Would the Star Wars prequels count? Everyone seems to hate them, but I didn’t think they were that bad.
Otherwise, I’d say Regarding Henry, The Island, Stay, Before and After. Some of it was more because of the cast, I’d say. I also liked Ghost Ship, as I tend to like ghost stories and horror movies.
Mystery Men was funny with good people in it. I liked it. I LOVED Tank Girl but i have a weak spot for action flicks and a G-spot for action flicks starring women. Salt, Resident Evil, Colombiana (was gonna put Long Kiss Goodnight but that has 70% on Rotten Tomatoes)-- man, I can forgive a lot of nonsense for girls who kick ass.
It’s been years since I last watched 13th Warrior. Time to rectify that oversight.
My stock answer to this is Johnny Mnemonic. At this point in time I’ll also say the Lynch version of Dune.
I just started watching this for the first time and I’m getting a real kick out of it.
Similarly, Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies. Bill Oberst, Jr. is so good as Abe that I could overlook the stupidity of so many Secret Service agents becoming zombie brunch. The ending is a kinda shaggy dog joke, but almost clever. Scores big points for at least trying something different. I wonder who had the “Lincoln vs supernatural” idea first?
One film I forgot to mention the last time we did this thread: Chain Reaction, with Keanu Reeves (18/27 on Rotten Tomatoes). I’d be hard pressed to defend it; the “free energy” part of the plot is nonsensical doubletalk, and the plot is standard wrongly-accused-guy-on-the-run stuff. But I enjoy seeing the familiar locations in Chicago and Wisconsin, and I like that it was filmed in the dead of winter (the actors are visibly uncomfortable in the sub-freezing weather). It also has some impressive chase scenes and explosions.
Willow is rated 52% on Rotten Tomatoes. I will fight anyone who trashes it.
Green Street Hooligans has 47%, not a wonderful film but I enjoyed it and it deserves better.
Joe Versus the Volcano rated 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, both Meg Ryan and
Tom Hanks agree it’s the worst movie either has ever done. They’re wrong, it’s awesome. Quotable, poignant, silly, powerful.
That I agree with. I really like that movie.
I like Volunteers (1985). Especially the part where Gedde Watanabe is reading the subtitles and Tom Hanks asks, ‘How do you do that?’ He said, "I’m Asian.’
I love Joe Versus the Volcano. Do you have a cite for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan not liking it, I would find that disappointing.
I also love 13th Warrior. No guilt necessary.
I liked the movie Problem Child with John Ritter (where he met his wife Amy Yasbeck). Rotten Tomatoes gave it 0%, audience score 42%. The reviews are excoriating. I truly feel like everyone else in the world didn’t understand the movie properly the way I did.
I literally watched this again last night. There is no good reason for Willow to have failed at the box office like it did. It had nothing to do with quality of the filmmaking or storytelling, it was all about the reputation of the genre. Fantasy was treated like Sci-Fi was before Star Wars, and Willow (or Labyrinth, or The Dark Crystal) deserved to be the movie that turned that around. Instead it took another 12 years and Lord Of The Rings, and even then it still hasn’t been a huge shift. Game Of Thrones’s success is still the exception, not the rule.
I rather enjoyed Cutthroat Island
Two examples, just forgot to name True Grit. Though sometimes I don’t think of The Shootist as a western, per se, but a film about beginnings and endings that happened to be set to the end of what we think of as the Wild West era.
Perfect example: I just happened to watch Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps last night, which I’d never seen before. Everybody and his dog is in it, in terms of A-list actors: Michael Douglas, Josh Brolin, Carrey Mulligan, Eli Wallach, Susan Sarandon, Shia LaBeouf. Directed by Oliver Stone, who despite his conspiracy orientation in movie-making shows himself to be a skilled director. I really enjoyed it, in the genuine sense of being really entertained. Yet Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crappy 55% critics’ rating, and an even worse 44% audience rating. Maybe the difference is that I was sitting at home with no particular expectations, rather than driving out to a theater expecting a big-budget spectacle.
Oh look - someone chiming in on what half the people in this thread have said. By which I mean me. I’m chiming in.
Agreed. But quite a depressing one.
The trailers for it were terrible - the studios clearly had no idea how to pitch it - and IIRC it was released at the same time Jurassic Park came out, so it’s no surprise it didn’t do well. It’s still a brilliant film, although I’ve struggled to explain to my daughter what “UHF” was (not the film - the actual UHF/VHF thing).
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
No. It’s genuinely awful. I mean, even for the genre it’s just bad, even by the usual “mystic Tibetan magic” standard it’s ridiculous and offensive, and even compared to early Eddie Murphy films it’s Murphy at his muggingest.
Oscar was Stallone trying to do a bedroom farce, but farce for some reason doesn’t work nearly as well onscreen as it does in the theatre (even Noises Off, one of the best farces of recent decades, pales in comparison to its live performances) and Stallone really doesn’t have the right kind of comedy chops for it.
Krull is a lot of fun - the design alone is worth watching it for. Yes, “flamethrower hands” are dumb but as “swords and sorcery” films go it has a lot to offer. Also, you can play “spot Liam Neeson” (and, if you’re an EastEnders fan, a young Todd Carty).
Sadly let down by a clumsy plot about water (see also: Solarbabies) but I thought Lori Petty and the kangaroos absolutely nailed it and I wish the rest of the film had been good enough for (also good) sequels to happen.
I don’t understand why people don’t like this movie. It’s a clever take on the Beowulf story, it’s well-made, well-acted and holds together well.
Joe vs the Volcano, however - I totally get why people don’t like it, because I certainly don’t.
Two other films that I enjoyed that were panned and bombed at the box office were Corky Romano and R.I.P.D.
Chris Kattan is a wonderfully gifted physical comedian and played Corky with tremendous energy and quirkiness reminiscent of Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura.
The latter film had Ryan Reynolds, Jeff Bridges, Mary Louise Parker, and Kevin Bacon in the cast. The special effects were pretty terrible, but the story was fun (though Jeff Bridges phoned in a weak-tea copy of his Rooster Cogburn character from True Grit)
I like the prequels as well and I would single out Ian McDiarmid’s performance as Palpatine/Darth Sidious as one of the best things about it.
In a way, “Mystery Men” was too far ahead of it’s time. Deconstructing the myths of superheores by looking at the lives of other, somewhat less superhero-like, people in their society has become all the rage lately. “Mystery Men” probably suffered by trying to make the idea into a comedy, rather than a straight up action film with comedic undertones.
But on balance, I still like it. The Big Hero getting killed because in the stress of the moment, everyone forgot how many times they flipped a toggle switch is pretty funny.
