"Heaven's Gate" by Michael Cimino

Finally got around to watching this. I remembered reading Roger Ebert's review of it in my parents' copy of his book, and saw it on "worst ever" lists many times since.

My own taste is often at odds with reviews, but Heaven's Gate really is a turd in the punch bowl. It amazes me that no one has called it out for its real sins:

1) It's such an obvious Godfather rip-off

2) It's cliched. One of the main characters is a literal hooker with a heart of gold.

3) It opens with like 10 minutes of fiddle music against a black screen.

4) We're expected to believe Kris Kristofferson as a Harvard undergraduate. He could easily have had kids at Harvard by the time this was released.

5) The nudity is all forced and awkward, except for the nude corpses which are just grody and depressing.

6) The whole thing has this sort of bland yet heavy-handed moralism about it. It's like being forced to watch an Alan Alda marathon.

7) To wit, there's this weird attempt to prove that Country music is really from Lithuania or something. That's probably what the 10 minutes of darkness was about.

8) The protagonists are not sympathetic characters. Some guy who graduated from Harvard helping a hooker who helps people fence stolen cattle- if this weren't a period piece these people would be stealing catalytic converters in Council Bluffs, IA

Anyway, I'm all tuckered out now, but Heaven's Gate really does suck, so much that a lot of the specific reasons that it sucks haven't previously been written down- hence this post.