X-Men: First Class was spectacular. I thought it was going to be reboot hell, badly done, rushed, and the actors would only be a shadow of Stewart and McKellan. I was blown away by this movie, I think I enjoyed it more than the other X-Men movies
I agree with many suggestions here. Kristin Stewart did great in The Runaways, and Michael Shannon as Kim Fowley stole every scene he was in. I’d never seen either prior to this movie.
The Star Trek reboot was far, far better than I expected, and I have seen it several times now. I say that as a Star Trek fan. Karl Urban was born to play McCoy. The fellow who played Kirk’s father was great, and could’ve played Kirk AFAIC, even though Chris Pine also did well. Everyone was great, and Simon Pegg made me laugh every time he was on screen. “Are you from the future?” "That’s brilliant. Do they have sandwiches in the future?
Machete. I went in hoping to enjoy some over-the-top action, and it delivered in spades, while also delivering some great touches of humor. I particularly liked the self-aware guards of the bad guy, who, rather than being mere cannon-fodder, commented on the stupid stuff they did. “You ever notice how you’d let a Mexican into your house just because he’s got gardening tools? No questions asked, you just let him right in.”
I’m surprised I’m the first person to mention Fight Club. I can’t be the only person that went into that movie expecting it to be nothing more then human equivalent of a cock fighting tournament.
That was one of those movies that I only watched (for the first time) because my roommates had it on. I still remember, I had some friends over, we all had our coats on and were about to leave and for some reason stopped in his room to say bye. I think at first we were just sort of watching a few minutes of it to see what it was, but over the next 5 minutes or so we all found ourselves leaning against walls, sitting on arms of couches or edges of beds and about 10 minutes later coats were off and we got as comfortable as we could for how many people were jammed in the room.
Turned out to be quite a good movie.
I’ll never forget it because my roommate spent the better part of the movie flicking a lighter in my face and I had consumed some things that made a lighter being flicked in my face rather obnoxious (yet I ignored it enough that I never said anything, I guess it wasn’t that obnoxious).
Either way, great movie that I probably never would have bothered with based on the title alone.
Sah dah tay!
Amadeus. I was expecting this stuffy film and it was too long to boot. It’s one of my favorite movies now. It was nothing like I expected.
Seven Samurai I don’t generally watch subtitled movies as I like to multi task while watching movies ( I don’t mind watching them more than once to make sure I don’t miss too much of the visual elements which helps ) but from the opening scene I was totally hooked and I couldn’t stop watching. I’ve since seen many of Kurosawa’s movies. He didn’t make me a fan of subtitles per se but he darned sure made me far more tolerant of them.
Spy Kids
Despicable Me
Bolt
Up
Cars
(the latter two suffered from “Pixar has lousy trailers and great movies” syndrome. From the trailers I didn’t expect to like them, but I loved both.)
Way of the Gun. Mildly obscure B-action movie with some really big names (James Caan, Benicio Del Toro, Ryan Phillippe, Juliette Lewis) and some genuinely great action sequences. And James Caan’s speech about “adjudication” is a personal favorite of mine. Also gets bonus points for having a Sarah Silverman cameo at the very beginning.
Certainly never in the running for best movie ever, or even best action movie ever, but still very well put together and I think a very underrated movie.
I think I have a pretty good concept of what types of movies I like to see, and all reviews really do is help me gage whether the interesting premise has been well executed or not. They are also occasionally helpful for determining whether it has real 3D or post process 3D. Rather than reviews per se, I think I rely on “buzz” long in advance to help me decide what I want to see, especially with regards to limited release and art house stuff.
Looking at my fav films list, it’s hard to find too many relevant films, perhaps because I generally go in with low expectations and even if I don’t, my expectations tend to be realistic, and if I’m bored I find that the intense sleep of falling asleep to a movie is well worth the ticket price. But I’ll give it a go:
Drawing Restraint 9: I can’t honestly recommend the film to anyone, because it has all the elements of boring you to tears. In fact, I would compare the experience to “watching paint dry”. BUT, one person’s boredom is another person’s meditative bliss, and really it was more like “watching paint dry, ON ACID” which I imagine would be fascinating. This film fascinated me, completely sober. Plus, it got me laid.
Delicatessen: the film was recommended to me, and described to me, and did seem like something I would find interesting, but I was surprised by how much it was awesome. The rhythmic scene in particular was great.
Dude, Where’s My Car. This film started a friendship! It looked stupid and cheesy, but for some reason I was in the mood for that. I asked one of my online friends to go with me because he was the only person I could imagine going for it. Ten years later, an enduring best-friendship and weekly movie going ritual! And the film was stupid and cheesy, but also super fun and funny with awesome skits, Stifler making out with Kutcher, and Michael from QAF as Zoltan! Plus, discovery channel trivia, Data, and a continuum transfunctioner! Oh yeah, and bubble wrap uniforms.
Galaxy Quest: I loathe Tim Allen. But this film is probably the number one film ever made in terms of rewatchability.
A Home at the End of the World. I watched just for the Colin Firth nude scene, but this was an amazingly intimate and poignant film.
Pleasantville. I knew I liked the premise, but it could have easily been a cheesy comedy with the same premise. Instead it was deep, metaphorical, and surprisingly adult. Plus my particular viewing had an amusing meta moment.
Rent. Just because my ex took me to see the broadway musical shortly before the movie came out, and I wasn’t all that impressed. Maybe they have gotten tired after years on broadway, maybe the movie having mostly the original cast helped, or maybe the fact that the movie had sound editing and cut out the parts I found annoying helped. But after being disappointed by the stage show, I loved the movie version.
Slumdog Millionaire. The premise, and the buzz, did make me go in expecting to enjoy it, but I was surprised at how uplifting it was, especially given it’s simple somewhat rote plot.
The Big Blue. I don’t even remember how I first ended up seeing this film. But it has become one of my top three. I prefer the American soundtrack though. I’m not sure the experience would have been the same with the alternate soundtrack.
Threesome. Somehow transcended its premise.
Chicago. Just because I didn’t know much about it and wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I like musicals, but it’s hard to tell in advance if it’s one that I’ll love or one that I’ll hate. Even beyond general music taste, I also tend to loathe “talky” musicals (which is part of why I didn’t like the stage Rent).
And… Bridge to Terebithia. I guess people who read the book knew what to expect, but from the trailers, one would think it was a fantasy CGI action adventure flick. Whereas it was actually a touching coming-of-age drama.
Unfortunately the buzz was so huge on this film that I ended up disappointed. I expected stupidity, but at the same time I expected it to be amusingly bad, which it wasn’t enough to redeem it.
Well… I’ll say that while the film did end up exceeding my expectations, I’m not sure I enjoyed it a lot more than I would have if it had equaled them. OTOH, I can’t remember which Brad Pitt film it was, either this or Se7en, but at least one of them left me pumped and ready to live my life to the fullest when leaving the theater.
It wasn’t so much a cliché then, but it is now. Despite the fact that science backs up the notion (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big-questions/201106/homophobic-men-most-aroused-gay-male-porn) it still does feel like a lazy writing element. Despite that, I thought it was superbly executed in that film.
I was hesitant due to Christian Bale “headlining”, but thankfully it turned out to actually be a Sam Worthington movie, which I enjoyed.
I didn’t think I’d like it, because it’s a mafia movie. Actually I don’t remember why I decided to see it. I ended up not liking it, not because it was a mafia movie. Most of the individual scenes were excellent. But the movie as a whole massively failed to pull together as a coherent overall plot. Jack Nicholson’s arc in particular was random. Suddenly he’s working for the feds, so spying on him doesn’t matter, and further, he dies randomly so his arc makes no difference at all.
[quote=“A Monkey With a Gun, post:16, topic:583808”]
I ask because I saw the movie waaay back when, and thought is sucked./QUOTE]
I think it was supposed to suck. Or at least be cheesy. Of course, we know from the series what Joss meant it to be, and that would have been awesome, and the movie clearly wasn’t that. BUT, at the same time, it was still an awesome cheesefest. Pee Wee Herman’s death scene alone was worth the price of admission.
While Avatar was no literary Sundance metaphorical arty genius masterpiece, it was an astonishing visual action adventure, and technologically a breakthrough. I think most of the slams were simply popularity backlash.
Similarly, Open Graves with Eliza Dukshu, basically an adult horror version of Jumanji, I expected to be a SyFy movie of the week (very very low bar, above only Birdemic).
That’s a John Woo film? lol. I did actually enjoy the film, but it didn’t give me a PKD vibe at all. But it was a clever premise, and well executed as such.
I came in to say this one. I saw a tv version and it was just awful. The seeing the trailer told me that it was not going to be much like the book, which I *had * read. I saw it anyway, since BTT was (and still is) one of my favorite books of all time. Good Movie. Bad trailer.
I agree completely. No need to feel defensive; apparently quite a few people liked it.
I was surprised by “The Silence of the Lambs.” I was not expecting a movie about a serial killer (make that two serial killers) to be so intelligently written, directed, and acted.
The other day I watched the remake of Arthur and really enjoyed it. The romance was sweet, the pseudo-parental stuff was touching, and Russell Brand was extremely funny; there seemed to be no disconnect between what he was thinking and what came out of his mouth, but in a good way.
The Field
Adaptation
The Bourne Supremacy. I don’t like the action movie genre, such films never (almost) catch my interest, I acutally find them boring. But this one was an unexpected exception.
There is something about Mary. I was absolutely convinced it would be dumb and childish, to be honest, and watched it reluctantly. To my suprise, I was giggling through the whole movie, many times laughing out loud.
Yeah, it got unfairly slagged by critics who couldn’t get past the original film. I can hardly wait for this to come out on DVD so I can catch some of Brand’s lines that just whizzed by. For instance, there was this bit where Jennifer Garner’s character is very aggressively kissing Brand. He pulls away from her and asks:
Brand: What was that?
Garner: A French kiss.
Brand: No, a French kiss has some degree of give and take. That kiss was distinctly German.
I love Dudley Moore in the original movie, but Liza Minnelli was utterly miscast as someone who was supposed to have some degree of sex appeal. Greta Gerwig was cute, appealing and sexy.
I watched Sucker Punch with about as low as my expectations can be and still fumble the disc into the player. Yeah, it was a pretty mindless spectacle but it was a fun spectacle nonetheless.
I noticed that, unlike most action flicks these days, you could actually follow the fight scenes rather than sit through a bunch of seemingly random flash cuts.