The relationship of the public with the cinema, as happens with the first love, implies several obstacles until finding true love. And reuniting with your favorite movies of youth has, sometimes, the same effect as having a coffee with your first partner: you no longer have anything to talk about, you barely understand why you fell in love with it and, above all, you remember why you broke These 16 films were erected as contemporary classics, but they are not as good as we thought
1.Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)
What we thought at the time. A suggestive nightmarish allegory about the inner monsters and the lightness that supposes maturing with a conflict rooted in the subconscious for movie download free. Come on, we did not understand it.
What it really is. ‘Donnie Darko‘ is the film adaptation of that friend who, in the middle of a party, starts explaining David Lynch’s films without you having asked. A pretentious and gimmicky film that knows that the less people understand it, the more cultured it will awaken. Since then, his director has made two films (‘Southland Tales’ and ‘The Box’) that make it clear that he did not understand ‘Donnie Darko’ either.
2. ‘Interview with the vampire’ (Neil Jordan, 1994)
What we thought at the time. A luxurious baroque, sensual and bloody production that brought together the most charismatic stars of the moment (Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas) with Christian Slater.
What it really is. A depressing nonsense that has no argument (basically it’s about sad vampires arguing and stopping the dishes) and where the real movie happened behind the scenes: Cruise (who hired an assistant whose only job was to make sure the The blond of her eyebrows was matching her wig’s) eliminating the interesting phrases of Pitt’s character so that it would not overshadow her, Kirsten Dunst disgusted by having to kiss Pitt when she was convinced she had lice, Slater replacing the deceased River Phoenix two weeks to start shooting and Brad Pitt trying to break his contract because he hated every minute of filming.
3 .’Indiana Jones and the cursed temple’ (Steven Spielberg, 1984)
What we thought at the time. In the ’80s, anything with Indiana Jones was better than anything without Indiana Jones. This second part, in addition, was the favorite of the kids because things do not stop happening, Indy is a friend of 10 years and the plot is so simple that you can continue while playing with a Rubik’s cube.
What it really is. A pastime with which Spielberg fulfilled his dream of directing a James Bond film (the prologue), he relaxed as he prepared his first great drama (‘The Color Purple’) and whose female character he himself confessed represented his frustrations during his divorce: Kate Capshaw (coincidentally, his second wife) spends two hours screaming. The plot accumulates persecutions, but none ends up going in any direction.
4.’The piano’ (Jane Campion, 1993)
What we found at the time. A work of poetic art about the indomitable heart of a lady oppressed by her muteness, her husband and her petticoats.
What it really is. A beautiful photograph and a romantic soundtrack that made ‘The Piano’ look like a breathtaking love story when in fact it’s about two people who can not stand each other, but they understand each other phenomenally in bed. The now pitiful Harvey Weinstein, his distributor, orchestrated a campaign focused on women’s empowerment and took effect: he won three Oscars for his three women, Holly Hunter (best actress), Anna Paquin (high school) and Jane Campion (screenplay). Neither the film nor its plot nor its characters had any coherence, but ‘The piano’ became fashionable and nobody wanted to ask a pertinent question: is it really good or just has a lot of fog?
5.’Memories of Africa’ (Sydney Pollack, 1985)
What we found at the time. A majestic romantic epic of those that are no longer done, designed so that each scene reawakens two reactions in the middle-aged viewer: “what a beautiful photograph” and “you have to see how well this woman works” (ie, Meryl Streep).
What it really is. Well 160 minutes that look 160 years. Filming took place in Africa and in Hollywood that can only mean one thing: that they were going to teach us from top to bottom. The captivating aerial planes of the landscape transport us to the wild nature (when it was released, the average viewer did not have access to such exotic trips), which turns ‘Memories of Africa’ into the first film adaptation of a postcard. And it’s as boring as looking at a postcard for 160 minutes.
6.’Desperado’ (Robert Rodriguez, 1995)
What we thought at the time. They sold us that Quentin Tarantino, fresh out of ‘Pulp Fiction’, was co-author, but all he did was play a secondary character whose monologue, of course, he wrote. Banderas gave it all, there were many shots and Salma Hayek sexually woke up a whole generation of teenagers.
What it really is. The culprit of the birth of a subgenre that we still suffer: fantasies perpetrated by a director who has given a couple of millions to run a party with colleagues in the desert and in which women are treated as porn magazines in movement. Most of these films (all of Guy Ritchie’s, for example) at least have hectic dialogues. ‘Desperado’ or that. It’s not a movie, it’s a bachelor party with blank guns.
7.’The Endless Story’ (Wolfgang Petersen, 1984)
What we found at the time. A fantasy filled with magic, adventures and a flying dog. For the ten-year-old kids, who were the cinephile’s equivalent to a magpie because we only demanded that the movies have brilliant things, it was more than enough to crown her as our favorite movie in the world for a whole winter.
What it really is. A tacky, which may sound redundant because in the 80 everything was a tacky, but this in particular also went out of fashion in real time as it happened to all the fantasies of the time (‘Legend’, ‘Lady Hawk’, ‘The immortal ‘) that were not’ Inside the labyrinth ‘. Emotionally coarse (a horse drowning in a swamp!), Narratively null and with an irritating protagonist. And the flying dog turned out to be a dragon. All are disappointments with ‘The Endless Story’.
8.’The reborn’ (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2015)
What we found at the time. A technical feat shot with natural light, in subhuman conditions and with overwhelming sequence of battles. And we thought that because his Oscar campaign made sure to remind us every day for months through reports, interviews and videos: anything as long as there was not talk about … the movie.
What it really is. ‘The reborn’ is what the most intellectual critics call “a tostón”. So obstinate in rubbing her technical prodigies that even the Oscars gave her a second consecutive award to Iñárritu and a victory of Leonardo DiCaprio that they had owed her for years, but that was a bit lackluster because, as Joan Crawford had told Bette Davis in ‘ Feud ‘, “they do not reward you for how well you do it, but because they notice how hard you try.”
9.’Requiem for a dream’ (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
What we thought at the time. A visceral, agonizing and traumatic film exercise with a soundtrack capable of pushing you into madness if it catches you in a low mood day. And the movie everyone was talking about in the university cafeteria.
What it really is. The American director Darren Aronofsky is a genius. ‘Requiem for a dream’ is the quintessence of those films that “I liked a lot, but I do not intend to ever see” and that plays very much in her favor. The fact that nobody repeats has preserved it in a privileged memory of the collective imagination, because its last 20 minutes are so suffocating that the spectator does not process it, it ends up stunned and confuses the relief that the cinematographic quality is over: we never liked, but we were victims of the Stockholm syndrome. And the happy soundtrack has ended up accompanying from election polls to soccer reports.
10.’Up’ (Pete Docter, 2009)
What we thought at the time. Phrases and headlines that were said when 123vidz it was released, in 2009: “Pixar does it again”, “they have no rival”, “the best Pixar movie to date”, “it is of drawings, but it is also for adults”, “I’ve remembered a lot about my grandfather.”
What it really is. The ten most amortized minutes in the history of cinema. The moving portrayal of a lifetime of love and adventure with which he opens the film grabbed the heart of the audience and, as is customary at Pixar, made him feel things he did not know he had inside. But those masterful ten minutes do have a name: short film. Because the remaining 80 are a succession of characters stumbling over things and an “improbable friendship” that we have been seeing in animated films since Pinocchio met Pepito Grillo.
11.’Top Gun’ (Tony Scott, 1986)
What we thought at the time. The movie that was the coolest in the world. Tom Cruise made fashionable the aviator glasses (as the ‘way-farer’ had made three years earlier in ‘Risky Business’) and the male friendship showed that it could be sensitive: here the ‘bromance’ was born.
What it really is. A movie that changed Hollywood. His mammoth box-office success proved that films should not necessarily be a story but could also be a product. The brand? U.S. The ingredient? Adrenalin. The objective? Awaken feelings (narratives at all) of patriotic exaltation, hyperbolic but accessible masculinity and desire to enlist in the army. And therefore it was shot like an advertisement for beer, jeans or sunglasses. A contagious euphoria that hides that ‘Top Gun’ does not intend to be a real movie because what he wants is to sell a concept. We’ll see if the sequel, premiere in 2019, gets us to buy it again.
12.’How beautiful it is to live!’ (Frank Capra, 1946)
What we thought at the time. A box office failure converted into a television classic thanks to the tradition of seeing her as a family every Christmas, recovering her faith in human kindness.
What it really is. A manipulative parable in which the good (Jimmy Stewart) suffers because he wants to grant loans to all the villagers without checking their endorsements (which is the cause of the current economic crisis) and in which the bad guy is a heartless caricature and , simply, a prudent businessman who refuses to grant these loans to people who will not be able to pay them. Both are diehard capitalists, but the hero is also a fool. But ‘How beautiful it is to live!’ She is so well intentioned that criticizing her makes you look like a villain. It is a perfect strategy.
13.’Reality Bites’ (Ben Stiller, 1994)
What we found at the time. Finally a film that gives voice to the misunderstood generation X. Let’s see what they have to say! “Welcome to the winter of our discontent”. Oh, okay.
What it really is. Hollywood set a trap for Generation X, leaving them like little boys unable to get off the couch because everything seemed prefabricated and they were looking for something authentic. What they were not looking for, apparently, was work. His characters are supposedly brilliant because they tell each other, but at no time do we see any sign of that genius. The film is rounded off as a perfect metaphor when, after spending 90 minutes ridiculing romantic comedies, ends with the boy (Ethan Hawke, carefully disheveled) presenting himself at the girl’s house (Winona Ryder, calculatedly pizpireta) to declare his love. But let it be clear that they are not like the others.
14.’Breakfast with diamonds’ (Blake Edwards, 1961)
What we thought at the time. The majority of the audience remembers her as two hours of Audrey Hepburn dressed by Hubert de Givenchy and eating ‘croissants’ in front of the Tiffany’s jewelry showcase.
What it really is. It’s better bag than movie. Rampantly superficial for the tortuous story that really counts (or, rather, that does not count), offers a tedious succession of comic sketches without really knowing what movie it wants to be. He relies too much on the charm of Hepburn and the melancholy that evokes ‘Moon river’, a song that sounds twelve times. Mr. Yamamoto, played by a Mickey Rooney made up and exploiting all the Japanese stereotypes and inventing new ones, is the most racist thing that Hollywood has done, because it is embarrassing and unnecessary. And it’s not even fun.