Yes, he was (surprisingly good, not Katherine Hepburn). There wasn’t even a hint of Barney (or Mr. Furley, for that matter) in his performance.
I also mocked the idea of Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It was a phenomenal movie.
Pitch Black and the Riddick sequels all seemed like stupid ideas. Each one has been better than the one before and are great movies. The third Riddick(2013) was, no kidding, the best movie of 2013.
Speed Racer watched it just because it was on and i was sick and bored, very very enjoyable.
**Zombieland **- I find Jesse Eisenberg to be a smug prick and would rather be shot in the face than watch yet another zombie movie, but this was pretty good.
Just thought of another one, the remake of Arthur. Everyone knows how much I really don’t like Russell Brand and I’ve always liked the original movie, but Russell, IMO, did the justice to it. Not being able to speak clearly (to our American ears anyways) went a long way when you’re playing a perpetual drunk.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t my favorite movie, not even in my top 50. But it wasn’t nearly as awful as I thought it was going to be. I’m glad I didn’t write it off just because of Russell.
The commercials for Tombstone made it look like a cheap, puffed-up made for TV movie. When I watched it with friends, I was really taken with some of the performances, foremost among them, of course, Val Kilmer’s.
Role Models starring Stifler from American Pie and some guy named Paul Rudd. It doesn’t hurt that Jane Lynch had a supporting role in the movie and I happen to like Lynch a lot. I’m not saying it was a great movie but it was better than it had any right to be.
Charlie’s Angels. Movie remakes of TV shows are often bad and this one was based on a TV show that was pretty bad to start with. And the buzz during production was terrible. But it turned out to be an enjoyable movie.
The sequel sucked though.
Speaking of which, it’s been too long since I first saw them to really remember, but the Bill & Ted movies may well fall into this category.
A buddy and I went to the movies, and I wanted to see “Dusk 'Til Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money” (which I bet a lot of you thought was direct to DVD. But no, it hit at least one theater). My buddy talked me into seeing “Fight Club”, which I thought was a just a dumb fight move. I owe that guy big time.
A similar thing happened to me. A group of friends and I were were about to leave my apartment and we stuck our heads into my roommates room to say bye. Him and another roommate were watching a movie. We hung around watching a few minutes of it, which turned into 10 minutes, after a half hour we took our coats off and asked what movie it was…Fight Club, which we had all been avoiding because it sounded dumb.
IIRC, Jennifer Aniston was dating Brad at the time and was on SNL making fun of the movie on the show. I don’t know if it had been released yet but she was making fun of the First Rule Of Fight Club, so I assume, at the very least, the writers had seen it. But they were still playing up that this was just a dump fighting movie. I think that was the point. Go in thinking it was a stupid guy movie (ala Fast and the Furious) and leave with your mind blown.
Oh, yes. It’s good, mindless fun with pretty fight scenes. And it’s got more of a plot than you’d expect.
I was surprised by Fight Club. That may be because I was out of the loop. Certainly anyone who had read the book would have expected more than was shown in the ads and trailers. From the ads, it came across as a mindless, hackneyed guys-like-to-fight movie, when its focus is on the main characters and the plot. After watching it by accident, I appreciated the way it had been downplayed.
Still haven’t read the book. I think the stack of books I own that I haven’t read yet is taller than me, though, so I probably won’t get to it this year. Maybe this decade.
Conan the Barbarian (the 1982 Ahnuld version).
Bunch of friends and I went to see what was expected to be a trashy fantasy flick. As movie snobs, we even had low expectations of producer Dino De Laurentiis’ body of work. And remember this was before Arnold Schwarzenegger was well-known.
The film has fared better in hindsight (77% on Rotten Tomatoes) than on release, but we liked it immediately. Philosophical and brooding, filled with symbolism and quotable dialog, and with James Earl Jones as a spectacularly hammy villain! Great flick.
I thought I was going to hate The Emperor’s New Groove. Reading the summary, it sounded like the dumbest thing I’d ever heard of. I thought it was a joke. Not sure why I ended up going to see it, but I loved it. It’s still one of my all-time favorite Disney animated films.
Didn’t have high expectations for Despicable Me, either, but loved that one as well.
Shakespeare in Love falls here, because I was convinced it was just another strange historical fiction rom com that somehow beat Saving Private Ryan. I watched it just to see if it was even a halfway decent movie and was blown away by how entertaining and funny it was. I now consider it the greatest movie of the 90s (yes, even above Pulp Fiction - that’s how much I loved it).
Recently, Spring Breakers. I know I’m not the only person on these boards blown away by it. The trailers made it look like a feature length Girls Gone Wild episode or something, but it turned out to be an avant-garde deconstruction of that concept. Fortunately I saw a couple of good reviews of it, so didn’t miss out.
In 2012, Taylor Kitsch starred in two big-budget movies. One was John Carter, the Disney film version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars novels. It was way too long and really dull. The other was Battleship, which was based on the Hasbro board game (as the Transformers movies were based on the Hasbro toys). I wasn’t expecting much from Battleship but it wasn’t bad, even given the weak connection to the board game in the movie.
Hmm…
Faster - I thought that it was going to be a standard Dwayne “ The Rock” Johnson action film, but it was actually a fairly dark story which didn’t end well for anyone.
Oculus - My SO wanted to see this as she is a big horror film fan. Its promos looked average; but it was a decent film with a lot of tension in it.
Wall-E - I wasn’t going to the movies to see this film as it didn’t seem to offer much to attract me. I have since seen it at least a dozen times and I count it as one of my favorite films.
Switchback (1997) - A serial killer film with a twist as to who the killer is. The previews stank up the place but it is a very enjoyable film,IMO.
A couple of people have mentioned Battleship. I can’t call it a surprise for me because it was pretty much the dumb action movie I expected it would be.
What did surprise me was Rihanna’s performance in that movie. I figured she had been cast because she was famous and would be hopeless playing a military character in an action movie. But she did an okay job. (I later found out that she had served in the Barbadian army before becoming a singer.)
Troll Hunter. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised by a really enjoyable flick. TRROOOOOOLLLL!!