Surprisingly good/bad movies?

iremex

hey all,

i was having a discussion with a mate yesterday regarding movies that turned out to be little gems and some that turned out to be complete turkeys.

has anyone gone into a movie and come out thinking "wasn't expecting that! that was actually really good"

remember i went to see dog soldiers, it was the only movie on that suited at that time, and came out quite content. its a movie i would of have had NEVER watched. on Film4, i caught "dead man shoes" one night and it was just such a great movie that again i didnt expect much out of. Shane meadows and paddy constantine made a hidden gem of a flick.;)
believe it was banned for quite some time or something...

on the turkeys, which i see was covered in movies you have walked out on, i think existenz and mami vice. only movies i have every switched off halfway. oh and also turned off domino after 5mins, the intro by the keira knightley was too much. most horrid voice in cinema...:mad:

tabatha

two films i seen recently and i loved were the butterfly effect and save the last dance with jlo and richard gere, i though they would be crap but they were great.

i hated mr and mrs smith. turned that off half way through!

Karl Hungus

iremex wrote:

believe it was banned for quite some time or something...

Nope, it wasn't.

monkeyfudge

Josie and the Pussycats

You'd think it would be horrible... but on watching it you discover that it is actually a pretty funny satire on the music business and commercialism. Ha... there are over 70 product placements put in the film as a joke.

Parker Posey and Alan Cumming are great as the bad guys.

RichyX

I know almost nothing about Ivans XTC before seeing it.
Was blown away by it, a fantastic piece of film making.

constitutionus

monkeyfudge wrote:

Josie and the Pussycats

You'd think it would be horrible... but on watching it you discover that it is actually a pretty funny satire on the music business and commercialism. Ha... there are over 70 product placements put in the film as a joke.

Parker Posey and Alan Cumming are great as the bad guys.

honk if you love pussy.....







.....cats !


im ashamed to admit it but i thought it was hilarious too. tara reid was brilliant as the ditzy one and the girl who played josie was fine


as for myself i quite enjoyed SGT Bilko with steve martin. once you got passed the fact its not gonna be phil silvers its quite fun. oh and in the same vein see if you can track down a film called "the pentagon wars" with carey elwes (spl?) i dont even know if it was a film that went on general release or straight to TV but its a brilliant satire on the US industrial military complex. basically theyve spent billions on a peice of crap that doesnt work and carys trying to get the thing tested while his superiors go to more and more extremes to get the thing to pass .the scenes where he's chasing after the sheep are brilliant not to mention an entire division set up to decide which sheep would make the best test subjects:D

J.R.HARTLEY

Mr Hollands Opus
never sure what it was i loved about the movie just caught it on Channel 4 one night and thought, wow great little movie, also two movies for golf fans, The Greatest Game Ever Played and Bobby Jones Stroke of Genius starring Jesus as Bobby Jones, grand little movies for sports fans.

DublinWriter

Fellini's 8 1/2. It was always cited as a masterpiece of modern cinema.

I'll spare you the 500 words of critique and just say that it's utter shite.

Mr. Presentable

Karl Hungus wrote:

Nope, it wasn't.

Yes it was.


In Malaysia

rediguana

"The Anchorman"! My Girlfriend got it and I thought it'd stink the gaff up it'd be so bad. I gotta say though - pretty funny! So many good lines - "Go back to your home on WHORE ISLAND!".

Retr0gamer

Recently went to see Crank without knowing what it expect. Nothing special but for the 90 or so minutes it was on the action never let up. Insane, funny and some great action scenes. I'd recommend it if you just want to be entertained.

District 13 is another film that my brother would class in the entertainment bullsh*t category. Pure hookum but a great time none the less.

Was very disappointed in the Thin Red Line. Was expecting a more thought provoking war film. What I got was a director getting off on how pretentious he can make a film. Art for arts sake and a snorefest to boot. Thin Red Line? Thin Red Cock more like.

21 grams is another art for arts sake film. After the WTF? in the first half hour you realise it's a very simple story (and not a particularly clever or original one) that they tried to make interesting by editing it out of sequence. Don't know what the praise was for. 21 grams? 21 cocks more like?

Crash just didn't do it for me. I'm amazed it won an oscar. The script in Rocky Balboa was better than this tripe. Talk about getting the message rubbed into rubbed into your face. Crash? Cock more like. (didn't see that one coming eh).

S.M.B.

Retr0gamer wrote:

21 grams is another art for arts sake film. After the WTF? in the first half hour you realise it's a very simple story (and not a particularly clever or original one) that they tried to make interesting by editing it out of sequence. Don't know what the praise was for. 21 grams? 21 cocks more like?

Crash just didn't do it for me. I'm amazed it won an oscar. The script in Rocky Balboa was better than this tripe. Talk about getting the message rubbed into rubbed into your face. Crash? Cock more like. (didn't see that one coming eh).

Would agree with you on Crash but I wouldn't call 21 Grams a bad film. Might not be exceptional but i enjoyed in a "this is one of the most miserable films ever" kind of way.

As for suprisingly good/bad films,

Good: Ginger Snaps, My Little Eye, The Descent (I never really expect to see a decent horror film)
Bad: V for Vendetta, Kill Bill 2

iremex

SMB, jesus i forgot about V for vendetta and for a reason, it was awful.! whole movie around a final explosion..

crash and 21 grams are both v depressing. seems to be that most oscars go towards those kinda movies, along with million dollar baby. hopefully Babel isnt going to be one of these. one can only wish!!

"thank you for not smoking" was also a nice surprise. as was SIN CITY.

Crap: Billy madison. expected so much more after seeing happy gilmore
novacaine with steve martin. admitingly i switched if off after 10mins and i also switched off the spanish prisoner. him in serious role gives me an upset stomach

latest movie to disappoint was Pan's labyrinth. not so much that it was a bad movie, but i just expected so much more from it. actually it was a really really good movie but i wanted it to be so much more and that just kills it for me.

hope it doesnt happen to 300

Rabies

Retr0gamer wrote:

Recently went to see Crank without knowing what it expect. Nothing special but for the 90 or so minutes it was on the action never let up. Insane, funny and some great action scenes. I'd recommend it if you just want to be entertained.

Another vote from me. Didn't know what to expect, non stop from start to finish. Leave your brain at the door and enjoy. Guns, chase scenes, fights and humour.

Petey2006

Retr0gamer wrote:

Recently went to see Crank without knowing what it expect. Nothing special but for the 90 or so minutes it was on the action never let up. Insane, funny and some great action scenes. I'd recommend it if you just want to be entertained.

District 13 is another film that my brother would class in the entertainment bullsh*t category. Pure hookum but a great time none the less.

Agreed. Dead Man's Shoes is a great film. Powerhouse performance from Paddy Considine. But no, it was never banned in any respect.

monkeyfudge

Retr0gamer wrote:

21 grams is another art for arts sake film. After the WTF? in the first half hour you realise it's a very simple story (and not a particularly clever or original one) that they tried to make interesting by editing it out of sequence. Don't know what the praise was for. 21 grams? 21 cocks more like?

I agree completely. The editing out of sequence works and makes sense in a film like Memento, but here it was just pointless. The whole 21 grams thing that the film was based around is utter bull**** anyway.

ixoy

In the vein of "Crank", I'd also say I really enjoyed "Running Scared". Didn't know what to expect, but it's utterly bonkers whilst always trying to maintain a serious edge. They chickened out on the ending (something which even Paul Walker agrees on) but other than that it's highly enjoyable.

Retr0gamer wrote:

Crash just didn't do it for me. I'm amazed it won an oscar. The script in Rocky Balboa was better than this tripe. Talk about getting the message rubbed into rubbed into your face. Crash? Cock more like. (didn't see that one coming eh).

Completely agreed. Do a search on this, and you'd probably find I can never mention this movie without bitching about its heavy handidness. Ugh. I blame Oprah Winfrey for promoting this preachy tripe to the masses. It's about as subtle on race as John Travolta's "White Man's Burden". That's not a good thing.

iremex wrote:

atest movie to disappoint was Pan's labyrinth. not so much that it was a bad movie, but i just expected so much more from it. actually it was a really really good movie but i wanted it to be so much more and that just kills it for me.

I actually agree here. I know that it's a very well made movie and it's hard to fault but yet I was still disappointed because I thought it'd be "suprisingly good". Maybe I had been hoping for more fantasy sequences, more to escape from a reality (yes, I know that's the point of the movie but even so...)

garred

Surprisingly I did'nt like:
Little Miss Sunshine - get as many disfunctionals together and send them on a road trip. As characters/family they were not believable and I had no affinity with any of them, infact the grandfather I thought was going to come out with the line "roads, where we're going we don't need no roads" such was his similarity to a certain doc from a certain movie. Sorry but dark comedy, light harted, romcom, etc.... a comedy is a comedy, either its funny or not, and to me this was not one bit funny. The outcome of bonding, etc was better done in better movies eg Stand by Me.
Others include TWTSTB, United 93, Team America, Miami Vice, Slither, Superman Returns, the Guardian and a lot more.

Surprisingly I liked:
Crank - As was already said this was a high action/adrenaline movie. Did'nt hear much about this, had'nt seen transporter 1/2 and was'nt mad about other films Statham was in but this was a cracking cheesy/action film. Especially the last scene with emphasis on the cheese.
Others include Thank you for smoking, Severance, Littleman (the 25mins or so when he was the baby), Crash, Descent, Junebug, The Hills have Eyes and a few more.

Stargal

Crap-o-rama: 25th Hour. Dullfest. Closest I've ever come to walking out of a film. I couldn't look at anything with Ed Norton in it for months afterwards.

Surprisingly good: The Constant Gardener. Pan's Labyrinth. Stranger than Fiction.

Miguel_Sanchez

Saw Adam and Paul at the Galway Film Fleadh a few years back (could have been its world premiere, not sure). I was working at the Fleadh and so got to see it for free. Going in I was expecting another crappy Dublin drug film ('Headrush' anyone?). I was shocked and extremely happy to see a genuinely funny film which didn't make light of its subject matter. One of the best Irish films ever made.

Retr0gamer

During a film binge in the UGC decided to go and see a korean film since all the other films that we saw were foreign. That film was Save the Green Planet and turned out to be one of my favourite films ever. Can't explain what it's like since it is a bit off the wall but it mixes so many genres together that it's amazing that the whole thing is an excellent coherent film if you get the ending. Fabulous stuff and a rather pleasant surpraise.

S.M.B.

Herbie: Can I help you, mate?
Richard: [shrugs] Sorry?
Herbie: [says aggressively] What the f**k are you looking at?
Richard: [shouts] You, ya C**t!

I love Dead Man's Shoes

monkeyfudge

stargal wrote:

Pan's Labyrinth. Stranger than Fiction.

Stranger Than Fiction was one of those films that was sold badly in it's trailers, so I went in expecting it to be a fairly dumb comedy, but was very surprised it a was actually a very intelligent film.

The Iron Giant suffered from having a terrible trailer that made it look like a completely different type of film... And I'd consider that to be one of the finest animated films ever made.

Pan's Labyrinth would lead you to believe that it is more of a fantasy film, so there is some sense of disappointment when you see it... but luckily the film is still brilliant despite the initial disappointment.

quickbeam

Most disappointing film ever for me, is Vanilla Sky. I so loved Crowe's other movies, especially Almost Famous, but also Jerry Maguire and Say Anything - he was always consistently good. Vanilla Sky was a bad film, made doubly worse by the fact that I had such high expectations. I kept waiting for something to happen that would make it all make sense. But it never came!

monkeyfudge

quickbeam wrote:

I kept waiting for something to happen that would make it all make sense. But it never came!

Was it not made quite clear at the end?

Most of the film was a lucid dream he was having while in cryogenic suspension

I've seen both the original film and this remake so I have them both a bit mixed up in my head and I'm not sure which one explains it better. The original is certainly a good deal better anyway... although Crowe makes very good use of sound in his version.