Huh, I thought Man on the Moon did well. At least, it had a big name star, was a semi-biography of another star, and I enjoyed it when I saw it (although I doubt I saw it in the theater).
I loved …Baron Munchausen and liked Final Fantasy, but I’m not surprised at either tanking at the box office.
Looking at Wikipedia’s list of highest-grossing films, it appears Liam Neeson, Harrison Ford, Kate Winslet, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Willem Dafoe, and Eddie Murphy all star in movies on both lists. I’m sure there are others I’ve missed, too. Still, interesting.
I think it is a good, almost great film, and I’ve never understood the hate for it. I think it may have been way ahead of its time. Live action musicals weren’t in at the time, if it had come out thirty years earlier or fifteen years later it would have gotten a lot more respect. The songs are great. When I was performing I’d almost always include “Santa Fe” in my sets. More than any other song I’d get people asking what it was from. They were always surprised and/or confused when I told them.
Of the films on the list I enjoyed Red Planet, which was way better than its competitor Mission to Mars, and Timeline, which is one of Creighton’s best stories imho.
I also liked Man on the Moon at one time when I was obsessed with Kaufman, devouring anything biographical on him. Now I just get depressed when I think about him.
Definitely The 13th Warrior—great movie, outstanding score by Jerry Goldsmith (one of his best). I honestly don’t understand how it could have performed so poorly, unless you chalk it all up to cost overruns.
Wait a second—Red Planet did worse than Mission to Mars!? The hell?
Edit: Going back over the list, I also liked Stealth, and I did see Treasure Planet in theaters, and I didn’t hate it. Kinda disappointed with it, but I didn’t hate it.
I never saw it. My memory might be flawed, but I think that perhaps they started advertising the movie like a year in advance, but then stopped all advertising for it six months in advance. By the time it came out, everyone had forgotten what film it was.
Just wanted to say that I’m glad Spirits Within bombed. Never saw it in theaters, but when I watched it at home I did so hoping to come out afterwards rooting for the underdog film. I hated it.
Cutthroat Island suffered from poor timing - people just didn’t want a pirate movie in 1995.
I also quite like The 13th Warrior. But I have a thing for Antonio Banderas. I mean, I paid money to see Original Sin in the theater.
And I like Hudson Hawk.
Wow - I like a lot of those movies!
The 13th Warrior - already mentioned
The Postman - it’s totally cheesy, but I have a soft spot for post-apocolyptic movies
Hudson Hawk - this movie is FUN!
The Last Castle - I even own it on DVD!
Nothing But Trouble - really not a funny movie, and pretty weird. But it has Tupac and Humpty Hump in it!
The Majestic - A quiet, touching film that was poorly marketed right when Jim Carrey was signing on to some terrible films.
Timeline - also not a real thinker, but I love time travel stories, even bad ones.
Totall agree with you. What’s so great about this movie is exactly why people hate it: it’s compeltely unexpected, nothing is sacred, and the entire thing is one big goof. But it wasn’t advertised this way, and it’s a huge tone-shift from what you’d expect given the actors and plot.
It’s basically a Dan Brown book - but played as a crazy looney tunes-like comedy. It’s surreal and utterly hilarious.
When I saw Sahara in the theater, I knew I had to show it to my wife. It’s such an extraordinary awful movie. It wants so desperately to be good, and you know they had a good time making it, but it’s just unbelievably bad.
On the other hand, I really did like The 13th Warrior and The Last Action Hero. Good films that actually did what they set out to do. Omar Sharif is supposed to have quit making movies after The 13th Warrior because it caused him to question what he was doing and what he had become. Why? He was playing a positive role of an actual historical character who was an Arab. If the dialogue wasn’t Robert Bolt, at least what he was doing wasn’t as absurd as in Top Secret.
And The Last Action Hero was a witty and inside joke-filled sendup of over-the-top action movies. Dammit, it deserved to do better.
Baron Munchausen was pretty good, too. Certainly it was aware of its roots, and had a quirky sense of humor.
I’d take any of these – Sahara included – over being forced to watch The Blair Witch Project over again.
The fact that it came out more than a decade after the first movie just tells me they begged Jim Carrey to do it for ten years and then simply went ahead with it anyway when he wouldn’t budge. I just saw the trailer for it - damn, it looks bad. I mean, really, really bad. The original wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane, but for what it was, Jim Carrey was a perfect match for it and his comic delivery is inspired and spot on. He did mature away from that style though, around the same time as The Son of the Mask came out, he had recently headlined Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. So, yeah.
I liked The 13th Warrior. But I think that some of that comes from it being filmed near where I was living at the time. I went camping one weekend and saw a couple of viking ships being towed up the river we were camping on. 
Red Sonja with Megan Fox?
Remake of Dune?
Talk here of remaking famous flops…
.
I’m surprised at that list, there are a lot of movies I liked.
[ul]
[li]Cutthroat Island was cute, and I am a big fan of Geena Davis. [/li][li]The 13th Warrior was OK.[/li][li]Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was good. I enjoyed watching it, especially once you got past the whole uncanny valley thing.[/li][li]Treasure Planet was fun, though I hate Martin Short in it! My kids love it.[/li][li]Red Planet was good, even though I dislike Val Kilmer because he is Val Kilmer.[/li][li]Soldier was interesting.[/li][li]Hudson Hawk is one of my favorite movies, not because it is good, but because it is so fun and wacky. Right up there with another Bruce Willis movie, The Fifth Element.[/li][li]Adventures of Baron Munchausen is great, very creative. Robin Williams is really annoying in it, but it is otherwise good. Not as good as Gilliam’s other films (Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Time Bandits, the Fisher King, etc…).[/li][/ul]
All that said, Pluto Nash should be erased from existence and everybody who worked on it should be exiled along with their families to the Kerguelen Islands. That was, IMHO, the worst movie ever created.
The Postman ruined a perfectly good David Brin book, and for this should be shunned.
They spent $82 million on an Andy Kaufman biopic? What the hell were they thinking?
Cutthroat Island is awesome. I bought it on Blu-Ray not long ago for $10!
And like many of you, I also like The 13th Warrior. I liked it even more when I realized what Michael Crichton was trying to do with the story: a plausible origin for the legend of Beowulf. All the elements are there, just changed a bit, as often happens with stories passed down by oral tradition. Interesting that Crichton has two films on the list, he’s really hit or miss apparently. Timeline was pretty bad, I must admit.
The Avengers deserves to be much higher on the list. Lordy, what a stinker.
Seconded.
ETA: On review, thirded or fourthed. Whatever, we have a quorum.
I can honestly say I have never seen any of the movies on that list. Except maybe Munchausen. I seem to recall a liquored up evening with that on the VCR. But I don’t remember anything about it except for some sort of flying head. Or maybe that was the booze.
**Hudson Hawk **has been in my Netflix queue for a while b/c it seems like just the sort of movie I would enjoy. I’m a big Bruce Willis fan and like his goofiness.
I think the issue with treasure Planet was that it was really a movie for older kids. Older kids don’t want to be seen liking an animated movie (well not at the time that movie came out. Anime has really made cartoons cool again and so has Pixar), but it was too dark and complicated a plot for Disney’s usual demographic. It’s not The Little Mermaid, but it’s not bad either.
We actually own Sahara on DVD. The Netflix copy stopped working about 3/4 of the way through the movie and my husband hates not knowing the ending. We have watched it more than once. It’s good for an evening of mindless entertainment.
I loved Newsies. But then I grew up watching whatever musical my mother could get her hands on. I cut my teeth on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Sound of Music.
Well, it was made at the peak of Jim Carrey’s fame when he could collect $20 million for literally talking out of his ass, so that partially explains it.
Still, even factoring in his salary, I too am surprised that it cost so much.