Sadly, reading subtitled films, good, bad, or indifferent, tends to make my aging eyes sag. I have to be fresh and alert when I see them. But I don't fall asleep completely on them.
I have no problem leaving a bad theater piece at intermission--goodbye, RING OF FIRE, the Johnny Cash musical--but would never do so if I'm reviewing it.
I wish I'd walked out of Natural Born Killers, which was repulsive in subject and nauseatingly edited.
More than that, though, I wish I could have had a lobotomy at some point during Forrest Gump, which I had studiously avoided for years before being obliged into watching it at the behest of a friend doing me a large favor. Better a vegetable than to live with that movie in my head.
I walked out of Eric Rohmer's "Perceval le Gallois" in 1982 after about 30 minutes of wondering, "When is the movie going to begin? This CAN'T be the real movie..." The user comments on IMDB are so positive that there's part of me that wonders whether I missed something, but at the time I was genuinely angry at myself for not finding out more about the movie, which tells a King Arthur-era story entirely in sung verse. Not my cup of tea.
Hayden -- I'm always pleased when I discover someone else who despised Natural Born Killers. I've even posted my old review of it on my blog, if you'd like to read it. I think it sounds like you might enjoy it.
Rued: it's also worth mentioning that I get either my money back or a pass to another movie when this happens. My feeling is that the movie theatres are delivering a product. If I'm not happy with said product, they owe me a new prodcut.
Ross, with all due respect, people like you make my day job a living hell.
The movie theater's responsiblilty is that the film is projected properly at an appropriate sound level in a comfortable auditorium. We present the movie, we don't make 'em - and therefore can only guarantee quality of presentation.
Demanding your money back because you disagree with creative decisions made by the filmmakers -- ie, circumstances that have nothing to do with the theatre you are viewing it in-- makes you just as horrible as the awful old ladies who are too fucking lazy to read up on what they're watching and storm out of CLERKS 2 after 90 minutes because "those kids have filthy mouths."
Ugh, sorry. Can you tell I'm writing from work today?
I can't recall the last movie i walked out of, but i definitely recall one of the first .. I'm ashamed that, when I was very young, even the orcs in the animated Lord of the Rings were just too terrifying for me, so we had to leave the theater
The last film I walked out of, about 45 minutes in, was PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST. Before that, it was the final installment of THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, because it just seemed an unbearable amount of time to deposit a ring on a mountain.
Maniac is a kick-ass slasher movie. A great score by Goblin. The cat-and-mouse chase through the subway is a brilliantly executed piece of suspense moviemaking. It's interesting to note Maniac was released the same year as Cruising and Dressed to Kill. Those movies could be taken as a strange tilogy of sexual obsession and sexual indentity crisis. Think about it.
I've never walked out of a movie. I'm pretty good at guessing which movies I should wait for home video or should just skip altogether. I would've loved to have walked out of Lethal Weapon 4. It was just depressing to see what Joel Silver and Richard Donner had done to characters I had grown to love. I also wanted to leave Meet Joe Black. Talk about a load. There was one good scene: Anthony Hopkins talking to his younger daughter who understands that he loves his other daughter more. It surprised me how much I was moved by that scene. The rest was a bust.
I think critics have the right to walk out of movies. If they choose to write about the movie they should just write about what they saw and what caused them to leave. Kael did that with the underrated adaptation of the Harold Pinter play Betrayal.
I guess my life is boring enough that I'll sit through just about anything.
The only time I've left a movie was The General's Daughter, and that's because my date wanted to leave. Though I almost walked out of "O."
First: Ross, with all due respect, people like you make my day job a living hell.
I understand the sentiment completely having managed three different movie theatres in my heyday.
Second:
SHADOW CONSPIRACY. Why did my dad take me? He stayed in, though, after I got a headache and told me all about the remote controlled helicopter with a machine gun. Kind of wish I'd stuck it out...
Also:
Circumstances were a little weird but I had no problem leaving LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE after the first act in Albuqurque. Since then I saw it all the way through and enjoyed it fine but it sure has a bunch of "indie" cliches that irked me out of the feel good groove.
At home:
I shut off SPUN as soon as Schwartzman slammed the door and the CD started skipping. I don't know how I got to that point--I wanted to die. Or watch FINDING NEMO forever.
It's awful being a film critic, but at least you're getting paid. It's even worse seeing a movie with a film critic: You pretty much can't walk out of a movie. But you can leave the theater and make a few phone calls, as I did during "I Love Trouble" and "Wyatt Earp."
But then, there are times that you're in a private screening room and there's nowhere to flee to. Such was my plight when seeing "The House of D," which holds the record for being the earliest I ever wanted to leave: After the very first line, Duchovny's gravelly, pretentious "My name is Tom Warshaw, and I'm an American artist living in Paris for the past 20 years." And it was all downhill from there (this was the film that, notoriously, had Robin Williams playing a mentally slow janitor).
Well, add another to my list and carve another notch in happenstance's scoreboard. Today, same day as publishing this article, I walked out of a film I was scheduled to review: Otar Iosseliani's Gardens in Autumn, an absolutely excruciating "comedy" that drove me to the exit upon the sight of Michel Piccoli in Mother Bates drag.
I cop to the walk-out in my notes on the film: my editor rightly won't be running it as a stand-alone review, though it will be part of the New York Film Festival feature we're running on Slant.
Sean: I agree with Ross, if you really don't like a film then you should get your money back or see another show, (although, you should make your move before the half-way point). I don't care if the chicken is throughly cooked and served on a clean plate by a pleasant server, if the meal tastes like crap then I want it fixed. It may not be the server's fault but he's the one who has to take it back to the kitchen. I do feel for you though, man. I worked in theaters for years and those bitty-types can drive you crazy.
I never thought I would walk out on anything, but I did with The Secret Garden (1990's?) release,(why screw with basic elements in an already proven story? arrogant) and The Blair Witch Project,(the jerky camera actually made me physically sick).
Sean -
I knew that tidbit probably wouldn't win me any points around here, but I had to say it, and I still agree with it.
While I also know that I'm probably not going to have some huge impact on what movies are shown, exhibitors DO choose which flicks will be shown at their theatre - and there are many, many films from which to choose. If I don't stand up and say, "Hey, this is crap - you owe me a better a flick for my money", then what kind of message is being sent? That whatever movies are made are just what we have to deal with, whether we like them or not?
I know it's a dodgy issue to be sure, but exhibitors look at films as their product, right? If they can't deliver a decent product, then we all get nowhere. A manager makes me *very* happy for reimbursing me for time wasted in situations such as this.
Unless the studios set up a system where people can send in their ticket stub for reimbursement, this is the only solution I've come up with.
I do agree with Duffy however, that the move should be made somewhere around or before the halfway point - if, after all, I was able to stomach the whole thing, then it couldn't have been ~that~ bad.
In any case Sean, I do apologize for my breed making your life a living hell. If it makes any difference, I almost never go to the movies anymore due to all manner of bad experiences (not always related exclusively to bad "product") and prefer to sit home and watch DVDs. Now THAT, sir, is a prevalent attitude sure to make your day job non-existent altogether. (Which I'll take no delight in, but you'll have standing invite to come hang with me and watch flix at my place.)
Duffy: I don't care if the chicken is throughly cooked and served on a clean plate by a pleasant server, if the meal tastes like crap then I want it fixed.
Kind of a wack analogy, no? It's not like we've got filmmakers toiling away in the kitchen preparing the movies specifically for you. ("Could you please take this back, I asked for no profanity.")
I'd say the situation is more like returning to the record store after listening to half a Shins album, demanding store credit because "it didn't change your life." Or showing up at Barnes & Noble outraged and wanting a refund because Dan Brown can't write.
And Ross, are you really trying to tell me that you thought THE FOG remake was going to be a good movie, and you were so devestated by the result that somebody else needs to take fiducairy responsibility for your choice to go see it? You seem like a sentient human being... gimmie a break.
The fact is that most theatres (mine included) have a money-back policy during the first half-hour after a picture's start time. This tends to accomodate the "Oh shit! There are subtitles! Run away!" crowd.
As we can see from the many disparate examples in this thread, one guy's masterpiece is another guy's nightmare. So how should somebody program a theatre to accomodate all these different tastes and sensibilities?
Or perhaps, maybe consumers could grow up, do a little reasarch about what it is they're plunking down their money to see (I see no shortage of film descriptions and opinions on this here Internet thingie) and maybe take a little responsibility for their own decision if the flick doesn't exactly turn out to be to their liking?
Truly, I have never walked out on a movie. I thought about it when I had free tickets to Hulk Hogan in Suburban Commando, and nobody would go with me. They were free tickets, I went. I watched it. However, I have slept through films. And operas.
Fade in: A cold, rainy Sunday in foggy San Francisco. SFX: cablecars. A local theater hosts an annual silent (classic) film festival. Four features, I have comp tickets at the door. After an indulgent Saturday night, I stretched out in the back row seats on Sunday morning still intoxicated and recently caffeinated. At 11.00am it opened with Clara Bow, the “it” girl. I loved it, even though now that I write I don’t quite remember it. The second feature was a mystical Arabian sort of enchantment, with princes in turbans and misty mountaintops. I sank in my seats, unable to read the subtitles, but in good view of the screen. I gently fell asleep and awoke at various times, finding myself approaching a castle and then realizing where I really was.
The third feature was another film I don’t recall much of at all.
Before the fourth and final feature I did refresh myself as such I would be able to enjoy the show. I think it began around 5.30 or 6.00pm. The film was Wings, 1929. It was one of the few films which made me post in Odienator’s article Boys Do Cry. Then I went home and went to sleep the end.
Duffy: Continuing this thread's spiral into the depths of relativity, I loved The Secret Garden.
Ross: You're coming at this topic from an unusual angle -- the assumption that the exhibitor is a retailer offering a choice of goods. The only problem with that is that most movie theaters have little or no say in what gets played, since decisions are made at corporate headquarters. So in striking a blow against the suits, you hit the middleman. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just quibbling.
Sean: It'll do your theater managing heart good to know I've never asked for a refund in my life based on not liking a movie -- only because projection and/or sound were horrid and the staff was unresponsive or unable to fix it.
But when working at the Inwood theater in Dallas back in 1990-91, I did give a number of refunds to people who paid to see The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down! assuming that the NC-17/X rating meant porn, and were immensely annoyed to discover that both movies had a plot, symbolism and stuff.
Wait a minute -- I just thought of an exception. As a senior in high school, I asked for a refund an hour into Funny Farm, on the grounds that it wasn't funny and Chevy Chase was creeping me out.
Sean -
I'll meet you halfway. Two of the the three movies I listed (THE FOG & MUST LOVE DOGS) were movies I went to see when I was doing unpaid movie reviews for a radio show (story of my life).
Every Friday I had to pick ~something~, and there were times when it came down to such fare. (Just so everybody knows - my reviews consisted of "This was so lame, I walked out" - yup, I pulled a Joel Siegel [minus the verbal stink]). So I was pissier than the normal joe on the issue.
But I also would always preface my reviews with "And I went to see this at the Regal Cinemas Blah Blah and you can see it there, too". So I was doing something to give Regal or whatever theatre some plug, but when I saw a crappy flick, I felt Regal owed me a refund. My case is unique, and maybe I should have stated that upfront.
But seriously dude - and I know enough about exhibitors to know that the movie ticket is not largely where you guys make your money: it's the concessions. It cannot truly be that big of a hassle or loss to slide someone a free pass if they hated a movie enough to walk out and ask to speak to a manager on the issue. To my mind, that's just good business, no? Keep the customer happy - surely that's something you care about, right? (Seriously, tell me if I'm wrong here.)
Matt -
You raise a good point, but therein is also a big part of the problem with the entire movie-making/exhibitor codependency. They have to rely on each other to exist (at least for the time being), and yet the exhibitors are totally at the mercy of the studios. It's a nasty, vicious cycle and I'm probably not helping anyone by bringing it up.
Two words: Gone Fishin'.
I hardly ever walk out of a movie and I've never asked for a refund, but I have slept through several. Edward Scissorhands comes to mind. As to walking out, well Ed Copeland, does a little radio screening of Staying Together ring a bell?
Sean: "one guy's masterpiece is another guy's nightmare."
You sure got that right. And since somebody double dog dared me, I'll fess up -- I walked out of Blade Runner the first time I saw it.
I remember the first movie I walked out of. 'Fatso' starring Dom Delouise (sp?) It was the first time that I found out that jokes could be so bad as to be not only unfunny but painful to watch. I also discovered that my love of Burt Reynolds had gone too far and led me thus astray. This after 72 viewings of 'Smokey and the Bandit' in a neighborhood competition run amok had not.
Ross: It cannot truly be that big of a hassle or loss to slide someone a free pass if they hated a movie enough to walk out and ask to speak to a manager on the issue. To my mind, that's just good business, no?
No it isn't that big of a loss or really that much of hassle at all, and typically I wind up doing so --all the while smiling, choking back the bile and rushing home to drink.
But really this is more of a philosophical issue for me... when you work in customer service long enough you get fed up pretty fast with people's often absurd sense of entitlement.
I simply can't wrap my mind around why a movie theater should be held responsible for whether or not the content of a film suits a person's particular fancy. And yet it has become increasingly common in my experience for people to behave as if somehow the ticket price includes a money-back guarantee of their personal enjoyment.
Awhile back we had a large blow-up of Boston Globe critic Ty Burr's four-star TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE review hanging in our lobby. One night, a particularly unreasonable gentleman came out after the movie demanding a refund for himself and his family because "that was not a four-star movie."
After an, I fear, fruitless explanation from yours truly regarding the necessity of subjectivity in modern criticism, the outraged gentleman wound up leaving voice-mail messages for Ty at the newspaper office, insisting that he was owed money.
Sort of follows your logic to its natural end-point, no?
I tend to walk out of movies that have been doing okay for most of their running times, but then start to go quickly downhill. Howard's Ransom comes to mind, as does Denis's Trouble Every Day. I'd rather preserve the memory of a good hour-and-a-half rather than watch it get spoiled. The only movie that offended me so much that I couldn't watch another frame was A Time to Kill. And, as for movie-patron refunds, I worked as an usher in high school and a woman ran out of Heat, in tears, because she had been sleeping soundly for an hour when, all of a sudden, loud machine gun fire woke her up. It went on for so long that she started screaming, as if overcome with night terrors, freaking out the entire audience. I gladly asked the manager to give her husband a refund. It's one reason I love Heat.
Or, to flog this dead horse from a slightly different angle... am I entitled to get my money back or a pass for a free game at Fenway Park just because the Red Sox played like shit? (A policy like that would come in pretty handy these days!)
The only film I've ever walked out, Kingpin, certainly deserves to be revisited, given my affection, today, for its directors.
Sean:
"am I entitled to get my money back or a pass for a free game at Fenway Park just because the Red Sox played like shit?"
No, but I think you are if less than 2 of their opening day starters are in the line-up.
As someone who worked as an exhibitor (aka one of the suits), for the most part an 8-plex and above is going to play everything that isn't an art film release (unless it crosses over, ala Crouching Tiger). Granted art films become a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure in smaller markets, but the bottom line is that top to bottom the industry doesn't nuture that market. I agree that it should, but I understand why not (the short answer: the industry has never seen the long term).
As someone who worked in the industry and had to watch numerous movies simply because someone had to at least catch a reel, I can't count how many films I walked out of. Agent Cody Banks 2, Held Up, You Got Served, Light it Up, etc. etc. Now that I think about it, it's amazing how much I actually sat through, including such less thans as Teaching Misses Tingle, Valentine, The Punisher, Down to You, etc. One of the films I walked out of in frustration, only to finish on DVD, and yet still find lacking is PT Anderson's Magnolia.
As a critic, I don't think you have to sit through something to get it, though I do think you have to be as receptive to the experience as possible. For me there was great pleasure in going into films and expecting nothing from the likes of, say, Torque and then having a blast with them. Something you can't get from seeing the new Coen Brothers, etc. Or like when a friend gave me Memories of Murder to watch and I only knew it was recommended.
Great question. I walked out on Jungle Fever like twenty years ago when it first came out. Not really because of the movie; the audience was out of control crazy. But I've come to pretty much not be able to bear Spike Lee, so it works.
I've walked out on maybe ten movies or so since, but that's the one that sticks with me the most.
I forgot about Staying Together -- but we left with very little left to go when the film broke and they weren't able to fix it in a reasonable amount of time.
Hey, Ross? I think you're forgetting that ancient (Chinese?) adage: "It was worth the price of admission just to get the hell out of there."
I walked out of 'Natural Born Killers' right after the fake sitcom Rodney Dangerfield molesting Julliette Lewis scene complete with laugh track. My pal was a projectionist at the theatre and both of us got in for free. He saw the whole movie just the scenes were never in the right order, so that might have added to this enjoyment of the movie. I have never watched the movie.
It seems Hayden Childs and I have a similar anti-taste in movies, though I have never watched Forrest Gump, and as long as I am in control of my eyes, and the ability to move, hopefully I never will!
Also, when I was four I walked out of a College of Wooster student theatre production of 'Alice in Wonderland.' I thought they really were going to chop of her head.
Ed G: KINGPIN is pretty great. Granted, this is an adolescent memory and I stayed away from FEVER PITCH (which you liked, right?) but still, the third act with Bill Murray is pretty hilarious.
Oh boy...I feel so responsible for this derailment. If anyone wants a refund for this talkback, I guess I'll have to pay up. (Sorry Keith.)
I'm going to take it somewhere else, though, that you Sean might appreciate, in regard to the "sense of entitlement" you spoke of and also because it involves another way of watching movies you're familiar with...
Back in my laserdisc selling days, I once had this customer. He bought the player from us and then started buying the discs...and it didn't take him long to start returning various discs. Why? Because the picture wasn't "perfect" - and I'm talking one blip or one speck here or there - even if it was just one during the ENTIRE DISC. He and I spent I don't know how many hours replaying discs with him saying, "There!! Did you see it?" ("Um, yeah - I saw it.")
He was sold the notion (not by me) that this was the "perfect" vid format and he wasn't settling for anything less - and unless every single disc he bought was perfection, he just couldn't hang with the format. In the end, we had to take back all of his discs and refund him the money he spent on the player as this was beginning to cause him visible stress and anxiety.
So I get you better than you think, man. I really do.
nspector -
In the case of MUST LOVE DOGS, I wish I'd thought of that.
"I remember wanting desperately to walk out of Blues Brothers 2000, but they were showing it on a bus."
I had this experience once, with The Odd Couple II, and it is excruciating. Because not only did I want to leave, I never wanted to be there in the first place. There is no escape.
As a critic, I do feel honor-bound to sit through movies, although I always tell my guests at screenings that just because I have to stay, they shouldn't feel like they have to as well.
Hey, what about movies on an airplane where you literally can't walk out? Yes, you can not get the headphones, but you're still forced to cross the country seeing Steve Martin play Sgt. Bilko. Now, that was hell...
Hey I walked out of an Oscar winner -- Braveheart -- and don't regret it a bit. I ain't gonna watch torture and particularly not any of Mel Gibson's sado/masochistic Christ/martyr complex crap.
Edward, thanks for the review! I did indeed enjoy it.
Nicanor is obviously smarter than I for having steadfastly avoided Forrest Gump and for having actually gotten up to walk out of Natural Born Killers, while I, miserably, would have found it socially awkward to do so.
Also, strange that That Little Round-Headed Boy mentioned Sgt. Bilko. This is exactly the movie I think of when the subject of bad movies on airplanes comes up (as, y'know, it does), based on a long, long trans-atlantic flight in the dark days before iPods.
I sure as hell wish I had walked out of What Dreams May Come.
City Slickers II. And Bambi, but technically I was carried out of that one, wailing.
Before that, it was the final installment of THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, because it just seemed an unbearable amount of time to deposit a ring on a mountain.
I hear that, TLRHB. I didn't walk out, but I wanted to. Ditto for King Kong. Luckily I had a bottle of wine for that one...
I've never walked out on a film: not Benigni's Pinocchio, not the harmless but boring Jungle Book 2, not some of the wretchedly bad or abusively long student films I've seen. I'm always curious about what will come next, no matter how "bad" I think the film is.
But it's not on principle that I don't walk out. I'm still not sure how I feel about the "critic has an obligation to stay for the film" debate. As long as you don't misrepresent yourself by implying that you have stayed for the whole thing, what's so wrong with this? I feel like it's assuming a Consumer Reports-like role for the critic...
Oh, I will leave a movie for a cigarette. And maybe I'm more likely to go for a few breaks if I'm not enjoying myself--Gods and Generals, I'm looking at you!
When I was an "art house" exhibitor (Market Theater in Seattle's Pike Place Market), I turned to my booking partner during the exhibitors' screening of "Runaway Train" and said: "If Eric Roberts says, 'Hey, Manny!' one more time, I'm outta here." It was a matter of seconds, as I recall, before we were on our way to the Two Bells Tavern for some delicious burgers...
I think extra points should be given to walk outs on Oscar winners. Well .. . . it's got to be a genuine walk out. I don't want to start some kind of walk out fad just so people can come to The House Next Door and brag about it. Integrity, people, integrity!
I had never walked out of a movie prior to 11 September 2001. On 12 September, still trapped at the Toronto Film Festival, and suddenly convinced that life is far too short to indulge movies that clearly aren't working for me, I bailed on three (and also saw three in full—it was a long day). The experience was liberating. I was a hostage no more.
That said, I always give the movie two reels (about 35-40 minutes) to grab me, I never walk out of anything I've been assigned professionally (it's almost exclusively a festival practice), and I generally stick with anything by a well-known and respected director no matter how tedious I find it. But I couldn't survive New Directors/New Films or Un Certain Regard these days without the freedom to bolt.
Matt: As for Histoire du Cinema, I think it's mostly that I have never been able to get really any enjoyment out of experimental cinema, and, though this may be heresy, I really don't like Godard post-Masculin-Feminin, which I do think is one of the best films ever (good canon choice, Schrader). I appreciated what Godard was doing with Histoire, but really couldn't get into it at all.
A Girl is a Gun is the American release title for Une Aventure de Billy le Kid, a French New Wave "comedy" that played here in Seattle recently as part of a Luc Moullet retrospective. The film was painful, and I made it only 25 minutes through before asking for a refund. I found nary a laugh in the film, just a lot of forced overacting (supposedly that's funny), and purposefully error-prone continuity. Unless you are a hard-core New Waver, I would stay way the hell away.
Kyle: When it comes to experimental cinema, the word "enjoy" acquires new shadings, I'll grant you that. The pleasures are intellectual first, then emotional (satisfaction and delight at having put the pieces together). There are exceptions for me, and one of them is Stan Brakhage, who's about as abstract as they come; sometimes I'll just throw on one of the DVDs from the Criterion box set and just groove on it, the way one might put on a favorite album and flip to a random track.
That said, Brakhage can clear a college film class like nobody else. As an undergrad film student and projectionist, I had a professor who devoted a whole two-hour class to Brakhage and Maya Deren. He showed a couple of Derens first -- good move, since her movies are short, elegant and decodable in terms of Freud and Jung -- but when I threaded up Prelude: Dog Star Man, the exodus began and accelerated with each minute until the only people left in the 200-seat auditorium were the professor, me and three students, one of whom was my girlfriend.
PS -- Great Reason Magazine interview with Brakhage here, if anyone's interested. In it, he expresses affection for Superman, The Movie -- which borrowed some visual elements from his work -- and Trey Parker and Matt Stone, two of his students.
But as usual, I digress.
Hey wait, I put Sgt. Bilko on my guilty pleasures list, and I wasn't even trapped on a plane.
I love watching the films of Stan Brakhage. It's sort of like getting drunk and looking at the backs of your eyelids. That's quite an accomplishment in my book.
At the age of five, I forced my father to leave Dr. Doolittle (the Rex Harrison one, obv) in the middle because I already knew was going to happen and found the music dull.
--Eraserhead. I was 19 and it was entirely too creepy.
More recently, Men of Respect... risible yet dull.
I managed to sit all the way through "Wing Commander" and "Batman Forever." I walked out of "the Waterboy" and "the Saint."
Oh, and the only two DVDs that I popped out mid-view (without just fast-forwarding to see if something interesting happened) were "Hollywood Homicide" and "Out of Sight."
Last one, I promise... my wife and I walked out of "the Bourne Identity" - I wasn't thrilled to be at a Matt Damon movie in the first place, and thankfully the entire movie was shot as either an extreme close-up or handheld shaky-cam, causing my wife to become physically ill and mercifully cutting the film short for us.
I was trapped on a trans-Atlantic flight with "American Beauty" showing... what a nightmare.
You know who can clear a college class? Harry Smith.
I have never walked out of a movie before (always thinking, "I paid for this. surely its gonna get better, right?"), but my wife and I did laugh inappropriately throughout QUEEN OF THE DAMNED.
Only walked out of two movies in my life:
Garden State, after the first 25 minutes.
I then walked into Catwoman, and left after ten.
"I remember wanting desperately to walk out of Blues Brothers 2000, but they were showing it on a bus."
I had this experience once, with The Odd Couple II, and it is excruciating. Because not only did I want to leave, I never wanted to be there in the first place. There is no escape.
So far this has happened to me with "Dr. Doolittle II", "Big Momma's House II", "The Animal", "Walking Tall", "Hidalgo", "Soul Plane", and "Heartbreakers", although that last one won me over in its last half.
I've only walked out of one movie that I paid to watch in the theater - "A Prairie Home Companion", because it kept making me cry and wonder if my life was going in the right direction and I felt like I needed to call my grandparents and talk to them as soon as possible. Also about 50% of it was musical performances and I had already heard the entire soundtrack CD several times.
As for videos, there's lots of movies that I've preferred sleep to watching. The example that leaps to mind is "The List of Adrian Messenger". My thought process was basically "Wait a minute. I'm here by myself, and I don't know what most of these disguised stars look like when they're not disguised anyway. And this movie is like "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" without any of the comedic elements. And even if I watch the whole thing for historical interest/coolness points, I won't be able to find anyone else under 60 who has seen it anyway. Why the heck did I rent this? Who cares?"
Oh, and the only two DVDs that I popped out mid-view (without just fast-forwarding to see if something interesting happened)
i do this when i have to read bad plays. for example, the one earlier this year where the characters all had numbers instead of names and were discussing their "identities". i mumbled to myself "dear God, not one of these..." and flipped ahead 20 pages where all of a sudden they have names and 2 battered wives in India are sharing a lesbian kiss. And you know i had to see how that managed to happen...
"Interiors". Right at the point that Geraldine Page begins sealing up a room with black electrical tape in preparation for her swan dive, if I'm remembering this correctly; it's been awhile.
Although, the way the peeling off of the tape was recorded was pretty neat. But not neat enough, you see, to keep me in the theater.
I wish someone would explain the virtues of "Manic" to me. I've tried on several occasions to get with it. I've failed each time. I much prefer the zonked-out dereliction of Abel Ferrara's "Driller Killer. That's kick-ass.
I rarely walk out on films.
But I did walk out on The Rose. And as I was making my way across the lobby, I could hear Bette Midler screaming, "Why is everyone leaving me?!"
When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle took me on a flight from SF to NY, and they accidentally put us in first class. So, fancy cheese, wine for the adults, fancy (but still pretty bad) food, and the movie was... Yes, Giorgio. I don't know what they were showing in coach, but suddenly the whole experience was not worth it.
I walked out of the critically acclaimed Barbarian Invasions (about halfway through) and (gasp!) Three Times (shortly after the third segment began). There were extenuating circumstances in each case, but I've never felt the need to revisit either one.
I walked out of Crash as an adult because it was badly acted, badly written and badly directed, and I walked out of the 3-D crapfest Parasite as a 10-year-old because it scared me too badly. My dad, who'd taken me to it (it was rated R) laughed at me the whole drive home.
I recently walked out on a Hungarian film called SEE YOU IN SPACE. The abortion clinic scene where the patient almost dies on the table was asking too much of the audience, I thought, after all the light comedy that preceded.
Well, what else? I walked out on ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE DON'T WANNA KNOW after the umpteenth excrement reference. Walked out on MONSTER-IN-LAW. And BOOGIE NIGHTS, too. After the Don Cheadle character was shot, there was no point in staying.
The Don Cheadle character was...shot? Figuratively?
As a result of my predilection towards cheesy horror and '60s/'70s sleaze, I'm a tough-skinned soul. I never thought I'd leave a film. That was before I met Scary Movie 2, which made me run in horror like a frightened schoolgirl from the tidal wave of idiocy. The real hell of it was when I realized, ten minutes later, that I'd have to walk back in, as I had no way to get home other than the people with whom I'd came... who were, of course, still sitting in the theater.
Since then, I've also bolted on the Sri Lankan non-starter Mansion by the Lake, though it wasn't my decision -- I could have toughed out the remaining 15-20 minutes, but my two companions had reached their limit. (If I remember my count correctly, we were the seventieth person or parties to make that long walk.)
And I really, really wanted to walk out of the pretentious pomo-porno George Bataille's Story of the Eye, but I would have just missed the concurrent showing of Primer, so I stuck with it. Early this year, I found even more reason to hate the film after actually reading the novella.
On the other hand, I'll give the heave-ho to about ten films a year on video -- the investment isn't as high and I distract easier. This year, I've shut off The Intruder (some crappy direct-to-video film, not the Denis), Zombie Honeymoon, Wings of Desire, Wheel of Time, Ginger Snaps Back and Jess Franco's Eugenie.
I'm so happy someone else mentioned Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. AWFUL, AWFUL STUFF. My eight-year-old son even wanted to bolt. Sad too, because I respected The Weather Man.
JJ sez:
The Big Blue, and proud of it.
I saw it--some of it, anyway--when I was eleven years old, with my father, at the Woburn multiplex. (back when movies like that still played multiplexes.) It can't have been my choice, so I was'nt exactly predisposed to it from the start, but...
The black & white opening was kinda interesting, as was the scene where the guy swims under the Arctic ice, and the suggestion that he's got Sub-Mariner-type amphibious powers.
But that was it. At first I was confused, then I got bored, and then actively frustrated, and finally it reached a point where Rosanna Arquette and the French guy (after what seemed like hours of nothing of interest happening) are splashing around like idiots in a fountain. I was like, "Why are these grownups acting so immature?" Cut to Rosanna and the French guy screwing in a hotel room. (at least, that's what I remember, I could be wrong.) That was it. I was eleven, I had zero interest in sex, I felt actively insulted by the movie, like it had teased me with hints of cool things (like a guy who can breathe underwater)then kept shoving all this other crap in my face. I did'nt give a goddamn about Rosanna Arquette's career as a reporter, or a diving contest, or their stupid affair. I stood up, told my father the movie sucked and I was going to watch something else. He tried to get me to sit back down and I aggresively disobayed him for one of the first time in my life by walking up the aisle. I can remember other people in the theater going, "The kid's right, this is awful."
So I left and went into Big. About nine minutes later my father came in and sat down next to me. (to this day I don't know how he guessed exactly what I was going to go into.) I was worried he was angry at me, but he leaned over and whispered, "Good choice."
We ended up coming back and seeing Big again to catch what we missed. I've never seen The Big Blue again. And two years later James Cameron made The Abyss, and I saw The Abyss with my father, in the same theater in the same multiplex, and we stayed for the whole movie this time, and loved it.
Epilouge: Differant multiplex. Myself and my father. The 5th Element. Film ends.
My father: "Good special effects, but..."
Me: "Confusing, frustrating, boring and illogical?"
Dad: "Yeah!"
Me: "Well, Dad, remember a movie called The Big Blue? Same writer / director."
Dad: "What?! Screw him. If I ever meet that guy I'm gonna make him give me 20 bucks back."
Me: "He's in France."
Dad: "I hope he stays there. And stops making movies!"
The motto: Luc Besson sucks.
I didn't think I'd walked out of many movies, but Mr. Copeland's comments reminded me how much I hated "Natural Born Killers". It kept me away from movie theatres for about six months. I've never gone to another Oliver Stone movie, and I never would. I also bailed out of "Titanic" (pun intended) before I started screaming at the screen. I avoided "Forrest Gump" until it showed up on cable, and a friend and I exited the first "Scream" movie noisily. Eric Rohmer eludes me, as does Jean-Luc Goddard (boring, over-rated).
Fantastic Four, The Grudge and Memoirs of a Geisha are the only ones I've walked out on in the theater. I lasted about half an hour in each before being reduced to tears of laughter, and the realization that life was too short to waste on them.
I saw about 45 minutes of Field of Dreams before sneaking out to see The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Only once have I walked out of a movie that I was assigned to review. I felt sick. One of the worst in a wave of torture porn. I reviewed the first 20 minutes and said, basically, this is beneath contempt.
Last Man Standing. I was living overseas at the time, and was back in the US for a wedding. I was out of the loop on movies, and killing time while waiting for my girlfriend to get off work. About 5 minutes in, I realized it was a redundant tribute to "A Fistful of Dollars" (and previous to that as I later learned, "Yojimbo").
At the opening credits, I saw Walter Hill's name, and I braced for approximately 1.5 hours of ultraviolent, cuss-word saturated, macho posturing augmented by extended scowling contests in alternating close-ups. Fifteen minutes in, after the 10th bad guy that Bruce Willis' character had launched through the 7th full size window in a four wall saloon with his projection shotgun, I had already reached my self-imposed eye-roll limit of 15. To kill the rest of the time that I had to kill, I think I went to a Wendy's and had a frosty and played with the ketchup dispenser and those paper ketchup cups.
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