60 Movies I Will Never See (Or Saw and Regretted)

There are 6 basic emotions, 1 positive (happiness), 3 negative (sadness, anger, and disgust), and 2 which could be either (surprise, fear)  The function of a movie, book, song, or other work of art is to elicit positive emotions, to make the audience feel better after viewing than they did before.

So I don't understand movies that deliberately elicit sadness, anger, or disgust.  Why would anyone want to watch something that makes you feel bad?  Don't you get enough bad feelings in real life?

Here are 60 movies that I will never see, or that I saw and regretted.

No dying of long, slow, debilitating diseases.  With scenes of yelling at doctors, reconciling with estranged relatives, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, and holding hands on death beds.

1. Terms of Endearment (1983). Shirley Maclain's daugher dies of cancer.

2. Beaches (1988).  No one surfing or swimming, just Bette Midler singing and crying.

3. Steel Magnolias (1989).  Women face tragedy in the South.

4. My Girl (1991).  Boy falls in love with a dying girl.

5. Lorenzo's Oil (1992).  Family tries to cure their dying son.

6. Stepmom (1998). Hugging and dying.

7. Here on Earth (2000).  Boy's girlfriend dies.

8. Bridge to Terabithia (2007). With Josh Hutcherson (top, recent photo). They fool you into thinking it's a fantasy movie, like Harry Potter.  It's actually about a boy befriending a dying girl.

9. Moulin Rouge (2008).  Fortunately, I walked out because it was so awful long before the deathbed scene.

10. The Fault in Our Stars (2014).  A support group for people dying of cancer.

Especially no dying-of-AIDS.  Yelling at doctors, reconciling with estranged relatives, sobbing, sobbing, and so on, but with homophobia.  Lovely way to spend an evening.

11. An Early Frost (1985).  Guy dies of AIDS.

12. Parting Glances (1986).  Guy dies of AIDS.

13. Longtime Companion (1989). Guy dies of AIDS.

14. Philadelphia (1993).  I was forced to watch this, but kept my nose in a book the whole time.  Guy faces discrimination because he's dying of AIDS.

15. And the Band Played On (1993). The government refuses to acknowledge that people are dying of AIDS.

16. The Cure (1995).  Guy dies of AIDS.

17. It's My Party (1996, left).  AIDS and suicide!  Fun!

No Holocaust as entertainment.  Um... 6,000,000 people died. How can that be turned into two hours of fun?

18.  Sophie's Choice (1982).  She has to choose which of her kids to kill, and later gets a couple of boyfriends.

19. Schindler's List (1993). He helps some people escape from the Holocaust.

20. Life is Beautiful (1997).  Set in a concentration camp. Are they kidding?

21. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2009).  More concentration camp hijinks.

No main characters dying, period. Who had th bright idea of killing off the protagonists in car accidents, gunshots to the head, or zombie bites?  Why would I want to get invested in a character, only to have them die?

22. Easy Rider (1969).  I saw this, not realizing that everybody dies, and the movie is ruined.

23. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969),  What's the point of a homoerotic buddy "comedy" if they're just going to die at the end?

24. Thelma and Louis (1991).  I watched this, too.  No one told me that they go over a cliff.

25. Titanic (1997). I was conned into seeing the musical.  Hint: they all drown.

26. The Perfect Storm (2000).  They all drown.

27. Children of Men (2006). Everybody is dying.

28. Pan's Labyrinth (2006).  Girl is dying.

29. Into the Wild (2007).  He starves to death!

30. 28 Weeks Later (2007).  Zombie movies are supposed to have survivors!

31. Burn After Reading This (2008).  I went into this thinking it was a comedy, and walked out when Brad Pitt's comic relief character suddenly was shot to death.

32. Apollo 18 (2011).  Dying astronauts.


No inmates on death row.  You know they're going to die from the beginning.  Why bother to watch?
 33. The Executioner's Song (1982).
34. Dead Man Walking (1995)
35. The Green Mile (1999)

No war.  War is one of the biggest tragedies of life, not a source of entertainment!  If the movie is about humorous hijinks far from the combat zone, ok.  But angst-ridden, somber music, people dying of bullet holes -- no way!  I don't care if the whole platoon struts around naked.
36. Platoon (1986)
37. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
38. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
39. We Were Soldiers (2002)

No ends of the world.  Nuclear holocaust, giant meteor, whatever.  Even worse than the main characters dying, the end of everybody and everything, the most depressing thing imaginable.

40. Dr. Strangelove (1965). Why would you yell "yahoo" while plummeting to your death on the back of a nuclear bomb? I actually saw this, under the impression that it was a "comedy."  It's not.

41. Miracle Mile (1988).  I actually saw this without realizing that the world ends until it was too late, and I was trapped there with a date.

42. 2012 (2009).  A new flood kills everybody on Earth, except for two hetero couples.

43. Cabin in the Woods (2012). I thought it would be a standard horror movie, with survivors at the end, not "the old gods awaken and start the Apocalypse," and everybody dies.

44. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012).  A "comedy" about a man and a woman (of course) falling in love just before an asteroid kills everybody on Earth.

45. This is the End (2013).  I actually watched this.  Everybody dies,but some of them go to heaven.

No LGBT people dealing with homophobia.  Getting yelled at, rejected, beat up, experiencing angst, and dying.

46. Get Real (1998).  I saw this, thinking it would be ok because no one dies.  Horrible!

47. Boys Don't Cry (1999). Transman is killed.

48. The Laramie Project (2002).  A movie about a real-life horrific hate crime!  Just the thing to brighten your day.

49. Brokeback Mountain (2005). Bisexual cowboys facing homophobia and dying.  No way!

No horrifying handicaps.  I don't care if they overcome adversity and find love, having a handicap is by definition bad, so no movie about it can be good.

50.  The Miracle Worker (1962). I got grossed out by the passage in the book where the child Helen Keller doesn't eat at the table, she just goes from plate to plate and grabs whatever she wants.

51. Johnny Got His Gun (1971).  A blind, deaf, and dumb quadriplegic?

52. Tommy (1975).  A blind, deaf, and dumb boy, plus homophobia.  I turned off the DVD and zapped it back to Netflix.

53. The Elephant Man (1980).

54. Mask (1985).  I don't know what it's about, but it sounds gross.

55. My Left Foot (1989). This one sounded even more gross.

56. The Sessions (2012).  A man living in an iron lung decides to have sex.  Gross.

No movies where the plot summary itself makes me nauseous.

57. Harold and Maude (1971).  I saw this one.  Sickening romance between a teenage boy and an 80-year old lady.  No, I don't think it's at all hypocritical that I'm 55 years old and dating twinks. Plus she commits suicide because she loves life so much.  Huh?

58. Pink Flamingos (1972).  Seen it.  According to John Waters, they offered Divine a substitute, but no, she wanted to really eat the dog poop.

59. Funny Games (1997).  A family is terrorized and killed by a pair of psychos.  Uplifting!

60. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).  He ages backwards!  Can you think of anything more disgusting?  I couldn't even sit through the trailers.

See also: 10 Gay Movies  I Hated.

The 10 Most Depressing Christmas Songs

November is my favorite month.  The air is brisk and cool but not too cold for jogging, it gets dark at a normal hour, tv and the theater are going strong.  Even though there's my birthday and Thanksgiving to celebrate, it's still relaxed and easygoing.

Then suddenly it's December, cold and dark all the time, people scatter, the campus is deserted, you have 1000 papers to grade, and you spend two weeks running around at breakneck speed buying and wrapping presents, putting up decorations and a tree, addressing cards, planning and going to about 1000 parties, getting sugar overload.  Then you get on an overcrowded airplane to spend two more weeks doing it all over again back home with the relatives.

All the while you're expected to be deliriously happy.  If you lose that robotic grin for an instant, you're ostracized as a Scrooge and a Grinch.

To facilitate your delirious happiness, you are subjected to a constant barrage of music specific to the season.  The problem is, most Christmas songs are not happy.  They're wistful, nostalgic, mourning lost youth and long-gone friends, or else bemoaning the fact that time is passing, we're all getting old and going to die soon. 

How are you supposed to be joyful when all of the songs you hear are about loss and despair?

Here's a list of the worst offenders.

1. White Christmas.  "Just like the ones I used to know."  A bittersweet look at Christmas past, in our long-gone childhood, before global warming, with a slow, lugubrious melody that makes you want to cry.

2. The Christmas Song ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire").  Humorous lyrics with a wistful, sad melody.  Talk about mixed signals!  Mel Torme, who is Jewish, wrote this on the beach in Florida.  There was no Jack Frost nipping at his nose.

3. The Little Drummer Boy.  There are actually no lyrics to this song, or just a few.  Mostly it's nonstop onomatopoeia ("rum tum tum"), and a slow, wistful melody.

4. Home for the Holidays.  You've got to be kidding.  When you see your relatives only once a year, they're strangers, and they've suddenly gotten a lot older, thus reminding you of your own inevitable progression toward death.  Oh, wait, the singer isn't really going home for the holidays; it's just a masochistic fantasy.

5. Holly Jolly Christmas.  Horrible heterosexist lyrics.

6. Good King Wenceslaus.  A beggar freezing to death finds his way through the snow by following the king's footprints.  All with a horrible ponderous melody.

7. We Three Kings.  The third king brings myrh: "bitter perfume, breathes a life of gathering doom."  You got that right.

8. We Need a Little Christmas.  Life is hard.  We've grown a little older, grown a little colder.  Holly and mistletoe won't help.  I heard this for the first time on an episode of The Facts of Life 30 years ago.

9. Blue Christmas.  Goes without saying.

And the worst of the worst:

10. Have Yourself a Merry...well, you know.  About the swift passage of time and the inevitability of death.  Judy Garland refused to sing the first version -- it was too depressing even for the Queen of Sad Songs.

Russian Doll: Skip the Last Episode

The Netflix series Russian Doll stars Natasha (Nadia Vulvokov), a  New Yorker.  Rather, she is New York, the city personified: big, brash, flashy, sarcastic, irreverent, gravel-voiced, with frizzy hair and lots of rings. 

She's Nicky from Orange is the New Black, Elaine Boosler, the scary, scanky woman that George Costanza thought was faking it on Seinfeld,   She has some sort of job with computers and a large pansexual, multicultural group of friends who talk about art, film, and sex while eating avant-garde hors d'oeuvres and taking designer drugs.

She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror at her 36th birthday party, commiserates with her friends on being over the hill, spars with her ugly ex-boyfriend John (Yul Vazquezl left), and flirts with the uglyMike (Jeremy Bobb, below) (apparently she has a thing for ugly guys).  She takes Mike home to screw. Later she goes out again, sees her lost cat, and rushes across the street to fetch him, whereupon she is hit by a car...

And appears at the bathroom mirror again, at the start of her 36th birthday party.  Natasha interrogates her friends on whether they gave her a weird drug, tells John about the weird experience, sees Oatmeal and fetches him, avoiding the car.  Then she trips and falls...

And appears at the bathroom again.

Life is fragile.A trip on a staircase, a chicken bone, a moment of inattention while crossing the street, a gas leak, a friend who mistakes you for a burglar, and it's over in an instant.  And return to the moment of your 36th birthday party.

Natasha interrogates her drug dealer, investigates the house where the party was held, buddy-bonds with the homeless Horse  (they sleep together but don't screw, at least not on camera)...

Then she meets Alan (Charlie Barnett), who is also reliving a pivotal day in his life: the day he asked his girlfriend to marry him.  She rejected him because she was screwing her literature professor...Mike, the ugly guy Natasha hooked up with!

He openly admits to screwing other co-eds, but the girlfriend doesn't care. 

Natasha and Alan are connected in other ways:  They ran into each other the night of their first deaths.  And they always die at the same moment in time.

To the director's credit,they don't fall in love (although they do screw).  They buddy-bond as they try to unravel the mystery, and either die permanently or go on.

The premise falls apart at at the end -- the last episode makes no sense.  But it's interesting to see Natasha grow from amorality, and Alan from frozen with indecision (think Eleanor and Chidi from The Good Place)

Gay characters:  Half of Eleanors friends are lesbians, although the morning after the party, they awaken in a multisexual pile.  No gay men exist.  '

Beefcake:  Alan always wakes up in his underwear.  The other male characters don't show their physiques, but most of them are startlingly ugly anyway  Brendan Sextan III, who plays Horse, is rather cute, but unrecognizable under the homeless guy makeup.

The Horrible Beefcake in the Horrible Hometown of Horrible Comic Artist Howard Cruse

Howard Cruse is the most depressing gay cartoonist of all time (and that's saying a lot: gay cartoons are typically cries of agony and despair).  His stories are about pain, loneliness, homophobia, death, hate crimes, AIDS, death, death, and more death (you know somebody's gonna die).  I have often wondered:
1. Who actually reads his stuff?
2.  What turned him into such a Sad Sack?

He grew up in Springville, Alabama, about 30 miles from Birmingham.  He memorializes the unrelenting agony of his youth in the unrelentingly depressing graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, which I refuse to read, because who wants to read a graphic novel about a baby made of rubber with pins sticking out of it?

(This photo has nothing to do with Howard Cruse. I just thought you'd like to look at something pleasant.)

Maybe Springville, Alabama is to blame for the unrelenting agony that is Howard Cruse's mind.  Let's find out.

The population is 4,000, 90% white, median household income $43,000.

It's got a long, narrow Main Street that parallels Highway 59.  Driving from the south, the first thing you hit is Tucker Auto Salvage and the Springville Baptist Church. Dead cars and fundamentalists. Then some wealthy suburbs, a supermarket, and the Springville Cafe, which looks desolate. 

Next Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, the Middle School, a Mexican Restaurant, and an Italian Bistro.

Then the high school, next to a day spa for pets.

Then a Wal-Mart, and you're out of town.

It does sound bad.  But surely there's some beefcake. 

Not much.  The high school sports team is called the Red Devils.  This one is called the Lady Red Devils, for some reason.

A clearer photo,but I think the boys are too young to be beefcake. Hard to tell -- their faces are old.  Worn from the constant suffering of life in Springville?

He's happy, I think. The caption reads "Springville Drowns Lake Nona."  At the swimming competition.  There always has to be death in there somewhere.

This Teen Bodybuilder of the Week isn't bad. 

Very scary guys popped up in my search for adult beefcake. 

A bizarre bodybuilder, Raymond Fong, is featured at the GTO Bodybuilding Camp...oops, it's in "San Francico."

A powerlifter from...no, Spanish Fork.

A wrestler from Honeoye Falls, somewhere in New York.



















Charlotte, North Carolina

Ok, I give up.  Howard Cruse did in fact grow up in the bleakest place on Earth.  But he moved to New York City in 1977, so that's not an excuse.

See also: Howard Cruse, the World's Most Depressing Gay Comic Artist.