I’m never early enough to these threads.
Here’s one more that I just thought of: Last Action Hero. The concept of being able to enter the universe of one’s favorite movie series has always fascinated me. And the second half (roughly) where the movie characters enter the “real” world and discover that the movie tropes they’ve gotten used to don’t apply is also very cool. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand what’s so bad about this one.
Seconded on both counts.
I also second Showgirls, Death to Smoochy, and Road House. I first saw Showgirls a few months ago, expecting a bad movie like MST3k bad, or The Room bad. What I got instead was a clearly well made film that was actually pretty funny.
I hated it the first time I saw it, then I started thinking of it as a comedy and I loved it.
Seconded. Sure, they’re completely over the top, but it’s a really entertaining nonetheless.
I didn’t know it had done that badly. My dentist **loved **that film.
Love the music, too. I often use it as background music for our D&D group.
Based on the ending, it sure seems like Sommers was setting up for a sequel, but the poor box-office showing undoubtedly killed that. Too bad…I agree, VH and Carl made a fun team.
Agreed! I love this movie. Perfect story of how good intentions can be corrupted.
I can understand the panning, though – it’s sort of a nonspecific parody (Ed Norton is basically playing Steve from “Blues Clues” AS Barny the Dinosaur…which is weird), and Catherine Keener, Robin Williams, and Steven Wright are all masters are rubbing people the wrong way.
She’s also very funny and cool in real life.
I went to her Dragon*Con panel one year, and she walked in with 4 bottles of red wine (she had finally located the only walkable liquor store to the Con and didn’t have time to go back to her room first.)
She drank the first one, didn’t care for it, and offered it to someone in the crowd. Did the same with the second. And even though she was drinking - it was really just sipping that one glass - said she tried to drink one glass a day for her health.
That aside - I like Tank Girl better after hearing her share about her experiences as an actresses and now a writer/director/producer.
I agree completely. Moonraker also has the hands-down coolest boat chase of the entire Bond series. I loved it when his speedboat was laying mines and blowing up the pursuing bad guys.
I really enjoyed The Hidden, a late-Eighties movie about an alien badguy hiding himself here on Earth; it got very mixed reviews.
I recently saw Amelia, the Earhart biopic starring Hillary Swank. I thought it was fine, but the reviews were pretty bad.
never mind
Agnes of God got very mixed reviews, but I thought it was very good, mainly because of Meg Tilly, who was amazing.
Whatever happened to her, anyway?
Catherine Keener can rub me any way she wants.
I think the critics were mostly disappointed that it wasn’t as good as the original, which was very, very good.
I don’t know anyone who’ll admit to liking The Happening, but it certainly worked for me. Sure, the premise is loony and the ending’s kind of anticlimactic, but the rest of it’s a pretty effective horror movie if my reaction (that is, a month’s worth of nightmares) is anything to go by. And while I don’t think it made any points re: people’s need for control that haven’t been made before, I doubt anybody else has conveyed them in quite the same way, and that was interesting.
Also on the Shaymalan front, Lady in the Water is one of my favourite movies ever, and I’ve not seen very many good reviews of it either. What strikes me as especially unfair about this one is that all the negative comments I’ve heard about it focus on either the Shaymalan’s-character-as-Mary-Sue thing or the way the movie critic character gets killed; when I watched the movie for the first time, I didn’t see either of those things that way. Shaymalan’s character isn’t the Infalliable Hero so much as he’s a MacGuffin, and the story isn’t really about him. The critic’s death didn’t come off, to me, as an attack on real-life critics; it’s played for (admittedly somewhat dark) humor as a way of pointing out traditional movie tropes (since the whole film is really about stories and their archetypes), and he’s such a jerk beforehand so we don’t feel bad for laughing at it.
The Prophecy - Christopher Walken at his creepy best. And a smokin’ hot performance by Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer!
Though it’s not one of my favourites ever, I agree with your assessment. The critics took the critic’s death as a personal attack on them, and reacted accordingly. Really stupid.
I also like The Village, and think most of the critics against it should get over themselves.
Newsies. I know it’s not a good film, but goddamn if I don’t love it to pieces. The songs are catchy and the guys are hot. Also, Christian Bale can do no wrong.
Agreed to both o’ youse guys.
I don’t even like Daredevil comics, I frankly have always thought he was one of the worst characters in the Marvel Universe to have his own long running title, but I rented the movie on DVD (not director’s cut, just the regular one) and thought it was really good.
Last Action Hero, I think the first people to see just didn’t get. They expected an action movie and got an action satire. So they start bad mouthing it, and pretty soon, everyone thinks it’s horrible. But it’s not, it’s so totally not. Ranks right up there with Kindergarten Cop as one of the best funny Arnold movies.
I also like the Star Wars prequels and Terminator 3-4. I don’t care that they aren’t as good as the earlier ones, I still like 'em.
I was going to post about Rumble in [del]Vancouver[/del] the Bronx, but I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and it inexplicably got 78%. I watch that movie every time it’s on, but it’s awful. But apparently the majority of people agree with me.