Saw this as teen on broadcast TV, thought it was pretty sparse but atmospheric and moody and liked it.
Saw it recently, oh my this might now be my ideal “pretentious shit” movie example. I really hated it because at some point it seems like it isn’t even taking itself serious anymore, and then a very grounded movie becomes a metaphor for nature or something:rolleyes:. Also NOTHING HAPPENS, this films thinks people walking by each other saying excuse me is sexual tension. Also the Aborigine guy goes from a character to magical negro. About the only good thing I can say for it well it does have some very nice shots of Australia.
God how about having the characters interact a little more instead of the T&A shots that go on forever?
Absolutely hated “Dumb and Dumber” and “Napoleon Dynamite” the first time I saw them. Now I find D&D a hilarious guilty pleasure and I love ND. No idea why I changed my mind on either.
I know it is blasphemy but for a long time I thought Blade Runner was pretty to look at but boring. I have since come around to appreciate it.
Similarly, as a kid Superman was a snooze and Superman II was awesome. As an adult the original Superman is one of my favorite movies and a lot of the silliness of Superman II grates.
I didn’t care for “Remains of the Day” the first time I saw it. So I don’t remember why on earth I would have watched it again. But I did. And loved it. I’ve watched it several times since and still think it’s great.
Didn’t care much for A Christmas Story the first time out (I never liked Jean Shepherd). Afterwards, I decided that it was dull a first, but picked up after the scene with the flagpole. The next time I watched, I realized that scene was in the first five minutes. Love the film now.
The first time I saw that film I was slightly mystified as to its popularity but on repeat viewing its charm has become apparent to me.
Goodbye, Lenin, when I first saw it I was blown away, thought it was a beautiful meditation on familial love and wry look at how German society changed when the wall came down. Having viewed it more recently I still thought it was all right but quite dull in parts and flawed.
As a general rule, movies over 20 years old that I may have appreciated, even liked, when they were first out have a tendency to lose their flavor as customs, fashions, movie-making techniques, and attitudes change over time. There may be a 10-20% exception for those “timeless” movies that hold up in spite of their period.
It’s rare for a movie I didn’t like when it came out to take on new dimensions if/when I decide to watch it again in later decades. Perhaps the group that may have gained in appeal for me are those that keep making critics’ Top X-Number Lists that I finally begin to appreciate. At least in those cases I may be provoked to watch them with a different intent.
I could list maybe 50 movies, out of hundreds that I must have seen over my lifetime, that still appeal to me the way they did back then. All in all, I see that as a pretty high success rate.
I loved this film when it came out. It had airplanes. It had Holly Hunter (who was just so damned cute and adorable). It had fun. It had fantasy. And airplanes.
The first time I saw it, it was at its premier (or something – the audience were given 8x10 fact sheets). I watched it many times over the years. Then one viewing, it just bugged the crap out of me. Richard Dreyfus’s mannerisms were manifested in Brad Johnson’s character; but they seemed artificial. Like, ‘Oh, yeah. Pete needs to do this here.’ The scene where Holly Hunter is dancing with Brad Johnson, a certain song comes on, and she turns away didn’t seem right. It was her dialogue and the way she broke off the dance. It just didn’t work for me. Again, it seemed like ‘OK, next thing on the checklist…’ Dreyfus and Hunter are great actors. They could have played their parts more convincingly. The runaway aircraft tug (or was it a forklift?) was silly. I thought it was silly on first viewing, but I didn’t let it bother me. On that one particular viewing though, it just struck me that Steven Spielberg wasn’t even trying. I know he loved A Guy Named Joe, and I know he wanted to remake it. But he got sloppy in a few places, and it took away my appreciation of the film after several viewings.
Not sure if I exactly changed my opinion about this movie per se, but definitely had a different take on what was happening in it…
Saw The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman at a college freshman orientation movie night when I was 17, and thought it was a fantastic and inspiring portrait of youth rebellion against twisted cynical cowardly middle-aged conformity.
Saw it again in senior week when I was 21 and thought “you inarticulate little doofus, what is your PROBLEM?!?? Okay, your parents are evidently not the sharpest knives in the drawer, which is hardly surprising considering that they produced you, but they are at least trying to communicate with you here and you’re giving them NOTHING to work with! Why are you so cognitively paralyzed, anyway? You allegedly graduated from Harvard so you’re supposed to be smart, you’re young and healthy; it’s okay if you don’t want to do what your parents want you to do but isn’t there anything YOU want to do? Or at least anything that you want to get away from enough that you’re willing to make an effort?”
I was rather shocked at the time to realize how my perspective had changed, and I have harbored a sneaking suspicion ever since that the college administrators deliberately showed that same movie at those two different times precisely in order to shock us in that way. :eek: Dunno how many of my classmates saw both screenings, though.
The original Star Wars movies. The first was my favorite movie, so much so that I’d want to fight if somebody said another movie was better. Turns out that the middle-aged me just isn’t into an updated Flash Gordon with hyper-aggressive marketing.
Same thing happened to me. I was a teenager when I saw it the first time, so maybe I was too young to appreciate it (even though I liked other Merchant-Ivory movies). But I rewatched it about ten years later, and suddenly everything about it just fell into place for me. Wonderful movie.
That was the first one I thought of. I could identify with not knowing what you want to do with your life when I was younger, but years later, I couldn’t get past that anyone could spend years away at college and come back that naive.
While my opinion on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou changed over time, it was just the day after I saw it. When I left the theater, I was kind of disappointed overall (Rushmore/Tennenbaum fueled expectations); the next day, I had a revelation about the subtext of the film, which in turn, flipped my opinion.
