The IMDb lists the following five movies:
I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967)
I Am Curious (Blue) (1968)
I Am Curious Tahiti (1970)
I Am Curious Gay (1970)
I Am Curious, Film (1995)
Yup, The Big Labowski for sure. Now one of my favorites.
I know this is about movies, but now that my Wife can stream TV (better satellite) we are getting into ‘The X-Files’. Next I think maybe we will try ‘Grimm’. Both my wife and I like this type of stuff. Should be right up our alley.
If books and films both count, I assume stage plays aren’t too far a departure.
“Our Town”. I found it stultifyingly boring as a high school student. “Bleah, I don’t like a single character in this thing, or their trivial little lives. I could never bring myself to care about anything that’s happening to any of them”. I do remember being vaguely roused from my sullen boredom towards the end where someone’s a ghost, but it was only on seeing the whole thing years later that the piece registered with me.
Repo Man (1984).
I can’t think of any other movie quite like this one!
On first viewing, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Subsequent viewings – the second through the 15th – were far more rewarding.
These:
The litigation that allowed these films to be shown in the U.S. is an important landmark in the history of the First Amendment. Arguably more important than the films themselves.
Yeah, I saw Yellow, the more famous one, when it came out. Never saw Blue until I rented both of them on Netflix. @mbh’s analysis is right, they are more fun to talk about than to watch.
I guess this list is entirely made up of films that I thought I liked but didn’t really understand/couldn’t really take in the first time that I saw them.
Blade Runner - I knew there was something special about it the first time I saw it, but I didn’t know what. Every subsequent time you watch it, it gives you more. (Every subsequent time you watch it, it’s been re-edited as well!)
Harold And Maude - funnier with every watching
Apocalypse Now - just too big to take in at first
MASH - very difficult to follow on a first watch
And then there’s …
Banzai! That’s the British TV show, the spoof Japanese gambling show which must have aired in the UK around about 1990 (the dates in Wiki are wrong). Back in the days of 4 TV channels you ended up watching some woeful things - I sat through episode 1 and absolutely hated it. God knows why I watched episode 2, but I did, finally realizing it was a spoof, and I laughed til I cried. All that was thirty-odd years ago, when cultural steroetyping was passed off as just a bit of fun - I’m not going to post any samples. But if you can look past the cultural steroetyping, the sheer joyful stupidity of it still stands up pretty well.
j
I think that Coen brothers movies are generally that way. I mean, Raising Arizona was superficially funny the first time or two that I saw it, but it’s deeper than that and funnier than that after watching it a few more times. Same thing with O Brother Where Art Thou, The Big Lebowski and several of their other movies.
I had to watch The Matrix two or three times, back in the day, before I understood anything that was going on. Now one of my all-time favorites, even if only to marvel at the special effects.
I first saw The Nightmare Before Chrustmas in pan-and-scan in mono on VHS and didn’t think much of it. Later tried it again in widescreen DVD and 5.1 Dolby Digital, appreciated it much more.
Hulk (2003). First time I watched it, I thought it was horrible. I watched it again a couple of years ago. Watching it again with different expectations, I thought it was a pretty good flick.
No, 2001-2003 is about right. I didn’t move to the UK until 1996 and it was definitely a few years after that. That and the longer-running Eurotrash were in much the same vein of “foreigners being ridiculous in OTT ways”.
My dad took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in reserved seats on Broadway (NYC) a few weeks after it was released. I was very excited to see it, having been a lifelong sci-fi fan at the old age of 15.
I walked out of the theater mad and angry - perhaps crying - at how the story just didn’t make sense. But, as we went home, it dawned on me that perhaps the problem was not in the movie, but in me. So I resolved to read the book, which clarified so many things! A couple of months later I saw the movie again, and it was an entirely new experience. So I read the book a second time, and saw the movie a third time. Wash and repeat a couple more times over the next two years. (Popular movies had lots of reruns in the days before VCRs.) Each time, getting more and more out of it.
I had a similar feeling of “there must be more here that went over my head” when I saw Apocalypse Now, but I was too busy with other stuff to follow up on it.
Here’s the thing: remember the days of discussing last night’s TV at work the next day?
“Did you see that absolute pile of crap Banzai last night?” - Ep 1 made such bad impression, I can remember where I was standing and who I was talking to - and that was a job I left in 1995.
j
ETA - shit, I just checked on All4, and they say 2001. I must be losing it.
My dad bought me this book. At the time, I was like: “Why would I want to read this? I’ve already seen the movie… with you!”. My dad responded: “Just read it and you can thank me later”.
And I did indeed thanked him later. What a great book!
I’ve loved nearly all of the Coen Brothers’ films at first viewing, but Barton Fink was a pointless bore. Every so often I’d watch it again, and the fourth viewing did the trick- I suddenly “got” it.
FWIW, Llewellyn Jones is the only Coen film I’ve flat out hated.
Moderator Note
Thread title changed at OP’s request.
I had a similar conversation experience with BF. I was quite surprised that I could feel a Coen Bro film could disappoint me so. I’m glad there is hope because I loved the feel and the acting.
A couple of other Coen brothers films were boring, like A Serious Man. And others weren’t as much fun as their best work. (Like I was hoping for more from Hail, Caesar!.)
My father rented this from the video store circa 1985. I watched it with him. To this day my father maintains it’s the worst movie he’s ever seen, and being just 7 at the time it didn’t make any more sense to me than it did to him.
Having re-watched it as an adult that knows, appreciates, and understands punk rock, I loved it. My father was never, ever going to “get” references like when Emilio Estevez started singing from Black Flag’s “TV Party”; it was just complete nonsense to him.