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

I kind of liked "Give My Regards to Broad Street" because I'm a fan of Paul McCartney.

 

Most women I've known seem to like Roadhouse as well. Probably has something to do with the shirtless and butt-revealing shots of Swayze. It has something to offer everyone.

 

Ishtar rules.

 

Yea, that's very true, I guess. As Zero Mostel says, 'something for everyone!'

 

I thought Sin City was genius, but most if not all of my friends didn't like it.
It was the perfect depiction ( to me) of Millers comic book, and the way Millers version of Daredevel (comic) should have been made.

 

I actually liked the movie "The Last Airbender" which was almost universally panned. One of my favorite movies of all time is Small Soldiers, which is pretty much well forgotten since nobody, including the production team, knew which genre they wanted it to be, so a movie that was very entertaining didn't appeal to family or action fans.

 

Avatar
The Man of Steel

 

That's funny - I came to the Visual Arts section to ask about the two great Hulk movies that nobody seems to talk about and how they fit in (if they do) at all into this new megaBillion Dollar Disney Universe.

2003 - Ang Lee - interesting, great take on the tale ("Don't make me Ang Lee. You won't like me when I'm Anglee")

And I rewatched the 2008 version two days ago - loved it. Probably my two favorite Marvel movies - far more fun that watching gravity-less CGI flying around without caring about the characters (for me, anyway). The 2008 Hulk was delightfully interwoven between the comics, the TV show (the TV closing theme included in score, that shot from "Courtship of Eddie's Father" with Bill Bixby on screen, Lou Ferrigno as the security guard..) and a modern Marvel movie and it was just really well done.

And both seem to not to be taken seriously or appreciated... I saw the sequel to Captain America (Civil War - is that the third one maybe?) and they DID use William Hurt in his role again from the Hulk (2008) and I forgot, but at the end of The Incredible Hulk, Downey shows up as Stark announcing he's putting the Avengers together... so is this film PART of the series or not?

I wish Edward Norton was easier to get along with so several directors could work with him in the Universe, but that ship has long since sailed... I love Mark Ruffalo, but he is just wrong as Banner. Too bulky, doesn't seem like a scientist... he just doesn't fit the part from the comic book or in any other way really, though he's a wonderful actor.

Hulk(s) aside, the Coen Brothers' "Hail Caesar!" I thought was BRILLIANT - an absolute DELIGHT - marketed as a caper comedy - all wrong. Great, great "day-in-the-life". I loved every frame. Haven't had a movie impact me like that in quite some time!

And as I've said in other threads, I love the much-despised "The Ladykillers" remake they did. I was just listening to the rap/gospel/acoustic soundtrack again. The films has its flaws (the dumb guy is too dumb) but it is breezy delight otherwise IMO.

Jeff

 

Short Circuit 2 - better than the first one, a nice little movie actually.

 

I really enjoyed it. My only problem with it (and this is going to sound insanely nit-picky) was Stallone's carefully tweezed eyebrows. He was playing a mook from Philly, and mooks don't employ $500 a session eyebrow shapers. It made him look like a Hollywood star rather than the character. Luckily he learned his lesson and was back to mookdom for Creed.

My wife and I love Coppola's One From The Heart. It did so terribly in the theater that it took his studio down and left him in debt that took years to pay off. Virtually all the critics hated it, and they are all wrong. It is a film that you have to watch while paying close attention to the soundtrack by Tom Waits with Crystal Gayle. Waits' songs are telling half the story, and if you disregard them as just background music, you're going to miss that half.

 

In the reverse category: "It Follows"
The superlatives used to describe this film are still baffling to me.

 

I rather liked the panned Sucker Punch for:

The very good, to me, fantasy sequences, sound was pretty intense as well and,

The eye candy and the solid cast and, the eye candy

 

Heavens Gate. A flawed, fascinating and gorgeous film. I like it more every time I see it. The Criterion blu-ray is a great way to give this film another look.

 

The Fifth Element, Chris Tucker is a hoot. The entire movie is cheesy but it earnestly tells it's story and has fun as well.

 

I liked Starship Troopers quite a bit, but I regarded it as a satire and a comedy, which a lot of people didn't get. But I knew the Heinlein original novel, too.

 

Yeah, it was hilarious! Dougie Howser dressed as an SS officer.

 

I think a lot of the audience missed the fact that, by the end of the movie, you realize that the humans are the bad guys and the "bug" aliens are the indigent creatures getting crushed and tortured by the invading army.

 

It annoyed a bunch of Heinlein fans, but I never thought that the book was particularly good example of his work in the first place.

 

As a kid, I really enjoyed Mortal Kombat Annihilation and Batman & Robin. Heck, B&R was even my favorite Batman film until 2010. Nowadays, I like both movies in a "so bad it's good" way, and I wouldn't consider either of them to be among the worst films of all time like many critics do. As long as I'm here, I must admit that I actually prefer B&R to Batman Returns, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises, and especially Batman v Superman (that one is honestly one of the worst/most boring movies I've ever seen).

 

What about the 2008 remake?

 

I saw "Eyes Wide Shut" in the theatres with my brother and his family on July 18,1999 (it had come out the weekend of July 16,1999), and knowing full well that
it was Stanley Kubrick's SWAN SONG, got into the alternation of talk and pantomime, and the now classic scary music (that piano two note "Musica Ricerata", by
G.Ligeti) and spooky orgy mansion scene in the second half and knowing it was splitsville for Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

Guess what? I was the ONLY one in my TROUPE who enjoyed it...the other family members found it boring. As an R rated film, this was the only way that our then
eight year old niece was with us....I got into the near three hour length and the creepy (by the second half) parts (including that limosine when TC returns to the mansion,
out of which car someone in a sinister outfit gives an equally scary threat note to TC not to blab what had gone on between them).

If anything I expected my brother, his wife and their daughter to be scared or somehting, or impressed anything else good or bad, but it was just..."meh" to them.

Me?

I enjoyed it and since 2002 have had it on DVD! (The only Kubrick film I have in my collection..)

 

Tough Guys Don't Dance is one of my favorite films ever. It has such memorable characters and lines. I think I get a kick out of the dark humor (or if you prefer, ironies) the most though.

 

I think that many did not get that Starship Troopers is a pretty brutal satire on US foreign policy.

 

Technically the current Marvel Studios continuity, represented by the Avengers films and pictures like Captain America: Civil War does include the events of the 2008 film with Edward Norton, but not those of the 2003 Ang Lee film. However, since the 2008 film's script started out as a sequel to the 2003 film, and there are still traces of that in the finished product (e.g., with Banner hiding out in Latin America), you could say that parts of the Ang Lee film occupy a kind of "grey area" in the continuity. For example, I think we can take it as understood that in the current Marvel pictures, the Hulk did get out of control in an American city as he does toward the end of the Ang Lee film, which is why the military is looking for him in the 2008 film and in The Avengers.

 

I dislike "Broad Street" because I'm a fan of Paul McCartney!