The Terminator – yup. When it first came out no one knew anything about it. The ads made it look like a low-budget cheapie sci-fi film. I expected it to be guys in rubber masks running and driving around LA shooting at each other. Yawn. But then I went to see it, sand found it was wonderfully plotted, sci-fi literate, and had a wicked streak of dark humor. And good effects. And Arnold cast as a robot was PERFECT casting – I’d seen his early films, and he was stiff and unnatural like a robot. I was utterly blown away. Robocop – this looked like a big money, big screen joke. But, again, it turned out to have an aware and literate script, good effects, and good plotting. The shout out to C.M. Kornbluth’s The Marching Morons was a signal that probably passed right over the heads of 90% of the audience.
For that matter, Star Wars didn’t look as if it was going to be that great from the original trailer, as I’ve written often enough here. It didn’t have the iconic John Williams score, or even the iconic yellow-pipinmg-on-black-starfield logo, and they managed to make it all look dull. But before I saw it, Time magazine had already hailed it as “Movie of the Year”, it had a full-page-width ad on the bottom of the front page of the Boston Globe, and the first night’s show was sold out, so I knew it’d be something good. I knew it would be GREAT when the movie opened with the FULL 20th Century Fox fanfare, not the abbreviated version they’d been using for over a decade.
I’ll nth Battleship. Given the underwhelming premise of the enterprise, it turns out it’s a pretty decent action movie, with just the right balance of tongue-in-cheek and explosions.
The ones that come to mind easily: 10 Things I Hate About You, which was another dumb high school flick based on Shakespeare (blame Clueless), but very entertaining for all that. Pitch Black was a surprise but shouldn’t have been, as Twohy snuck up on me with **The Arrival **years before. Deep Rising by Stephen Sommers, which is a lot more fun than the trailer/synopsis makes it sound - part of my misgivings was Treat Williams starring in it, as he was doing a bunch of low-budget action films at the time. Having read “The Club Dumas” I wasn’t psyched about being dragged to see The Ninth Gate but it’s a favorite of mine, thanks to the writers pretty much lopping off half the book.
The biggie though? The Bourne Identity - that book taught me to loathe Ludlum and I couldn’t believe someone was once again trying to make a decent film with it; I’m still amazed how good it is.
Legally Blonde: I’m not even sure why I watched it to begin with, but I bought it afterwords.
Sex Drive. I ran across it just flipping through the stations a year or two ago. It’s a stupid movie, no doubt, but not nearly as stupid as I thought it was going to be.
Drop Dead Gorgeous was another film that surprised me. The trailers made it seem like just another dumb comedy, but to me the comedy was smarter than expected.
Hellboy. I went to it because it was a hot night and my AC was broken, so I wanted to go sit someplace cool for a while. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, right from the first moment when I learned about the connection between Rasputin, the Occult and the Nazis.
Easy A. Thought it was going to be dumb and was a really good movie.
Not Another Teen Movie. Every single Airplane rip off that has come out in the last 20 years was complete shit except this one. And this one was really good.
I dunno why you guys are so surprised about Fight Club, Brad Pitt is one of the few actors who actually reads the script first, and it was before Ed Norton fucked with them.
I’ll add some quality chick flicks: Something’s Gotta Give, Must Love Dogs, As Good as it Gets, Legally Blonde, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Twilight: I read the book first, and I figured there was no way the movie could possibly be worse. It was unbelievably worse than the book. However, the movie actually showed the final fight scene, which the book glossed over.
“Rocky Balboa”: Okay, let me get this straight. Rocky is an old man, who was advised never to box again in Rocky V. But he’s going to do it anyway… vs a champion boxer in his prime?!? No wonder Talia Shire said “NO WAY” this movie.
Afterwards, I thought it was the second best movie, with lots of shout-outs to the first one. They even made the big fight plausible, I daresay the movie could’ve even worked without the fight.
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle: I saw it on a list of good independent films, thought it sounded like B-grade, teen-aimed, formulaic, dumbass, crap, but I was working my way through the whole list so I watched it. I loved it. It combines silly, surreal incidents with likeable and believable main protagonists.
Wow, I was gonna propose Twilight as a movie that I didn’t necessarily enjoy, but was so much better than the book that I was enjoying the experience out of sheer relief. We were spared Stephanie Meyer’s prose, for chrissakes!
Also the girl who plays Alice was stunningly attractive.
I was in the mood for something totally superficial, something that I could just watch and forget and not think about. So I decided on *Chocolat. *Little did I know that I was about to witness the eternal struggle between pleasure and self-denial. Imagine dedicating your life to providing people with the epitome of pure pleasure. And imagine an entire town of uptight people hell-bent on providing every imaginable obstacle. Then imagine, one by one, winning them over and showing them how delightful life can be.
I love everything about this film. Especially the fact that it wasn’t what I thought it would be.
When I first saw the posters for the Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes, telling me Robert Downey, Jr. was Holmes, it seemed like an awful idea. At some point I changed my mind enough to go and watch it though.
I like Japanese monster movies. Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, you name them. But I don’t usually expect them to be good movies.
The first weekend in May, each year, here in Topeka, there’s a Godzilla and Friends film festival. I think it was four years ago that a modern Gamera film was shown, one not released in the US. It was, in English, Gamera the Brave, and I was surprised at how good it was. Good acting and good production values, and a plot that neatly balanced the fantasy of a kaiju film with a sensible plot.
