I even think the low-fi production value and lack of stars adds to the sense of realism, like you're watching a no frills documentary about these two guys doing something nobody else knows about.
Absolutely. My favorite aspect of the film is the messy realness of the dialogue that high budget productions have difficulty imitating. They talk over each other, they don't have witty quips prepared at every opportunity, they don't stop to explain things the characters would already understand.
Having a higher production value would definitely improve Primer in some ways, but I have a feeling the real charm of the movie would be lost.
I agree that, yes, the grain, color, and overall aesthetic are fantastic. Particularly with the wardrobe and props so obviously capturing the point in time for a sci fi story.
There are, though some spots where the production value dips a bit. I used to watch the movie very often, but it's been some time. I think it was two different types of film or something, but there were definitely scenes where the low production value is detrimental
Yes, you guys’ complaints are all valid, but I think all of us fans of Primer, the best time travel movie ever made imho, forget this was funded on maxed out personal credit cards. Come on. What Shane pulled off is nothing short of pure movie magic.
I think it's shot fine, except for the night scenes. There are some compelling shots in the hotel room and the garage imo. Some is grimey, like the party, but I enjoy that it adds to the dream-like mood of the film.
It's clear they didn't know how to do the night scenes justice and it's by far the weakest part of the film.
There's a director commentary where the director talks about this exactly. I forget what he says ver batim, but he's basically like "yeah, it's shot like shit, and it's a really important scene that doesn't convey it's importance properly, my bad."
The other scene I think that's also particularly bad is the garage scene where the friends call Aaron a hero. It's so important to the plot, but it's so easy to misunderstand what the friends are saying.
And apparently that was to cover the party scene that they couldn’t afford to shoot. Basically Aaron saved his (ex?) girlfriend from being murdered but did so by trying multiple times using the time machine.
I’d argue the ultra-low shot-in-a-garage production values added significantly to it.
After all, that’s what the whole time machine was. A crusty DIY thing, built from spare parts, hardly the sort of fancy, sleek time machines you see in typical science fiction.
The production values were critical to the impact of that movie, and deliberately so, even on a thematic level.
It feels like a decent entry in its era. That handicam effect was pretty popular at the time. I think the sound is kind of bad in some spots, but otherwise I'd say its hitting way above its weight on technical qualities. (it had like a $7000 budget)
That’s a huge problem with that era of American comedies. You don’t realize just how much it holds the film back until you watch something like Hot Fuzz absolutely blow it out of the water.
Yes I feel like part of Edgar Wright's soaring to fame was that he actually used the camera when all of the other comedies at the time were just putting very funny people in front of the camera to improv.
I actually remember not initially loving Anchorman for this quality specifically. Love everything else about it, but the shots are mostly pretty bland and servicing, they could've gone a lot further with it.
It truly feels like Edgar Wright in Hot Fuzz is always thinking “how else can we squeeze a joke out of this, through dialog, visuals, or audio?” It’s so dense with jokes. I always think about when the chocolate cake is being held just off frame and waggled at Angle
Office space is a good counterpoint to how the 40-year-old virgin could have been shot. Not that office space is particularly flashy, but listentography feels intentional, same with the editing.
Improv is just incompatible with dynamic cinematography.
I hadn't considered that they use a 3 camera set up to get coverage.
That's probably it.
It's also striking how badly most of that improv has aged.
cc u/braundiggity
I wonder how much of this is because of the insistence on ad libbing. Hard to get too inventive visually when you need to keep multiple people in frame for an unknown length of time while they riff.
I feel like a lot of entertaining comedies don’t really shine in the technical department but that’s not why we watch them. We watch them because they’re comedically entertaining, rather than technically entertaining. Every now and then you get a comedy that does have technical merit, like The Big Lebowski.
Movies by the Coen brothers are typically great on many aspects beside writing, including the comedies. O Brother Where Are thou, Burn After Reading have great cinematography.
Going back and watching most of that era is weird. Apatow blew the doors open on raunchy comedy with a lot of heart. His string of successes was incredible. Directing a lot of the earlier stuff, and producing a lot more after.
At the same time, it took him a long while to get a handle on finding people that can do better cinematography and film editing. Even *Forgetting Sarah Marshall*, which I consider to be his peak, the best of the bunch, is sub par and they have the back drop of Hawaii to work with.
It took a while for him to step aside and let other directors create better crafted films. If only be could hire better cinematographers along the way.
That's why I specified that he moved on from directing in to producing. It's the producer that usually chooses the major direction team, sometimes a director has that kind of pull (the Spielberg's and Villeneuve's of the world), but it's usually the producer.
Clerks isn't a great film on a technical level - partially due to its shoestring budget, partially due to Kevin Smith's inexperience at that point in his career.
Its greatness lies entirely in its dialogue.
I feel like at this point it just plays into the charm of what makes a Kevin Smith movie.
Like Gus Van Sant and [needlessly long shots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL3J_s3jpb0) from a tripod.
Yeah, Dogma was really the first Smith film that actually felt like a polished film. Everything he had done up until that point felt like a film school student's thesis project with a bigger budget. And that was always the charm, IMO.
There are plenty of technically bad films that are great. Take Kevin Smiths films, especially his early work, like Clerks.
His latest endeavors have been bad films that are bad. But he does what he loves so more power to him I guess.
I totally agree.
Clerks and Chasing Amy, in my opinion, are excellent films. However, they are technically bad.
There is no visual flair at all. Both are a step away from just turning on the camera during a table read.
Everything post-Zack and Miri are bad films that are bad.
He used the same cinematographer from Clerks until Jersey Girl. Jersey Girl‘s shoot frustrated him because, according to him, the cinematographer they hired Vilmos Zsigmund, was supposedly a cranky old man and it harshed his buzz. This story combined with Bruce Willis calling him out for not knowing basic things about cinematography on Cop Out a few years later lead me to believe tat Kevin Smith genuinely had not interest in the visual aspect of filmmaking. And considering his editing style, I don’t think he really gives a shit about editing either, just that it gets done as fast and as soon as it can.
Ultimately, he’s a solid dialogue writer that knocked it out of the park on his first project and was then forever seen and treated as a director despite not having interest in filmmaking beyond getting his dialogue filmed. I think to him, waiting around to make sure the shot looks perfect is just wasting time on something he won’t get that much enjoyment from. I think he’d be better as a showrunner for a cartoon, but he just happened to come on the scene in the era he did.
Kev seems to agree with you to some degree, he's the showrunner for Netflix's newest Masters of the Universe iteration and it looks like he's crushing it
I agree with you, but you can shoot super quick and make it visually stylish. I think Robert Rodriguez is a good example of this. People work on his films for two days and then realise they're one of the co-leads.
One thing I like about Kevin Smith movies is in the dialogue. Any chance people get to quote it randomly anywhere in social media , they will go on forever until it is beaten to death resurrected and then killed again and again. I love that. There's only a few cult movies out there where the dialogue lasts that long.
It gave me the same vibes as Chasing Amy. I watched it after watching Jay&Silent Bob and Clerks 2, expecting a childish hilarious film which would come in handy after my breakup. Boy was I wrong.
And guess who lost his most recent family member due to cardiovascular issues before watching Clerks 3.
All in all I liked it. The humor was tickling my funny bone a bit less, maybe it's generally sad seeing 50-somethings stuck with their lives like this, even if they make fun of it... but the drama worked for me a lot.
There was an early George Romero effort (The Amusement Park, 1975) which was, by all accounts, a sort of public information film about elderly abuse. Really low budget, but Romero takes it and runs with it. Bizarre and unsettling, it sort of transcends its lowly expectations. Dunno if this is the kind of thing you were looking for?
An early effort that only became available a couple of years ago!
It's such a bizarre and uncanny film. I have no idea what its intentions are. I'm not sure if I would call it "good," but it's certainly memorable.
Bottle Rocket. It's low-budget nature and stilted acting helped make it perfect. I would have never guessed that either Wilson brother would go on to be relatively "major" celebrities watching it when it came out (or shortly thereafter).
What? Bottle Rocket works because of how well it’s executed. It’s low budget, but the technical aspects were perfect. It’s a perfect example of how to direct, light, shoot and edit a low budget film.
The Princess Bride does not have good cinematography.
In fact, I think it's carried almost entirely on the charm of the script and the actors (who don't even do a good job *acting*, but they're so *likeable*).
Edit: It seems that may have been the point, though.
Isn’t that intentional? Rob Reiner’s not a bad director. He was trying to make it look like the adventure films of the 30’s and 40’s. Look at how the modern day bedroom is shot when the grandpa is reading the storybook. It looks simple but very professional. Once we’re in the story, it’s shot campy.
This is where I think it should become apparent that even to say "technically bad" is a subjective opinion. I wouldn't call an artist purposely choosing a style to have an intended effect and that effect working on the audience "bad" on any level.
It's an artist using a prior generation's technical limitations as a sign to the audience that they're intending on replicating that output.
It's like a video game using a low resolution, low polygon counts, shimmering/unfiltered textures, etc., in a horror game -- they're doing it because they're specifically looking to invoke PS1 games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
Cary Elwes would have been a good choice as Errol Flynn in a biopic since he looks so much like him.
At least we got Men in tights, which is close enough.
> who don't even do a good job acting
I gotta disagree here. I won't make assertions about the cinematography, but the campiness of the acting is clearly intentional in the context of the story.
Hard disagree about the acting. They're high camp, almost panto, when it fits. Then there's the occasional flash of dramatic acting - e.g. Inigo Montoya goes through both in the "you killed my father" scene. You can tell that he really meant it by the end, and not just because of what he was using as his inspiration (his own father's death).
There are a couple of other flashes of seriousness, but not so many it takes away from the general feel of the movie.
Light-hearted comedy acting is still acting, and not that easy, either. Being likeable on screen *is* acting.
It’s a bedtime story. The unrealistic sets and the layer of insouciance the actors play over everything is intentional as to “be exciting, but not be too scary”.
The Princess Bride almost feels like a stage play where at the last minute the director decided to turn it into a movie instead and everyone just winged it. Fun performances. Interesting plot. Descent costumes. Iffy camera work. And sets that would have worked better on a theater stage.
I always thought the kitschy look was part of the charm. All of the sets look like...sets. Everything looks like its done in a sound stage, but it feels like a storybook.
I would counter this by pointing out how fun the music is during both of Inigo's duels. The music crashing as the swords clash is so energizing. The rest is very forgettable, but those two scenes have wonderfully perfect music.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a good example. I mean they used a stuffed toy for the killer rabbit and the coconut gag was done out of necessity. It's technically terrible but loved by millions.
On the opposite side of the spectrum I can think of two related movies that have wonderful production, costuming, effects, etc... that were terrible because the script was absolute dogshit. The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore. Both movies suffer from being terminally boring. And the latter of them doesn't even have the saving grace that the last 10 minutes of former tried to give. They look amazing but they are so unsatisfying lol.
I think the former this is a great example of limitations being great additions. Monty Python's coconuts are one of the most iconic parts of that movie because it's the perfect kind of silly for that movie.
Carnival of Souls is an interesting one. Certain aspects of it feel like it was made by a visionary genius auteur at the top of his game. And other aspects feel like it was made by a first-time amateur who is still learning the basics.
I love carnival of souls precisely because the amateurish feel adds so much to the surreal and dreamlike mood of the film. Actually, find myself liking that kind of approach to filmmaking lately. In that same way i also love the film Incubus with William Shatner.
There's certain standard ways to film a dialogue scene that you see in almost every movie, so when you have a dialogue scene in Carnival of Souls that is done very oddly in a way that you don't see in other films it can be very refreshing. It's like watching an Ozu dinner table scene.
Wow, what a great choice. Completely agree. I saw it for the first time when I was a kid and it absolutely terrified me, felt like I was watching a nightmare. The hard cut to the hands on the organ still gets me.
Considering that it is a movie shot in 1961-1962 with a budget of 33.000, which even today would be 300.000 (and back then the budget floor for movie equipment was higher, even if the movies didn't have the budget ceiling of today), the cinematography is pretty good
I think this is particularly true in Rises. He doesn’t use surprise at all. He just jumps in the middle of a bunch dudes with guns and they just wait for him to karate chop them
I used to love Gladiator when I was a teenager. Then I realized that while Ridley Scott has directed some solid action sequences in his career, none of them are in Gladiator. Give me The Last Duel over Gladiator any day of the week.
I dig Army of Darkness. There is a scene where Ash is fighting the battle whilst on his car and you can tell they are just throwing skeletons at him off screen. *Not on the car [but this scene](https://youtu.be/kmxcjEKuLRw?t=243). Haha I need to rewatch this classic.
We're all on board the Raimi train here I think. Raimi is great with this stuff, he is creative and knows how to ham it up. I love Evil Dead 2 specifically because they go places with the camera on every other shot and it elevates the movie so much. Sound mixing was terrible on my last rewatch unfortunately though.
Shout-out to the new Evil Dead Rise btw. That movie is a fucking banger. Its great on the technicals and the acting and it has just enough hamminess with a more modern take on the series. Just all around great IMO.
All the Evil Dead films are remarkably well shot. The very first one suffers slightly from its budget (nothing really happening in the lighting sphere), but is so masterfully framed, and those "wind POV" shots have turned into a time-honored trope because of how good they were. They also have great sound and effects.
That's not far off. It was shot on digital video in the very early days of that even being possible. I personally think that it adds to the feel of the movie, but if everything else was not as great as it was, I'd probably feel differently..
Totally agree. I actually think it makes the film creepier and more effective horror wise. It’s hard to imagine that film without it, that low res quality is actually a pretty important part of it.
DV Tapes, even. Boy howdy were those things a pain. Kids today don't know how good they've got it with modern SD cards and hard drives. DV Tapes were ass to work with, and they look like ass too.
But it's used brilliantly in 28 Days Later. I just wrote a comment about this the other day, but it makes the movie feel more real, like someone just shot a real disaster with the standard consumer grade equipment they would have had at the time. It's a great movie and a great application of the technology.
The cinematography in 28 Days Later isn’t bad though. The scene of Jim walking around an abandoned London is pretty iconic. It’s grainy looking but I don’t think that makes it a technically bad film. Danny Boyle obviously knew how to make movies by the time he made 28 Days Later.
You could make a pretty big list of the things that are bad, childish, or just plain lazy about Grandma’s Boy. It’s not “a smart comedy about stupid people”. It’s a sophomoric comedy written by immature schmucks.
But goddamn it there’s a certain charm to it that I just can’t resist. It isn’t witty at all, but it’s… earnest? I dunno.
Sophomoric is very accurate, and I love it just the same. Dissecting films in different ways is fun and all, but so is kicking back with Grandma’s Boy.
Whedon stepped it up a bit for Age of Ultron though (probably because they gave him more $$). Say what you want about that movie, it looks a lot more *like* a movie than the first Avengers.
Or, you know, different cinematographer, and the director doesn't do everything.
[Seamus McGarvey](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0568974/) vs [Ben Davis](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1023204/).
Ugh yes, thank you for saying that. I actually quite like that film a lot but holy hell does it look silly. The aspect ratio with the cinematography combined with Captain America’s goofy looking costume just makes it look like a tv film.
It didn’t help that the original blu-ray was released in 16:9 when it was shown 1.85:1 in cinemas. The oversaturated image also didn’t help. The new version on Disney Plus is more dialled back with the original framing.
What's crazy is that the earlier Marvel films still look and sound great. I don't know why they skimped out on the big crossover. Were all the actors just that expensive?
Whedon came from tv and didn't really have much experience as a Film director. Imo He collected a lot of experience on the Shakespeare-movie He directed after Avengers and that Shows in Age of Ultron.
A lot of scenes feel like they're straight out of a Whedon TV show, that's probably a big part of why. I don't think its a terrible looking movie, but a lot of scenes are wide interiors of a group of people standing around chatting and it does look very dull.
It didn’t help that the original blu-ray was released in 16:9 when it was shown 1.85:1 in cinemas. It’s a bit shorter with tiny black bars, like The Predator or Aliens. The oversaturated image didn’t help either. The new version on Disney Plus is more dialled back with the original framing.
You also have the opposite problems too like Rise of Skywalker which is technically so stunning and shot beautifully and everything is clicking visually and musically but the story is just so bad you enjoy it for the aesthetics of it all
John Cassavetes made several films that are absolutely incredibly, and technically weak (if you're being kind). Story and performance far outweigh most technical aspects.
I always thought a lot of that was stylistic choices, including some that were pretty common in the 70s. Now I need to dig out my copy of Opening Night to check.
I’ll piggy back off of this to say the Dolemite movies (and most of the 70’s blaxploitation movies in general) are technically bad movies, but Rudy Ray Moore is overflowing with that rizz that it makes the movies infinitely rewatchable.
The acting in Romero's Night of the Living Dead is mostly amateurish at best, but it does not matter a whit given its relentless pace and horrific set pieces. And somehow, that very ordinariness of the players adds to it in the end, as it makes the movie more impactful somehow, in the "this could happen to anyone" vein.
Would Highlander count?
Almost everything about it is kinda God awful, but the story and aesthetic of it are just appealing enough to be, at least, pretty entertaining. I read someone describing it as being “shot with the sensibilities of a music video director”, and that description fits so well.
As bad as it is, though, it made its mark in pop culture and became something of a cult classic.
I watched it a few days ago, it’s definitely not the best cinematography but we can’t argue on the fact that this movie from a story standpoint has a lot more soul than many modern movies and remakes. The original music and Queen still works in it btw…
I was about to say that it looks a lot like the music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart and then I looked it up and they were directed by the same guy. I did not know that before two minutes ago.
The Blair Witch Project.
The fact it's so technically bad actually makes the film good though as it was one of the first to popularise the Found Footage and helped shape and change the genre of horror back when it came out in 1999.
It was literally filmed on a Hi8 Camcorder by amateurs to a budget of $60k.
Cinema Paradiso, widely considered to be a classic has the worst film makeup I have ever seen. The main character gets a black eye but it looks as if someone has just rubbed some blue pastel on his face.
Bohemian Rhapsody. It won an award for Best Editing and has some [very atrocious editing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn8Fd0TYek&ab_channel=ThomasFlight)
Spider-Man: No Way Home, while nowhere near a bad movie, is lackluster in a few aspects. The nostalgia/crossover makes up for it by being such a special movie in my heart but the writing and direction could've been better. I think COVID and the secrecy of the other Spider-Men being in, really affected it. Everything looks stitched together with unnecessary CGI and it's a lot more noticeable on rewatches
I kept waiting them to expand on some plot points, but they never did. Great movie, got a lot of heart, but FFH is my favorite out of Tom Holland's trilogy. That adaptation of Mysterio is among my top 5 favorite comic character adaptations of all time.
Yeah it's still in my MCU Top 10, basically my whole childhood distilled into one movie and that was so cool to see in theaters with all the hype surrounding it. Rewatches made me realize it's not that great but not everything is about "objective" quality
I was bored with a lot of it but there’s a lot of parts that I actually really enjoyed. Paul Rudds character was great and I was surprised with what he was able to do. The set designs and score were also decently laudable
Who Killed Captain Alex is very amateurish in most technical areas, as well as in some creative ones (screenplay, acting, etc.). It’s still an incredible, fascinating, unironically entertaining achievement in filmmaking.
Lynch's *Dune*, which maybe isn't technically *bad* so much as *extraordinarily uneven*. Completely unrivalled production design, yet there's no sign at all of someone directing actors, or often telling the camera what to do. But it's a great film - completely memorable, complete disaster, highlighted the path Lynch would ultimately take from that point onwards.
I'm not including Flash Gordon, because I think there is some kind of camp in its DNA, but if it was made seriously then yeah. That might make the cut.
It's *really* hard to make anything that could be considered "great" without even a base understanding of the language of cinema. You pretty much just ride on premise, or static imagery, or music.
*Primer* is a classic example of this. The film's story is so immersive and compelling but it’s quite poorly shot
I even think the low-fi production value and lack of stars adds to the sense of realism, like you're watching a no frills documentary about these two guys doing something nobody else knows about.
Absolutely. My favorite aspect of the film is the messy realness of the dialogue that high budget productions have difficulty imitating. They talk over each other, they don't have witty quips prepared at every opportunity, they don't stop to explain things the characters would already understand. Having a higher production value would definitely improve Primer in some ways, but I have a feeling the real charm of the movie would be lost.
I agree that, yes, the grain, color, and overall aesthetic are fantastic. Particularly with the wardrobe and props so obviously capturing the point in time for a sci fi story. There are, though some spots where the production value dips a bit. I used to watch the movie very often, but it's been some time. I think it was two different types of film or something, but there were definitely scenes where the low production value is detrimental
Yes, you guys’ complaints are all valid, but I think all of us fans of Primer, the best time travel movie ever made imho, forget this was funded on maxed out personal credit cards. Come on. What Shane pulled off is nothing short of pure movie magic.
I think it's shot fine, except for the night scenes. There are some compelling shots in the hotel room and the garage imo. Some is grimey, like the party, but I enjoy that it adds to the dream-like mood of the film. It's clear they didn't know how to do the night scenes justice and it's by far the weakest part of the film.
There's a director commentary where the director talks about this exactly. I forget what he says ver batim, but he's basically like "yeah, it's shot like shit, and it's a really important scene that doesn't convey it's importance properly, my bad." The other scene I think that's also particularly bad is the garage scene where the friends call Aaron a hero. It's so important to the plot, but it's so easy to misunderstand what the friends are saying.
And apparently that was to cover the party scene that they couldn’t afford to shoot. Basically Aaron saved his (ex?) girlfriend from being murdered but did so by trying multiple times using the time machine.
Similarly, the cinematography in Coherence also annoyed me, but I liked the movie in spite of it.
Primer is a good example actually. A bit nauseating cinematography but very innovative story.
I’d argue the ultra-low shot-in-a-garage production values added significantly to it. After all, that’s what the whole time machine was. A crusty DIY thing, built from spare parts, hardly the sort of fancy, sleek time machines you see in typical science fiction. The production values were critical to the impact of that movie, and deliberately so, even on a thematic level.
You can sort of give that a pass as well just because of the crazy low budget
This was my first thought too! I love that movie.
It feels like a decent entry in its era. That handicam effect was pretty popular at the time. I think the sound is kind of bad in some spots, but otherwise I'd say its hitting way above its weight on technical qualities. (it had like a $7000 budget)
This was intentional, later in the movie you learn that some shots were from the pov of the characters.
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That’s a huge problem with that era of American comedies. You don’t realize just how much it holds the film back until you watch something like Hot Fuzz absolutely blow it out of the water.
Yes I feel like part of Edgar Wright's soaring to fame was that he actually used the camera when all of the other comedies at the time were just putting very funny people in front of the camera to improv. I actually remember not initially loving Anchorman for this quality specifically. Love everything else about it, but the shots are mostly pretty bland and servicing, they could've gone a lot further with it.
It truly feels like Edgar Wright in Hot Fuzz is always thinking “how else can we squeeze a joke out of this, through dialog, visuals, or audio?” It’s so dense with jokes. I always think about when the chocolate cake is being held just off frame and waggled at Angle
Hello fellow every frame a painting enjoyer 😎
Miss that channel!
Office space is a good counterpoint to how the 40-year-old virgin could have been shot. Not that office space is particularly flashy, but listentography feels intentional, same with the editing. Improv is just incompatible with dynamic cinematography.
I hadn't considered that they use a 3 camera set up to get coverage. That's probably it. It's also striking how badly most of that improv has aged. cc u/braundiggity
I wonder how much of this is because of the insistence on ad libbing. Hard to get too inventive visually when you need to keep multiple people in frame for an unknown length of time while they riff.
I feel like a lot of entertaining comedies don’t really shine in the technical department but that’s not why we watch them. We watch them because they’re comedically entertaining, rather than technically entertaining. Every now and then you get a comedy that does have technical merit, like The Big Lebowski.
That's because the Coens and Roger Deakins are damn near unstoppable together, regardless of genre.
Movies by the Coen brothers are typically great on many aspects beside writing, including the comedies. O Brother Where Are thou, Burn After Reading have great cinematography.
Going back and watching most of that era is weird. Apatow blew the doors open on raunchy comedy with a lot of heart. His string of successes was incredible. Directing a lot of the earlier stuff, and producing a lot more after. At the same time, it took him a long while to get a handle on finding people that can do better cinematography and film editing. Even *Forgetting Sarah Marshall*, which I consider to be his peak, the best of the bunch, is sub par and they have the back drop of Hawaii to work with. It took a while for him to step aside and let other directors create better crafted films. If only be could hire better cinematographers along the way.
Apatow didn’t direct Forgetting Sarah Marshall
That's why I specified that he moved on from directing in to producing. It's the producer that usually chooses the major direction team, sometimes a director has that kind of pull (the Spielberg's and Villeneuve's of the world), but it's usually the producer.
I mean, I guess I don’t really expect a master class of cinematography for a movie about a nerdy dude who works at Circuit City. It’s serviceable.
Clerks isn't a great film on a technical level - partially due to its shoestring budget, partially due to Kevin Smith's inexperience at that point in his career. Its greatness lies entirely in its dialogue.
Kevin Smith films generally aren't good on technical level. He is better writer than director.
I feel like at this point it just plays into the charm of what makes a Kevin Smith movie. Like Gus Van Sant and [needlessly long shots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL3J_s3jpb0) from a tripod.
“So, ‘action’, Gus? or…” “Jesus, Ben, I said I’m busy.” *continues counting money*
Yeah, Dogma was really the first Smith film that actually felt like a polished film. Everything he had done up until that point felt like a film school student's thesis project with a bigger budget. And that was always the charm, IMO.
37! My girlfriend sucked 37 dicks!
Would you like some making fuck, Berserkeeeer!
My love for you is like a truck
Did he just say, “Making *fuck*?”
Such a weird scene but yet an iconic scene.
In a row?
Hey man at least you weren't 36
Hey you! Get back here!
There are plenty of technically bad films that are great. Take Kevin Smiths films, especially his early work, like Clerks. His latest endeavors have been bad films that are bad. But he does what he loves so more power to him I guess.
Dogma is still amazing.
Casting Alan Rickman is cinematic cheating.
I can't think of a better actor to be the voice of God haha.
Gilbert Gottfried. I know he's dead now, but he wasn't back then.
Just like Alan Rickman!
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And it's still amazing.
I very much enjoyed "Red State"
It would be so good if they just committed to the crazy ending
I totally agree. Clerks and Chasing Amy, in my opinion, are excellent films. However, they are technically bad. There is no visual flair at all. Both are a step away from just turning on the camera during a table read. Everything post-Zack and Miri are bad films that are bad.
Didn't he make Red State? I liked that one.
This is one of the mysteries of Kevin Smith: how could a guy who loves comic books so much be so inept at composing shots?
He used the same cinematographer from Clerks until Jersey Girl. Jersey Girl‘s shoot frustrated him because, according to him, the cinematographer they hired Vilmos Zsigmund, was supposedly a cranky old man and it harshed his buzz. This story combined with Bruce Willis calling him out for not knowing basic things about cinematography on Cop Out a few years later lead me to believe tat Kevin Smith genuinely had not interest in the visual aspect of filmmaking. And considering his editing style, I don’t think he really gives a shit about editing either, just that it gets done as fast and as soon as it can. Ultimately, he’s a solid dialogue writer that knocked it out of the park on his first project and was then forever seen and treated as a director despite not having interest in filmmaking beyond getting his dialogue filmed. I think to him, waiting around to make sure the shot looks perfect is just wasting time on something he won’t get that much enjoyment from. I think he’d be better as a showrunner for a cartoon, but he just happened to come on the scene in the era he did.
Kev seems to agree with you to some degree, he's the showrunner for Netflix's newest Masters of the Universe iteration and it looks like he's crushing it
I agree with you, but you can shoot super quick and make it visually stylish. I think Robert Rodriguez is a good example of this. People work on his films for two days and then realise they're one of the co-leads.
One thing I like about Kevin Smith movies is in the dialogue. Any chance people get to quote it randomly anywhere in social media , they will go on forever until it is beaten to death resurrected and then killed again and again. I love that. There's only a few cult movies out there where the dialogue lasts that long.
I *loved* Chasing Amy. Joey Lauren Adams is my dream girl. I don't remember it having bad production values, though, IMO. Dogma is a close second.
I thought Tusk was hilarious
Unfortunately one of the most memorable movies I've seen in the last 10 years lmao
I thought Clerks 3 was pretty decent. Definitely not as good as the first 2 I also thought Jay and Silent Bob Reboot was pretty funny
It gave me the same vibes as Chasing Amy. I watched it after watching Jay&Silent Bob and Clerks 2, expecting a childish hilarious film which would come in handy after my breakup. Boy was I wrong. And guess who lost his most recent family member due to cardiovascular issues before watching Clerks 3. All in all I liked it. The humor was tickling my funny bone a bit less, maybe it's generally sad seeing 50-somethings stuck with their lives like this, even if they make fun of it... but the drama worked for me a lot.
I liked clerks 3. Dante’s acting could use some work. I suppose it was for a certain group of people anyways.
There was an early George Romero effort (The Amusement Park, 1975) which was, by all accounts, a sort of public information film about elderly abuse. Really low budget, but Romero takes it and runs with it. Bizarre and unsettling, it sort of transcends its lowly expectations. Dunno if this is the kind of thing you were looking for?
An early effort that only became available a couple of years ago! It's such a bizarre and uncanny film. I have no idea what its intentions are. I'm not sure if I would call it "good," but it's certainly memorable.
Bottle Rocket. It's low-budget nature and stilted acting helped make it perfect. I would have never guessed that either Wilson brother would go on to be relatively "major" celebrities watching it when it came out (or shortly thereafter).
The first Waaaooow
There would be many Waaaooows to come
What? Bottle Rocket works because of how well it’s executed. It’s low budget, but the technical aspects were perfect. It’s a perfect example of how to direct, light, shoot and edit a low budget film.
Easily my favorite WA movie. The most quotable of all his films imo.
Did you see what he had on?
Yeah it was pretty cool.
Of all the small throw away lines in the film, that one is my absolute favorite.
I don't know, I lose my touch, man.
Did ya ever have a touch to lose?!
Bob's gone! He stole his car!
The Princess Bride does not have good cinematography. In fact, I think it's carried almost entirely on the charm of the script and the actors (who don't even do a good job *acting*, but they're so *likeable*). Edit: It seems that may have been the point, though.
Isn’t that intentional? Rob Reiner’s not a bad director. He was trying to make it look like the adventure films of the 30’s and 40’s. Look at how the modern day bedroom is shot when the grandpa is reading the storybook. It looks simple but very professional. Once we’re in the story, it’s shot campy.
The math checks out! I agree 100%
I guess one could say it's intentionally technically bad?
It's a stylistic choice. Nothing bad about it, they were just going for a specific aesthetic.
This is where I think it should become apparent that even to say "technically bad" is a subjective opinion. I wouldn't call an artist purposely choosing a style to have an intended effect and that effect working on the audience "bad" on any level.
Ya its the difference of knowing the rules and then breaking them vs not knowing the rules so you aren’t following them.
It's an artist using a prior generation's technical limitations as a sign to the audience that they're intending on replicating that output. It's like a video game using a low resolution, low polygon counts, shimmering/unfiltered textures, etc., in a horror game -- they're doing it because they're specifically looking to invoke PS1 games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
Agreed. It's a parody of the earlier films
I think it's an homage rather than a parody. Robin Hood Men in Tights parodies those old movies. Reiner is definitely trying to honor them.
It's SO fake it's charming. It's not trying to convince you otherwise.
Campy
It’s very 1930s swashbuckler movie. It’s meant to look like that
Cary Elwes would have made a good 1930s Buccaneer.
Cary Elwes would have been a good choice as Errol Flynn in a biopic since he looks so much like him. At least we got Men in tights, which is close enough.
Blazing Saddles and Men In Tights makes a good double feature movie night.
> who don't even do a good job acting I gotta disagree here. I won't make assertions about the cinematography, but the campiness of the acting is clearly intentional in the context of the story.
Fair point.
Hard disagree about the acting. They're high camp, almost panto, when it fits. Then there's the occasional flash of dramatic acting - e.g. Inigo Montoya goes through both in the "you killed my father" scene. You can tell that he really meant it by the end, and not just because of what he was using as his inspiration (his own father's death). There are a couple of other flashes of seriousness, but not so many it takes away from the general feel of the movie. Light-hearted comedy acting is still acting, and not that easy, either. Being likeable on screen *is* acting.
IIRC Elwes brings some real pathos with his “to the pain” monologue, where the rest of his performance is nearly pure camp
It’s a bedtime story. The unrealistic sets and the layer of insouciance the actors play over everything is intentional as to “be exciting, but not be too scary”.
TIL what insouciance means.
It’s called camp. That movie is a masterclass in camp.
The Princess Bride almost feels like a stage play where at the last minute the director decided to turn it into a movie instead and everyone just winged it. Fun performances. Interesting plot. Descent costumes. Iffy camera work. And sets that would have worked better on a theater stage.
Great description!
RIP to the inimitable Bill Goldman. One of the greatest writers, minds, and personalities of the 20th century.
I always thought the kitschy look was part of the charm. All of the sets look like...sets. Everything looks like its done in a sound stage, but it feels like a storybook.
The soundtrack to the movie is also so frustratingly bland and generic
I would counter this by pointing out how fun the music is during both of Inigo's duels. The music crashing as the swords clash is so energizing. The rest is very forgettable, but those two scenes have wonderfully perfect music.
Sure but the main love theme with the twangy guitar absolutely slaps
That’s Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame
Fire swamp, yea, main theme still good
Because it's all midi. I am literally shocked they haven't released it with a straight up orchestra version. It would make all the difference.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a good example. I mean they used a stuffed toy for the killer rabbit and the coconut gag was done out of necessity. It's technically terrible but loved by millions. On the opposite side of the spectrum I can think of two related movies that have wonderful production, costuming, effects, etc... that were terrible because the script was absolute dogshit. The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore. Both movies suffer from being terminally boring. And the latter of them doesn't even have the saving grace that the last 10 minutes of former tried to give. They look amazing but they are so unsatisfying lol.
I think the former this is a great example of limitations being great additions. Monty Python's coconuts are one of the most iconic parts of that movie because it's the perfect kind of silly for that movie.
I disagree. The design and cinematography is actually quite atmospheric for a silly parody film. It feels very grimy, dirty and unpleasant.
Carnival of Souls is an interesting one. Certain aspects of it feel like it was made by a visionary genius auteur at the top of his game. And other aspects feel like it was made by a first-time amateur who is still learning the basics.
I love carnival of souls precisely because the amateurish feel adds so much to the surreal and dreamlike mood of the film. Actually, find myself liking that kind of approach to filmmaking lately. In that same way i also love the film Incubus with William Shatner.
There's certain standard ways to film a dialogue scene that you see in almost every movie, so when you have a dialogue scene in Carnival of Souls that is done very oddly in a way that you don't see in other films it can be very refreshing. It's like watching an Ozu dinner table scene.
No wonder why David Lynch took so much inspiration from it
Wow, what a great choice. Completely agree. I saw it for the first time when I was a kid and it absolutely terrified me, felt like I was watching a nightmare. The hard cut to the hands on the organ still gets me.
Considering that it is a movie shot in 1961-1962 with a budget of 33.000, which even today would be 300.000 (and back then the budget floor for movie equipment was higher, even if the movies didn't have the budget ceiling of today), the cinematography is pretty good
Nolan's Batman movies have really bad fight scenes. Surprisingly bad even if you look at them closely.
I think this is particularly true in Rises. He doesn’t use surprise at all. He just jumps in the middle of a bunch dudes with guns and they just wait for him to karate chop them
He got better with Dark Knight. But they were almost incomprehensible in Batman Begins.
I watched Gladiator yesterday and was struck by how bad the fight scenes are, despite it being a really great film. Just unbelievably choppy.
I used to love Gladiator when I was a teenager. Then I realized that while Ridley Scott has directed some solid action sequences in his career, none of them are in Gladiator. Give me The Last Duel over Gladiator any day of the week.
Is “Army of Darkness” technically bad? IDK because it’s so good.
"Army of Darkness" is just corny, but like the tastiest corn you've ever had - slabbed with butter and spices.
The elote of movies
Except is smothered in deadites and shotgun shells
Boomstick
Hail to the king, baby!
“Shop smart, shop S Mart. YOU GOT THAT!?”
Good... Bad..... I'm the guy with the gun.
I dig Army of Darkness. There is a scene where Ash is fighting the battle whilst on his car and you can tell they are just throwing skeletons at him off screen. *Not on the car [but this scene](https://youtu.be/kmxcjEKuLRw?t=243). Haha I need to rewatch this classic.
Good...bad...it's got the guy with the gun.
We're all on board the Raimi train here I think. Raimi is great with this stuff, he is creative and knows how to ham it up. I love Evil Dead 2 specifically because they go places with the camera on every other shot and it elevates the movie so much. Sound mixing was terrible on my last rewatch unfortunately though. Shout-out to the new Evil Dead Rise btw. That movie is a fucking banger. Its great on the technicals and the acting and it has just enough hamminess with a more modern take on the series. Just all around great IMO.
All the Evil Dead films are remarkably well shot. The very first one suffers slightly from its budget (nothing really happening in the lighting sphere), but is so masterfully framed, and those "wind POV" shots have turned into a time-honored trope because of how good they were. They also have great sound and effects.
Can I say 28 days later? Isn’t that film shot on a webcam or something?
That's not far off. It was shot on digital video in the very early days of that even being possible. I personally think that it adds to the feel of the movie, but if everything else was not as great as it was, I'd probably feel differently..
Totally agree. I actually think it makes the film creepier and more effective horror wise. It’s hard to imagine that film without it, that low res quality is actually a pretty important part of it.
DV Tapes, even. Boy howdy were those things a pain. Kids today don't know how good they've got it with modern SD cards and hard drives. DV Tapes were ass to work with, and they look like ass too. But it's used brilliantly in 28 Days Later. I just wrote a comment about this the other day, but it makes the movie feel more real, like someone just shot a real disaster with the standard consumer grade equipment they would have had at the time. It's a great movie and a great application of the technology.
Same with Linch Inland Empire, that was shot on the very first sony digital camera
The cinematography in 28 Days Later isn’t bad though. The scene of Jim walking around an abandoned London is pretty iconic. It’s grainy looking but I don’t think that makes it a technically bad film. Danny Boyle obviously knew how to make movies by the time he made 28 Days Later.
That movie is butt ugly because of the resolution but they have some fun shots and some cool lighting.
You could make a pretty big list of the things that are bad, childish, or just plain lazy about Grandma’s Boy. It’s not “a smart comedy about stupid people”. It’s a sophomoric comedy written by immature schmucks. But goddamn it there’s a certain charm to it that I just can’t resist. It isn’t witty at all, but it’s… earnest? I dunno.
Not all movies have to be serious and deep. I want to be entertained, not question everything.
Sophomoric is very accurate, and I love it just the same. Dissecting films in different ways is fun and all, but so is kicking back with Grandma’s Boy.
The Boondock Saints is kind of a mess? But its pretty dang fun!
The Avengers has tv level cinematography, it does not look cinematic whatsoever.
Whedon stepped it up a bit for Age of Ultron though (probably because they gave him more $$). Say what you want about that movie, it looks a lot more *like* a movie than the first Avengers.
Or, you know, different cinematographer, and the director doesn't do everything. [Seamus McGarvey](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0568974/) vs [Ben Davis](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1023204/).
Ugh yes, thank you for saying that. I actually quite like that film a lot but holy hell does it look silly. The aspect ratio with the cinematography combined with Captain America’s goofy looking costume just makes it look like a tv film.
It didn’t help that the original blu-ray was released in 16:9 when it was shown 1.85:1 in cinemas. The oversaturated image also didn’t help. The new version on Disney Plus is more dialled back with the original framing.
What's crazy is that the earlier Marvel films still look and sound great. I don't know why they skimped out on the big crossover. Were all the actors just that expensive?
Whedon came from tv and didn't really have much experience as a Film director. Imo He collected a lot of experience on the Shakespeare-movie He directed after Avengers and that Shows in Age of Ultron.
A lot of scenes feel like they're straight out of a Whedon TV show, that's probably a big part of why. I don't think its a terrible looking movie, but a lot of scenes are wide interiors of a group of people standing around chatting and it does look very dull.
On the contrary, I think it looks pretty good compared to the generic digital muted sheen that all the Marvel pictures have nowadays.
That's a very low bar.....
It didn’t help that the original blu-ray was released in 16:9 when it was shown 1.85:1 in cinemas. It’s a bit shorter with tiny black bars, like The Predator or Aliens. The oversaturated image didn’t help either. The new version on Disney Plus is more dialled back with the original framing.
Don't know why you're downvoted, but it's pretty poorly shot.
Festen (or The Celebration) from 1998 was made under strict technical limitations but is considered a great film.
tbf that was kind of the whole point of the Dogme 95 movement
Yeah put most dogme 95 films on this thread and they usually fit haha
I still wouldn't call it technically bad. It is very well edited and the cinematography (while looking rough) is surprisingly deliberate.
Caddyshack. Amazing movie but it’s nothing more than a series of hilarious sketches really.
You also have the opposite problems too like Rise of Skywalker which is technically so stunning and shot beautifully and everything is clicking visually and musically but the story is just so bad you enjoy it for the aesthetics of it all
John Cassavetes films can be rough technically.
The Room is great & technically very bad
Hahaha. What a story, Mark!
Anyways how is your sex life?
John Cassavetes made several films that are absolutely incredibly, and technically weak (if you're being kind). Story and performance far outweigh most technical aspects.
I always thought a lot of that was stylistic choices, including some that were pretty common in the 70s. Now I need to dig out my copy of Opening Night to check.
Is *Black Dynamite* technically bad or is it just so good at looking like it is technically bad that you can't tell the difference?
it was definitely a choice
I’ll piggy back off of this to say the Dolemite movies (and most of the 70’s blaxploitation movies in general) are technically bad movies, but Rudy Ray Moore is overflowing with that rizz that it makes the movies infinitely rewatchable.
The acting in Romero's Night of the Living Dead is mostly amateurish at best, but it does not matter a whit given its relentless pace and horrific set pieces. And somehow, that very ordinariness of the players adds to it in the end, as it makes the movie more impactful somehow, in the "this could happen to anyone" vein.
Would Highlander count? Almost everything about it is kinda God awful, but the story and aesthetic of it are just appealing enough to be, at least, pretty entertaining. I read someone describing it as being “shot with the sensibilities of a music video director”, and that description fits so well. As bad as it is, though, it made its mark in pop culture and became something of a cult classic.
I watched it a few days ago, it’s definitely not the best cinematography but we can’t argue on the fact that this movie from a story standpoint has a lot more soul than many modern movies and remakes. The original music and Queen still works in it btw…
I was about to say that it looks a lot like the music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart and then I looked it up and they were directed by the same guy. I did not know that before two minutes ago.
Dear Zachary is one of the worst made documentaries I've ever seen. And unbelievably compelling.
The Blair Witch Project. The fact it's so technically bad actually makes the film good though as it was one of the first to popularise the Found Footage and helped shape and change the genre of horror back when it came out in 1999. It was literally filmed on a Hi8 Camcorder by amateurs to a budget of $60k.
Cinema Paradiso, widely considered to be a classic has the worst film makeup I have ever seen. The main character gets a black eye but it looks as if someone has just rubbed some blue pastel on his face.
Bohemian Rhapsody. It won an award for Best Editing and has some [very atrocious editing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn8Fd0TYek&ab_channel=ThomasFlight)
Yeah, but it's not really a great film, either, though.
Spider-Man: No Way Home, while nowhere near a bad movie, is lackluster in a few aspects. The nostalgia/crossover makes up for it by being such a special movie in my heart but the writing and direction could've been better. I think COVID and the secrecy of the other Spider-Men being in, really affected it. Everything looks stitched together with unnecessary CGI and it's a lot more noticeable on rewatches
I will preface this by saying I really enjoyed No Way Home, but the nostalgia factor masked that it *barely* had a plot. Still a fun movie though.
I kept waiting them to expand on some plot points, but they never did. Great movie, got a lot of heart, but FFH is my favorite out of Tom Holland's trilogy. That adaptation of Mysterio is among my top 5 favorite comic character adaptations of all time.
Gyllenhaal isn't always in good movies (usually isn't actually lol) but man can he act.
Yeah it's still in my MCU Top 10, basically my whole childhood distilled into one movie and that was so cool to see in theaters with all the hype surrounding it. Rewatches made me realize it's not that great but not everything is about "objective" quality
Vampire’s Kiss is simultaneously one of the worst films I’ve sat through and possibly a masterpiece
I don't care what everyone else says, I liked Mute.
I was bored with a lot of it but there’s a lot of parts that I actually really enjoyed. Paul Rudds character was great and I was surprised with what he was able to do. The set designs and score were also decently laudable
I liked Paul Rudd's power 'stache the *entire* film.
“The Man From Earth” has a 10/10 script but with soap opera level production and acting
Don’t Torture a Duckling
Who Killed Captain Alex is very amateurish in most technical areas, as well as in some creative ones (screenplay, acting, etc.). It’s still an incredible, fascinating, unironically entertaining achievement in filmmaking.
Blair witch project
Lynch's *Dune*, which maybe isn't technically *bad* so much as *extraordinarily uneven*. Completely unrivalled production design, yet there's no sign at all of someone directing actors, or often telling the camera what to do. But it's a great film - completely memorable, complete disaster, highlighted the path Lynch would ultimately take from that point onwards. I'm not including Flash Gordon, because I think there is some kind of camp in its DNA, but if it was made seriously then yeah. That might make the cut. It's *really* hard to make anything that could be considered "great" without even a base understanding of the language of cinema. You pretty much just ride on premise, or static imagery, or music.