Recently we did, “Movies you liked better on second viewing”, but what about movies that you liked better the next day after one viewing?
I watched “Wendy and Lucy” last night. At the end, I thought; there wasn’t much too that but what was there was just okay and I certainly won’t ever watch it again. Today, I can’t stop thinking about it, and plan on watching it again in a few days.
What are some movies that you liked better the day(s) after you saw them than right after you saw them?
Saved!. I walked out of it thinking that it was stupid and kind of dull. After sleeping on it and running it through my head, I decided that it was actually really cute and sort of clever. I like it a lot now.
I found Watchmen to be okay - overly long, but good enough. But the next day, I found myself wanting to read the comic, and now I want to see the movie again. I think my brain is editing it down or something.
The Conversation creeped me out too much to say I liked it when I first saw it. But now it’s my second favorite movie of all time. I can’t say it happened literally overnight, though. It was probably 3-5 years before I watched it the second time.
Bad Lieutenant. I still don’t really like it, but after sleeping on it, I think I understand what the film-makers were trying to do.
The Big Lebowski. It was all right when I watched it, but it grew on me quite a bit after. Not necessarily the next day, but in the weeks and months after.
Sword of Doom. Again, I liked it when I saw it. But I didn’t realize how good it was until I noticed that I couldn’t stop talking about it.
I know what you mean. I saw it because I like Michelle Williams and people were raving about her performance. It played a week or two and then was gone, so I made sure I caught it. After it was over, I thought, yeah, she was good, and the movie was ok, but…that’s it? Nothing really happens. But then the more I thought about it, the better it became in my mind so when it opened at another theater a few weeks later, I went to see it again.
This time I could understand more about Wendy’s motives and her (generally) stoic persona (that is, on first viewing, Wendy seeming to not show emotions to events that would have me crying and a mess), and I saw the deeper stuff inside Wendy on Williams’s seemingly placid face. It is indeed a really wonderful performance for such a tiny, tiny slice-of-life film. The performance was way too subtle to be recognized by any of the major awards bodies, which is a shame.
Similar reaction to Wendy and Lucy’s director’s last movie,* Old Joy*. Less than 80 minutes long, nothing really “happens,” but it really sticks with you.
The Lost Room had a totally cool premise but while watching it I kept thinking “too much hokiness; they could have gone far with this, but what they ended up with is a lot of silliness”.
The afterimages keep looping. The atmosphere is really well done. Actually the movie kinda rocks.
Star Wars. Seriously. The original. I tend to like my science fiction “hard”. While watching (in between oohing and aahing at things like the HUGE empire ship flying 8.5" above my eyeballs) I kept kibbitzing in my head. In particular the awards ceremony at the end and the whole sense of the outcome of a galaxy-level conflict having any meaningful dependency on what 3 characters did. Oh please. And didn’t like the conflict and competition dynamics between Luke and Han, or between Leia and the pair of them. Yeah, let’s have a rebellious bad boy, no one’s done that as a male hero role. Next morn: hey that was a DAMN GOOD fairy tale set in space! Once upon a freaking time! All the ominous and all the “everything you do is meaningful”, totally Grimms in Space! Good movie!
I haven’t seen that one yet but I want to. Have you seen Wendy and Lucy yet? Kelly Reichardt is a director to watch. Will Oldham is in both films. In Wendy and Lucy he plays a kindly Wal-Mart security guard (though he mainly just keeps an eye on the parking lot) who is nice to Wendy when her car breaks down and she loses her dog (Lucy).
Oh and yeah, I felt the same way about Star Wars. I came out of it thinking, oh, that was cool, but, whatever. However certain scenes kept sticking in my head which made me want to see it again. I did and that was it. I became one of those crazy loons who saw it over 100 times in the theater when it first came out. Totally obsessed.
Edit to add, remember, this was in the days before home video, so I had no idea when I’d get to see it again except maybe a few years down the road on broadcast TV, with commercials. To heck with that. I wanted to see it on the BIG screen! As many times as possible.
Brokeback Mountain. I liked it fine when I first watched it, but it *haunted * me for the next couple of days. I rented it again, then went online to discuss it with anyone that was willing!
Transsiberian. I thought “that was good” but after my wife and I stayed up late dissecting the plot, and we continued to mull the whole thing over the next day.