Overrated/Underrated Geek Media

To be honest, I feel like your posts frequently don't show any respect for other posters, and casually and often without engagement off-handedly dismiss complex arguments, actual research, and so on, no matter how politely phrased, but I've always written it off as simply "posting style" on your part, and not intentional.
I am not trying to be rude at all and I do feel like I address people respectfully (disagreeing with people isn’t disrespectful: not engaging an argument isn’t disrespectful: there are lots of reasons not to engage a particular argument). Asserting one’s beliefs or opinion isn’t disrespectful either (even if someone thinks that opinion veers into not being true for some reason)


I mean, would you feel better if instead of "nonsense" I rephrased to "fundamentally untrue"?
Honestly yes that sounds a lot more respectful to me
 

log in or register to remove this ad


I am not trying to be rude at all
And yet sometimes you do come across that way to me at least. Not as often as me I'm sure but...!

not engaging an argument isn’t disrespectful
It actually can, imho, appear to be extremely disrespectful, especially you asked for evidence or asked for an explanation/argument. No-one is psychic - people don't engage for a million reasons, so the actual motivation is unknowable, but when someone asks about something then ignores or dismisses the response that looks pretty disrespectful a lot of the time.

Honestly yes that sounds a lot more respectful to me
Ok going forwards I'll try and do a mental replacement of "nonsense" with "untrue" or "fundamentally untrue"! Just like delete the word nonsense if I see myself typing it lol. I think I can do that!
 

I think after a period of reflection folks realized, its just not very good. It lacks the performances of Goodfellas, the vibes as folks have mentioned. Its long, boorishly stylish, and has zero sympathetic characters. For a good number of years it was considered the bees knees though.
I think that's exactly it.

I never understood the positive response some people had for the movie - it seemed to be a heartless tale about terrible people, and not a particularly interesting story either. And yes "boorishly stylish" is a great way to put it!

(The "on reflection, this was pretty mediocre" thing occasionally happens with videogames as well, I note - sometimes a game is very well-reviewed on release, and then a couple of years later, people are like "Why was this so-so game getting 9.5/10 reviews?!". It was particularly prevalent from like 2000 to 2015-ish, but is less common now.)

Whereas Goodfellas is incredibly charming, and that's why it works. De Niro or Pacino couldn't have pulled off what Ray Liotta did in that role.
 

I think that's exactly it.

I never understood the positive response some people had for the movie - it seemed to be a heartless tale about terrible people, and not a particularly interesting story either. And yes "boorishly stylish" is a great way to put it!

(The "on reflection, this was pretty mediocre" thing occasionally happens with videogames as well, I note - sometimes a game is very well-reviewed on release, and then a couple of years later, people are like "Why was this so-so game getting 9.5/10 reviews?!". It was particularly prevalent from like 2000 to 2015-ish, but is less common now.)

Whereas Goodfellas is incredibly charming, and that's why it works. De Niro or Pacino couldn't have pulled off what Ray Liotta did in that role.
When Casino first came out I remember a lot of people not liking it as much as Goodfellas and it being not as highly reviewed. I kind of wrote it off myself for decades after I first saw it before coming back to it a few years ago and finding my feelings for it were very different this time around. Not sure what the shift was due to.
 

When Casino first came out I remember a lot of people not liking it as much as Goodfellas and it being not as highly reviewed. I kind of wrote it off myself for decades after I first saw it before coming back to it a few years ago and finding my feelings for it were very different this time around. Not sure what the shift was due to.
I think it was momentum off the heels of Goodfellas. Dont get me wrong, as style over substance as Casino is, that style is executed expertly. It just so happens all that energy got placed in style and they forgot to write a good story or command top performances. Folks are often compelled about mafia stories because nobody had done one so well received since The Godfather. There is a sense of wonder at violence in a domestic situation that isnt quite present in a war pic done by soldiers. Its a spectacle, and folks tend to get lost in that moment and forget whats all around that spectacle. I think QT is a master of this, and has taken full advantage of it. Not to pull this discussion in yet another direction.
 

I don’t think it gets more perfect than goodfellas but I also do think it isn’t about having a tight story. To me it is his masterpiece (I would rate it even higher than Taxi Driver, Mean Streets or Raging Bull: all great movies that I could see others rating higher than Goodfellas. That said, if people dislike the story or feel it is ungainly, fair enough. I don’t quite know how I would label Goodfellas but I quite like the storytelling approach he takes in that and Casino.
Fair enough. Those are precisely the three that I think are better, but that's probably just a taste thing.
 



Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are just truly excellent. I can take or leave everything QT after that though.
at the point that QT started grinning during the destruction of an irreplaceable vintage musical instrument, I decided it was time to leave everything Tarantino.
 

Remove ads

Top