I always found the original “Star Wars” terribly overrated. Though I was the right age at the time of its original release (and a sci-fi fan to boot!), the film never struck a chord. Even at that young age, I recognized the Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon elements and therefore did not view the film as startlingly original. Worse, the characters and their situation simply never were all that engaging … again, to me.

But what really irked me as the film ended was that George Lucas and company designed the movie with sequels in mind, something almost unheard of back then. Darth Vader escaped the exploding Death Star, my friends noted. He WILL be back! I thought that element too calculated … even unseemly.

How times change!

– E.R. Torre

A film that everyone loves that I can’t stand: “Forrest Gump.” Nice film editing, great acting, cute enough story — but upon further review, it drives me up the wall with its message: be nice, don’t take any consciously big chances or make any tough moral choices (or really any choices, since Forrest’s biggest moves come from people telling him to do it, except for running across the country), and everything will fall your way. Anybody who takes a chance is mocked or has terrible things happen to them. I especially feel depressed over the notion that millions of slack-jawed people thrill to a movie about never making a tough moral choice, and then going about their life with this lesson to base their lives upon.

– mrljdavid

I frickin’ hate that movie. The only fond memory of that 12-hour hell-on-earth was the sarcastic comments my date and I made as we watched. I think we irritated the little old lady sitting next to us but she deserved it for being surprised that Rose still had that stupid jewel.

As for a movie I love, but get unreasonably annoyed with: “The Princess Bride.” When the R.O.U.S. attacks Westley, Buttercup really pisses me off by just standing around and watching while he gets bitten, then screams for his help when the rodent finally notices her. Pick up a branch and help out! Other than that, the movie is perfect.

– max mendalbaum

The whole movie pivots on one key concept: that Ed Norton punching himself in the face in a bar parking lot would result in a club of people fighting each other. It’s one thing to believe that if two guys are having a knock-down, drag-out that it could get other guys interested in doing the same. But one lone nut job punching himself for no reason? Silly.

– GaryML

I’ve seen it at least a dozen times in all its various versions, and I have no idea why. I love Philip K. Dick, but it’s far from the best Dick movie (my votes are “A Scanner Darkly,” “Total Recall” and “Minority Report”). Ridley Scott is in a contest with Clint Eastwood for most overrated living director. “Blade Runner” is what I call a Coffee Table Movie: put together a book of stills and it would look gorgeous on your coffee table, right next to a picture book of “Barry Lyndon.” Yet I keep watching it.

– linguica

The cinematography was brilliant and Joseph Cotten was great. The rest of it was, meh. It’s a movie being graded on a curve. The story behind what it took Orson Welles to make that movie and how he screwed Mankiewicz is fascinating. It’s almost Shakespearean. Unfortunately, that’s not the actual movie.

The actual movie drags to beyond any semblance of inanity. It sensationalizes William Randolph Hearst’s already erratic life to a level unheard of. It’s also the start of the “loosely based on reality” nonsensical meme that we would be better off without.

It’s also the one film critics are not allowed to actually dislike. Ever. Under any circumstances. They can pretend to criticize it, but if it doesn’t come in No. 1 on their greatest movie of all time list, they’re dragged over the coals by the “serious professionals” in their field, who have long since given up actually trying to explain what they even found great about the movie in the first place.

– libertyson

I knew that the movie had a much harder edge to it than the TV series, but I was not prepared for the disappointment I endured when I finally saw the movie several years ago. Over and over I kept saying to myself “THIS is the classic I’ve heard such rave reviews about?”

The main characters (Hawkeye, Trapper and Duke) were the most insufferably smug, condescending pricks imaginable. Had they been real people I could not have been in their company for more than a minute without wanting to punch them in the face. The whole movie carried a very ugly, misogynistic, mean-spirited tone. But I would be willing to overlook all that if the movie lived up to its billing as one of the top comedies of all time and actually made me laugh. Unfortunately it didn’t. Not even once.

I look at “M*A*S*H” as a product of its times. In the context of 1970 and the Vietnam War it was an audacious statement and by most accounts was a groundbreaking film. But audacity alone does not make for a good film, and when viewed today M*A*S*H seems dated and a bit ridiculous.

– bluefellow

This one I find reprehensible, and it won the damned Oscar. Manipulative junk, and at a time when most divorces or separations involved the man leaving, this one turns it around for no real good reason. Spends most of the film’s running time demonizing the Meryl Streep character, and then we’re supposed to hate that she gets custody, and then cheer when she — out of nowhere — says, “You can have him.” She’d seriously just give up the kid out of the blue? After this months-long fight, where she spent tons of money (presumably) on lawyers? Now, she’s going to give him up on a whim? And we’re supposed to cheer and think this is a good thing? Good lord.

– TheGaffer

Politically a very troubling film. Basically it is one big ad for feudalism (“Return of the King”), the bad guys are dark-skinned and have Arabic-sounding names, and the film promotes the view that women should be pretty and virginal (wasting the talent of a great actress like Cate Blanchett). Of course most of these problems come from the source material. But Peter Jackson does nothing to improve them. I loved “Heavenly Creatures” and really liked his early horror comedies, but there is no trace of the dark sense of humor he showcased in those movies to be found in the “Rings” trilogy. The few attempts at jokes there are cringe-worthy.

– wmterhaar

When you see a well-reviewed, widely lauded film and it makes you look back on every previous work of the director with suspicion, when a film makes you discount the collective wisdom of your peers and feel like a stranger among them, when a film leaves you worried for the fate of humanity, then you know it has made the list.

For me the top contender for most overrated and horribly flawed, definitely dangerous and possibly evil film of the last 20 years has to be “Saving Private Ryan,” a film that actually got people killed. I left the cinema snarling at its simple-minded bellicosity and horrified that it had been so generously reviewed. I am utterly convinced that the film and its attendant TV series helped lay the ground culturally for the Bush wars and the general conviction that invading abroad was just a perfect way to emulate the “greatest generation.” It amazed me that it was more racist and less humane than propaganda films made during the Second World War. A completely unironic paean to killing, mercilessness and the evil of the other. Amazing.

– Shay Begorrah

I heard the rave reviews of “The English Patient” and was really looking forward to seeing it. Afterward, I think the primary positive thing I could say about it was that it was very pretty. I HATED the characters I was supposed to love. Being whiny and self absorbed was supposed to be highly romantic?

For me, the worst scene is was when Alm

I’m feeling the “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Forrest Gump” comments, big time. But “American Beauty” tops them all. I’ve never, ever seen such laughably contrived slop committed to film. Suburban ennui, confusion, fakery and self-delusion? Dude, that’s an idea that’s totally played, and had far more impact when it was convincingly done in 1950s and 1960s American cinema. You know, back when it wasn’t a freaking cliche.

I had zero sympathy for any of the characters (not that characters necessarily have to be likable). I kinda cheered when the pathetic Kevin Spacey character was offed. Everyone else was too one-dimensional to even hate. And finally, FINALLY, the plastic bag scene. There are no words. Amateur night.

The only reason I’m glad I didn’t walk out of the theater that day was that it’s given me fodder to bitch about for the past 11 years.

– eyelasso

“Michael Clayton” is a critically lauded film that made money. It only works because of a singular moment of what Roger Ebert refers to as “idiot plotting” [where a character has to do something stupid and out of character in order for the film to work]. What’s really funny, is that writer/director Tony Gilroy hangs a lantern on that moment in the film’s dying seconds, as if saying, “Waitaminnit! That was stupid! Maybe if I point it out, I can get away with it …”

What is this singular moment of stupidity? When Tilda Swinton’s character, Karen Crowder, gives the order [in however roundabout a manner] to kill Clayton. It’s like Clayton says at the end of the film, “I’m not the one that you kill — I’m the one that you buy!”

Considering that throughout the film, Crowder is described as the best and the brightest among the up-and-coming at her firm, you’d think she would be smart enough — and could afford to take five or 10 minutes — to make a couple of calls [easily done offscreen to keep the story moving forward; requiring maybe one or two lines to explain] and find out about Clayton, but nooooooooo …

And that moment of stupidity totally undoes a deliciously suspenseful movie that was even trying to say stuff.

What a waste.

– Sheldon Wiebe

“The Manchurian Candidate” is a movie I love and have watched over and over but I can barely tolerate Janet Leigh’s ridiculous dialogue. Come to think of it, what is the point of her character at all? Laurence Harvey’s love interest is also pretty annoying (taking off her blouse to make a tourniquet and then pedaling home in her short-shorts and strapless bra!) but all is forgiven with the appearance of Angela Lansbury’s wonderfully terrible mother. Nothing makes a good movie like a really bad mother. And for that she got billing below Frank Sinatra.

– trishg

Loved it — I’m not going to trash it. I loved it since I was a kid, and my daughter loves it now.

But ever since I was a kid, I was bugged by the fact that, at the end, Dorothy’s OK, yay, but the sheriff still has an order that Toto is to be destroyed. Five minutes after the fadeout, Mrs. Gulch will be back, and Toto will be taken to the sheriff to be put to sleep. We can rationalize and read things into it — but to a kid like I was and my daughter is — they never resolved the horrible conflict.

– Carmody