Ten Tips For Picking Movies

#10 - Sequels are bad, mmmkay?
They are. They are! You don't believe me? Go watch any movie that has a 2 in front of the title and see if I'm wrong. Stand-alone is more likely to do good than a sequel, even if you enjoyed the original movie. And if you didn't watch the original, by crow do it before you try the sequel, lest a good movie be wrecked for you because it was turned into a franchise. Nobody in his right mind would watch any of The Exorcist if they missed the first. Because not only do they make little to no sense, they also suck.

There are, of course, a few exceptions which prove the rule. Sometimes, it's impossible to tell a story in one movie, so various are made: The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the works. These are the good ones, they follow the story. Even so, you want to watch them in the right order, or you won't get shit about what's going on. Again, nobody watches The Empire Strikes Back before A New Hope. Another exception is, movies adapted from books which already have tried and true sequels: Aliens follows Alien in novel as well as in movie. I found every sequel to the original very decent, even if the first remains my favorite.

Now let's pick another movie with sequels, Pirates of the Caribbean comes to mind... what did the sequels add to the original story? Nothing. Was it worth it? Nope. Was it as good or better than the original? No! What reason to watch it? Well unless you want to see Johnny Depp play a schizophrenic drunk pirate... (which is actually more appealing than it should be...)

You know a way to minimize damage when watching sequels? Take a whole day to watch the original and its sequels. If there are too many sequels, take a whole weekend. That way, maybe you can actually see some sense in it all. So if you're short on the time and/or the cash, forget taking up a sequel to something. Also keep in mind: the older a movie is, the less likely it is to suck.

#09 - Avoid remakes and adaptations.
Recently, Hollywood has been adapting a lot of stories from other media into motion pictures. Comic books seem to be a big favorite. Older or foreign movies are being redone too. Why? They're either out of really good ideas, or did it once and it worked way too well, bringing the box office an awesome profit, and dooming the process to constant repetition.

As remakes go, I think it's simply wrong. I find only two logical purposes for remaking an old or foreign movie. The first is that it draws attention to its original counterpart: you watch the remake, get curious, look up the original version and check it out. The second is, it caters to the American need to have every good movie spoken in their own language. You know, like the Spanish with porn.

There's nothing wrong with adapting an all-time favorite to the big screen. How do you think Batman made it all these years? The problem comes when they'll adapt everything... and make sequels out of them. The X-Men franchise was already pretty jaded to begin with. Now that they made movies out of it, they're gonna suck them for all they've got: you had three successful (more or less) movies, now they're gonna bother to make movies for isolated characters too. There are two (crappy) Hulk movies already! Why!? Seriously, in every feasible way, the first sucked on toes (except for Velvet Revolver's best song at the end) and we didn't need to try again to see it sucks. I doubt even Hulk fans considered those great movies. So unless you wanna see your childhood further raped or you, like me, masochistically enjoy having a will to gouge your eyes out with a spork, avoid them.

As for adaptations... stop being a pussy. Find the original version, get some subtitles if it's a foreigner and watch that, and then, if curiosity's too hard to resist, take a gander at the American version. You don't have to go very far: even the lousiest Ju-On movie was better than its Eastern counterpart. And they were made by the exact same director.

#08 - Distrust innovation in actor careers.
Some actors are multi-talented, and can on command do drama, action, comedy or horror. Some actors were made for one style alone, and fail horribly when they try to do something else. Actors, like all human beings, have wills and aspirations. Some of them have dreamed of doing, for instance, drama. But their debut was made in gangster movies and that's where they've stayed. They are free to go for their dream parts... unfortunately, they usually suck at their dream parts.

When you think of Robert De Niro, what comes to mind? Deer Hunter, right? Half-mad Vietnam veteran. Taxi Driver, yes? Completely mad cab driver. Raging Bull, okay, stubborn boxer. The Untouchables, very cool, biggest gangster of them all. Goodfellas, of course, a gangster again. Cape Fear, maniac. But try Hide and Seek... or Angel Heart... it will be very clear to you that he was not built for that sort of movie. De Niro actually played one of the worst incarnations of Satan I had ever seen.

So when you pick a genre, check the cast. If you know someone from another style, move on to the next title, because there are very good chances that is gonna suck. You wouldn't watch an action movie with Billy Crystal, would you?

#07 - Accept modern American movies will have bullshit.
Ah, bullshit. They feed you a healthy dose of it everyday, through every media available. It's no different in cinema. And if it's Hollywood, well, welcome to the Empire of Bullshit.

It is almost impossible to find a movie in which you get no bullshit whatsoever. When picking a movie, you must find a way to accept that it will have some bullshit. Like the jump Power Rangers style that allows our hero do come out of a gas explosion without a scratch. The impossible car chase. The scene that comes out of nowhere and adds nothing whatsoever to the movie. The hideous, unnecessary twist ending. You will get bullshit anyway - live with it. It is now a matter of deciding how much bullshit you can take and what bullshit is too far fetched for you to swallow. A carefully reading of plot on the back cover of the movie or the Internet can usually help you decide. But first, you must accept there is no such thing these days as a bullshit-less movie.

And it's not just the USA... bullshit, like air, seems to be everywhere. Independent films will feed you bullshit and excuse it as "creative" and "intellectual". The Asian movies will give you unexplained bullshit nobody understands (especially if Takashi Miike is within one hundred feet of the set). European movies will try to pass their bullshit as either "classy" or "we didn't have much of a budget". Me, I'd rather believe there is a purpose to bullshit other than "this is the best we could come up with", so I'm taking an Asian movie over a Hollywood feature any day.

#06 - Disbelieve the main awards.
I have a tendency to distrust any movie that got an Oscar for whichever feature. Because I have seen Oscar winning movies and actors go beyond the limits as crap is concerned. The usual standard for movies is... hideous. And if you have a line of movies which aren't worth their budget, and you must choose among them the one that is less of a crap... no matter how less of a crap it is, you're still gonna end up with crap.

Everyone toots about The Return of the King getting a shitload of Oscars, and I in no way say it was a bad movie... but look at what was running against it: Lost in Translation was one of the biggest flops of 2004. Master and Commander sucked. I think at this point everyone agrees all copies of Mystic River should be buried and forgotten along with Atari's E.T., and preferably in the same place... and did anyone even bother to watch Seabiscuit? Do you see where I'm getting? Suppose you decide to run a marathon and everyone running against you has a limp... of course you're probably going to win, but your victory is meaningless: you were running against a bunch of crippled people! No matter how good you are, you get a medal for simply having two functioning legs when all others don't!

You know what I'd like to see sometime? An Oscar Award ceremony where no prizes would be awarded. The jury would simply say all movies of the year were sub-standard and they refused to award prizes so as not to lower audience expectations. That would be good. That would force the people in Hollywood to actually put some serious effort into making good motion pictures.

An award means absolutely nothing. In fact, I have more fun checking out the nominee list of Fantasporto, no matter how bad it is, than I do checking out the winner list of the current year Oscars.

#05 - Disbelieve the ratings.
Never - and I mean ever - believe newspaper reviewers. Ever. Newspaper reviewers never say it like it is. These are people specifically paid to write good reviews. They write reviews by a model, guys! They start off by making a runthrough of the actors' and director's careers, give you the plot, the awards, and say they liked it... what about why this or that is good? You never read that! They never tell you why they liked it: they just say it's good. Unless they are forced to say something about the movie was bad. If they must say something's bad, they do so right in the beginning, and immediately tell you why they think it's good. Example: "Despite flawed, Pile of Crap is a movie which will keep you on the edge of your seat with incredible action, stunning effects and the fantastic talent of leading actor John Bullocks!" So you are actually told the movie is flawed (and for the newspaper reviewer to tell you it's flawed, its flaws are so big they're impossible to ignore) but after the first comma, they do everything possible to still get you to watch it.

Here's another trick: when they throw in a lot of meaningless and overly complicated, overly elaborated words to make a movie sound better than it is. Example: "Pile of Crap is a journey of self-learning, a turmoil of unleashed emotions, a mystifyingly deep and sensitive picture." You read that sentence and go, "Holy shit, I gotta watch this!", but... what exactly did they tell you? Can anyone tell me what exactly "a journey of self-learning" means? Because I've seen that particular sentence applied to countless movies, and I'm starting to believe it means, "I couldn't find anything good to say about this so I'm just going to write some meaningless philosophical crap here and hope moviegoers will attempt to find the meaning at the theatre." And what about "deep"? Newspaper reviewers love the word "deep". You know what "deep" means, in this context? Profound, thorough, intense, heartfelt. Now go watch Legally Blonde 2 and come tell me it is a profound, thorough, intense and heartfelt picture, because a lot of reviewers consider it a "deep" movie.

You want a more accurate picture of how a movie is? Wait two days after it comes out, and check forums at IMDb. It's just as flawed, opinion-wise - but at least, they'll give you specific reasons why they liked / didn't like a given motion picture. I find it more rewarding to read from a guy who got nothing out of it but a loss of 90 minutes of his life, than from a guy who gets paid to convince people to go watch something.

#04 - Be mindful of plot over cast and director.
Everyone is entitled to a mistake. If you usually like Francis Ford Coppola movies, his newest feature is likely to be of your enjoyment, but it may so happen that this time, Coppola went Crappola. This is why you don't watch every single movie a director makes. I like Zack Snyder a lot - but I have no doubt in my heart that at some point in his career, he will direct a movie which will make me go "What the fuck was he on?!" And I enjoy watching Christian Bale act, but oh crow, keep me away from the latest Terminator flick.

Good directors can sometimes pull the most horrible plots... and bad directors can wreck the best ideas. Just like a good actor can sometimes screw up a whole movie, or an unknown bloke can be the shining star of an otherwise crappy movie. Please, do not pick a movie just because your favorite's in it. Read the plot first. I can't tell you how many bad movies I could have easily avoided if I had ran my eyes over the plot on the back cover of the DVD. This is the order you want to check out a movie on: name first, plot afterwards, then director, cast and cover as a last resort. And you are only checking actors here because of #08. Remember: you watch a movie for the story. Watching your favorite actor butt-naked is bonus. And you don't need to watch a movie if your only goal is to watch Angelina Jolie's rack. The Internet's there for that.

#03 - Consider how to view it.
Some movies, you enjoy alone. Some are meant to be watched in a crowd. Some you want to watch with a few selected friends. And some are meant to be watched however the heck you want to watch them. Horror movies are easily enjoyed alone or with a group of friends, but lose a lot in a crowd that yells, giggles and makes a fuss. Comedies are meant to be watched in a group, unless you like getting your chuckles alone. Your girlfriend may not like martial arts movies, so you'll watch it with the guys.

The person you're with may wreck the movie for you. And I'm not even talking of chatterboxes who will talk about completely unrelated things while you're trying to watch a movie, or those who try to predict everything that's going to happen next and completely kill whatever surprise there was left. I'm not even talking about those guys who repeat character lines after they're spoken, or those who make you stop your DVD every ten minutes because they want a snack, need to go to the can, cellphone rang... nah. I'm talking about taking someone who liked Van Helsing to watch Eraserhead. I'm talking of gathering a group of squeaky girls to watch a horror movie you actually are interested in. I'm talking about taking ten guys to watch The Bridges of Madison County, arguably the most pussified film ever made. Even if I am to talk about the first few cases, you wouldn't take them to watch a movie you're really interested in, would you? You'd probably rather pick a movie you've watched before, or one where you don't mind the talking and the interrupting. On Brokeback Mountain, I actually welcome any pause we make... I hated that.

#02 - Consider where to view it.
I am a firm believer that consumers shouldn't have to pay for something they don't know if they'll like. In fact, I believe you should be allowed to check out magazines and comics before buying them. Not reading them end to end, but just checking them out. See if it's promising. If I like something, I don't mind paying the just price to own it. But without a previous show, well... The same happens with movies. That's why there's trailers: so you get a preview of how it'll be. But as we all know, trailers feature only the best parts, and at times, parts that aren't even in the whole thing. Trailers lie. You should be allowed to watch the first fifteen minutes of every movie for free: no bullshit, first fifteen minutes, and if you're interested, you'll pay to watch the rest. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen, which leads me to issue #02: not all movies are worth watching in a theatre.

When I was a little girl, I though there were only two types of movies worthy of theatre views: the ones that featured awesome landscapes, or the ones with super special effects. As I grew up, landscapes became less important and effects became all CGI, which were more enjoyable in a small TV because I couldn't see they were CGI as clearly. In time, it sank that any movie could be enjoyed in the theatre, provided it wasn't complete shit... but here's the problem: if you are watching a shit movie in theatre, it's a miserable experience. You can't pause it... you can't pick something else... and of course you can leave, but you're going to loathe the € 5.70 you paid to watch it for a good while. Your alternative to going through this sort of experience?

First, if you have any doubts about a movie, don't immediately choose to watch it in a theatre unless you're going for the company. I saw Boogeyman in a theatre for the company, but the movie is lousy and the time I spent sitting there was nothing short of Chinese water torture. There are plenty of options for you if you're not sure a movie will be good. Rent it. Borrow it. And, of course, steal it - if they were so interested in stopping piracy as they say they are, they'd allow us to watch the first fifteen minutes of any movie and stop feeding us bullshit trailers. You can find bootlegs so easily these days, and going to the movies is so expensive, you may actually prefer to gather some people at your place to watch it. And if the movie proves true, you can always go see it with better quality.

One more thing about moviegoing. There are two types of movies not worth your cash: 3D movies and IMAX features. 3D is yet another gimmick to get you to go to the movies, and it's not so awesome as people make believe it is. In the 80's maybe, but not at this point. As for IMAX features... here's my experience: loud, boring, unnecessary, eye-straining, once again, don't spend money on it. That is my personal advice.

#01 - Know your sources.
Reading about a movie before watching it is always a good idea. You know why? Because I once rented Alone in the Dark for the title only and only midway through it did I realize there was only one director who could've made that pile of crow: Ewe Boll.

Better than reading is talking to someone who watched it ahead of you. I hate it when I'm the first to watch a movie, because it's going in blindly. I don't mind at all that someone runs ahead and then tells me what they thought... provided, of course, they have some cred to their word. I know this guy that usually watches movies way before me, and we usually have similar opinions about movies. I trust him when he says it's good, and I trust him when he says it's crap. If I watch it afterwards or not (who am I kidding, I watch everything) is my choice. In movies as in dating, you sometimes need a wingman, a trusty partner who can scout ahead for you. If you trust each other's opinions, you may even choose to scout for each other, so that each of you only needs to watch half the shit you'd normally watch. My point: if you're asking an opinion about a movie, ask it from someone with some knowledge of the matter, and whom you know has an opinion more or less like yours. It is the best way to avoid crappy films.