Viewing Thread:
"Does Donnie Darko still suck?"

Goatboy wrote:
> I wasn't miserable when I watched it, just bored and annoyed that my
> mates were all "Oh you just don't understand it" when I did
> understand it, I just wasn't impressed all that much.

spot on. THOSE are the people that play the "we saw it before it was cool" card as well. average movie, elevated above it's ststion by an elitist audience.
Still, at least you go Pump up the Volume to watch. that's dynamite.

Yeah, I tried to watch Bladerunner recently. I was shattered from work so turned it off after about 45 minutes, meaning to watch the rest the following day. That was about a month ago.

Donnie Darko sucked balls. I thought I'd enjoy it because it bombed at the box office and usually I don't agree with the crap that makes a lot of money.

I was bored, I was un-impressed, I was slightly confused at parts of it but figured it out whilst watching. I will watch it again one day, because some of my all-time favourite films were ones I disliked the first (second or even third or fourth) time I watched them.

Ironically my mate from college borrowed it and absolutely loved it, and he's not a film fan at all (the guy waited ten years to see Jurassic Park, ten years he managed to avoid it when it was on every lunch box in the country!)

I have the same trouble with Bladerunner: everytime I watch it up until the cyborg/robot runs through those windows and then I turn it off because it's boring the hell out of me.

I wasn't miserable when I watched it, just bored and annoyed that my mates were all "Oh you just don't understand it" when I did understand it, I just wasn't impressed all that much.
I do remember Swayze's porn dungeon, that was funny but no in a "ha ha" way.
It seems to be the comment complain/get-out clause from cineastes that think they hold a deep and secret understanding of films because they took a 2yr course at college, "Oh you didn't understand it".
Yes I did, and I understood it may have had several different layers and interpretations but I didn't care enough to try.
Like tonight, started watching it and just lost interest, went to listening to the director and Kevin Smith talking about the Mike Yanagita scene from Fargo.

I'll try again tomorrow.

Haven't watched this movie for aaaages. Watched it about 2 or 3 times, probably more, then got bored of it. The soundtrack, the story and Jake Gyllenhaal(sp?), always leave me feeling miserable. It's his pouty lips, I know it.

Goatboy wrote:
>
> But so far it's as I remember - miserable goth teen moping about not
> being understood and not enjoying school or his family.

But it's more of a parody. It's poking fun at that sort of thing. There's a dark sense of humour at work.

Good movie.

Watch it as a movie and not something deeper that it isn't.

But it does make you think.

I don't have the patience for it tonight, started at 11pm and have been flicking back and forth between the film audio and the commentary - which is very interesting and, surprisingly for Smith, serious. He's giving Richard Kelly some grief along the lines of Kelly will explain something, "I chose the music specifically to fit exactly the images in this scene" and Smith is "Dude, did you really do that or just found afterwards that it fit and thought 'well what the hell, I'll say that'"

I need to watch it with the audio to see if it's as annoying as I remember, and then with the commentary to find out more.
The thing I have noticed that wasn't in the original cut is that the book about time travel that the old woman wrote is included, in text form, in this cut. It goes some way to explaining, as before you had to visit the website afterwards to understand just what the hell was going on.

But so far it's as I remember - miserable goth teen moping about not being understood and not enjoying school or his family.
Meh, I need to sit and give it 100% attention instead of fidgeting.
Just not tonight, I bought "Pump Up The Volume" and going to watch that instead.

Have you seen it?