Ronin. The critics were ambivilent in aggregation, but the ones who hated it really hated, hated, hated it. Ebert claims that it is “berift of a plot,” an opinion that I find nothing short of astonishing, and many seem to find it “boring”, “mindless”, and “stiffly acted”. I can’t see how a movie with riveting car chases is “boring”, how a Mamet-penned screenplay is “mindless”, and how any cast incluing DeNiro, Jean Reno, Sean Bean, Jonathan Pryce, and the lesser known but excellent character actors Michael Lonsdale and Jan Triska could be “stiffly acted”, but everybody’s entitled to an opinion, I guess (even if they’re wrong.)
Personally, I think it’s one of the most clever, multi-layered, nuanced, and exciting action-thriller made in the last twenty years, and with several implied references and deliciously ambiguous dialog. It also plays with the conventions and expectations of a thriller–these guys aren’t all experts (Spence is full of crap about being an SAS-trained “weapons man”, the driver, Larry, is a showoff), the attempt to blackmail the Russian dealer backfires when he let’s his girlfriend be killed, and the character who gets eliminated early on doesn’t come back later to plague the rest of the team. I’m not sure if people didn’t like it because they didn’t get it, or didn’t like it because it dispensed with standard conventions, but this one gets plenty of play at my house, and I have to keep myself from overquoting Mamet’s great dialog.
Freakin’ love Hudson Hawk. Ocean’s 12 is, however, the one film I think that my husband and I love most that critics panned most. It’s right up there with HH for critical dissing, at least. But it’s really - well, I don’t want to be one of those people who insists that a movie other people find vapid is actually deep, but - we’ve found that once we watched it through the first time and figured out what happened, the zipping around with unreliable narrators and flashbacks that were just extended tall stories from everyone involved, it was quite fun and rewarding. We kept picking up new little bits and pieces about who knew what, when. Plus some of the dialogue is rather sharp, and the soundtrack is great.
My movie collection runs to large amounts of poorly dubbed Hong Kong dreck, other action movies and things with Humphrey Bogart or Audrey Hepburn in them, though, so it’s probably hard to take me seriously as a critical voice in film
I loved that movie. My buddies and I all went to see that in the theater and laughed our asses off. The director said he read a review that suggested it would be the film shown in hell for eternity.
I think it was the kind of movie you would hate if you hadn’t been subjected to teen movies. None of the jokes would’ve made sense. “Why is it that when I ask guys where they would like to put it, they always put it in my ass?”
Hey, I loved “1941”. Saw it on the the monster-sized Cinerama Dome screen. I have never been able to figure out where all the animosity over this picture came from.
The Thirteenth Warrior - Sure its a story thats been done to death, but its an entertaining way to waste an evening.
Dog Soldiers - A squad of Brithsh troops run into a band of werewolves while on excercise in the Scottish Highlands. What’s not to like?. Best quote ever “Sausages!”
Evolution - Got panned (with some justification) as a Ghostbusters wanna-be. Get past that & its a pretty fun flick.
Tremors 2: Aftershocks - OK, not as good as the first effort, but close. Nice to see Earl & Burt back out Graboid hunting. The less said about 3 & 4 the better.
Spaced Invaders - Heavily armed, war-crazed (but none too bright) Martians invade a small Iowa town by mistake.
Indeed. Which is also the reasong why I loved Kung Pow. I grew up watching old kung fu movies. The kind that was subtitled in 3 different languages at once and cheezy as hell. Kung Pow was loaded with the little things. They way he fought, the little mannerisms, etc…
Actually, I still haven’t seen any of the 80s teen movies, and I’m seen only a few of the 90s ones. It’s always neat when I flip past The Breakfast Club and catch the inspiration for a NATM scene.
Also, “Shut your hole, Wang Chung” is a daily part of my vocabulary, as is “shithoused.”
