Vicious Circlesis a little known erotic thriller that is a LOT better than its obscurity deserves. The protagonist is an interesting and strong character who becomes a professional sex slave but turns out to be a much more formidable person than anyone gives her credit for. It has some real flaws, some silliness, but it’s so much closer to what an erotic thriller should be than most much better known films are. Carolyn Lowery convincingly delivers both the erotic and the thrilling. It has a twisty little plot that’s fun if you don’t think TOO hard about it. It’s not a widely hated film, it’s just unknown, and should be much better known.
I liked The Phantom Menace. And Jar-Jar wasn’t that bad, once you got used to him.
Yeah, my recollection was that it was very well received, indeed. The whole reason me and my cousin saw it in the theaters was that it was getting such high praise from everywhere. We both didn’t get the hype. It was an interesting concept, but we didn’t much find it scary. (And I’ve never encountered any “blowback-sophomore train of bashing it.” Mostly, I just haven’t heard anyone really discuss the movie since.) I kind of felt the same way about “28 Days Later.” Interesting concept, but just turned into a run-of-the-mill zombie movie. I should probably rewatch both of the movies and see if my opinions have changed over time.
Oceans 11, 12 & 13. Enjoyed them all.
Could not wait for Gravity to end.
Is it just me or is every Tolkein novel movie just the same damn movie over and over again?
Well, technically I don’t feel exactly like RealityChuck but I am pretty close. I think it’s a good but not great movie. I can watch it at any time but if you asked me for a horror classic I’m not coming up with Alien. I feel that it’s a one scene wonder that has a scene so memorable that the movie is graded higher because of it. Lots of films like this so that’s not an insult but it’s not a quality of a great film.
Now, I consider Aliens one of the greatest action movies of all time and it could not have existed without Alien so I have great affection for the movie and I rewatch it as part of the series and I consider it entertaining but taken by itself, I really wouldn’t bother.
So, he’s wrong about it not being a good movie but I concur it was not a classic.
Now, back on topic, it’s hard for me to choose one because I found out with Netflix, I’m a very forgiving reviewer. I like most movies. I’ve only given one 1 star review and about a dozen 2 stars. Lots and lots of 3s though. I am easily entertained.
For example, I didn’t hate Manos, the Hands of Fate. I enjoyed watching this bad film and not just the mst3k version. The thing is, I’m not stupid, I know why everyone else hated the movie so it doesn’t fit the OP either.
A quick look at a worst films of all time have several like that. I did find my answer there though. I remember totally not getting the hate and I still don’t. Howard the Duck. No, not a classic but I really rather liked it. I can get not liking it, it has issues but I just do not get the hate.
I agree that it is quite over rated. Many key events were obviously predictable. But not a truly awful film like Gravity. Merely a “meh” film. It definitely is the poster child for why you should ignore the IMDb rankings. (That and the list has way too many recent films. Like Hollywood films have gotten better lately. Right.)
Re: Earlier question about what should have won the Hugo instead of Gravity? Quite a few films. I just checked the nominees:
Gravity
Frozen
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Iron Man 3
Pacific Rim
Not a very sterling list to say the least. I forgot about Frozen. Also another leading candidate for this thread. But the other three are not offensively bad as those two, so any of those winning would have prompted a :rolleyes: rather than a :eek:.
Checking BoxOfficeMojo’s list of top 100 2013 films finds quite a few clinkers like After Earth mixed with the so-sos like Elysium. So not a great year. But Her stands out far and away as superior to any of the above.
The Hugos are a fan popularity vote by a very limited group - limited as in constrained, not just as in small. The film one in particular is… limited as in relevance.
I agree on Alien, most of it is pretty lame, but it has some good moments. Aliens and even Alien3 is better IMO
I LOOOOOOOVED Signs. One of my favorite movies of all time. The whole struggle of faith interposed with an alien invasion and a young family? Great combination.
I liked the Village too, but not as much as Signs.
John Carter of Mars was pretty good!
Star Trek 6 is better than 2 and 4.
Return of the Jedi rules. Just as good as ANH and ESB.
Two movies that “everyone” loves but me:
The Matrix: I agree with davidm above. I saw it in the theater because some friends wanted to see it, and I just didn’t appeal at all. I didn’t like the story, and special effects don’t do anything for me.
The Princess Bride: I saw it for the first time a few years ago, and I just couldn’t get into it. My personal opinion/theory is that it’s not a good movie, but IS very appealing to kids, and those who saw it as a kid love it into adulthood.
Isn’t that sort of the default position? I think 12 was the only one where reviews could be called “mixed,” and even then I think most people liked it, even if they they thought it was a big step down from the first one.
A question unrelated to the quality of *Gravity *(which I saw in IMAX and liked very much): what makes it science fiction? It sure seems to take place in the present day, and it’s not examining the consequences of some new idea or technology. It’s just a disaster movie in low earth orbit. Does that setting alone necessarily make it sci-fi?
It is fiction with a hard science basis (i.e. spacecraft, astronauts, and orbital mechanics). It has certainly taken a few liberties with reality (e.g. the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and the hypothetical Chinese Space Station all being in the same orbit in relative proximity; the speed of progressive of a cascading Kessler syndrome event, et cetera) but is largely technically accurate. It is certainly closer to being actual science fiction than, say, Star Wars (which is space opera) or Armageddon (which is your standard issue exploding disaster movie that happens to be set in a space milieu), albeit still not in the realm of being, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, or even The Terminator, which examine the implications of technology.
Stranger
Another vote for Ishtar, which I’ve seen several times. It’s funny, and both leads are delightful.
As someone alluded to upthread, in the post-Heaven’s Gate (a movie I’ve been told is quite good) era, critics often reviewed the budget and not the movie.
I think Lambert is the only exception. She lacks authority and strength, but is the voice of common sense throughout the film. “Let’s get the hell out of here”, “What happened to the rest of the crew?” etc.
MASH is great, but I’ve never seen another movie of his that was all that interesting. I will admit that Popeye was fun when I was a kid, though.
I think Pitch Black, Chronicles of Riddick, and Riddick are scifi classics that deserve to be hailed as works of genius.
I thought Daredevil with Ben Affleck was great, especially before the director’s cut messed it up.
I also liked John Carter.
I found the 1989 Batman movie to be a crapfest that people only liked because they were’t yet used to “dark” superhero movies. Terrible acting (even Jack Nicholson, who was overacting to “Master Thespian” levels), sets that wouldn’t look out of place on the original “Doctor Who” shows, and a stoopid, stoopid plot. When The Joker pulled out the oversized pistol and shot down the Batplane, that was - and remains - the single dumbest moment in any superhero movie.
I also liked Daredevil quite a bit. Michael Clarke Duncan as The Kingpin? Awesome! And I thought Green Lantern was OK, certainly not the crap sandwich the reviews and box office suggested it was.
Yeah, the Green Lantern movie actually struck me as a better than average comic book superhero movie. And by that I mean, better than Spiderman 2 and 3, about on par with the Thor movie, better than all the Superman movies, not quite as good as the Avengers movie, but better than the Hulk movie and about on par with Iron Man. I’ve NO IDEA why everyone says it’s so much worse than the others. Then again, I find superhero movies to be generally submediocre except for the special effects and the well-staged battle scenes.
Ok, but it seems to me that if a similar sort of movie were set in, say, a nuclear power plant, it would likewise be fiction with a hard science basis, but it would generally NOT be classified as “science fiction.”
I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass here, just want to get a handle on exactly how the term is actually used. I’m guessing that “Space = Sci-fi” is the actual controlling rule a lot of the time.
Well, there’s really two separate questions there: Why science fiction folks consider it science fiction, and why the general public considers it science fiction. For the general public, yeah, it pretty much is “space = sci-fi” (see also people who think Children of Men wasn’t science fiction). But for science fiction folks, it’s because it explores scientific and technological topics, and to that audience, a similar movie set in a nuclear power plant probably would be science fiction.
Hoban ‘Wash’ Washburne: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction.
Zoë Washburne: You live in a spaceship, dear.
Hoban ‘Wash’ Washburne: So?
Stranger
Whenever I read anything about Tank Girl the writer seems to assume that it was a wincing embarrassment that everybody at the time loathed and couldn’t wait to forget. I think they’re talking about a different film; it wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was a great little B-film: witty, fun, and went a long way to at least trying to capture the spirit of the comic. Most people I knew who saw it at the time thought it was great.