Super Mario Bros (1993) is this movie for me ... it's weird as hell and it's adherence to the source material is ... iffy at best ... but god damn if it wasn't a fun ride!
Then you read about how everyone hated the directors so much they literally got drunk on set and openly wore custom made shirts with slogans about how bad the directors were AND Bob Haskins was in a cast for most of it for an injury on set and it gets even more fascinating! The Directors poured hot coffee on people and just openly belittled everyone. It's insane!
I love this movie. It's gloriously cheesy and fun. I can see the poor ratings overall, but for 90s kids who were just pumped to see their favorite game on the big screen, this was an amazing moment in cinema.
yes, this is my answer as well! as much of a nightmare the filming process was for everyone i think it's a legitimately good movie, not even "so bad it's good". it's utterly bonkers & the production design is absolutely off the chain and i love it.
Not as extreme as the case in the OP, but I'm often surprised how "meh" a reaction Don't Look Up got. Maybe people think it was heavy handed? Too on the nose? I don't know but most folks seem to think it was at best merely "okay".
For me, I place it next to Idiocracy as one of the most prescient films about what is in store for us. I think after this last election day, it seems even more prescient. On top of that, it is legitimately funny with really good performances, especially from Jennifer Lawrence.
Yeah, I'd call it heavy handed. It felt like it was a message first. Not as bad as the Daily Wire stuff, but going down that road. Even if I agree with the message, it felt contrived.
Just my two cents though.
Agreed. It came across as preachy instead of entertaining, but it seemed like it was trying really hard to be entertaining.
I've gone over it again and again and again in my head and I still can't make sense of it. He's a three-star general. He works at the Pentagon. Why would he charge us for free snacks?
This part had me absolutely rolling. I loved that movie.
I loved Jonah Hill in that movie so much
It suffers from the “Reality is Unrealistic” trope. Seems so on the nose and heavy handed, yet is literally exactly how it would happen (and is arguably already happening).
In hindsight its kind of understatement.
Being so on the nose, to me, is part of the joke.
So obvious its blinding, and unrealistic. Just like reality lol.
Spot on. This thread got me to rewatch it tonight and I gotta say, it hits even harder this close to the election. Almost painfully plausible.
It's not a true story, but it is a very high fidelity representation of reality.
I really liked that movie. Great example for me, too.
I couldn't watch it, not because it wasn't good but because I was constantly getting unbelievably depressed about how accurately it mirrors the world today. Every scene had me thinking "this would be funny if it wasn't exactly how it would actually pan out." I think it might be hilarious a few decades after this all blows over but right now it hits way too close to home.
a few decades after this all blows over
Up. You mean blows up.
Or, in the Homerian fashion, 'It's Funny Coz It's True', really not in some cases, but laughter may help some people cope. Agreed. I also hate prattfall comedy for similar reasons, empathy, self-reflection, rational fear, those things...
It's one of the least forgettable movie I've seen in a while (it's a good thing) and the concept is just so good because it's idiotic but at the same time completely true
I just loved the pacing of Don't Look Up so much. Just constant subversion of expectations that I really enjoyed
It's been a long time I got as visceral of a feeling as I got when watching that film and Leo's character's meltdown as the impending doom is happening an noone seems to be giving a fuck
Too fucking relatable and more every day.
I tried watching that. But the wilful idiocy and mocking scene at the start just invoked such a rage in me i knew i was gonna stroke out if i kept going
As a kid, I couldn't believe how funny Wild Wild West is
It did not hold up well.
I think it did.
But I grew up watching the TV show, and others like it (Get Smart), and appreciate the style of humor.
I think the divide on this is knowing what that genre is about, and some people just don't appreciate that kind of humor.
I get it, I like these movies/shows, but don't like the 3 Stooges.
I still think the movie slaps
So I just watched it for the first time earlier this year and honestly it wasn't bad. It's cheesy (and by most measures not a great film), but it was genuinely fun to watch.
Eh, I never saw it as a kid, and I watched it recently... imo it's a decent action flick. It barely makes sense in more than one way but I still enjoyed the ride
Me too! I saw it in theaters and cracked up the whole time. Haven’t watched it again since then, but I did listen to an interview with the director who essentially disowned the movie. He said something to the effect of: “the couple of moments that were cute were not worth the overall quality of the film.” He said Klein and Smith had no chemistry. He also basically confirmed the Will Smith MIB fart rumor in the same interview.
I loved Equilibrium and was surprised it wasn't rated as good.
I've never met a person who I know has seen it but doesn't like Equilibrium.
...And it's at a 7.3 on IMDb. That's a pretty good rating.
I nearly literally started a friendship based on showing the other person this movie. It's a fantastic movie and apparently why Christian Bale was chosen as Batman.
I cried harder at that dog scene in that movie than any other movie ever. Even right now I'm tearing up thinking about it. It may have been in part because I watched it alone so I didn't feel the need to filter myself at all and there wasn't anyone to comfort me. Fuck, man. Fuck.
But yeah, apart from that, I liked it too. It's a bit cheesy, sure, but I really enjoyed a lot of it. I thought the gun stuff was cool. I forget the name they have it. Gun Kata or something? Like when they'd slide into a pitch black room and just shoot all around them. That was cool. It's such a cheesy thing but so cool lol.
Lol my mom watched every version on the DVD. Probably watched more times than me. Amazing movie.
Back when Netflix had everything I watched that one thinking it would be a cool scifi film, but turns out its a kong fu movie and I was not in the mood for a that so I was disappointed. The sound track slapped though!
Equilibrium is great but it's hard to see it as something else than a b-movie even with my rose tinted glasses
It's one of the films I keep going back to in my mind. So clever. The way it makes one root for the main character and the emotional uprising, only to be, in the end, made aware of the awful things emotions can do. The ending makes you reconsider whether the unnatural emotionless society at the beginning could actually be a preferable solution despite the imperfection. It's so good.
I have a friend who recommends literally every single thing he watches. He'll watch the stupidest movie in the world and be like "wow, that was awesome!". I envy how much enjoyment he can receive from terrible movies and TV shows.
I'm that friend, except I'll preface it with "You know I like a lot of garbage movies, but..."
Lucky!
I love me some bad movies!
I actually liked sucker punch.
Seems like alot of people didn't get the A B C B A style of story telling that it did. I get on so many arguments with IRL people over it.
A) real world beginning and end of movie. she is in an asylum.
B) In her mind she is elsewhere dancing to get items to escape.
C)her dancing is shown as boss battles because her dancing is her fighting for her life in her mind.
I still can't decide if it's a brilliant retelling of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or schlocky trash, but it sure is fun.
A little of both. I mean they ended the same.
I saw it in the cinema, left with mixed feelings. I should probably rewatch it
I was surprised by the reaction to this movie. I really enjoyed it.
I wasn't confused by the story, I was bored by the terrible action
I'll never not like Waterworld
Waterworld is fine. It just gets ragged on because of its insane budget and the lackluster results for said budget. But if you don't care about that and just watch a movie, it's a decent movie.
The Simpsons joke where the tie in video game needs 40 quarters is still funny though.
Like most, I totally disagree. However, it had such great potential.
I feel the same about Valerian. The imagery was pure eye candy and then I watched it, so looking forward to a great flick, and what I got was... Valerian.
It's definitely a spectacle.
"'Cause she's my friend." Will always have my respect for not phoning it in and just cashing the check.
F you and Saint Joe Hazelwood. I love sails.
Yep. Great movie, watched it in cinema and a few times later. Still don't understand how people didn't like it.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was my jam as a little girl.... but it might just be because I ended up being bisexual and there's a lot of beautiful and badass people in it.
Have you ever read the comics? Quick read, and vol 2 is a straight up banger.
Fun movie! Idk if I ever bought the DVD but I would always watch it when it was on TV.
LGX would make a good streaming series if the budget was generous.
It has a lot going for it, and a really great setting/foundation for a thing.
I gotta read those comics sometime.
Huh. I enjoyed The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen myself, but never really thought to look up the reviews. I never had any idea that movies was so disliked by reviewers. I suppose I've found the movie I liked but everyone else seems to think is terrible.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I saw it the day it came out and thought it was a brilliant departure from the macguffin-based plots that had come before, and it showed so many different things that had never been in a Star Wars movie before.
Turns out all Star Wars fans want is more of the exact same that had been in the previous 7 movies.
Honestly I loved both the direction that Rian Johnson clearly wanted to take the sequels and I loved the direction that JJ Abrams clearly wanted to take the sequels and I honestly wish Disney had just stuck with one of them for the entire trilogy and let the other do a trilogy as well. We all know how badly Disney wanted to pump out a Star Wars film every year during that timeframe so that way they could've had their cake and eaten it too
I agree with the other guy somewhat - take out a lot of the casino scene and it's the best star wars movie so far.
I'm pissed Johnson isn't going to get the trilogy he was promised. Instead, we got Abrams making the most corporate star wars to date, and that's saying something
If you remove the whole space casino bit, I would agree with you.
If they had completely scrapped the casino arc it would fix so many problems. Not only would that shitty, worthless sequence not exist, but they would've had screen time to put in more quality stuff. Imagine if at the end of the movie the big reveal was that Palpatine was alive. Instead, they had to put that into a messy scroller at the beginning of the third movie.
I’d say it’s quite annoying in its imperfections, as they make it quite an easy target and that undermines what it was trying to achieve. Washed-up, beaten Luke Skywalker drinking blue milk? Great. Reframing the Force as a cryptic balance that goes far beyond the Jedi Order’s sacred tomes? Great. Undoing the obsession with the special noble bloodlines. Also great.
Honestly its especially annoying to those of us who have a good grasp of the old lore. Hell half of what you listed is kinda done in KOTOR 1 & 2.
Beaten washed up Jedi, heres the exile and to a degree Kreia.
The force is esoteric force deconstruction heres fucking Kreia and her goddamn thesis.
No obsession with bloodlines and shit, might I introduce you to the Mando killer, the Malacor evaporator, Darth motherfucken Revan.
But seriously the Sequels really did just retread old ground, hell in Dark Empire we atleast got evil Luke Skywalker and a Droid army.
I thought it was alright. One thing that really bugged me is that if you're chasing someone in space why not call another ship to cut them off, or just... fly faster. Idk it didn't make a lot of sense to me lol
The original trilogy is over-rated.
There, I said it.
First movie is 100% forgettable by today’s standards. Empire Strikes Back is a great sci-fi movie by any standard, and Return of the Jedi is totally a lackluster finale. I think I agree with you
Yes, but at least this one has 91% critic rating on RT.
i feel like it’s much harder when you finish a movie, and you hate it, and then find out it’s one of the most critically acclaimed movies of all time.
this was my experience watching taxi driver. to this day, i have not been able to find a single other person who disliked that movie as much as i did
Taxi Driver is a movie I can recognize as being a great piece of art that I don't enjoy.
I turned off Oppenheimer, felt so pretentious and over the top serious to me. I already knew people love it, though.
thank you! i also couldn’t stand that movie. watching oppenheimer felt like watching a 3 hour trailer for oppenheimer. i can’t understand nolan’s refusal to let a scene last for more than 1 minute
Wife and i turned it off halfway because it was sooooo boring
I get this, other than Pulp Fiction, I dislike all of Tarantino's films.
I don't like the style or the pacing, I don't like the revisionist take on events.
But people generally like his films.
It's the pacing, it's very uneven
i can sympathize with this. i also didn’t like many of the tarantino movies that i’ve seen for similar reasons. the feet stuff also doesn’t help his case.
I cannot stand 2001 A Space Odyssey
It's glacially paced, there's like 1 good scene with HAL and Dave and the rotating set is neat with him running around the edge. It's about 20 minutes of decent movie padded to an agonising two and a half hours of pretentious nonsense.
People go "oh, but it was groundbreaking at the time!" We'd had Star Trek for two years by that point. It really was not that groundbreaking.
Both of those movies are on my watchlist. My family saw 2001 A Space Odyssey and they HATED it.
exactly how i feel about it too. the 5 minute long segment that was just nature footage with weird visual filters was also particularly hard to watch.
i also found the whole obelisk thing super repetitive. i was hoping that they would go into more detail about the obelisks, and explore the topic more. but it ended up feeling like they were asking the question “what’s a list of weird times and places where we could put an obelisk”, and that was the extent of it.
Was also very underwhelmed by taxi driver.
it’s nice to know i’m not the only one
Oh my god I just watched taxi driver and thought it was mediocre at best. Gave it 2 1/2 stars. Saw that it sits at 4,2?!?
Taxi Driver resonates much more powerfully when you or someone close to you has suffered from delusions.
To the perfectly sane mind Travis is being insane without reason, and in a boring way.
I imagine the high score TD had gathered over the years is because there are many people that sympathize with Travis, and maybe see him as an anti hero.
That's how I felt about Paranormal Activity. It was like I spent the entire movie waiting for something scary to happen. A thing just... stood there. Every "night" on screen felt the same: a being... just standing there. Not standing there sharpening a knife. Not standing there ominously stroking people's cheeks. Nothing attacked or even made threats to do so. It just. fucking. stood. there.
Then when something finally started to happen, the movie ended.
I don't know if my standards for "scary" are too high, but I found the entire film (save for those last few seconds) to be extremely boring. How it's so popular (and even spawned a sequel?!) is beyond me.
That was how I felt about Blair Witch. Full disclosure, I don't like horror to begin with, but to me the movie was about a group of people in the woods with a scary thing somewhere, and when they finally find the thing it ends.
It's like if Texas Chainsaw was about a bunch of teenagers who stood around while you hear a chainsaw running somewhere in the distance, the cuts to black right when the killer shows up.
It's been a while and I can't remember which one it was that I saw, but I remember that ending coming out of nowhere. It's like oh, there's a ghost or something haunting the place, ok. Signs of evil or something, a person floating while sleeping, too iirc.
Then suddenly there's hundreds of witches or cultists surrounding them outside and it just ends!?
Maybe it would have been scary if I was the type to buy into moral panics?
It was just kinda creepy and then weird. Felt like "rocks fall, everyone dies" kinda energy.
Absolute trash for me as well. I watched it alone when I was slightly drunk, thinking oh boy, let's put on something scary. Absolutely nothing happened. Few movies have left me angry. Insane it has such good critic score.
The French Dispatch for me.
God I hated every second, and it only got worse. That's the kind of movie you'll need to play on repeat and I'll spill all my secrets to make it stop.
i couldn’t even finish the french dispatch. i watched it for what felt like 3 hours, only to find out 45 minutes had passed. there was no way i was going to suffer through another hour. i liked some of the other wes anderson movies i’ve seen, but the french dispatch was torture.
Same, not for Taxi Driver, but for The Deer Hunter, Chinatown, Life is Beautiful, Amour...
i also wasn’t very impressed by chinatown. i remember feeling like i spent the whole time waiting for the movie to “start”, and then it ended
I’d imagine this happens a lot more often than the OP’s scenario. Some complete garbage becomes “critical darling” for whatever reasons.
Looking at you, Mulholland Drive.
Fuck ‘em.
A good movie is a movie you enjoyed watching. Full stop.
This is why I've adopted the ACG-style rating for reviewing stuff. So, for movies it'll be basically: must watch asap; wait till available to stream/BD/pirate; watch if you got nothing else to watch; skip.
This is your regular reminder that a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes means that 20% of reviewers liked the movie. The RT score represents chance that a reviewer liked it, not overall weighted score or how much they enjoyed it.
Yes it's odds that you will like the movie going in.
Besides, aggregate scores are hard to work with.
The best thing you can do, when dealing with critics imo, is to find a critic with similar sensibilities to you, and then figure out the things they like.
If a critic hates car chases and you love them, it doesn't matter what the score is, because you can see them score it low for car chases and use that information. What matters more than score with critics is consistency.
Exactly! The best thing I ever did was find two similar movies with similar scores, but I hated one and loved the other, then find any critics that agreed with me. Turned out there were only two and one of those ended up being one of the most enriching people I read regularly even today.
The critic is Walter Chaw and the movies were Live Free Or Die Hard and X-men 3. Both stupid action flicks that got similar RT scores, but I hated X-men 3 and loved Die Hard. Instantly fell in love with Walter Chaw when I saw his blurb for X-men 3 was "Michael Bay's Schindler's List." lol
Just had this experience with The Men Who Stare At Goats. Thought it was a good watch, like 6.2 on IMDb. Would recommend
6-7 on IMDB is a pretty decent score, plenty of good movies in that range. If it's 5 and below it means it's right proper schlock.
That's not how IMDb rating works. It's just an aggregate based on the number of users voting on it. It's basically useless at distinguishing a stinker from a watchable weeknight movie from a masterpiece. Rotten Tomatoes attempts to address this imbalance with a weighted scheme, which usually works better for well-known movies.
I also highly recommend the book (and all of Jon Ronson tbh)
I read the book first which made me really not like the movie. I think in a vacuum the movie is fine, but the heavy fictionalization to the point of preposterousness of something that was only one part of the book was just such a twisting. The book was about government waste, fraud, and abuse. The movie was about a wacky special forces guy who could apparently on some level actually use powers.
“Them” is also great and has Ronson sneaking into Bohemia Grove with a pre-full-on-crazy-grifter Alex Jones. I read it in one sitting.
I thoroughly enjoyed that one
This is actually why I like rotten tomatoes, breaks apart the critics and the fans.
I recall going to a movie with friends, walking out and saying "that was terrible" and my friend saying "what, that was good". Debate ensued in the group.
Honestly nothing gets me more interested in a movie than when the reviews are greatly divisive—it’s usually a sign that the director/writer is doing something bold or at least interesting. I know that for the most part that if I go see a movie like that even if I don’t love it I’ll at least be glad I watched it.
Wagons East was one of my favourite movies growing up and my fam would watch it many multiple of times.
It has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Wagons East...
/thread
Pack it up y'all. We have a winner.
I thought the scene washing up in the river was pretty funny.
"Huh, cold water usually does the opposite to me."
See, I actually think a lot of it was funny! I just watched it a few months ago after learning it had a 0%. I hadn't seen it at that point in at least a decade, probably more. I also watched it with my partner, who had never seen it so she wasn't blinded by nostalgia for it.
It's not the greatest comedy ever produced or anything, but it's not 0% worthy.
Wait, people don't like that movie?
That's like not liking Tommy Boy. Or Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Preaching to the choir!
In a similar vein, I absolutely love John Candy's last film, Canadian Bacon. Every time I rewatch it I go "man I forgot how funny that film is!"
Checking rotten tomatos its not quite as badly panned as Wagons East! (0% critics / 33% audience vs 17% critics / 52% audience) but seems like a good candidate for this thread nonetheless
Brief synopsis:
The president of the United States has successfully ended every war the country is involved in and is facing abysmal odds of re-election, so his team decides to start a second cold war, this time against Canada. John Candy plays a former weapons factory employee now sheriffs deputy in Niagara Falls NY, laid off with his friends due to the plant closure, and seeing the propaganda, they decide sneak across the border to stir trouble in Canada, losing one of their team who's caught and taken for a free mental health evaluation in Ottawa, so now they must take a trans-canadian road trip to "save" her
Congo is one of my favorite movies of all time I can recite every line in it. It's only got a 23% on RT and like a 5/10 on IMDb but I don't care. I still love the fuck out of that movie
The Thing.
Critically panned when it came out, and my favorite horror movie of all time. Of course critics feel differently now, but far after its following grew.
I’ve been watching old classics that I’ve never seen like the shining or predator.
I couldn’t believe how good The Thing was, just how the story structure developed and the ending giving the perfect existential dread.
I'd like to mention Harbinger Down.
It is made by the practical special effects company originally hired for the 2011 prequel, who were then fired and replaced with a CGI company. They were so disgruntled they made their own off-brand The Thing movie to show off what they got. The plot is kind of meh, but the effects are amazing for fans of The Thing.
The thing is a genre defining masterpiece! I can't believe the critics didn't realize that in the '80s.
Oh, same. Absolute favorite.
Death to Smoochy, my dark comedy about the mafia world inside of children's TV show is utterly fantastic and I will not be taking questions.
It's poorly rated? What in the world. Madness. This is the dark comedy film to watch.
Hard agree.
Never heard of this movie (or if I did, I was too young to be interested in it.) However, your comment and those in response to it got me curious to look it up.
I got as far as to read that it's directed by Danny DeVito, and two of its stars are Robin Williams and Jon Stewart.
That's all I needed, I'm sold. Queuing it up to watch this weekend.
Well then I have done good in the world today. Robin's performance ALONE is fantastic but honestly the whole cast goes above and beyond. Enjoy!
That movie is fantastic. I had no idea it had poor ratings. Just thought it flew under the radar.
I rewatched it a year or so ago. Still loved it!
Just, everything about it was fantastic!
Does the downfall of Rainbow Randolf portray a foreboding anti gay agenda that gave rise to the Trump movement?
Batman and Robin. I KNOW it's cheesy as hell but I was a kid and I loved it. I loved the aesthetic of Gotham but found the previous Batman villains too scary (Penguin, Two Face) but Mr Freeze and Poison Ivy weren't scary at all. It was a romp!
It's Batman Forever for me. It was my favorite of the Batman films until dark knight came out but everyone else I know hates it. I think maybe I'm just a big Jim Carrey fan and he elevated the movie for me.
I loved Batman Forever and I still listen to the soundtrack.
It want's to be cheesy and not serious like the newer Batman movies. It's like the series with Adam West. People not liking it are expecting something other.
Boondock Saints is such a movie, which is a crime
I’m actually the opposite, in the early 2000s it was hailed to me as being “as good as Pulp Fiction”. Rented it at blockbuster and was really excited, at the end of it all I thought was “that was hot pretentious garbage”. I revisited it during Covid lockdowns, still a shit movie
I thought Battlefield Earth had a cool concept when I was like 13. I watched it again a few years ago and it's hilariously bad. 90% of the movie is Dutch angles
I had no idea what a "Dutch angle" was, so I googled it and was pretty tickled to find that it triggered a Google easter egg :)
Maybe I am one of today's 10,000 but I had never heard of that particular one!
At first I went "what easter egg?"
Also, kudos for the AI Overview for getting it entirely wrong while the easter egg at least knows what's up
I've known about the Easter egg for years, but I honestly assumed it wouldn't work in the mobile app.
Turns out it does!
I thought the Percy Jackson movies were pretty cool. I was very wrong
Eh, I've only watched the first one but I think on its own, ignoring the book it's based on, it wasn't that bad. It (and the sequels) are just hated because of how utterly and thoroughly they shit on the books.
This was 16-year-old me with The 13th Warrior. Thought it was pretty good. I have never watched it again, so I wonder if today's me would say the same.
It isn't bad actually.
It has Antonio Banderas in it, how could it not be good?
Watched it a few months ago, still a great movie.
In 2006, a movie was released in which an evil AI is defeated by Shia LeBouf.
The evil AI's plan? Kill the president!
Why does the AI want to kill the president? he has too much unchecked power and bombed village of innocent people in the middle east and the AI told him not to because it could not confirm if there was actually a terrorist there.
How does Shia LeBouf defeat the evil AI? Opening fire at the capitol to cause a panic.
The war in Iraq was ramping up at the time, how was there not rioting at screenings? How is this not a controversial movie?
The acting is not great, but it deserves better than 27% on Rotten Tomatoes when the message of the film is the government does bad stuff and should be persecuted for it
Great thread .... now I have a new movie list ... thanks
One thing I had to learn quickly was that my preference towards anything cultural was not in line with what my peers found good/cool, so I strode down the road of enjoying what I enjoy and let others enjoy whatever they enjoy.
Here's a short list:
Roadhouse
The 13th Warrior
Both Ewoks movies
Roadhouse
Open up your heart and let the Patrick Swayze Christmas in
Both Ewok movies
I remember seeing the first one in the theater when I was a kid and I later saw a letter my Mom was writing where she said it was a dumb movie, but the kids liked it. I was offended!
My tastes may be questionable but that is too much even for me.
I remember seeing the first one in the theater when I was a kid and I later saw a letter my Mom was writing where she said it was a dumb movie, but the kids liked it. I was offended!
The movies can be considered bad, for today's standards but for what I care, it was a great way to spend some time. Where else could we se cannibal Care Bears?
Roadhouse is a classic! I don't think it counts here.
I very much liked 13th warrior, just watched it again last week! It's on YouTube free with ads right now
It may be considered as such today but it panned as not worthy of the time for many years.
The 13th Warrior was another of those movies that got thrown into the grinder by critics and cinephiles for being not worth the effort just to develop a cult following in response.
Which remebers me of another panned movie: Pathfinder
And while we're at it, let's add both Dredd movies (the second is the best) and the Demolition Man.
Not as bad as watching a movie with friends when everyone else loved it and you were the only one who hated it lol. It feels so much more visceral.
Yep this is the downside of being a discerning film lover with a friend group that watches movies together. I had this experience recently when we saw Longlegs (2024) in theaters. One friend LOVED it (he has notoriously bad taste), two friends thought it was decent, and I thought it was mediocre.
2003's the core. I always loved the semi friendly rivalry between Zimsky and Brazz. And how Keys (the main character) is sort of the glue that holds the team together and I think the cast has a good energy together as a whole. Combine that with genuinely enjoyable yet ridiculous 90's style end of the world action / world destruction scenes and you got a 10 / 10 in my book.
Batman V Superman from 2016.
My local theatre had an early early show: an early morning premiere, a day earlier than the official release date.
In spite of the, frankly, stupid trailer #2, I was still excited to see the first live action movie with Batman and Superman with my fellow nerds.
We came out of the theatre thinking it was a good movie, with Lex Luthor’s odd shenanigans aside (mannerisms, maintaining tabs on meta humans with well designed logos, etc.).
I specifically remember appreciating and talking about the movie’s score (Hans Zimmer), cinematography (Larry Fong), and costumes (Michael Wilkinson and Ironhead Studios).
While driving back, one of us checked the reviews and box office indications, and it was abysmal. The reaction was so bad that there was unspoken agreement between us to never talk about it again in public.
I still like the movie, and like the Ultimate Edition even more. But I wasn’t a fan of all the movies that followed.
E: grammar
There's lots of them but one that hasn't been mentioned is Sucker Punch. It's 6.1 on IMDB and 22% on Rotten Tomatoes and I loved the visuals.
Also, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is terrible but everyone needs to watch the opening sequence
Van Wilder
Soundtrack is incredible, it's one of Tara Reid's best roles, the cast is absolutely stacked, and IMO it's basically Deadpool without the costume. It's Ryan Reynolds best movie to date, and if he doesn't return for a second (the sequel doesn't exist) his career afterwards is ultimately pointless.
The first Silent Hill movie and the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory stand out for me. The consensus seems to be that they suck, but I like 'em.
Is that the one where Pyramid Head grabs that woman and janks her skin off in 1 go? That movie in it's entirety is on Youtube.
Yup, that's the one!
Kangaroo Jack (2003) for me. It's not objectively good but I found it silly and fun, and it's one of my dad's favorite movies. Never really understood why it's so panned (9% critic and 29% audience on Rotten Tomatoes)
Haha that movie was showing as a demo at the wholesale store my family would go to as a kid. I watched it in segments whenever I was there- I thought it was super cool + funny. So much so that when I was in college I convinced my girlfriend to watch it with me and wow that movie sucks I'm sorry to say :;( Although I do still quote "I see this is Flying Dingo IV. What happened to Flying Dingos 1 2 and 3?"
I thought Speed Racer was visually fantastic, and did a good job capturing some of the feel of the original show while putting a more modern spin on it. John Goodman feels like he can do no wrong. I just had a good time with it the whole time through.
It seems most people didn't feel the same way I did
To be fair, people are generally coming around to it and it's kind of on it's way to being a cult classic now. People say this about everything but it was actually ahead of its time in terms of its visual style and the way it deals with the serious elements within the wild cartoon visuals.
Weirdly, I kind of think Marvel movies like Guardians might have been the thing that tipped the scales. The breakneck editing is still way ahead of anything I've seen since though.
Same! I liked it. Like Willy Wonka with racecars.
I love Reign of Fire. And honestly I think the CGI has held up surprisingly well for a 2002 movie (although not at all perfect).
6.2/10 IMBD, 41% critic/49% audience on Rotten Tomatoes.
One of McConaughey's most iconic characters. The fact he is introduced as a crazy evil antagonist but transitions to badass bro of the protagonist by the end of the movie is genius.
Beowulf (2007).
Yes, the cgi aged badly, but everyone panned it for the plot change, which was the thing I liked about it the most!
It has a soft spot in my heart because it was the movie me and husband went on our first date to.
It was enjoyable to yell at the screen with only one other person in the theater.
We had both read the original Beowulf. Although not in the original writing, but I have heard the entire thing read in the original, it was at an entire thing/concert/performance thing for it.
The very obvious 3D things were the best to make fun of.
All of the 3 ninjas movies. I was telling my wife about them and was talking about how great they were (this was like a decade ago) and went to look them up. Like 0-35% on rotten tomatoes depending on which one.
3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain is particularly bad at 0% critic score, 29% audience score, and a 3 on IMDb.
I loved all the 3 ninjas movies so much though.
Back in the day before RT, it was Ishtar. My parents loved that movie.
There is nothing wrong with Ishtar as a film. It's not perfect, but it's actually a decent comedy. The problem is that the production ran over budget by such a huge amount that it killed Elaine May's directing career and it became a meme even before memes were a thing.
Happen to me recently with "I saw the TV glowing" I tough it was a good movie, not 9 but maybe 8.5, apparently not, 5.5 by the IMDB voters.
That’s a lot of A24 stuff tbh. A lot of disagreements between critics and moviegoers, but that’s usually a sign that they’re doing something interesting
I watched the Last Airbender movie before seeing the cartoon.
It's not a bad kung fu movie, except for the casting. Not great, but it was a fun watch. Now that I've seen the cartoon, I understand why the folx who grew up with it refuse to acknowledge it's existence.
Watch the netflix version!
And Korra!
Also. The Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai.
Korra was good. TLA was one of the best animated series of all time, so nothing would fill it's shoes. But Korra was a solid show.
I am a fan of the Netflix version and looking forward to the next season.
I am honored to accept the Earth King's invitation. 😛
Netflix's Avatar the Last Airbender.
Not a movie, but it's moving. Zuko/Iroh stole the show just like Book 1 of the animation, Lu Ten's funeral legit made me cry. Yet it gets tons of hate!
I'm a huge Avatar fan, but few fandoms put the original on the pedestal as much as ours, and it's only gotten worse with time. I feel like Korra got the same treatment, as I'm a massive Korra fan and I don't understand how so much of the fandom treats it like garbage.
I think that both Korra and Netflix's Avatar deserve a lot of criticism (Netflix more so than Korra), but it's definitely overblown in many parts. Korra has a lot of good sides, those rarely get mentioned alongside the bad ones.
I liked Korra, but Season 1 had trouble finding itself, and Season 2 was awful. 3+4 were masterful, but I think most people had made up their minds by then.
Strong disagree, I thought Book 1 was incredible. The animation, the art, the noir, fights, Korra's whole "human husky" attitude, Amon, everything! Even the intro. The first two episodes of ATLA are so much slower.
Season 2 was very mixed, with some great episodes though. And not just Wan, I loved the alice-in-wonderland-esque Spirit World.
And to be even more oppositional, I loved 3, but it was too short. And Book 4 has some mixed bits too, lol.
Land of the Lost (2009)
Hot take, I enjoyed Chappie. I don’t care that there’s some self-insert band in there, it’s just a funny robot movie
Oh man there's a movie with Paul Bettany dressed up like a priest, and it's this post apocalyptic cowboy western, but very horror manga in style, and he has a deeply goofy fight with Daywalker Vampire Karl Urban on top of a moving maglev train.
It's called Priest. I've seen it four times at least. It's real bad.
Usually the opposite is true for me these days.
Observe And Report starring Seth Rogan.
It's a movie about a mall security guard and it often gets confused for the awful Paul Blart movies by people, which is why I think it gets dismissed. But it's genuinely darkly funny. It leans into the hero complex of the main character and it gets weird and off putting in the best kinds of ways. If you like Death To Smoochie, you will probably like it.
Joker 2
Ant-Man 3
I Saw The TV Glow
Leave The World Behind
I loved I Saw The TV Glow. It's 3.5/5 on Letterboxd, which is not high enough but not terrible.
It's at 5.9 on IMDB, which is far too low
I really liked I saw the TV glow. Huge Alex G fan though.
Oh and two Christian movies I like the most, Courageous and Mom's Night Out. Solid 7/10s that are treated like 3/10s because they're Christian.
Your Highness for me
Universally got trashed but I honestly enjoyed it and still do on a rewatch
It's stupid and it's fantasy but it doesn't try to be anything else
Yellowbeard has a similar appeal for me.
Alien Romulus. Me and my friends fucking loved that movie and were blown away so we were surprised to see how many people hated it
That movie has no originality. I just wanted something new and all we got was a rehash of the original alien movie, but with attractive kids.
I thought it did some cool stuff with making the Facehuggers scary again and the
Tap for spoiler
Hybrid alien was cool. Although apparently that was a reference to an alien movie I haven't seen yet or something?
Anyway, I really liked it as well.
That's a fair assessment of that movie. I still liked it tho.
I like comedies, dumb action movies and horror. So it's almost everything, just like the person in the meme. lol
Going to give an old example and a new example.
I remember liking the Aeon Flux movie. Don't remember too much about it, but I remember enjoying it, and favorably comparing it to Ultraviolet which came out around the same time. Recently I heard someone bring it up in a podcast as a terrible movie and it turns out it's pretty universally panned lol.
A more recent example is The Watchers. I thought it was pretty good and kept my interest the whole time, but seems pretty middling from reviews. A lot of people especially didn't like the ending, which I guess was kind of sudden, but still alright imo. Not noteworthy in being especially bad or anything.
Aeon Flux movie would have been fine as a normal action movie. It was a terrible Aeon Flux movie.
I believe it. Coming in blind having never having seen the original probably helped a lot.
Really? I loved it! But, I know literally nothing about the source material.
I loved The Chronicles of Riddick! It's bombastic space opera, of which we have much too little that isn't Star Wars tripe, and Vin Diesel is perfect in this role.
Deathstalker 1 & 2, although the second is far superior.
It's completely tone deaf by any standards, let alone modern ones. Watch as a gang rape is interrupted and turned into what can only be described as a "heroic sexual assault".
The second swaps out the main actor for a much funnier one, and has probably the catchiest out-of-place theme tune of any movie.
You know you're watching a terrible movie, but they breeze along and you can't help but be entertained by it.
I have a bit of a soft spot for a movie called Club Paradise starring Robin Williams. It doesn't review well but it's fun enough. I also love some of the lines from it.
"What the hell kind of a name is 'Moniker?'" (Robin Williams' character's name is Jack Moniker)
"Just seeing that all is well." "Is it?" "No."
"On behalf of her Britannic magesty Queen Elizabeth The Second, I order you to disperse this mob at once or I shall be forced to shoot you between the eyes with a Rather Large Bullet."
"Say hello to Hat." "Possible." (An excellent cook with VERY long dreadlocks was kicked out of the kitchen by the chef because his hair is unsanitary. Jack's solution? A 3 foot tall chef's hat.)
Basically any movie-adaptation of a book. I know I'm in the minority on this, but if I wanted the story of the book, I'd be reading the book, not watching a movie that's often merely based on it. A new spin on an existing tale is the best of both worlds imo.
Generally yes, but sometimes...
The Martian was a great book and a GREAT movie. Ridley Scott made visuals better than my imagination.
The Aubrey-Maturin series of novels can be a bit impenetrable, because you kind of have to arrive to the series already able to speak 18th century British technobabble. The movie Master and Commander: The Far Side Of The World is kind of a Greatest Hits compilation of the book series, much more accessible to a general audience and just an excellent film.
Agree. Also they cut out enough of the book to make a movie of reasonable length without absolutely butchering the entire point and plot of the book.
Another example of great movie adaptation of a book is How to Train Your Dragon. Takes a complete departure from the book to make something cinematic. You don't have to copy the book verbatim to make a good book-based movie.
Ok but ready player one could have tried alot harder
My case was with The Witcher's Polish TV show. I was entertained and aware that, being a TV show from 2002, budget would've been slim, so I didn't mind the "low quality" effects. I also watched with subs, so I couldn't tell if some of vocal acting was good, bad or terrible
I filtered in IMDb movies where I have voted 7+ while user rating is up to 6 and these jumped out seemingly panned by both critics and users.
- Gods of Egypt. Visually great, standard action story, don't get the dislike at all.
- Tremors 4: The Legend Begins. I have watched most Tremors movies, have given them 6+. The one I disliked most was Tremors: Shrieker Island which I have rated 3.
- Iron Sky. Do not remember a single thing, but it looks fun. Probably will rematch soon.
Slam Dance
Three O'Clock High is an all-time favorite. It's like somebody set out to make THE stereotypical eighties movie. Budget Matthew Broderick? Check! Bratty little sister? Yes, sir! Nerdy best friend? We got you! And don't get me started on how fantastic Buddy Revelle is. I feel like it's got way better cinematography than it should, and the acting seems surprisingly good to me.
Blind Fury (1989) was my guilty pleasure. 6.3/10 on imdb.
Contains a death scene like Darth Maul's but predating it by 10 years.
How it feels to possess reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.
For me this is the matrix sequels and Indiana Jones 4. All of them are absolutely fantastic.
I swear pretty much every comedy movie is like this unless it's a massive hit and then becomes a 70% at best
The Razor's Edge (1984)
North [1994]
Loved it as a kid, rewatched it tripping, very funny concept. 4.5 on IMDB
My problem is that most movies I like were never universally panned, they were just sort of so so. Movies like Fandango. I really liked it but I think it got like a 5.5 on IMDB.
Second Bayformers movie here
Small Apartments.
Last Days on Mars.
For me, it was The Fastest Guitar Alive. I remember loving it as a kid, then looked it up recently to a surprising metacritic rating.
I made a joke -- and it's not a joke -- if he says it's too shitty and he didn't even watch it, then I might like it.
Yeah, but critics always have to say shit films are good and good films are shit; that way we keep thinking they've got some amazing insight that's worth them being paid oodles of cash. If they said good films were good and shit films were shit we'd all be like "no shit Sherlock" and kick them unpaid out of the building.
