Movies You Thought Weren't That Bad, That Everyone Else Hated... Or Vice Versa

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Once, when I went to see the Phantom Menace, which I thought was supposed to be a Star Wars film, they showed a awful crap fest, stinker of a movie and people pelted the screen with popcorn and soda.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I think I was at that screening too. Or, as Jar Jar would put it: 'Me no like-a dat movie fer shore!'

 

I would say CAGED FURY (1989) -- I think its pretty good.. a lot dont

I love the first one!!! (I have it recorded from analogue cable in the 80s (Cinemax))

The terminator is awesome in it!!

 

I love Oliver and Company which got a lot of hate and is one of the lowest rated Disney movies.

The Dark Knight, never could get through that one without becoming terribly bored.

One movie I wished I liked for the longest time was Magnolia. I love PTA's films but that one never clicked for me. I just gave up trying to like it and acceptted he has a film I dislike.

 

I've never thought the 1989 John Belushi Biopic WIRED was that bad of a film. Is it great? Lord no. But is it as bad as you were led to believe? I don't think so. Michael Chiklis' performance alone makes the film worth seeing. I saw the film on VHS in 1990. Admittedly, I was rather young (14) but I had grown something of an obsession about the late comedian and had read Bob Woodward's unfairly maligned book of the same title shortly before then.

The films' structure is odd, to say the least, but there are some scenes in the film that I still think are pretty powerful. I always come back to Chiklis' performance though. He really threw his heart into it and it shows. I believe the film was attacked at the time because there as an effort to quiet the reality of what had been Belushi's long struggle with addiction. I will be the first to admit, the movie is a little bizarre (angel of death leading Belushi around... the whole thing feels like an "It's a Wonderful Life" LSD trip). But the one redeeming thing I can say is that I definitely would categorize this film as a "cautionary tale". Not one moment of it makes drug use look "fun" or in any way "glamorous". That coupled with Chiklis' film debut, Gary Groomes doing an odd but decent job of playing Dan Aykroyd and J.T. Walsh as Woodward makes it at least worth a look for curiosity sake.

It's certainly a film that time as essentially buried.

Conversely, a film that is fairly well loved (at least among its target audience) that I disliked strongly when I saw it in the theater and still dislike immensely – FIGHT CLUB.

At the time, Roger Ebert wrote: "Fight Club" is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since "Death Wish," a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink smoke screw and beat one another up."



It felt like a single step too far down the road of nihilism. It made me very uncomfortable at the time. I sensed Fincher pushing the envelope of irony to its outer reaches. And, at the end of the day, I perceived it as mean-spirited, cynical, toxic and ultimately un-redeemable as a picture. I've seen some YouTube reviewers refer to it as TAXI DRIVER for the 1990s.

Many of those YouTubers are too young to have seen the FIGHT CLUB upon its release and perhaps are more accepting of it its motives given the cultural rot that has transpired since 1999. Those comparisons to TAXI DRIVER are unfounded though, to me. Scorsese & Schrader weren't ultimately asking the audience to sympathize with Bickle's actions but with his loneliness. Furthermore, Bickle can in some grandiose way be viewed as a "hero" in the narrow morality of the film. Also, the ending has always made me think that perhaps the whole ultraviolet escalation was nothing more than a fantasy of Travis'. Or, it can be viewed that way. FIGHT CLUB, on the other hand, doesn't seem to know what it asks us to believe or come away with. The closest I can figure is, destroy what doesn't belong to you – be it property or person – in the name of cleansing.

Some fantasy.

 

Did I miss something, or wasn't La La Land one of the most sucessful films of recent history? Is it just not popular with the ultra macho types here?

 

The Muse

 

It was critically and commercially successful - it made $445 million worldwide on a budget of $30 million! That's probably about $400 million more than they thought it would make!

 

I liked Hudson Hawk

 

Funnily enough, I think that one has developed into something of a "cult classic" over the years. It seems to have a decent fan base now.

I liked it in 1991 - but then completely changed my mind when I saw it again in 2007!

Hudson Hawk: Special Edition (1991)

 

With Spielberg, I can handle "Duel", "Jaws" and "Close Encounters".
In the first two, he was lean and hard; the films had soul.
"Close Encounters" was tense and beautiful, but the signs were already there.
Past those films, his over-shot, over-produced, lit-within-an-inch-of-their-lives productions do very little for me. This includes "Schindler's List"; if I want that subject, I'll watch "Night and Fog".

Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" was lauded as "heartwarming, uplifting..."; I thought it was offensively shallow and crassly manipulative.

Two Gilliams, one already mentioned:
"Fear and Loathing" is brilliant. Pure cinema. Amazing that it could be filmed that faithfully, given the novel.
"Tideland" is mesmerizing; n0t loved by many, but a truly unique and powerful film.

My two cents...