The reverse of that post I’ve made a week ago…
Rules: pick one movie or series and explain why you actually enjoyed it despite the criticism.
For me: The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, by far the best ST stuff ever made, I couldn’t take seriously the original universe with the dated effects and stiff acting, same goes for NG… These movies did ST actually great looking and much more believable, not just the effects.
Wild Wild West has a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes but I genuinely enjoy that film. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also at 16% and also a movie I enjoyed
Super Mario Bros. with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. I don’t care how bad it is. It’s in the campy so-bad it’s good pool of movies and nothing anyone says can change my mind. The fact that they were drunk off their asses just makes it even funnier in my opinion.
Not sure if it was HATED, but Hook if we’re going by reviews. I can’t imagine any kid seeing that movie and not loving it though.
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I thought Waterworld was fine.
Johnny Mnemonic. Keanu cannot act for shit in it, the story isn’t exactly gripping, hell the action in it is somewhere in the shitter. Oh, and Henry Rollins is a nerdy doctor. All if it adds up to a campy trip of slop that triggers my guilty pleasure.
Matrix 2 & 3. I don’t see, or watch, them as separate movies. Rather, together with Matrix 1, they form one big masterpiece for me. But I can see that it doesn’t really fit the 100 minutes format audiences came to expect, and breaking it in three parts did not do it any good. Plus, I guess I’m just a fan of long movies as I’ve also sat through the original, restored “Until the End of the World,” which runs for about 5 hours.
Tank Girl, it got shit reviews when it came out, but has grown a cult following since then, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tank_girl
I am also partial to Dude Where’s My Car
I don’t hate Tank Girl for what it is but for what it could have been. Like that was the greatest casting imaginable for Tank Girl in any era of film and the soundtrack was magical at the time. It had so much potential but got lost due to budget and film industry input
I think the set and costumes are on point for a satirical punk comedy.
I made the mistake of watching dude wheres my car again recently. I enjoyed it as a kid, but the way that trans charcter was done really upset me. I entirely forgot she existed in the movie, but a cis actress who was dubbed with a cis man voice was used to trick the main charcters into making out and then played as gross out humor. Her whole storyline was just flat out upsetting stereotypes.
The tattoo scene is still a total gem, but the rest of it aged so poorly.
The 90s in general were pretty bad for portrayal of trans and lgb+ characters. Remember Ace Ventura, first one?
I agree, though, close minded people ruin everything.
Pet detective was my favorite movie growing up, now I try to forget it exists. Most movies haven’t aged well in terms of casual bigotry of all flavors. Yet they still hold value, some more than others. It’s just important to remember they were products of their time. Which makes them good measuring sticks for how audiences have changed. Sometimes the real joke is what I used to find funny as a kid.
Tbh, some of these scenes were pretty mind boggling to me even as a kid. Never understood what people have against different bodies.
both awesome movies. don’t trust “experts”, siskel and ebert rated Tommy Boy the worst comedy they’d ever seen. fuck them lol
Zoltan!
I’m not even going to call it a guilty pleasure, but Josie and the Pussycats was a movie that I genuinely adored long before people started to appreciate it for the satire that it is.
As a CIS male I got endlessly mocked, but I stuck to my guns.
Star Wars Ep 1 gets more hate than it deserves. It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but it’s enjoyable.
Lots of people love to hate Cloud Atlas. I see it as flawed work of art with a good message and an amazing cast, produced under such nearly impossible circumstances that we are more than lucky it ever saw the light of day.
Man, I love that movie totally unironically. Cannibal Hugh Grant, dude.
I can watch really bad movies as long as the score is good, and cloud atlas has a banger score. How they weave the different timelines while playing that music really does it for me. I’ve watched it a few times and now that you reminded me I’ll probably watch it again soon.
I absolutely loved Cloud Atlas and I was crying at the end. I didn’t know anything about it, didn’t know about the book, didn’t know it was hated until now. Just a movie that I liked the trailer for, so I watched it and I’m glad I did.
Not universally hated by any means. But there are plenty of people that expect a movie to fit a certain Hollywood formula, which includes not challenging your audience too much. And so they judge movies by standards that an epic artistic endeavor like Cloud Atlas was never trying to meet.
Also the whole “gender- and race-bending” made some people uncomfortable, even though it’s merely the same actors portraying completely different characters.
Add to this that certain influential studio voices in Hollywood had previously rejected the project outright when they were first approached by the Wachowskis. So it was clear they would never give it a fair shake after it was produced in Europe, against their judgment and without their blessing, and under such unconventional circumstances.
Ain’t that the tru-tru.
The concept behind Cloud Atlas made for a much better movie than book, IMHO.
Having the same actor play the same part in each time made following the plot easier, at least for me. The book was a bit of a slog at times and following each characterization was confusing.
Plus some of the casting in the movie was really good. Jim Brodbent in particular, I thought, delivered a spectacularly good performance.
You’re probably right. I’ve never read the book.
Having the same actor play the same part in each time made following the plot easier, at least for me.
This is what I expected to see on first watch, and was a bit confused that at least some actors did actually “switch sides” between timelines. Going by interviews, it seems this was possibly meant to reflect an evolution of souls. But to me the message of the movie works just as well, if not better, if you leave out the concept of persistence of souls or individuals altogether, accept that some of them just look similar, and think more in terms of repeating patterns and ideas across eras.
Jim Brodbent in particular, I thought, delivered a spectacularly good performance.
Hard agree. His contemporary and light-hearted “shady publicist to nursing home jail break” plotline also really worked well to ground the movie in between epic-dramatic segments.
It has one of the coolest trailers ever
Check out Mr. Nobody (2009) if you liked Cloud Atlas.
It needed to be like 4 hours longer to capture the feel of the book. Some of the actors didn’t have the range to pull off all their parts which caused some sequences to fall flat. It’s still good though, I remember hearing a lot of positive things about it.
What’s the message? I didn’t really catch any, besides some notions about souls, reincarnation and sex not being fixed.
The things you mention are narrative elements. The message is repeated almost like a mantra throughout the movie, and later revealed or summarized as the ‘prophetic’ words of Son-Mi:
Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.
This is the core thesis of the movie, standing in direct opposition to the various antagonists’ ideology, which can be summed up as self-serving nihilism and upholding the status quo of might makes right / the natural order by any means.
Thanks. That completely slipped from my memory.
Reminds me of The Egg short story I’ve reread yesterday.
It spoke to me when I watched it at the right point in my personal development. As is often the case with movies or experiences that try to convey something meaningful, whether the message lands depends just as much on the watcher. I honestly don’t blame anyone for whom it was a lengthy and confusing blurb. The narrative structure and casting choices are so far outside what audiences are used to, that the script was thrown out by every major Hollywood studio at the time despite the prestigious names behind it. I myself was quite confused on some of the timelines and characters until my 2nd rewatch, and that’s a lot to ask for a movie of this length. It really never had a shot at mass appeal, so in an economic sense those studios were right. I’m just fascinated and grateful it ever got made. It truly was a leap of faith and a labor of love for many, the Wachowskis and Tom Hanks in particular. And I feel like this shines through in the final release, rough edges and all.
I read the story you linked and I absolutely see the parallels. I feel like I may have read it once already years ago. It’s quite the philosophically intriguing concept.
Kurzgesagt has also arranged it in short film form if that’s your thing : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI Personally, it’s one of the most impactful stories I’ve read.
The Postman. Compared to other post apocalyptic cheese fests it feels like a more nuanced display of societal breakdown and the re-emergence of the barter economy.
The mid-2000s A-Team movie comes to mind. It was terrible. The casting was off and there was no real plot to speak of. However, it was so much over the top that it turned pretty funny actually. I probably won’t be watching it a second time though.
I love The Polar Express.
The most widely hated thing about it is the mocap. Not much to say here, I’m just straight-up not bothered by it. I think it looks fine. It’s not incredibly expressive like a stylized animated film could be, but it doesn’t look actively bad to me in any way.
The way the titular express inexplicably gains and loses rolling stock scene by scene and behaves in absurd ways like bending around the mountain are a common punchline. “BuT iT’s A mAgIc TrAiN!!!” doesn’t really solve it for me either. But on a casual viewing it’s mostly inoffensive. A silly curiosity.
Some say the plot of the film spends too much time aimlessly noodling around and throwing in needless filler scenes. Meh. If you ask me that’s where all the meat of the film is. The actual plot of the film has nothing interesting to say. “Kid doesn’t believe in Santa. Magic Christmas hijinks ensue. Kid believes in Santa now. The end.” Riveting. Nah, the so-called “filler” is absolutely the meal here.
The fact that the film literally has five named characters, and the main character isn’t one of them is hilarious. To even get to that number you have to count both the Scrooge puppet and the kid who the elves were monitoring in a single scene as characters, and after that, one of the remaining three is Santa Claus. Just more weight to my point that the story doesn’t matter, lmao.
Say what you will about the animation, but the cinematography is incredible. So many dynamic long-track camera shots from interesting angles. Especially whenever the steam locomotive is on screen. God, steam locomotives are so fucking cool. I don’t even care that it’s full of inaccuracies if you actually look up close. They put a lot of effort into it and that effort shows. It’s quite the treat.
The set design of the North Pole is fantastic. It’s admittedly kinda fucked that it’s modeled after a real world Pullman company town, but I guess it’s appropriate as a joke about the whole Santa’s workshop thing while also incorporating a neat little nod to real life railroad lore. Beyond that, it’s blindingly radiant of all that Victorian-era charm that most of the modern secular Christmas tradition is born from. The serene night snow amidst the rustic red brickwork illuminated by glowing amber gaslamps… augh, it’s so aggressively cozy!
All the pneumatic and other steampunk-adjacent elf tech is a treat as well. The film is certainly no slouch in breathing its own unique spin of whimsy into Santa’s toy factory. It’s not the most whimsical out there, but it’s definitely putting in work.
Alan Silvestri’s score is phenomenal. It’s all delightfully extra. Every single song in the film that’s an original composition is a banger and every song that isn’t an original composition for the film is part of that time-tested canon of hits from the 50s and 60s. I think a lot of people are fed up sick of the latter but, I dunno, I grew up listening to them on my Now That’s What I Call Christmas CD, and to me their sound is synonymous with that warm, nostalgic holiday cheer I get from the season. Even if I don’t get around to actually watching the movie, you know damn well I’m putting The Polar Express’s soundtrack in my December shuffle.
Genuine S tier Christmas film. Well worth every single fault.
YEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!! Polar Express rocks. It’s not necessarily good, but it is awesome.
I never understood the hate for it either. Sure, the animation is a bit dated and has some uncanny valley, but it’s a fun family movie.
Also has the greatest scene in cinema history: the train that drifts on ice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COdoHpU_a8U
That movie feels more ridiculous every time I watch it. I still like it though. One thing that’s always stuck out to me is the sound design. You practically don’t even need to literally watch it, the soundstage is so detailed that it’s practically like I’m there just by hearing it. All the little grunts and rattles of the train just so fucking cool
It’s funny, I hadn’t watched it since I was a kid and it was on at my families house by chance during Christmas, I could not get through how uncanny valley it all looks.
John Carter
