What are movies you are somewhat embarrassed to have liked? It could also be a whole genre. For example, I do enjoy blockbuster disaster movies, not all, but even fairly silly things like, say, Armegeddon. Though Steve Buscemi steals the movie and my sense that that’s the case I do not feel guilt over.
I don’t really have any favorite movies that I feel awkward about liking, or maybe I just can’t think of any good ones yet, but there are a few t.v. shows. I’ve watched the entirety of Laguna Beach and The Hills and loved almost every minute of them. I watched the first episode of Laguna Beach as a joke to see how bad it was, but to my surprise I was absorbed by the culture, the personalities and their interactions, and fascinated by these charismatic young people and their relationships and real life struggles. I sort of went from thinking of the shows as a joke and the people as fake to finding them incredibly human and compelling. I even feel like I’ve learned some beneficial things about social behavior from watching those shows. So I don’t feel super guilty, just a little awkward about them. Other guilty pleases have been Dragonball Z and the first season of Jersey Shore. I can’t say anything redeeming about Jersey Shore, it was just entertaining for awhile.
maybe White Oleander
Yeah, I don’t mean you feel you have to drag yourself off to a priest to confess, just that you either think the film is really rather silly or immature or in bad taste, but nevertheless you enjoy it. I see no TV so I no none of the ones you mention.
I liked Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance in that. She was scary. That doesn’t quite fit my guilty pleasure list. I felt no guilt and not enough pleasure. But we will each have our own types of guilt.
You just don’t watch t.v.? Or you can’t?
I am in Europe, these days, so I can’t watch american TV, at least not a lot of it. And I don’t own the digital box you need here to get TV. I could buy one, so can’t and choose not to are mingled.
gotcha. these days, even what I can get on television, I end up streaming from online some way or another. so no worrying about missing a show or forgetting to record anything, I can watch what I want, when I want, without commercials or with much more limited commercials.
Anything with Samuel L Jackson or Denise Richards in it.
I’m also kinda partial to shitty Steven Seagull movies, even though they are all the same.
Armageddon was alright. One of the few Michael Bay films where he doesn’t go mental with the close-up-wobble-cam and CGI explosions. It isn’t as good as Deep Impact, which is a much more mature disaster movie and has a title that makes it sound like it’s a porn film.
Right. Deep Impact, which came out almost the same time, has a better script, focuses more on characters and less on the special effects. I am sure for some Deep Impact would count as a guilty pleasure, but for me it somehow crosses the line into no longer being one.
Partially this is based on the sheer shallow patriarchal patriotism of Armegeddon. It is almost camp. That I would enjoy it anyway, when the message of the movies is trust the neo-fascist male authority figure and forgive him for being a prick becasue you never know when he may save the world with all the attendant politics behind it,
my guilt is also in part that I feel I should not like something with such a problematic message.
Steven Seagal, works for me. I have seen 1 or 2 that I enjoyed. What an unlikely movie star he is.
For me it is dead simple, the message in Armageddon is the same as in most disaster films - that we can somehow avert the disaster - whereas in Deep Impact there’s large scale death and destruction - i.e. we did not avert the disaster. Much more realistic, much more interesting film.
A fair point. It depends what you like about the movie - if you enjoy the triumph of the neo-fascists then you’ve got problems, if you enjoy the sheer vacuity of the film and it’s genuinely impressive production values then you don’t, as I see it. I think it is a terrible yet highly compelling bit of cinema.
I’m amazed by how he has managed to carve out a pretty lucrative career making sincerely bad films. Particularly when he seems to have set out to try to make good films.
By contrast, another of my guilty pleasures are the films of The Asylum, who make mockbusters. Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus switched me on to the brilliance of their work and since then I must have watched a dozen of their films. They set out to make quite bad films and succeeded, so I can see how they manage to turn a profit.
Sure, though if you enjoy the movie, on some level you are enjoying the triumph of the neo-fascists, even though you are also conscious of not going along with this. But yeah, I enjoy it anyway.
His self-seriousness could not even be parodied, because he is his own parody. He is, usually, a dry wit parody of himself. I think that is part of what I enjoy about him. And then the teenage male in me can enjoy him beating up bad people. Take Jean Claude van Damme. He is cheesy. The unintentional self-parody is not dry enough for my taste.
.This only sounds slightly familiar. I’ll keep my eyes open for them.
The Country Bears – watch it before you judge.
All I can say is it looks like a good example of a guilty pleasure.
But I think the point should be that we cannot we really judge another person’s guilty pleasures. Is it better to have as a guilty pleasure a sexist, neo-fascist film - not thinking of any in particular, but I know I have some guilty pleasures that are this - or a film that look cheesy? Basically we judge our own guilty pleasures or there wouldn’t be any guilt.
some others…
(most movies with Bruce Willis)
Billy Jack
Communion
Species
Scanners
Titatic - this kind of movie bothers me - huge expense when the parts I generally like require little money, something cut and paste about the story, cliche motivations and characters, etc. Nevertheless…
Forest Gump - I hate this movie. I hate at least some of what it stands for. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it.