Movies so good you never have/want to see them again

[axordil]

This came up in the Pan's Labyrinth spoiler thread. I've seen a handful of movies that were very, very good, but which left me with NO desire to see them again. Generally they do something very uncomfortable very well. Anyone else have ones they would recommend to someone, but not with an offer to accompany them?

My list (subject to change if memory kicks in):

Schindler's List
Seven
Pan's Labyrinth (obviously)

[yovargas]

Requiem for a Dream!!

I bought this movie and now am not sure why since I never want to see it again. But damn if it ain't one of the most powerful, moving movies I've ever seen!


(I didn't find Seven particularly wrenching.)

[vison]

"Manhunter". I wish to god I'd never seen it in the first place. And that goes double for "Red Dragon", which was the same story. (Saw only bits of it, and that was too much.) Were they "good" movies? I would never recommend them, I would, instead, recommend that you stay as far away from them as possible.

Movies about "war" leave me cold, usually. Seeing actors pretend to die doesn't do it for me, and I doubt that any movie could ever show the horror of war beyond a few hints. "All Quiet on the Western Front", the book that is, said it all, "they should never send horses to war". That got to me, not for the horses, but the young man who could say it.

[axordil]

vison--

Well, if you wouldn't recommend them, it's hard to call that "good" by most standards. Seriously though, I think there is a difference between movies that leave the audience drained and revolted and those that leave the audience drained because the subject matter was inherently draining, if it is to be done well at all.

edit to add: It occurs to me there might be other reasons why a movie would fall into this category as well. Could "The Crying Game" be as effective the second time through? "The Sixth Sense?"

[superwizard]

edit to add: It occurs to me there might be other reasons why a movie would fall into this category as well. Could "The Crying Game" be as effective the second time through? "The Sixth Sense?"

If you haven't seen The Six Sense a second time I suggest you do. Whe you see it the second time you'll be seeing it in a different perspective. Things that you didn't notice before will strike out. Same thing goes for other similar movies like fight club.

[axordil]

Fight Club wasn't quite good enough to make my list. I wouldn't mind seeing it again.

Sixth Sense was spoiled for me by a local review, which had a big "SPOILERS" on p. C1 where it started, but not on page C5, where it continued, and where the first line of text (right at the top of the page, too) blew the big secret.

edit to add:

I would add Memento to the list, except I wouldn't mind doing a DVD chronological viewing to see if it hangs together.

[superwizard]

Oh I never really liked fight club but the tv channel that I watch put it soo many times!
I never saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen again and I really liked it the first time around. Might be boring watching it a second time though. Most movies I see are nice but I wouldn't really want to watch them again.

[Primula Baggins]

Mr. Prim and I saw TESTAMENT when it was in theaters back in the early '80s. It's a really well-made film about the survivors of a nuclear war. You never see the bomb devastation, just the effects of the radiation on a few neighbors in a community near San Francisco. I've never forgotten it, but I'll never see it again. Jane Alexander is a mother whose children suffer the effects of radiation poisoning. We didn't have children then, yet her performance was searingly painful to watch. Now—there is no way.

Fortunately, it's also less relevant than it was then.

[vison]

I thought "Manhunter" was a "good" movie in that it was well written and well acted: William Peterson was truly excellent in the role of the FBI agent.

It just really bothered me. It still does.

[Inanna]

"A Beautiful Life"

I am not putting myself through buckets of tears again.

[Angbasdil]

[osgiliate]

vison,
Manhunter was good, but Red Dragon captured so much better what made the book so brilliant. Ralph Fiennes was amazing as Frances Dollarhyde! And the book is so much more about the title character of Dollarhyde than it is about Graham.
Red Dragon is one of only a handful of books that I can read more than thrice.
Silence of the Lambs was also very good (both the book and the film), but not as good as Red Dragon.

Then Thomas Harris completely forgot how to write and published a steaming pile of crap titled Hannibal, at which point I made a vow to the cosmos that I would never buy anything else written by Harris until he wrote a sequel wherein Will Graham comes out of retirement to hunt down Hannibal Lecter.

But if you can withstand the subject matter, the book Red Dragon is absolutely brilliant!

[/osgiliate]

[vison]

[osgiliate]

vison,
Manhunter was good, but Red Dragon captured so much better what made the book so brilliant. Ralph Fiennes was amazing as Frances Dollarhyde! And the book is so much more about the title character of Dollarhyde than it is about Graham.
Red Dragon is one of only a handful of books that I can read more than thrice.
Silence of the Lambs was also very good (both the book and the film), but not as good as Red Dragon.

Then Thomas Harris completely forgot how to write and published a steaming pile of crap titled Hannibal, at which point I made a vow to the cosmos that I would never buy anything else written by Harris until he wrote a sequel wherein Will Graham comes out of retirement to hunt down Hannibal Lecter.

But if you can withstand the subject matter, the book Red Dragon is absolutely brilliant!

[/osgiliate]

Yes, the little bit I saw, Rafe Fiennes was good in the part.

The truth is, I can't bear the subject matter, and so would never read the books. I might have, if I hadn't seen the first movie. But not now. And I'm so glad I didn't read them!!! I really can't describe the depth of the horror stories like that awaken in me. Right now we are enduring a murder trial dealing with crimes in our part of the world that even Thomas Harris could not have imagined. There is nothing in this "real" story that would be endurable on film. Yet the "imitation" horror of those movies was nearly as awful, somehow, even when I kept saying "It's only a movie."

I have not, needless to say, seen "Silence of the Lambs". While it was out in the theatres I couldn't bear the tone of the advertising, as if there was something smartly sophisticated in the monster Lecter, and the hint of some kind of sexual tension between him and the character played by Jodie Foster. Now, I could be completely wrong, of course, and there may have been no such hint, I might have imagined the whole thing.

Real life killers and their crimes of that sort, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Robert Pickton, et al, are so vile, so brutal, so unbearable to know about, that I just can't stand to see such things made light of, even in movies where they aren't made light of, if you follow me.

[Angbasdil]

Yeah, I follow you. I think I just have a high tolerance for... well, for a lot of stuff, actually. As long as it's not gratuitous.
Which is what separates Harris' earlier works from the dreck he writes now.

[Primula Baggins]

I'm with vison on this. There are just some things I would rather not know about, even read about. Sometimes I think we should do it anyway (as in learning about the Holocaust and other atrocities of history), but sometimes there is just nothing to be gained (as in reading about serial killers and other instances of individual cruelty and evil).

[baby tuckoo]

I've watched The Crying Game many times, and enjoy it each. Yes, it tests one, but there are nuances of virtue that emerge each time.

[axordil]

BT--
Fair enough. It's certainly no worse than the number of times I've seen The Little Mermaid.

Prim--

You touch on my issue with Seven. It is a fine a piece of the craft, within its genre, as I've seen. It is not gratuitous in the same way as (IMO) Silence of the Lambs, but it is deeply unsettling for me in a way I don't want to recreate. Yet if someone liked psychological thrillers I would recommend it in a heartbeat.

vison--

There is indeed a certain amount of tension there, but it is very one-sided. The Starling character is fascinated by Lector, but not attracted to him in the least. Lector, on the other hand (which no longer applies...), sees something in her that is...attractive? Redemptive? Unattainable? This is played out more in the sequel, where there is at least one Beauty and the Beast tableaux I recall.

Not saying it's good, bad, or indifferent, but it's an interesting thing to attempt.

[Taurie]

I wouldn't watch "Trainspotting" or "A Clockwork Orange" again

I would recommend them, but they left me in a very weird mood, half irritated, half miserable.

Strangely enough I never got that sort of feeling with any other movie I've seen.

[axordil]

I couldn't sit through Trainspotting the first time. Clockwork Orange, on the other hand, I can watch a lot. What that says about me I couldn't say.

[Primula Baggins]

I've never had the nerve to take on Trainspotting. I've had the same experience so often with films like that, films that are adored by sophisticates everywhere: when I finally try to watch them I can't get past . I'm too appalled by the repulsive sensory overload to see the mordant wit or trenchant satire or whatever it is I'm supposed to take away from the film.

So now I don't try. Life is too short.

[axordil]

It was the suppository, wasn't it?