Well I really liked I, Robot. Some scheduling quirk led to me seeing it both on my recent flight to Europe and on the way back. Besides having decently humorous dialogue and slick action sequences, it has many clever uses of irony that you’ll only notice on your second viewing.
When my sweetie brought home Bring It On I though “well, at least it has cheerleaders”. I was hooked from the first scene. It didn’t suck.
Trust me on this one, don’t watch her in her appearances on Six Feet Under last year. Unless you wouldn’t find the image of Dawn stradling a big black cop-type too ooogly.
Shrek 2. Looked really truly awful from the previews, but I had some really good laughs out of it. Much better than the first.
Ditto to Constantine. I expected it to be just horrible, and while it still wasn’t “good,” it wasn’t awful, either. Rachel Weisz was really good, I thought.
I expected Blade Trinity to be just awful, but it was fun for what it was.
And since I really don’t like the first Matrix movie at all, I expected to hate the second one. But it turned out pretty cool.
The only movie in recent memory that I expected to be bad but actually turned out really good, as opposed to just “okay for what it is,” was Pirates of the Caribbean.
The Butterfly Effect–I’m not a fan of Ashton Kutcher, but I wound up really loving this movie. It might be in my top twenty list of favorite movies.
Bubble Boy–Watched this just for Jake Gyllenhaal, but it’s a good movie even without the cute lead actor.
Conspiracy Theory–Not a Mel Gibson fan by ANY means, and not a fan of action movies in general, but I really liked this and will still watch it whenever it’s on cable.
The Aviator–I’m not usually one for bio-pics, and I’m not a fan of Martin Scorcese’s mob movies, but I thought this was great. Maybe that’s just because I find Howard Hughes so interesting.
Seconded!
I wasn’t looking forward it to it at all after seeing the horribile trailers. Thankfully, they couldn’t have been more mis-leading.
My favorite film of 2004.
Clueless. Not my type of movie usually, but I enjoy it more and more with each viewing.
Wow. That’s, um…interesting. I’ve apparently missed a lot in Six Feet Under since the end of Season 2. Must…get…DVDs…
bamf
I was pleasantly surprised by two movies that I was sure were going to be awful, but which turned out to be surprisingly good, and two that were much better than I expected. All of them SF:
The Terminator – from the ads I expected this to be a low-budget flick about guys purportedly from the future running around LA shooting each other up, with special effects on the cheap rubber mask level. But one bit I saw in a trailer sugested more. I went to see it and was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasa literate and very hip to SF, and that the effects, although frequently low-budget, were skillfully used.
Robocop – looked like a campy comic-book movie. Imagine my surprise to find it an equally hip SF film that used that campy humor to make a point. Again, it showed its knowledge of SF by semiquoting from C.M. Kornbluth’s classic “The Marching Morons” with its future catchphrase “I’d buy that for a dollar!” (inflation apparently caused that change from Kornbluth’s “quarter”.) The incredible bad taste of the villains gives new meaninng to “the banality of evil”. The sequels all stank.
The Matrix – despite its flaws, I was blown away by the ideas and execution. This film, more than any since “Forbidden Planet”, embodies the “Sense of Wonder” that SF critics talk about as the seminal SF experience. Taking the Red Pill is like stepping through the wall/door in Morbius’ office and finding the Krell lab, experiencing a dramatic change in perspective.
Creator – Witty SF with emphasis on character rather than effects, breaking lots of stereotypes. Cloning without the cliches.
I took the kids of a friend of mine to see George of the Jungle. The kidswere about 7-8 at the time. I think I laughed more than they did, and found it incredibly stupid, and acknowledging its own stupidity, which is what made it smart and witty.
It also made me a fan of Brendan Fraser who’s great at comedy, can play an action hero with confidence (The Mummy) and great drama as well (e.g. The quiet American). He may be one of the most versatile and underrated actors working in Hollywood right now (along with John Goodman who has the same range).
Went to Necessary Roughness expecting a pretty low-brow, Revenge of the Nerds-type comedy. What I got was a much better football comedy than I expected. Yeah, it’s not high cinema, but it’s not bad either. Pretty good. You could find worse ways of spending a coupla hours.
Plus, now I get to call all really huge linemen “Manu Manu the Slender” when watching football.
:eek:
Jeez, I love that show (only seen the first season, though), but :eek: