Actually, I’ll take it. If we narrow “fantasy” to “dragons and wizards” fare, most of those movies are terrible. The Hobbit. Eregorn. Even Narnia was kind of meh. There’s a Warcraft movie coming out that looks terrible (plus it’s a videogame film…so there’s that).
Exception would be Lord of the Rings.
Seriously. I mean, there are video game movies that I’ve enjoyed (Street Fighter was positively delightful for so many ludicrous reasons), but that hasn’t made them good by any reasonably objective metric.
It’s important to note that there have been lots of good video game movies (Wreck-it Ralph, King of Kong, The Wizard, hopefully the upcoming Ready Player One) - just no good video game adaptations.
It’s been years since I’ve seen it, but I recall the Silent Hill movie being passable.
Crap movies, all. You’re right that there exist FUN crap movies in the genre, though.
And I wasn’t counting non-adaptations.
edit:
Hmm…I know I’ve seen it…but I guess it didn’t really make an impression on me. That might be the real exception.
Goddammit, Boyo! Ever hear of a “Spoiler Box”? :mad:
There are more critically acclaimed sports movies than you can shake a stick at. In addition to Million Dollar Baby, there’s Creed, Rocky, Raging Bull, The Fighter, Cinderella Man (it’s apparently very difficult to make a bad boxing movie), Jerry Maguire, The Blind Side, Friday Night Lights, (geez, football is up there with boxing), Moneyball, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, A League of Their Own (and so is baseball!), Foxcatcher, Seabiscuit, etc…
I think you have the rule backwards.
I mean, I hate gangster movies (all of them!) but everyone else seems to love them.
And I like vampire movies, but I feel they might qualify for this thread.
C-A exception: “Interview with the Vampire”
Fun exception: “Blade”
Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
I came here to say this, but I have to add ANY games. Battleship, Dungeons & Dragons, just to name a couple crimes against humanity.
Similarly, Westerns. Guns, horses, men who shoot guns and ride horses, or vice-versa… what was the appeal, again? The good “Westerns” aren’t Westerns as such, anyway: They’re samurai films in drag, and therefore not examples of the genre, so don’t go waving “The Magnificent Seven Samurai” or such in my face.
There is no way this thread is going to be anything other than a train wreck. Great idea, but I doubt people are capable of differentiating between “Films that are great/sucky” and “Films I like/hate.”
See most of the posts above for examples.
Now hold on a second there, partner. I reckon you’re putting the Zatoichi before the Zane Grey there. The samurai genre was inspired by early westerns not the other way around. I’ll grant that once the two genres got going, ideas passed back and forth between them.
Exception: All the King’s Men
So what? It’s a thread for people to express their opinions.
The weird thing is the author who’s had the greatest success in his works being adapted to the screen: Philip K. Dick. Reading his books back in the seventies, I would have guessed he was one of the unlikeliest authors to see his works turned into successful movies. But while apparently more cinematic authors have seen adaptations of their books fail, Dick’s work has somehow inspired a series of good movies.
Minor nitpick: He died before seeing anything turned into a movie. Except for Blade Runner, I think, but I’m too lazy to look it up.
I’ve gotten pretty tired of police dramas that hew to this formulaic script:
Detective So-and-So is an overworked, under-appreciated member of the Big City Police Department. His/her personal life is a train wreck and they’re approaching burn out, which they deal with by excessive drinking and/or meaningless hookups, when not crashing in their tiny squalid big city apartment.
The Detective is assigned a seemingly routine case involving some dead lowlife nobody would ever miss. But the Detective can’t shake a nagging feeling that some tiny clue just doesn’t add up. The more they dig, the more it turns out that the lowlife’s death was just the tip of the iceberg, and moreover important and dangerous people want the case dropped.
The Detective pursues the case with increasing risk to his/her career and/or life, their only ally their partner (who has at least a 50% chance of getting killed as a result) and either their estranged ex or someone new they’re falling for. The conspiracy reaches even into the Department itself, and the Detective has to survive a betrayal or ambush by one of their own. They persevere until the bad guys are exposed, justice is done, they reconcile with their ex or form a new relationship, and they realize their job is worthwhile after all. The End.
Not at all. High Noon preceded Seven Samurai. Unforgiven, which I think is not only a great Western but also one of the best movies ever made, doesn’t draw on samurai films.
Other good Westerns that didn’t draw on samurai movies significantly:
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Searchers
True Grit (both versions)
T**he Wild Bunch
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Stagecoach
Hombre
The last in a series.
Westerns were a part of the Hollywood scene from the very start of filmmaking. Hell, the movie often credited as the first story film, The Great Train Robbery, was a western (even though it was shot in New Jersey). It’s influence in films is immense, even today (it’s credited as having the first closeup of a person, for instance).
The first notable samurai film was from 1925. By that time, you had a whole series of American westerns with stars like William S. Hart, Broncho Billy Anderson, and Tom Mix. John Ford’s The Iron Horse was also made before that.
In addition to Colibri’s list, other westerns that had no Japanese influence include Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache, and Cat Ballou.