comment #1

kyleb says ...

I think there's truth to this. "There Will Be Blood" for example is great but a bit boring. I would suggest, however, that "The English Patient" is more than a little bit boring.

comment #2

BoshBarnetWonkyDonkey says ...

State of Play is an obvious pick. Not bad, not really boring as such, but a nice film that just doesn't really ever get you that excited.

Love the enthusiasm for Gone in 60 Seconds from the old column:

"Bruckheimer makes guy films, true, but they're always high grade."

How times have changed for Jeff.

comment #3

snoop says ...

This is a nice observation. However, instead of boring, I like to tihkn of it as the guts to tell a story properly, and even sometimes slow things down, despite what the hee haws want.

This is the one of the many strengths of Assassination of Jesse James, There Will Be Blood, and Zodiac. Desptie my love, I can admit all three were slightly boring, but as you put it, "because of this my soul is richer and my horizons have been broadened." I had friends complain that Public Enemies or Adevntureland were too "slow," but I think really they had that good bit of boring your refering to. Maybe the were a bit boring, but the movie, and my experience, are all the better for it. I'd include a film like Changeling in this mix, but if I recall you weren't a fan.

comment #4

Rich S. says ...

I love reading these old columns. Ebert runs them from time-to-time, as well. It's interesting to see movies referenced, like Cookie's Fortune, that had relevance at the time but are barely remembered today, only 10 years later.

Ebert recently ran a column from late 1977, wherein he basically reviewed Star Wars as a summer blockbuster flash in the pan. In the same column, he observed that Hawks' El Dorado had more relevance and staying power than another popular movie that came out that same year. Yep, The Graduate. Great stuff.

comment #5

markj says ...

Which part of 'The English Patient' do you find boring kyleb? It's a masterclass in screenwriting and filmmaking.

comment #6

snoop says ...

Obviously, I meant "think" in that first sentence.

I'll also defend the big budget movies you refer to though, as I think sometimes these films are perfect when they, opposingly, go a "bit dumb." Star Trek and Iron Man jump to mind, but so to do many Jerry Bruckheimer films (Gone in Sixty, Pirates), as well as Watchmen (which depending expectations going in, some might actually say was a bit boring).

The problem comes in when these movies go over board (i.e. Transformers 2) and can't find that right mix of dumb. But, that's here nor there, because some drams go a bit too boring (the thing that coems to mind right now is Silk). The key is to have these films be just enough to either way, because usually it's nearly impossible to have it both ways--with a movie being totally exciting, while also enriching the soul and broadening your worldview. I'd say films like Fight Club and The Matrix are nice modern examples, but some could argue either of them are too boring or too action-oriented. Obviously old standbys like the Godfather do both, but you'll always have a few people who will even say that was a bit boring won't you?

comment #7

kyleb says ...

markj: the whole thing. without going too elaine benes, i found it pretty excruciating. that said, i've never taken a second look at the movie, so maybe i was in the wrong mood for the film on the night i saw it.

comment #8

Yuval says ...

Not to be too gotcha about it, but your column suggests you saw Sunrise (10 years ago) while you admitted you never did a year ago.
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2008/02/eternal_polluti.php
I guess it just sounded a bit boring.

comment #9

allstar397 says ...

Have to agree here. What most of the big budget flicks dont get is you NEED to slow it down at points. it's the only way that the big setpiece special effects portions can have any impact. By the end of Transformers its just another explosion or building toppling.

comment #10

raygo says ...

Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Burn After Reading, Michael Clayton ... this is turning out to be George Clooney's signature brand. And I really like all of them.

comment #11

raygo says ...

I still have my Mr Showbiz refrigerator magnet, and the poster of Kansas City I won for answering the Robert Altman trivia contest.

comment #12

JapAdapters says ...

The Conversation is the most brilliantly boring movie of all time. Well, American movie anayway.

comment #13

Stringer Bell says ...

What stands out for me is that Jeff uses a more youthful picture of himself now than the picture he used 10 years ago.

comment #14

raygo says ...

Ditto the Conversation. Recently I watched it On Demand for a friend who had never seen it. I was raving about it, but realized that once it started, it was a little slow. He liked it, but I sensed him questioning my rave.

comment #15

bibliotechnician says ...

Godfather at 12: could not keep my eyes open. Never made it past the wedding.

Godfather at 17: my attention puddle jumped the long scenes and focused primarily on the graphic violence. Enough so, in fact, to watch it through to the end. I actually started to become captivated and emotionally moved by Sonny.

Godfather at 25: watched it on the big screen in Seattle. The graphic violence took a back seat. I followed the characters, their individual story arcs, the mesmerizing Brando when he hears about Sonny, the orange, and the last scene which still gives me chills.

Sometimes the boring comes from age, or a certain unfamiliarity with the truly great. It has to be soaked in, digested, ruminated, and then, sometimes, watched again and again. BTW, I implore the people above who listed "There Will Be Blood" to watch it once more (on Blu-ray if possible). Believe me, it gets even better.

comment #16

le corbeau says ...

"Which part of 'The English Patient' do you find boring kyleb? It's a masterclass in screenwriting and filmmaking"

Beginning, middle and end. It's a reverse Casablanca in which the problems of World War II don't amount to a hill of beans next to a middling tale of adultery that could have starred Stewart Granger and Ava Gardner. The locations add some color and there are some good performances (Binoche, Dafoe, Naveen Andrews) but there's just not that much going on-- and what there is is made less urgent by the structure that has her dead and him turned into The Mummy before the romance can even begin.

comment #17

crazynine says ...

Wow, I remember reading that column like it was yesterday. I've been reading Wells for a long, long time.

The most striking difference between then and now? How much of a better movie writer he was when he had an editor. In that column, Wells managed to write three entire pages of text without invoking far-Left politics, insulting readers who disagree with him, or making borderline ethnic slurs.

It was that kind of stuff that made Wells a daily read for me for nearly a decade. It was the latter that resulted in me visiting here at most once a week now, and really just to see what the latest train wreck is here.

But he still knows his movies-- and the "boring films" thesis holds up, even now.

comment #18

George Prager says ...

Which part of 'The English Patient' do you find boring kyleb? It's a masterclass in screenwriting and filmmaking"

It's boring when people are talking and it's boring when they aren't talking.

comment #19

George Prager says ...

What about bad scenes in great films?

comment #20

TL says ...

It's funny, all the "X-factor" films in the first paragraph have held up pretty well over the past 10 years. All the others, except "The Sweet Hereafter" haven't.

comment #21

arturobandini2 says ...

I don't know, TL. When I rented Cookie's Fortune years later, I thought it was one of Altman's better movies. (Maybe you have to be from the south to appreciate the humor.) And I still prefer eXistenZ to The Matrix, as far as meta-movies go.

I mentioned the other day that Summer Hours was the only movie this year that stuck with me for more than a day. Then someone chimed in to say it was "BOOOOOOOring." Which only proves the thesis of the movie (which clearly sailed right over them): This current, fidgety generation that's so enamored of disposable trash culture has no idea what it's lost.

comment #22

frankbooth says ...

"Even the over-40s seem to be losing interest in movies with even a minute meditative edge."

Speak for yourself. I loved Assassination of Jesse James. The Conversation is never dull, and neither is The Third Man. I'm not always in the mood to watch Tarkovsky or Bergman or Bresson, but once I begin I'm usually enraptured.

Now, some stuff is boring. The English Patient, for example. But I don't think it's because I'm too dim to get it, it's because it's a glossy middlebrow prestige picture about pretty people in nice clothes. It practically screams its respectability in every stiff frame. If you like it, fine, but it's a gussied up melodrama.

What bugs me is that you sometimes see younger viewers complaining about Jaws or Alien or The Godfather as if they were slow, dull classics they were being forced to appreciate. Jaws is not a Brussels sprouts movie.

comment #23

Chapman Carruthers says ...

>>>The most striking difference between then and now? How much of a better movie writer he was when he had an editor.

Shout out to the legendary Thor Thorson.

Not only were the late nineties films better at playing it slow and cool, they are just better films in general than those the studios are offering up these days. Look at that list of movies Wells cited in his article. Those aren't even the preeminant movies from the period. The four or five year window surrounding the end of the last century sure was a nice time for cinema.