Were those the cap guns with the red paper strip you feed through that had some explodey stuff in it?
I trust you are aware of General Patton’s views on pearl-handled handguns?
“They’re ivory. Only a pimp from a cheap New Orleans whorehouse would carry a pearl-handled pistol.”
Mine is The Boondock Saints. All the way up to 28% by critics on RT (it was at one time less than 10% amongst critics), but it has always scored 90%+ by audiences.
I was going to put Buckaroo Banzai (more accurately, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension) on the board, but it’s in the high-60’s on RT
When it was released Australian critic Luke Buckmaster in his review, In defence of ‘the worst film ever’: why critics are wrong about Movie 43, discussed the manner in which the movie was dismissed:
The absurdly disproportionate critical response to Movie 43 has brought to the fore one of the laziest strategies a film reviewer can deploy, and we’ve seen it time and time again: the technique of describing content with the insinuation that such a description constitutes analysis.
The producer Charles B Wessler responded, in the comments:
As the “creator” of MOVIE 43, I truly appreciate you taking JUST a few minutes and words to give the audience a chance to consider for themselves if this is possibly a film they may or may not want to see. I do not agree with everything you’ve said here in your article but I can say that it is damn interesting to read.
It is so easy to write review bombs like “Worst movie ever” or “My wife actually died during the screening of this movie”. It is however much more difficult to find the good and the bad and tell your readers a subjective truth… but the truth non the less.
Remo Williams.
I never liked The Boondock Saints. I tried…but nope.
I love Buckaroo Banzai. Showed the movie to my in-laws…they didn’t like it and wondered who was marrying their daughter.
Another one I liked. Maybe it was his ability to make a woman orgasm by tapping her wrist that intrigued teenage me.
I quite like Every Time We Say Goodbye, a WWII love story with Tom Hanks as the lead character. It’s set in Mandatory Palestine and the Jewish family central to the plot are Sephardic so the language used in Ladino.
I also like The People with William Shatner and Kim Darby (who had played together in one ST:TOS episode).
And my guiltiest pleasure is The Incubus.
Late-1960s comedies: Casino Royale, Candy, The Magic Christian, Head, etc.
Latitude Zero (1969) - not sure if this was panned or not, but it’s certainly a guilty pleasure
The Last Days of Man on Earth, a.k.a. The Final Programme (1973) - possibly still ahead of its time
Anaconda (1997) - Jon Voight is regurgitated by a giant CG-snake; now that’s entertainment
Battlefield Earth (2000) - not really all that bad, but heavily derivative
I think The Last Action Hero was partially a victim of Arnold’s successful run as an action movie star since the 1980s. Between 1982 and 1993, there were only three years where Arnold didn’t star in a successful movie and that’s only because he wasn’t in any movies in 1983, 1989, and 1992. (He didn’t have to compete against Batman in 1989 so good move on his part I guess.) It was kind an odd movie and then we kind of expected it to be his “last” action type movie as there were concerns about children watching violent media so I think a lot of people were just disappointed. It’s not a bad movie, it’s just disappointing when put up against Arnold’s overall career.
It’s also, by far, Stallone’s finest work as an actor. He’s terrific. The movie has action, but it’s also a really serious story. When he breaks down at the end, when the anger and fury pours out and he has nothing left, it’s just so crushingly sad.
I liked it too, but it wasn’t “widely panned”. It has a critics’ rating of 75 on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s kind of a strange movie in that it has two distinct parts, a low-key first half and an abrupt change of tone halfway through. It also has an unusual and lengthy development history, where it started as a Stanley Kubrick project, stalled in development, and eventually transitioned to Steven Spielberg.
So I guess instead of the OP’s aim, we are instead discovering an interesting subset of movies that we like, but that we incorrectly think other people would not like. We are ineffctual movie hipsters.
That one I will say I thought was legit bad. I tried to like it and my standards are easy but a hard nope on that one. Just my $0.02.
If we define “bad” as “not historically accurate,” there are a bunch. For example:
https://medium.com/@jack.delaney/the-15-most-historically-inaccurate-movies-ranked-7f5e96cb01c4
I enjoyed JFK and Braveheart.
I liked Sucker Punch, but my fave movies that were panned include:
Fifth Element
13th Warrior. So many fun lines in this movie.
Battle: Los Angeles.
Soldier, with Kurt Russell, if only for the avoidance of the “bad guy gets up after we all think he’s dead.” trope.
I prefer his performance in Cop Land.
I love The Fifth Element as well and am totally not afraid of saying so, but Wikipedia says it’s at 71% on Rotten Tomatoes.
If we’re calling that panned, my vote goes to Galaxy Quest.
Fair enough! I had written a sentence about the probability that there may be many more movies I love that are panned but I don’t really follow what the critics think. I chopped it, but apparently it would have worked both in the positive and negative.
Nighthawks was none too shabby, either.