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Scent Of A Woman (1992)
Al Pacino’s gruff and showy turn reaches its gear-grinding crescendo with a shameless piece of Hollywood stage management, the film barely grasping to any sense of reality as Al explodes a blinking tirade of foul-mouthed justice all over the assembled rich prepsters.
Troy (2004)
There’s more than a splinter of sense in hiring Brad Pitt to play Achilles – the nearest thing Hollywood has to an old-fashioned matinee throb playing swords and sandals like in the old days.
But when Achilles’ big talkie bit arrives, the usually dependable Brad fluffs his lines so hard he makes his bloodthirsty cry sound like the pay-off line in a shampoo ad.
The Goonies (1985)
There’s no arguing that The Goonies is a brilliant, breathless ride about youth and having adventures, but this big Sean Astin moment has always struck a bum note.
It’s overpackaged – the lowest ebb, the wheezing asthmatic, the intruding soundtrack. It feels like a formulaic Spielberg Adventure building-block, and one of the film’s few low points.
Armageddon (1998)
Michael Bay lays it on thick like a big winter coat of stupid in his meteor-meets-the-earth spectacular, as the American president speaks voluminously over An Important Montage to explain to us why the things we are about to see are Very Important And Thrilling. Utterly hollow.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Another entry that makes it not because it sucks, but because it does sadness so smartly. Here Alec Baldwin’s uptown hotshot reads the riot act to Glengarry’s trio of failing salesmen, presenting a razor-edged and utterly depressing insight into the emptiness of ruthless capitalism.
Henry V (1989)
This is the most famous speech of perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous play, as performed by the most popular classical actor in the world.
And he fluffs it – Branagh’s chubby-faced gurning is the opposite of kingly, and what’s with us having to /think/ to understand what’s going on? We’re an angry mob, rouse us in bullet points!
Gigli (2003)
Far from the temperature-raising teaser that was presumably intended, J-Lo’s grotesquely graphic explanation of why girl bits are better than boy bits (Toes? Slugs? Sweet heavenly bollocks) is actually more likely to uninspire anyone who watches it to ever have sex again, ever.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
True or not, any right-thinking viewer will reject these climactic scenes of unabashed sentimentality like a human body would reject a transplanted dog’s liver.
It’s a peeling gloss finish on a fractured failure of a movie – Genius! Delusion! Dramalovetheend! – that uses wrinkly make-up and a sub-Jerry Maguire speech to replace proper storytelling. Boo!
Taxi Driver (1976)
Pre-bloodletting crescendo, this scene catches Robert De Niro’s frantic and confused Travis as knows he’s falling apart, and reaches out to experienced fellow-cabbie Wizard for help.
In a dark, dark comic moment, the advice he receives is a cloud of jumbled, directionless nothings that bring Travis no inspiration at all.
The Boondock Saints (1999)
The daft final sequence of Troy Duffy’s inexplicably cultish crime clunker, with the MacManus clan storming a courtroom and yarr-ing a pre-rehearsed speech about corruption in brash Oirish accents while the camera cuts about them fast enough to make the whole thing look like a St Patrick’s Day beer advert.
