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
Fun fact. Will Smith passed up playing Neo in the Matrix for WWW. I think we got the better deal but it’s fun to picture it.
No way ! WWW is a treasured childhood memory of mine, this rotten tomato guy can suck ass
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen aka How audiences unjustly bullied Sean Connery out of acting.
Wait, really? That was an excellent movie. I wanted them to build a franchise around it
Indeed.
Sean Connery’s agent had scored him the roles of Gandalf for Lord of the Rings and Morpheus in The Matrix, but turned them down due to feeling the plot was too complicated for audiences to follow. After both of these became money-printing machines, he picked League of Extraordinary Gentlemen despite still having problems with the script believing it would be as big as the other two films and that he wasn’t going to miss out on a solid payday three times in a row…
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would go on to be a box office bomb, and Sean Connery felt he was too “out of touch” with modern audiences to be an actor.
There is good news though, if you want more from the franchise you’re in luck. As the movie itself was based off of a comic book which has pretty much the same plot.
The only difference is the movie added “Tom Sawyer” to the group, he isn’t in the comic book and had been requested by executives so that there was a token American in the group, fearing audiences wouldn’t be able to relate without a member from the good ol’ US of A.
Tom did seem kind of tacked on there, rather than fitting with the rest. But of course the executives were right, my American pride liked the symbolism of the ending
I can see someone liking League if they’d never read the comic.
I’ve read the comic. I consider them two different things
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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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.
Watching this as a kid that scene where he puts on cyber gloves and hacks his own brain was a wild ride. It’s so ridiculous but still better than much of the “hacking” Hollywood depicts as far as entertainment goes.
People consider it a bad movie? News to me
I thought Waterworld was fine.
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.
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.
It has one of the coolest trailers ever
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.
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.
Star Wars Ep 1 gets more hate than it deserves. It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but it’s enjoyable.
I feel this way about TFA but the next two deserve the hate
The prequel trilogy at least had a singular vision, even if it probably got diverted at times. TFA started a new trilogy, but got derailed. TLJ had some interesting ideas, but not ideas for the second part of a trilogy.
I changed my tune on the prequels, after seeing some fan edits. And especially seeing some of the original cuts of A New Hope, before Marcia Lucas fixed it, I’m convinced the prequels just need a solid re-edit to make them amazing.
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.
They fly a tank - it’s perfect!
You can’t fly a tank foo’!
Mythbusters covered it, and said that everything in that scene was within the realm of possibility.
I think they were bribed by Jessica Beil’s thighs
Aren’t we all…
Murdoch was dead on. I thought face was pretty good. Liam did a decent Hannibal and BA was fine.
What irked me was this weird back story of like… trying to let face taking over to lead the group sort of thing, plus the romance. It really rubbed me the wrong way.
Like, the A team isn’t some club, they’re this perfect storm of chaos towards bad guys, there isn’t so much a hierarchy as just this inexplicable plot armor and audacity. If it wasn’t all four it would all fall apart.
Man I’d forgotten about that film but I also really enjoyed it. It was fully self aware and made no attempt to take itself seriously, and if you’re in the right mindset for that then it’s a great time.
Might have to watch it again.
John Carter
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.
Wild wild west. I wish to be entertained.
Batman v Superman and Justice League (I didn’t watch original versions though).
As a non-fan, I thought the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies were well received. All the casual trek fans around me seemed to like them, at least