I’m not at all a Jim Carrey fan, but, from the UK, not knowing that much about Andy Kaufman other than he was in Taxi , and the " dead or not/will come back type " rumours, I thought MOTM was a quite interesting movie - I kept wanted to see what happened next - even though he was playing an often irritating weirdo. How much was based on reality I’m not sure but Carrey’s best and most convincing performance IMO.
Watch Being John Malkovich and report back. Thank you.
I know! Saw this in the theater and loved it, and have watched it several times since. Apparently some folks just don’t want to watch shit blow up real good and think at the same time.
I liked Death to Smoochy and The 13th Warrior too. I really loved the 2004 version of The Alamo. The Alamo was a huge box bomb but a great movie almost no one has seen. The movie has great action scenes, great dialogue and character development, and was about as historically accurate as Hollywood gets. I think one of the reasons more people didn’t give it a chance is that they expected it to be an over the top cowboy movie like the John Wayne version of the Alamo. It’s tangential but I feel compelled to briefly compare the two. In the 2004 version, Jim Bowie is pretty much a complete dick to his slave, as one would imagine lots of slave masters to be. Bowie’s slave points out to another slave that slavery is illegal in Mexico, and perhaps he shouldn’t be rooting for his master’s rebellion to succeed. In the Wayne version Bowie’s slave throws himself on top of Bowie, using his own body to shield his master from Mexican bayonets. In the Wayne version, Travis manages to take out half a Mexican regiment single handedly before succumbing to multiple gunshot and saber wounds, but not before first breaking his own sword. In the 2004 version, Travis unceremoniously catches a musket ball to the head early in the fight. If you enjoy historical epics at all, I urge you to check out the 2004 Alamo, it really is a great movie.
Well, I agree with you that The Alamo is by far the most historically accurate screen version of that event. (And that may be why audiences didn’t find it as entertaining. Accurate historical films can be kinda dry.)
Well, I’m surprised by how many of those on the list I saw theatrically, but I’d have to say almost all of them have earned their reputations as stinkers, and I feel most of them are genuinely terrible, not just “underappreciated” or denigrated unfairly (though perhaps disproportionately).
But like most of Gilliam’s films, while Baron Munchausen is a bit of a mess, it’s got enormous amount of heart, imagination, and visual inventiveness to make up for it. Out of all those films listed, it may be the only one I can imagine ever watching again.
Harrison Ford made a hilarious appearance, I think it was on Conan, to promote this movie. A clearly stoned Ford mocked the movie openly, asking why on Earth the Russian characters would be speaking in Russian accents to one another, rather than in Russian. I think he also slammed the godawful title.
I’m not surprised by how many of those bombs have all-star casts. It seems that, once they’re done paying salaries, there’s often no budget left for a decent script. I hated most of the movies on the list that I saw (or started), except Man on the Moon. I enjoyed it, and thought Carrey was perfectly cast. If only they’d gotten to him before he could command five figures. And I think they also overestimated Andy Kaufman’s brand power, in terms of name recognition and teenage moviegoers.
Munchausen is the only one on the list that I’ve seen all the way through, and I did like it, although it seemed to be kind of sloppily put together, and Robin Williams was in it, but I liked it anyway.
Personally, I think it’s one of the most carefully crafted films. It has a specific topic that it is discussing and accomplishes that quite clearly. There are few enough books that accomplish that, let alone movies.
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn - I laughed the whole freaking time.
Gods and Generals - I like war movies and Lee’s phrase “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it” at the right time, just sold me.
Not on the list but two of my favorite comedies Office Space and Saving Silverman were busts at the box office. They probably didn’t cost a whole lot to make though.
If I interpret the numbers right, Office Space made a modest $827,813. Nevertheless, I believe it absolutely cleaned up on DVD. Same with Fight Club and many other cult classics.