Dave and Mike Need Wedding Dates from 2016.
The To Do List with Aubrey Plaza.
Death of a Unicorn was not a good movie, but I thought about it quite a bit afterward. I think it was because my brain kept trying to fix the plot holes to make it logically coherent. The gore probably helped.
People seem to think that Highlander and Flash Gordon are mediocre movies, I disagree, they’re cult movies doing something different (though Highlander has dated I believe, not watched it for years).
I personally can’t think of one which matches the title though. Probably any of the Roger Moore bonds perhaps, but that is probably because I didn’t have the critical reasoning to realise they were crap when I watched them (oh nasa has launched a space shuttle, lets have a space shuttle bond, oh smokey and the bandit is popular, lets have redneck bond).
Good one; yeah that’s a favorite of mine too.
And I realized that maybe the older adaptation of Dune would have been a better choice for thread opener. Not good, but if movies were scored for intriguing it would be a 11. Maybe it helps that I also played the PC game, which copied some of the aesthetic.
The Last Starfighter – I don’t really think it’s mediocre, but it’s not first tier, and had a lot going against it. The CGI was too ambitious, and they didn’t have enough money/time to make it look really good. Some people think the video-game “look” added to it. Pretty good acting and writing, and Robert Preston as “The Music Man in Space” definitely added to it. The makeup looked crude and fake, although I suspect it wasn’t. But it overcame all that and was a delightful film. One of these days I’d like to see it with up-to-date CGI in place of what they had to work with.
Man, I loved that move and still do. So good and weird Bootsy Collins mined it for lyrics.
The Doberman Gang. A heist comedy where the crooks train Dobermans to rob a bank. (This was from 1972, where Dobermans were the equivalent of pit bulls are today.) It has no right to be as good as it is
“Welcome to Rylos, m’boy!”
(Robert Preston as the friendliest alien ever. His delivery of that line was the highlight of the movie for me… and still is.)
I really want to see that because I love Dobermans! Haven’t found it yet though.
I watched half of it recently (it was on the screen at a bar) and what a trip. Such strange and haunting animation.
I will add Torque (2004) as my mediocre movie of choice. It is a biker thriller that tries way too hard to capitalize on the success of The Fast and The Furious, and Adam Scott has a surprisingly funny part.
Vanishing Point. Rebellious nonconformist full of amphetemines pilots souped-up muscle car across the American Southwest, much to the annoyance of law enforcement officials. It does not end well. Ouch!
TRIANGLE
Triangle sails into some strange waters, but this horror outing anchors its idiosyncrasies in a satisfyingly weirdly twisting and scary story. There are scenes in it that flash back in my mind occasionally.
I’ll pick Ghost Ship (2002). I razzed the film in a couple on-line reviews…but I still watch it regularly. It’s fun and makes a lot more sense than many more recent horror films. Some of the scenes are, IMHO, actually pretty outstanding. Love the opening.
Here I’ll give you an utterly bland and innocuous one that pops into my head randomly every now and again. It’s a Hallmark movie. Hallmark movies are uniformly garbage or at least solidly, resolutely, repetitively mediocre. They may even be the very dictionary definition of mediocre - ‘merely adequate or just acceptable, but lacking distinction or excellence’. This one is no exception - The Russell Girl with Amber Tamblyn.
It reeks of Hallmark, absolutely reeks of it. The plot is painfully paint-by-numbers. I ran across it some random rainy day when I was bored and for some reason it just got stuck in my head like relapsing fever. Is Tamblyn good? Given what she had to work with, sure. Is Ehle? Yeah, ditto mostly (mostly). Is anyone else? Not reeaaalllyyy - in fact some genuinely suck, but they sure didn’t have much to work with either.
I can’t really say I like it as a film, I don’t particularly recommend it. But for some reason it still occasionally pops into my head. I think it is Tamblyn mostly, but it’s not like I am a huge Tamblyn fan boy or anything. Just something about her emoting in that contrived plot (and maybe that contrived tragedy on tragedy plot itself) clicked in some odd fashion.
I find it perplexing, which makes it perfect for this thread. There are a number of random films that I know that I have a similar inexplicable reaction to. But that is the most extreme version of bland that I could remember off the top of my head.
The Innkeepers is a 2011 horror movie about an old hotel that seems to be haunted. It’s only rated 5.5 on IMDb and my normal rule of thumb is to not waste my time on anything lower than 6, but I thought it was actually pretty effective and well done. It co-stars Kelly McGillis in a secondary role, looking so, so much older and different than she did in the original Top Gun that she was unrecognizable.
Another one I just thought of is Toys. It starred Robin Williams and was just… weird. But I still think about it occasionally even after all these years, and it had an amazing soundtrack. That movie was where I discovered Tori Amos’s music.
My wife and I watched and enjoyed it. I thought it was a pretty solid alien science-fiction concept.
It also did a good job, I thought, of taking advantage of the ‘creepypasta’ derived liminal space vibe. A 2026 movie called ‘Backrooms’ is based on a short video made back in the 90s, that I think started the whole liminal spaces concept:
Huh… well, just based on the title of this thread, I was gonna suggest one of my all-time favourites, Robot Jox. I love the hell out of it… one of those movies I could watch any time it comes on like Aliens or Big Trouble in Little China…
… but saying it’s “not for everyone” would be a euphemistic understatement. I bet there are even Battletech fans who think it’s garbage!
No Escape - a 1994 action flick set in a futuristic penal colony, starring Ray Liotta, Lance Henriksen, Ernie Hudson and Kevin Dillon, and directed by Martin Campbell, who made some good stuff both before and after it. It’s not a great movie, or even a good one, really, but it has a loopy sense of humor, and it’s weirdly pensive and melancholy for a dumb action flick, with a laid-back pace and surprisingly good character work. The scene that sticks with me the most is when the “good” prisoners decided to throw a Christmas party or something, and they all dress up in makeshift party hats and start dancing to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”. Why? Why not?