Movies that you genuinely like that everyone else hates - Page 2

I enjoy the hell out of "Virtuosity", for some reason.

One thing that always amused me about Virtuosity is how much Russell Crowe looks like Bret Easton Ellis in that.

KOTCS is a satire? News to me. This thread is redeemed by "M Night Shamwow".

Louse, you don't have to justify your taste because you aren't entitled to hold whatever opinion you desire.  You have to justify your taste because it's stupid and annoying to presume anyone on a public forum would be interested in reading a list of your opinions with no context.

Also, it wouldn't hurt anything to use proper grammar and organize your thoughts in a more coherent fashion.  This is if you are at all interested in talking with people, mind you.  If you just want to talk at people, it might be more appropriate to post on a blog rather than a message board.

Here's the thing as much as Erix likes to be the champion of the kooky and downtrodden his point kind of falls apart in that recognising the merits of and liking something require completely different skillsets. 

I can express why I like Cliffhanger. Because it's goofy, because it has gloriously crazy John Lithgow, because it the main villain is killed by a  Renny Harlin special, and because it's surprisingly vicious for what should be an unassuming action movie. However those are all feelings, gooey, intangible feelings which kind of mean nothing and are easy to express.

Meanwhile explaining why say....There Will Be Blood is a genuinely great film requires effort, requires thought. Because you've got to think about objective and subjective camera angles, the way that PTA uses spacing in his shots, the construction of certain shots, the nature of the script and the powerplays going on in the subtext. Making a defence of an established 'great' requires skill that saying 'I liked the Spirit because it's pleasingly goofy, Scar-Jo is a weirdly hot Nazi, and I love the scene where The Spirit non-chalantly cold clocks a mugger' just doesn't.

Funny, I would say the opposite: it takes more effort and skill to defend a widely-considered "bad" film than it does to defend an established "great" film. Or maybe it's equally difficult: with one, you're swimming against the tide of popular opinion and trying to prove a "guilty" film "innocent"; with the other, you're trying to say something fresh about a film everyone else has already praised every which way.

Also, what's the fun of contributing to a thread like this if you aren't going to give some context? I mean, my reason for liking Gigli was concisely expressed, but it's there. Half the fun is reading other people's takes on a movie you would've sworn nobody could ever enjoy. I don't give a shit if I don't agree with it. As others have said, it's not an objective thing. No movie is objectively bad or good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spike Marshall 

Here's the thing as much as Erix likes to be the champion of the kooky and downtrodden his point kind of falls apart in that recognising the merits of and liking something require completely different skillsets. 

I guess you didn't quite get my point then.

Whether it's one thing to "like" something for arbitrary reasons and another to seriously analyze the merits of a work is not an issue. Obviously those are two different things. I'm sure some of the films that have been brought up in this thread are movies that their champions recognize as mediocre or just plain bad. But they like them anyway for personal reasons.

I was just expressing that it's arrogant and obnoxious to look down on a person's entire point of view just because they happen to like something that most people don't.

And I'm sure someone could take the time to argue the actual merits of a "bad" film if they wanted to. And they could probably do it articulately. I recently read a blog that featured an excerpt from a French book on John McTiernan. In that book's introduction, the author managed to find lofty things to say about Rollerball, how it's a saavy satire of modern media. I felt he was reaching. And I still consider Rollerball to be a piece of shit. But it was as coherent as any similarly complex analysis of There Will Be Blood.

Now you see the satire defence is something I often find rather flimsy as often it's used as a way of papering over flaws in the film. The problem is that like the 'it was all a dream from the protagonists point of view' theories that get attached to 50% of films it's easy to convince yourself of something that might not be there. And I'm not talking about complexity of argument, I'm saying that sometimes taking a view which isn't commonly held allows you to stretch things more than arguing for a commonly held view. Cracked essentially operates on, weird, reinterpretations of movies and they're given leeway not because they're particularly challenging but because they're left field. 

Also, y'know what. This forum needs more analysis of films. It really does. Because I'd be willing to bet that the majority of film discussion is based more on individual emotive 'likes' rather than intellectual analysis. Hell two of the most active threads here are kind of devoted to championing underdog films. People who actually want to discuss 'classics' are kind of in the minority here. 

ok  i really dig   spun

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

It's not just that, it's that these threads talking about bad movies people like usually end up getting more replies than anything related to good movies. WHich leads to the question of "where is your taste" as you seem more passionate about defending crap than talking about the actual quality stuff. I've been just as guilty of it in the past.

 

But seriously....PLUTO NASH? THE VILLAGE?

Unpucker that sphincter Merriweather me old China. I done plenty of clever talking about clever films and sometimes I'm going to tell my internet buddies that I love a few dumb films too. You're going to want to learn to deal with that in a way which doesn't involve your knickers twisting all up in your business if you don't want your stomach acids overworking themselves into drilling you an ulcer or two.

I mean, what are you? 19? 22? Way to young to be ulcerated by online movie chit-chat.

I'm 31. Where was I puckered or ulcerated?

This is kind of silly. People are accused of being overly serious or getting worked up because we don't see the value of listing a load of shit films that we like.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

I'm 31. Where was I puckered or ulcerated?

 

This is kind of silly. People are accused of being overly serious or getting worked up because we don't see the value of listing a load of shit films that we like.

Then why come in the thread at all just to bitch about it?  Why derail a thread that some people may enjoy just because you don't see the merit?

Why do anything on a messageboard, for Christ's sake? If all this place is going to be is lists of bad films we like and nudge-nudge wink-wink ironic appreciation of crap I'm not sure what the point is, that's all.

Well, if you and those who feel like you refused to post in these threads every time one of them pops up, there would be less traffic and perhaps the threads on the great films/film-makers would flourish.

Yes. It is those of us that dislike these threads that are causing them to prosper.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

Why do anything on a messageboard, for Christ's sake? If all this place is going to be is lists of bad films we like and nudge-nudge wink-wink ironic appreciation of crap I'm not sure what the point is, that's all.

C'mooooooooooooooooooooon Hyperbole Jones. I already said I do clever talking about clever films too. Plenty of folks around here do. Quit acting like this kind of thread, which is merely one of hundreds, if not thousands, is some kind of sign of doom. Did you forget that The Nunz himself wants this place to be FUN?!?

Also, I can't speak for anyone else but I'm here to tell you that I don't do anything ironically. Not even nudge and wink. Why not, you cock your head to ask? Because I was a teenager when grunge hit. I ironied and snarked the shit out of the world back in the early 90s and got bored with it long before Y2K. I'm too smart to find irony interesting these days. It was played the fuck out yeeeeeeeeeeeeears ago. When I see even grown adults I like using irony and snark as some kind of shorthand for "I want you to think I'm clever because I get it", which is exactly what it's used for by teenagers, I want to do these grown adults the favour of slapping them on and about the face. It's very hard to do irony and snark and be interesting. In fact unless your name rhymes with Bavid Betterman or Bon Bewart I'm not impressed.

See, I loved watching Nacho Libre and Pluto Nash as unironically as I loved The Lives Of Others and Waltz With Bashir. You see that? You see that I name dropped two proper films there to show you I have cred? I'm not being ironic. I really did that. You can't deny my cred now. I really am that clever.

So c'mon buddy, there's plenty of shit in this world worth taking to heart and this little thread is far from being one of them. There's no reason we can't all be pals.

Hilarious.  Thanks to this reply my monitor is now sopping wet.  Hmm, well, off to go watch X-Men 3.  Maybe I will follow it up with The Island or Hulk.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NathanW 

Hulk.

I second this- a genuinely great movie that as an added bonus has a giant green fella smashing shit up

The italian job remake.

As an Englishman I shouldnt admit I prefer this to the 'classic' original but i cant help it!

Seth Green & The Stath = Comedy Gold!

Like what you want to like, but don't for a second try to categorize people who dislike stuff like KOTCS or Terminator Salvation as over hyper internet jerks. There's a certain amount of rational that people who really give two thoughts to a film have to undergo when explaining why a film DOESN'T work; when you just sit there and go "OH well but it worked for me!" that, to me, kills the discussion even more. Calling people who--let's face it, very rationally--hate Pluto Nash as having "sticks up their asses" doesn't make you sound more enlightened, it makes you sound like you just have really low standards. And I, personally, don't find discussions of that kind particularly interesting, because it's a case of trying to force an immovable object. People could come in and list their grievances with Indy 4, but I imagine you'll just dodge around and maintain that they're just being Dumby McDumberpants who want everything to be those silly art films you don't understand, but hey, we've all done that dance before. Most are tired of it. And on some of the middle ground films most will talk about what works and what doesn't work--you're just stuck in "Nope, it's GREAT it's all of it GREAT!" mode. That's even more tiresome than the Armond Whites of the world who live to tear stuff apart.

They worked for you. Good for you. Did you want a cookie?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg Clark 

Like what you want to like, but don't for a second try to categorize people who dislike stuff like KOTCS or Terminator Salvation as over hyper internet jerks. There's a certain amount of rational that people who really give two thoughts to a film have to undergo when explaining why a film DOESN'T work; when you just sit there and go "OH well but it worked for me!" that, to me, kills the discussion even more. Calling people who--let's face it, very rationally--hate Pluto Nash as having "sticks up their asses" doesn't make you sound more enlightened, it makes you sound like you just have really low standards. And I, personally, don't find discussions of that kind particularly interesting, because it's a case of trying to force an immovable object. People could come in and list their grievances with Indy 4, but I imagine you'll just dodge around and maintain that they're just being Dumby McDumberpants who want everything to be those silly art films you don't understand, but hey, we've all done that dance before. Most are tired of it. And on some of the middle ground films most will talk about what works and what doesn't work--you're just stuck in "Nope, it's GREAT it's all of it GREAT!" mode. That's even more tiresome than the Armond Whites of the world who live to tear stuff apart.

 

They worked for you. Good for you. Did you want a cookie?

A lot of fair points Greg, but when you try to bring rationality into discussions about comedies I think you're barking up one of those wrong trees. We could yap meaningfully about why one shakycam action scene works better than another because there's enough objective value in the way directors deliver information on the geography of the players' movements for us to see eye to eye on technique. We could yap meaningfully about whether a sci-fi film did a nice job of building a world we could invest in or about whether a sports movie worked the formula in a way which sung for us or whether a thriller showed its hand too early and telegraphed its twists and turns, because there's enough that's objective in those methods of delivery for us to start from a common viewpoint.

But there's no logic in comedy. Haven't you ever noticed how discussions on comedies almost always fall into, "I loved the part when ...", and "Oh yeah, and how about when ..."? It's not that there aren't techniques in play that we can break down, it's that whether those techniques work or not is so subjective that the discussion of them between two people who disagree is without any practical meaning. Nevermind the deluded elitists who labour under the misguided notion that taste in comedy speaks to a person's level of intelligence, as if there aren't surgeons and rocket scientists who get a laugh out of dumb shows like Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.

And c'mon, maybe some people didn't get it but you know I was being flippant with the sticks-up-asses thing. I know not everyone who disagrees with me on those flicks suffers from Over-Serious Bore syndrome. But I can't take discussions on taste seriously, especially on the comedic aspects of anything. If we're talking about dances we're tired of that one's the most wearying of all.

No, you're obviously an educated, immensely pretentious, self-satisfied cretin.  Which is worse, really.  I don't know a nice way of saying this, but on the lists of reasons people, either online or in real life, don't like you, there's no way enjoying a bad Indiana Jones movie ranks nearly as high as you want it to.

I called you louse earlier because that's the name of a previously banned Canadian poster that was prone to writing lengthy, ponderous, vaguely paranoid screeds about unimportant topics, that always felt like an obsessive nerd unloading everything he "should have" said in an argument he lost a week before.  These would always devolve into half formed, poorly articulated theses about how technological connectivity was turning the entire world into hyper-critical, joyless douchebags, and end on a note of self-congratulation that managed to be simultaneously smug and bitter.  Also he didn't like Devin Faraci.

So if you're a different guy, my bad.  But you see how I could make that mistake.

Bay isn't shooting Dark of the Moon completely in digital.  It's going to be a mix of formats (film, 3D, HD) depending on what he thinks best suits a shot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spike Marshall 

I saw The Spirit in theatres.... Bought the DVD and have never bothered a rewatch but I found it genuinely hilarious at the cinema. 

You should revisit it. I enjoyed it when I saw it in the cinema too, knowing full-well that it's far from great. Wasn't sure how well it would hold up on a second viewing but it's still the same bonkers brand of fun. It's a shame, granted, the film didn't do full justice to the source material. Still, everyone knows what they're making (especially the gorgeous Stana Katic who's so far over the top she's back round again.) And it looks lovely - even if the bleaker Sin City palette denied us Eisner's pulp vibrancy.

For the record, there are a lot of dubious choices early on in this thread - even for a topic like this. Obviously there probably isn't any film that "everyone" hates except for one person, but even within reason some of the picks here are just taking the mick.

Hey, no problem.  I was pretty mean in that post, but your response showed a lot more patience and self-awareness than I gave you credit for, so I'm probably the asshole here.  You may be onto something about the internet turning everyone into judgmental dickheads, but I think a better response to that is to engage people (or even better, their points) on an individual basis rather than going off on dickish, judgmental rants of your own.  But no real harm has been done in any case.

I mean, it's not like you said you liked Pluto Nash...fuck...really, Bucho?  I'm pretty sure even Eddie Murphy has said he'd drown his daughter in a water fountain rather than let her get on a plane that might be showing that war crime.

To: Original Poster

From: Sphere_Monk

Re: Unappreciated Movies

Otay, honestly I can't sit through a lot of the movies you mentioned. But man, am I not afraid of copious amounts of cheese in films, and I don't care who knows it. I like The Core, as others have mentioned. Sure sure, it's a dumb premise, but the script is sharp and I love the chemistry between the cast. I never really enjoyed modern disaster films a la Armageddon, and The Core kind of makes me feel included in the fans of break-the-laws-of-physics-and-probability-in-order-to-save-the-world genres.

I don't know how it is regarded here, but I only know one other person irl that adores American Zombie the way I do. I loved everything, including the vegan zombie gag and the zomstock concert (as I refer to it).

I dug American Zombie.

I gotta say I was very moved by the civility and diplomacy shown in the last few posts. That's how it should always be...

...................

Now then... My love for the "bad" Shyamalan films is already well-documented on these boards. As is my affection for Loose Cannons.

But there is a more fairly recent film that I actually loved. And I'm surprised it doesn't have more fans. MR. BROOKS. I think Kevin Costner does some of his best work in there. And Dane Cook actually serves a useful purpose. The only weak link is Demi Moore. But, overall, I think it's a very original and entertaining thriller.

I don't think MR. BROOKS is bad, it just doesn't quite know what to do with itself. Costner and William Hurt are both really, really good in it.

The Demi Moore stuff is real bad - in a bit of a so-bad-it's-good amusing b-movie way, but definitely bad - but the rest is actually a fairly legitimately good movie. Makes it feel schizophrenic (pun intended?), but I think the good mostly outweighs the bad, at least enough to warrant a rental or late night cable viewing. I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Wikipedia: Beauty - Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. »

I believe this is the only time in the history of recorded writing that "affection for Loose Cannons" has ever been typed.

Zoolander

Zoolander may not have been a smash at the box office, but it garnered a sizeable cult as soon as it hit cable.  It's certainly not hated.  But hey, thanks for not burdening us with any of that pesky context or detail to go with your opinion.

anytime

I kind of like The Happening. I'm a big fan of slow burn and nature-run-amok horror tales, and The Happening was kind of in my wheelhouse. It's not great or anything, but I enjoyed watching it.

I enjoyed laughing at The Happening, it's a glorious comedy. 

I'm pretty sure Altman's POPEYE is seen as this miscalculated albatross around Altman's neck and a flop to boot  (despite making back at least twice it's budget), but I love it. I love its production design, its tone, its music, its one-liners and peripheral humor. And it's PERFECTLY cast. I don't feel that nostalgic plays into its longevity for me. It genuinely works for me as an adult.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperJim17 

The italian job remake.

 

As an Englishman I shouldnt admit I prefer this to the 'classic' original but i cant help it!

 

Seth Green & The Stath = Comedy Gold!

I'll echo this. It's a thoroughly mediocre movie saved by, IMO, a fantastic cast. Green, Statham and Mos Def all do quality work here (the scene where Green narrates Statham's conversation with the cable lady always kills me). Norton is in full scene-chewing bad guy mode, and it is glorious. There are plenty of ridiculous scenes and things that don't make sense, but for most of its running time, I find it hugely entertaining.

Rambo III.  Actually, I have a hard time understanding why people DON'T like that one.  I've heard plenty of arguments, but they don't make much sense to me.  Perhaps my liking of that one is simply irrational.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 

I'm pretty sure Altman's POPEYE is seen as this miscalculated albatross around Altman's neck and a flop to boot  (despite making back at least twice it's budget), but I love it. I love it's production design, it's tone, it's music, it's one-liners and peripheral humor. And it's PERFECTLY cast. I don't feel that nostalgic plays into its longevity for me. It genuinely works for me as an adult.

I second this emotion. THESE are picks I can get behind. Interesting films that don't work.

THE HAPPENING is truly an awesome comedy, though. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that the two leads' acting made me think they were supposed to have mental difficulties.

One of the reasons I married my wife is because she was the only girl I had met who found Freddy Got Fingered funny.

And I wouldn't say that everyone "hates" it, but I enjoy Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade more than any of the other entries.

The "FREDDY GOT FINGERED is a misunderstood satire!" argument just made me hate the movie even more.

3000 Miles to Graceland has always been a film I enjoyed.  Everyone I know who saw it, thinks it's a trashy film, but come on, you got Costner and Russel going at it, and a dude swinging around upside down with a two Uzis.  Plus the casino heist in the beginning is pretty badass, specially when Costner offs the cop between the elevator doors. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperJim17 

The italian job remake.

 

As an Englishman I shouldnt admit I prefer this to the 'classic' original but i cant help it!

 

Seth Green & The Stath = Comedy Gold!

It's like the original Ocean's 11. Iconic leading man makes a mediocre(Great chase scene though) movie seem better. The remake is snappier and more entertaining, it just has a mediocre director.  It needed a Soderbergh.  The cast is great.

Speaking of Wahlberg, I love Four Brothers. Wahlberg is hilarious in it and it's nicely gritty.

I always liked Knockaround Guys a lot. Great cast and Hopper and Malkovich are typically great in it.