Terrible, terrible movies?
Since there are topics about cult classics and movies that everyone loves, I figured I'd make another thread about movies that you love that everyone else hates!
I've got to start with Jupiter Ascending. A lot of you know that I'm an unabashed fan of the Wachowskis, and this is almost universally recognized as their worst movie. It's pretty easy to see why; it's a confused mess. But even so, you can see the vision behind it. The story goes that they wanted this to be a three-film series much like they did with the Matrix sequels, but at one point the studio decided that they just wanted to make one film, so we got a very long hyper-compressed version where things weren't allowed to make much sense. The visuals are fantastic as you would expect from a Wachowski film, but the real diamond in the rough here is Eddie Redmayne's performance.
Branded is an almost objectively terrible movie. It's a fairly well put-together movie, but the idea behind it was bad. To make matters worse, the company that promoted it released trailers that basically just lied about what it was about, basically just scamming the audience into thinking it was a much more interesting movie. The IMDB page still has a fairly misleading description to this day. Thankfully I went into it blind, and I actually enjoyed it. The message was good, even if the storytelling wasn't, and it had a surprisingly excellent soundtrack.
For me this were Batman & Robin (1997). It's really strange how so many people failed to see that things like bat-nipples and bat-credit card were meant humorously. I mean, the film opens with Batman sliding down the back of a dinosaur and playing ice hockey with an oversize diamond. It's not exactly subtle.
The problem with Schumacher's Batman movies was that he wanted the movies to be reminiscent of the golden era comics and the Adam West TV show, but the comics at the time were very much going for the dark and gritty, so the public expectation was completely opposite of what he envisioned. It doesn't help that the movies themselves weren't very good.
It also doesn't help that those movies were considered sequels of sorts to the Tim Burton batman movie that came before it.
But I think it's unfair to call them bad movies. They're cheesy, yes, but if you compare them with contemporary action films, they're fairly competent.
And now that I think about it contemporary action films were also really cheesy in only a slightly different way.
Were they? To me they were always it's own thing apart, granted it's been like 20 years since I've watched any of them.
I guess? The thing is that the whole macho thing those movies from the 1980s and 90s had going was only really widely considered cheesy afterwards when that fell out of fashion. And the tone of the Schumacher movies was bordering on comedy and satire at times, so there's that.
Given that it's been roughly the same amount of time since I've seen them, I very may well be wrong.
And to be honest, I find most action movies to be cheesy or schlocky regardless of the era, so I could be alone in that.
Yes, several actors carried over from the Burton movies, most notably Michael Gough as Alfred and Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon. Obviously continuity was a mess, but it seems pretty clear that the Schumacher films were part of the same franchise as the Burton films.
Shit, you're right. I've never noticed that, then again I was a little kid when I watched those movies in the 90s, to me they were completely unrelated since they were so different.
It's easy to forget that the superhero genre just didn't exist at the time. A Batman movie had continuity in the Batman franchise, full stop. Funnily enough, Batman Begins was maybe the first superhero reboot; but back in the 90s the Schumacher movies were "canon" in the same universe as the Burton films.
I think Zorro was rebooted a few times over the decades. They kinda went back and forth between remakes/reboots and serials where it was meant to be the same guy. The only super notable one in recent years was The Legend of Zorro from 1998 and iirc that one was a sequel with Antonio Banderas becoming the next Zorro.
I feel like The Lone Ranger also got rebooted for newer audiences a couple times but nobody cared (I'm talking prior to the one with Johnny Depp as Tonto).
Batman Begins was more notable though bc they not only rebooted it completely but drastically changed the tone from earlier films and most of the comics, instead going for the overly grimdark Batman who populated a string of special miniseries thru the late 80s/90s.
Schumacher's movies were also sequels to two "dark and gritty" Batman movies.
He was asked to make them campy though after Batman Returns underperformed at the box office and was met with complaints from parents over its imagery and subject matter.
Oh wow, I did not know that.
I remember really enjoying Batman Returns, too.
It felt like they were trying to be camp and silly, while still trying to be dark and emotional at the same time.
I'm sure this wasn't intended, but I remember as a kid in the cinema finding Robin's family dying hilarious. I swear I didn't grow up a psychopath, I cried for weeks watching Schindler's List.
But his family dying was comedy gold.
I love Stallone Judge Dredd because they went full camp, silly hilarious fun. It had nothing to do with the comics but they were consistently ridiculous. If they wanted to honour the TV show they should have fully embraced it.
I know it's a terrible movie, but I absolutely love it. I thought Chris O'Donnell was the cutest thing ever when I first saw the movie and Alicia Silverstone was queen of all after Clueless so I was super excited to see her, even before I really understood actors are actors and the characters they play aren't real.
I have a soft spot in my heart for that movie and the stupid bat credit card.
I totally get that!
But on the other hand, it's completely fair to say that the jokes just aren't funny.
But on the other other hand, they're not really enough of a comedy to dislike them just for that.
I mean, they hired Joel Schumacher to direct the movie, I don’t know what they expected. The man was campy as hell (I mean that in the best way).
I didn't know anything about the movie, and went to the cinema to watch it back in '97. The projector broke down during the opening credits, just as the massive rubber bat-buttocks were on screen. They kicked us out, and we all got 2 free entries for other movies. To this day I haven't watched it.
As some of the other users here posted you were about to be treated to: batsuit nipples, a game of hockey with a diamond instead of a puck and a bat credit card. Worth checking out for campy laughs if you're into that sort of thing!
Howard the Duck from 1986....maybe it's because I watched it several times as a kid, and it definitely doesn't stand up today in several ways. But nostalgia is real!
Howard the Duck is a super fun movie though. It might be weird and a little too out there for some people, but it’s never dull or boring.
My brother and I got in a LOT of trouble the summer that the Howard The Duck movie came out because we dialed the 1-900 number to "talk" to Howard over and over and over. We had no understanding that the 900 numbers cost money each time you called. My mom was furious about that.
Spoilers for a 37-year-old movie follow:
I will argue that it does indeed hold up. It's funny (really funny!). It's paced perfectly. It has a great climax with a wonderfully-designed stop-motion monster. It avoids the "perfect Hollywood ending" by not only not sending Howard home, but making it so he can never go home. Its primary cast is all great actors (things they've done outside of work notwithstanding...) who fully commit to their roles.
I have loved this movie for 37 years and I will love it for 37 more.
It was way ahead of its time.
A wise-cracking, misunderstood hero self-sacrifices in a final effects-laden battle scene to save the planet from evil villains and the threat of cosmic horrors.
Howard the Duck basically created the mold for every MCU plotline to follow.
This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It was the worst/raunchiest movie my parents would let me watch when I first saw it, and I think that's only because they didn't think it would be as crass as it was.
I went on for years (after having not seen it for as long) telling people it was one of my favorite movies. That is until I tried to re-watch it a few years ago. My wife, who also liked it as a kid, bailed within 20min. I stuck it out all the way through, partly because surely it had to get better at some point, right?, and also I think out of some misguided sense of duty (for lack of a better word) to nostalgia. I regret having done so.
Howard the Duck is now one of the worst movies I can think of. And I love kitschy shit. It isn't kitsch though. It just stinks. Probably about as much as the interior of that semi-truck Dr. Jennings was driving around in, or Cleveland in general. If you liked the movie as a kid, please, keep it that way. Don't re-watch it. Go on remembering it for what it wasn't.
It's so stupid and I love it. Jeffrey Jones was a fantastic mix of hilarious and creepy.
Mine is Waterworld (1995). Especially after watching the extended Ulysses cut, but I loved it even before that. People like to hate on it because of its ridiculous budget, but I think the reaction was and is way overboard--it's a damn fine film.
Family favourite because of how ridiculous the entire plot is and how deliciously hammy Kevin Costner performed.
To this day whenever appropriate someone in my family will exclaim "That made a hole!".
Totally. It’s an idiotic plot. I can’t explain why but I just love the vibe of it. Maybe the feel of Costner’s solitary life on the water, maybe the clear blue skies, maybe the music, maybe the comedy, maybe the mad-max insanity, maybe all of the above
Edit: I didn’t know about the extended cut - I’ll need to track that down
I am 100% on the Wachowski train but I’m going to disagree and say that Jupiter Ascending isn’t that hated. I know tons of people who genuinely enjoy that movie. I think most people just didn’t see it.
Since we’re talking about them, Speed Racer was ahead of it’s time and is genuinely a masterpiece.
Jupiter Ascending has a 28%/38% on RT, I think it qualifies. (Speed Racer has a 41%/60% for comparison)
I’m happy to talk about it regardless, since I love the movie, but I’ve never trusted Rotten Tomatoes to be particularly illuminating for rating movies. It’s a very myopic view of critical reviews to boil them down to a percentage, and even then, it only works for more modern films. For older films, they usually only consider modern reviews so it’s not even accurate.
I never bother with Rotten Tomatoes cause it's just an aggregator site with gamed, misleading systems. So is IMDb but I look at that more than RT, even tho they are about the same rating quality wise.
Perhaps I just have a bad sampling of people' opinion on that movie. The only time I ever hear people talking about it is when they are trashing it.
(Edit: speak of the devil)
Speed Racer is indeed a masterpiece and anyone who dares to disagree to my face will be slapped.
JA is a fantastic movie with a poor execution. I saw it myself, and I was blown away by the visuals. waaay way better than Marvel's stuff now, and it's practically 8 years old!
And yeah, most people didn't see it. Reception nowadays is based on secondhand experience and word of mouth, rather than primary experience.
I disagree about the execution. I think it’s a lot stuff into one film, but it’s well done. The Wachowskis know how to take a movie with a lot of moving parts and make it work. The action scenes are well directed, the acting and writing are straight out of a soap opera (which is how they intended it to be) but they’re still good.
Speed Racer is damn good. That was one of my favorites as a kid and it's nice to hear it get more praise recently.
I thought the 2016 Blair Witch was a great movie despite its flaws. I haven't met a single person who agrees with me. Lionsgate doesn't, as they're about to retcon and reboot it again. It's almost universally hated.
You can get a good idea of the film's reception by watching the director's commentary: one of the first things out of the director Adam Wingard's mouth is a joke that he's just taken hemlock to kill himself because of bad reviews, and that he will die before the film is over. Both commentators also regularly make jokes about how only people wanting to stalk or harass them are going to bother to watch the commentary, along with even more and different jokes about offing themselves. They both come off as truly, truly depressed and more than a little spiteful. I get it.
The film gets a bad rap for a few reasons, one of them being the mistaken(?) opinion that the film shows the Blair Witch. I'm inclined to give Wingard the benefit of the doubt and say that it doesn't. He attempts to explain this in the commentary: that there was a deleted scene where the connection between the Blair Witch and the monster that does appear in the film is detailed, but which had to be scrapped; that the person who made the credits didn't work on the film and didn't know about this, so mistakenly credited the puppeteer as "Blair Witch arm" or something like that. That's one of the things people online really took them to task about.
I'll admit that it's overly derivative of the original in places, devolving to a shot for shot remake every now and then. While some of the throwbacks work, others are tasteless; I'm thinking here of the first "person in a corner" scene. But what's most frustrating is how unappreciated their efforts to explain certain plot elements of the first film while leaving others mysterious have been:
Spoilers for 1999/2016 Blair Witch films
While never confirmed, a close watch of The Blair Witch Project strongly implies that the characters are stuck in a time loop. In a line that's easy to miss, someone in Burkittsville says that the Rustin Parr cabin was demolished decades previously; at the end of the film, they find the cabin intact. Blair Witch 2016 confirms this through how its group of characters gets separated: group A has spent only "hours" wandering, while group B has been lost for a few days, and later years.
This confirms the time loop, but Wingard and co. take some pains not to explain it too much. As in the 1999 film, the second half takes place in a kind of endless night. The sun never rises even though their clocks read noon. But interestingly, near the end of Blair Witch 2016, there's an inexplicable flash of white light and roaring noise, hinting that the days are still there but hyper-compressed. It also looks and sounds for all the world like a UFO landing. One of Wingard's spiteful moments comes here: he refuses to explain what's going on, saying that it would have been covered in the sequel, and that he doesn't want to explain it to people who "hate him."
There are at least two other subtle touches that I think bear mentioning. For the most part, the characters' thinking something is "out there" is pure paranoia, but there are two instances where extremely close eyes or a freeze frame can show that something is out there: one shakes the branches of the tree that Angela climbs, and another appears incredibly briefly in the woods when Peter gets separated from the rest of the group. Neither is definitively the "Blair Witch" puppet, although there are similarities. In the commentary, Wingard refuses to explain both moments -- but the fact remains that they're beautifully enigmatic touches.
Beyond that, I think the sound design and especially the score are just superb. The ending scene at the Rustin Parr cabin is one of the most horrifying scenes I've seen in any movie, the kind you love just as much as you dread. All in all, the film just doesn't deserve all the hate.
(I realize I'm being a total apologist here. I've never seen any of Wingard's other work, but I'm a lifelong fan of anything BW. You can take these comments with a grain of salt.)
I just wanted to tell you that I love the 2016 Blair Witch movie. I'm spoilt though, I saw it as a free screening under the original name, and it was a packed room full of horror fans. The moment we realized what it was the theatre erupted. It was one of the best vibes i've ever had movie going.
The Woods, right? I've heard about that story. I can't imagine what it must have been like. Sounds like a blast -- thanks for sharing.
I didn't particularly care for that film, but I will give you that I did like it much better than the original film.
I've never seen this movie but your write up actually made me want to watch it. I have a weird relationship with horror movies where I really love the concepts and stories but I'm also a big scaredy cat haha. I'm super curious as an outsider to the series with no preconceived notions whether I would also think it's a bad movie or not.
It made me so motion sick, I left barely a half hour into it.
Zombiez (2005) is the worst movie I've ever seen and it has a special place in my heart. Full movie is on YouTube. I bought it in a truck stop when they were selling out old VHS stock. My friend and I saw it and bought it thinking it looked like it would be funny and awful. We got so much more than we bargained for.
The acting is terrible, the music is terrible, the camera work is terrible. The props are plastic Halloween store closeout stuff. The zombies have zero consistency in their behavior--sometimes they can run, sometimes they can't; sometimes they can only groan, sometimes they can have rational conversations. Sometimes they just stop being zombies all together. The plot... who am I kidding there is no plot. The whole thing is just an acid trip that keeps getting worse the longer it goes. At one point some guy just starts shooting at someone walking back and forth in a chicken suit for like ten minutes solid. This is never explained.
The funny part is this movie has gotten way more play time than almost any good movie among my group of friends. Every time someone admits they haven't seen Zombiez yet it gets added to the queue.
I absolutely love Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. I think a lot of people were completely lost while watching this film, not realizing that it was just a redubbed kung-fu film (I’m simplifying, I know there was more to it but I digress). It’s one of those films that I can’t stop watching once I start, and it makes me laugh so hard my sides start to hurt. But it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea because the jokes are increeeedibly stupid.
I’m also a sucker for Saving Silverman. I know that objectively it’s trash cinema, I imagine the rotten score is low as hell. It’s low brow. It’s got old school Jack Black, trying to help his friend (the dude from American Pie) break up with his evil fiancé so that he can marry his old high school sweetheart instead. But there’s just a charm to that movie I can’t get anywhere else. The humor resonates with me. If you can stomach this film, you belong in my circle of friendship dammit.
Excuse me, but this is a topic for terrible movies. Kung Pow is obviously a masterpiece of frequently misunderstood genius.
Saving Silverman is perfect for this though. I don't think I remember anyone who disliked it at the time but man, it wasn't exactly PC then and it has just gotten worse as time goes by.
I haven’t seen Saving Silverman in a few years, but man some of the quotes are hilarious and have stuck with me for a very long time!
Jack Black is sharing nachos with his friend. He shovels like a third of the plate of nachos into his mouth. His friend screams “dude!!! What is wrong with you man?!!” “Dude, the rule is if a nacho is stuck together with another nacho, it counts as one nacho.”
The theatre trailer for Kung Pow made it look absolutely terrible. We saw it later on DVD and almost couldn't breathe from laughing so much. One of the most quotable movies ever.
"Swingin" the chaaiiin, swingin' the chaaain, swinging the chaaiiiiiin"
You are the first person online that I have seen mention Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. I don't know how we stumbled upon it but my husband and I found it hysterical. It's so stupid it's brilliant. We need to see it again.
To this day, my friends and I throw KP quotes at each other. “Why don’t you respect me? I’m a man too, you know; I go peepee standing up!”
Never Too Young to Die
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091621/
Starring:
Full Movie -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcu6RxYk9og
Honestly I don't want to ruin it. You should watch it and experience it for yourself. If you have trouble sticking with it at least watch the "dam fight" between Gene Simmons and John Stamos.
Oh my god. I took your advice and watched that scene in the office on mute with Youtube's horrible automated subtitles and I am in tears. That was just magically terrible.
This one sure hasn’t aged well! It’s a fun movie otherwise but uhh…the hermaphrodite stuff is not great.
(If anyone else listens to the movie podcast Junkfood Cinema, the name Stargrove might sound familiar…)
https://youtu.be/jcu6RxYk9og?t=5101
THE DAM FIGHT!
Once its been programmed it can't be de-programmed!
there are some bad movies in this thread, but this one is truly terrible.
That sounds like either a teen trying to sound like an adult, or an adult trying to sound like a teen. Also that dialogue is just amazingly awful.
could be both -- especially with Stamos' cute little button nose.
Hardcore Henry. Cheesy ass plot that is also predictable? Yes. Nauseating visuals because of it being an fast moving movie in first person point of view? Oh yeah. Did I watched it all? You bet I did, and I enjoyed watching it because I did not had to think through out the movie. Was it ground breaking in anyway? Oh no, it is not. Does Payday 2 have a character from this movie as a playable character? Yes, whom I had played the most with.
Edit: Also, if you look the movie up on Youtube, you can watch the movie, it is like the third or fourth video.
The original Super Mario Bros movie. I have such a soft spot for it, lol.
I adore this movie. "The goombas are dancing..." is a line my spouse and I text each other if we're stuck in particularly boring meetings.
My friends and I will pretty regularly watch awful movies, so I'll mention some of the highlights.
Twisted Pair
Not Neil Breen's most famous film, but the most nonsensical of his that I've seen.
Suburban Sasquatch
There's nothing I can say that RedLetterMedia hasn't.
God's Not Dead
Adding this one to the list for all the wrong reasons. This movie pissed me off with its circular logic and high-and-mighty attitude. But the most absurd thing was recognizing the backgrounds... because it was shot in my city. The outdoor university scenes are in the quad I walked through for years. The professor gets hit by the car at the end in front of a greasy pizza place a few blocks from my apartment.
This question piqued my interest as I love films that everyone else hates. If it's sci-fi, fantasy, has explosions or a lot of guns, action, adventure with a boat load of special effects - I'm in! I also really enjoyed Jupiter Ascending.
So, I checked Rotten Tomatoes to see where I stand. It's not as bad as I thought and rolling in at the 55th worst movie spot:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/battlefield_earth
I really liked this film. The campiness sealed the deal more than anything else. If I find it available I'll happily watch it again.
I don't really know what's wrong with me 😂
I haven't thought about "Battlefield Earth" in a long time, but I really liked it also. I watched it without looking at any reviews first and was surprised when I found out everyone disagreed with me.
I remember loving the "Rocketeer" also. I don't think it's rated as low as the other movies mentioned here, but that's another that never got any love. Though I have to admit that the special effects look terrible now.
I love the Rocketeer! It's so much fun. How can people hate it? It's a somewhat cheesy period piece with Jennifer Connolly in gorgeous clothes and an over the top villain! I'm aghast.
I totally understand. But at the same time when someone pointed out that every scene is at a dutch angle I couldn't unsee it, so it actually makes me feel physically ill to see it these days.
I watched
BattleshipBattlefield Earth expecting it to live up to the hype of being "one of the worst movies" but I found it totally fine. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again, but it really wasn't that bad. I wasn't paying attention to film criticism when it came out - being a newborn infant made that hard - but I speculate that a lot of the hate is (understandably) derived from anti-Scientology more than actual criticism of the film.There's a Roger Ebert quote about the movie that I still think of a lot:
Definitely way better than the book.
Surf ninjas is my contribution to bad movies. I thought it was great as a kid and when I showed my friends in college I reevaluated this movie.
https://youtu.be/W9bOJs_z9M0
Surf Ninjas is one of my favorite movies. It’s one of those movies that I’ll put on when I’m looking for a laugh and don’t want to think. My wife and kids on the other hand roll their eyes and leave the room. Back when it came out I was driving a Jeepster Commando so of course my friends and I had to try motosurfing. Looking back, I cringe on how dangerous and dumb that was.
There's something amazing about those terrible kids movies from the late 80s to early 2000s.
Come to think about it, I'm kind of amazed that nobody has brought up any Disney Channel Original Movies yet. Where would we all be without such timeless classics as Zenon: The Zequel and The Cheetah Girls?
I was never one for watching Disney channel movies, but spent countless nights watching whatever terrible movies we could find at Blockbuster. Having friends that worked there and allowed us to take movies for free (no new releases) allowed for some great entertainment usually laughing at how bad some of the movies were.
Look, Freddy's Dead is not a good movie. It is easily the worst Nightmare on Elm Street film (a series that I give credit for always trying something new, even if it doesn't do it well. With the exception of the remake, it is a series that always swung for the fences with some wild shit/aesthetic that really makes them feel fresh and worth watching in a way any of the bad Friday the 13ths or Halloweens don't.) and it makes no sense. Freddy is basically Bugs Bunny in it, and it is full of incredibly bad acting and ridiculous moments that don't come close to landing, and yet.
And Yet.
It is one of the campiest horror movies I've ever seen. It feels like if you asked John Waters movie to make a sequel in a series he knew nothing about.
At one point, Freddy dresses up as the Wicked Witch of the West and flies around on a broom, and when I watch it I think, "Yes, this is what this monsterous child murderer would do, this makes perfect sense."
I find the NOES films some of the most rewatchable 80s slashers because they are all so interesting and different tonally, and this is the summation of that ethos. It is a horrible movie. Freddy Krueger gets a NES Power Glove at one point to murder a teenager. Its plot is paper thin and makes no sense if you give it even a second of consideration.
I will watch it gladly whenever I see it on TV.
Wow, it really is so bad.
I honestly might watch this movie just to see this because I cannot picture a way to frame this in which the scenario is not completely bonkers.
Did I mention that the last 30 minutes of the movie is in bad 3D with the blue and red glasses, and the characters diegetically tell you when to put them on?
Bird's of Prey is the worst thing I ever saw in a movie theater. Me and my friends were speechless by the end. It is hard to convey how a movie can be bad about every single thing it does, from start to finish, each and every second of that movie is so absurdly bad it's almost an achievement in itself. The style was all wrong, the jokes didn't land, the plot made no sense and the dialogue had the sophistication of a Nickelodeon TV movie. I could see what they were aiming at, and the ideas were not even bad, but execution failed at every count. It's not even one of those "it's so bad it's good". Watching that movie was the artistic equivalent of having my nails removed with pliers. Just complete garbage.
The Last Airbender.
I had watched Avatar: The Last Airbender first, with the full intention of ruining this movie for myself and... It didn't.
I liked the attempt at a diverse cast of cultures, especially how they portrayed the Fire Nation. Iroh got the energy right, Zuko was different but still perfectly fine, Cliff Curtis killed it as Ozai. The casting could've used some help, but the whitewashing that did happen was normal at the time. People make fun of the choreography but the kids in the movie weren't martial artists, I can forgive it.
I think pelple took it way too seriously amd felt itnwas a perfectly fine adaptation of the show. It captured the energy, let the nations we saw be distinct nations with radically different cultures from each other, and even aimed for the emotional punch the show had.
It had issues like cramming a whole season into a movie, but I don't see most arguments about it as more than adults being mad about watching a Nickelodeon children's movie.
For additional context I also like every Shyamalan movie not because I'm a fanboy, but I find them enjoyable to watch. "The Happening" is a contender for this post from me, as well, and probably "Lady in the Water."
The bravest comment in here. I disagree wholeheartedly but...'tis the point of the topic at hand.
I love Watchman and I think the ending is better than the graphic novel version.
Personally I like Zack Snyder's work, except maybe BvS and Justice League, and I find the criticism towards his films to be overzealous. I just like his stylization techniques whereas everyone else seems to have enjoyed it for 300 but hated it for everything else. Even 300 gets a lot of hate now in some circles.
That said, nothing he's made would break my top 100 anyway so maybe I don't even have a dog in this fight.
I'd say I have pretty good taste in movies and it usually lines up with general critical opinions, barring some exceptions. Where I have disagreements is where like audience score is concerned. Like I loved The Lighthouse but everyone I've watched it with thought it sucked. I know they're just wrong though because Robert Eggers is a genius filmmaker who hasn't had a miss yet.
I've just never been able to enjoy a Zack Snyder film. Watchmen director's cut was better, IMO. I think he does a great job visually, especially considering the source material he represents, but I never came out of the theater thinking "this was a good movie."
People don't like Watchmen and 300? I'm genuinely astounded and really surprised. They're both fantastic and are regular rewatches for me. I really thought they'd be in the 'good film' list and not the hated one.
Maybe it's just me but I feel like in the wake of the Synder backlash thanks to BvS and JL his entire catalogue has been retroactively trashed (at least online).
Then again, I enjoy Suckerpunch and I've been told that makes me a bad person who hates women. Shrug
I was on board with Man of Steel from the first trailer that I saw. I still think it's the best DC movie since The Dark Knight.
Snyder's Watchmen is very good. I don't really like most superhero movies so it's easily top 2 or 3 superhero movies for me. I think the ending is the only part I don't like. I think it mixes metaphors and misses a lot of the point of what the ending was doing. Doc Manhattan already represents a lot of things in the symbology of the story, and it doesn't really seem to mean anything or make sense for the world to team up against those things, whereas it makes a lot of sense within the themes of the story for Veidt to get the entire world to team up against some (seemingly) wholly alien, mysterious foreign creature.
Snyder misses the point of basically everything about Watchmen, and the resulting film is cartoonishly fascist all the way down to its imagery, but given that a lot of the comic is about the fascism latent in the basic imagery of superhero media, it's perfectly fitting. Like everyone says, Snyder missed the point entirely and thought Rorschach et al were supposed to be cool, but in every case (again except the ending imo), him so fully missing the point results in imagery that accidentally either complements the themes it's portraying from the comic or flawlessly illustrates those themes by being a pitch-perfect example of what Moore was making fun of and criticizing, and it ends up being this accidentally prescient meta-critique of comic book movies made back before they were even really their own genre.
Showing one of our heroes doing something awful and portraying it as tantalizingly cool, like Snyder does, leaves you to sorta stew with why we see these parts of superhero media as tantalizingly cool. It beats having the director beat you over the head with "What Rorschach is doing right now is maladaptive and bad. What the Comedian is doing right now is evil. What Doctor Manhattan is doing right now is misanthropic." Snyder's style is such a perfect match to the subject matter in so many ways I don't think he has the cognitive ability to process.
Yeah I suppose it depends on the viewer properly interpreting the material in spite of the film's direction. I can't see reading these characters and situations differently but maybe someone unfamiliar with the source material could? I don't know...
I just want to note that the Balboa Theatre here in San Francisco screens The Room by you know who every month, and the man himself, an SF resident, frequently makes an appearance.
Double Team (1997)
Starring:
Until recently it was available on Netflix in the US. So many incredible scenes in this movie: JCVD lifting a full bathtub, JCVD in a super passable disguise with a wig, the entire final fight scene in the coliseum. Hearing the hilarious dialogue helps, but I also enjoy just watching it with subtitles and music on. Super refreshing only 93 minute run-time as well. Highly recommend this one for a bad movie night.
Troll 2 (1990) it has nothing to do with troll 1.it is really bad it has been called one of the worst movies ever made.
It is supposed to be a serious movie about a family movining to a new town called nilbog (goblin backwards) the costumes for the goblin trolls are bad. The dialogue is bad and the story is bad.
But I like it because it is so bad it is comical.
Beyond the Black Rainbow
It's the only movie that I wish I had my time back for.
If you want a better version of the same idea, the TL;DW is basically Stevie by Kasabian.
To be clear to both you and @d_b_cooper, this topic is supposed to be about movies that you enjoy in spite of how terrible they are.
Is there something you enjoyed about this one?
Oops. My bad.
Okay, but what do you mean by enjoy? If it’s a terrible movie, that I think is a terrible movie, but would absolutely watch again because it’s almost absurdly bad…does that belong in this thread?
Take a look at some of the examples other people have mentioned. Whether you enjoy a movie that is very unpopular or is just really badly made, it doesn’t matter. Hate watching counts too, if you would watch it just to hate it. MST3K fodder is perfectly at home here.
Easily in my top 3 favorite movies of all time.
I liked the My Little Pony movie, the cartoon one based on Friendship is Magic with Tempest. Not the 3d "new generation" one.
I grew up obsessed with playing Wing Commander. When WC3 was released it blew my mind.
So of course when the Wing Commander film premiered it was all my childhood dreams realised. That film is universally lampooned, but I absolutely love it.
Now hear me out, there are good reasons why people ridicule the film, but beneath them is actually a great movie. Freddie Prinze Jr acting is horrifically bad, worse than anything I could have imagined. I have absolutely no idea why he was a star. Matthew Lillard was the worst casting decision possible, I think they had to go far out of their way to make such a poor choice.
But behind that are some great performances. Saffron Burrows was brilliant and I had a proper teenage crush on her because of wing commander. Jürgen Prochnow is good, David Warner was great.
Tchéky Karyo was absolutely bloody fantastic. Even when he was sharing the scene with god awful Freddy delivery, his voice and reverence made you forget his presence. He really put everything into that role.
If Mark Hamill reprised his role instead of Freddie Prinze Jr, with WC3 Tom Wilson as Maniac, I think it would have been a beloved cult classic.
Freddys romance with Saffron Burrows really did sour the show, he had all the charisma of wet cardboard.
Lt. Cdr. 'Angel' Deveraux on the overhand was an absolute badass and she would have been better off falling in love with a Kilrathi than Freddy.
Alien Resurrection. I don't care what anyone says, I love that movie. It was supposed to be the start of a trilogy and I'm really bummed that didn't happen.
I kinda like that as a result of the part-way director switch and tone shift, Joss Whedon didn't get to see through his vision of the scrappy and diverse space jobber crew dynamic for the whole movie. Because of that unfinished business, we got Firefly.
Tank Girl, Hudson Hawk. Unapologetically insane and silly, with fun action and villains that chewed had to be handfed scenery from other sets to keep them satiated after they chef through all their own. A friend and I bonded over our love of both and frequently started singing Swinging on a Star or Let's Do It when we were hanging out together.
Tank Girl isn't a terrible movie. It was just so far ahead of it's time that we did not know how to judge it at the time.
Or maybe I just have terrible tastes.
I haven't seen Hudson Hawk before, but now I know I should.
I read the original Jamie Hewlett Tank Girl comics and Lori Petty was not who I pictured in the lead role. But she captured the vibe perfectly, and this movie is still on my "if it's on, I'll stop what I'm doing and watch it" list.
I just watched “Spawn” for the first time. Honestly I loved it, but it’s pretty bad. Took me back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s with all the aging CGI.
I've never seen a movie so proud of it's awful CGI than Spawn
As a movie, there isn't really much of anything going for it, but it seems like everyone who made it had a lot of fun and it shows.
The only other movie that comes to mind for terrible CGI that they put front and center like it’s amazing is Lawnmower Man.
John Leguziamo’s fucked up clown is seared into my memory from seeing that movie as a child.
This was the first movie I walked out of. I really wanted more of it, but it offered me nothing. Then again, I guess it gave me practice walking out of bad movies.
Sorry to be a grump for not naming any titles, but without any exceptions, I genuinely despise films that depict a real life tragedy that affect many people. I don't think there's ever any artistic and ethical thought, care and empathy behind any of their stories and they're merely misery porn to be consumed for our entertainment at the expense of people's suffering.
Just to give a random answer though, I sorted my half a star ratings by average rating on Letterboxd and apparently Capernaum is the most popular title I thought was terrible.
Are we talking, like, United 93 or Chernobyl?
United 93 certainly fits the bill, yes.
I'm with you there. I remember Greengrass saying something like, "somebody was going to make this movie, and since I knew how to do it right I decided to do it first." My SO and her friend watched it in our apartment one night; I got drunk on the balcony instead because it seemed like a better time than watching that dreck.
Sounds like you made the better choice. I hadn't known that quote from Greengrass, but it's not surprising given that depicting tragedies is his forte. He also directed 22 July, which is another example of an awful, awful film.
I forgot to post about it in the cult classics thread, but Black Dynamite is maybe my favourite film of all time.
It’s not actually terrible, by any standard, so I guess I’m shoehorning it into this thread a bit, but it pokes fun of so many tropes from my favourite film genre of all time, Blaxploitation film.
It’s got everything you could possibly need in a hilarious film. Sex, Drugs, Violence, an incredible soundtrack, hilarious intentional bloopers, conspiracy and Kung Fu.
Need I really say more?
Black Dynamite is a fantastic movie. Have you seen the animated sequel?
The pimp council scene is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
I have yeah, it’s incredible too. I’d love for them to make a video game in that style.
“We’ve got to collectivisize!!”
“But Black Dynamite, I sell drugs to the community!”
I’ve seen it so many times and realise a new silly thing every time.
“I threw that shit before I even came into the room” always cracks me up without fail.
I heard a while back they’re making a sequel, so hope it’s true and it delivers as much as the first!
Is that the one with Michael Jai White? That guy always brings 2000% to the role. He's carried whole movies (see: Spawn, mentioned in this thread).
It's not a movie that everyone hates because it's relatively unknown, but I love Getting any? by Takeshi Kitano. He is, IMHO, one of the best film maker out there, and he did this very bad movie on purpose. It's also one of my favorite bad movie which I've seen once on the big screen. It's the story of a man "obsessed with the idea of owning his first car so he can have sex in it" and you should watch it right now.
Here is the trailer, you will love it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7nCJdwf0ww
I don’t know what you mean, because if the trailer is any indication this is by far the perfect movie.
I despised "Under the Skin". I feel alone in that, but my ex and I almost walked out of the theatre.
Side note... why the hell is the "post a comment" option all the way at the bottom of the thread and not the top? Weird.
I always just assumed it was to get you to read what has already been posted, that way there aren't a bunch of comments saying the same thing.
That's exactly why
I watched Under The Skin on an airplane and landed before I could see the very end (I got to where she had run away), but I honestly have zero desire to finish it based on what I saw. It was visually interesting in parts and kind of had an initially creepy/surreal vibe that drew me in, but it just felt like it wasn't really doing anything with it's premise. The premise isn't even very original either so it's not like it stands on it's own for being novel.
Shaolin Fox Conspiracy (a/k/a Jade Dagger Ninja) is one of the worst movies ever made, Hong Kong martial arts genre or otherwise. Plot, dialogue, special effects, acting, makeup, wuxia choreography, (OMFG the sound effects), cinematography, translation in dubbing... all dreadful, but in a way that's hysterically funny. Moreso if you've got friends who practice martial arts and can point out how badly the mythos has been treated. It's practically self-MST3K'ing.
I have to pull it out every few years to make sure it's as gloriously awful as I remember it being. But at the same time, it's absolutely seminal to the whole genre, and you can see how influential it was to the better films, from Bride With White Hair to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
New Alcatraz / BOA (2001).
One of those so-bad-it's-good B-monster movies that only work because they were made totally in earnest. I get the impression everyone involved in the production thought they were making a good movie.
The movie largely takes place in an unfinished-but-operational super-maximum security prison in Antarctica. During construction, a deep hole had to be drilled for no particular reason, and out of the maguffin pit sprang an enormous prehistoric snake, preserved in living stasis in a hollow rock filled with nitrogen. The rock that formed around the snake while it ... look, don't worry about it.
Once it starts rampaging through construction workers and prison staff, they decide they needed an expert. The characters must have been familiar in-universe with Jurassic Parkbecause they call in a paleontologist (Hey kids, it's TV's Dean Cain!). Yep, he'll be the guy to deal with a living, imminent threat from a prehistoric reptile.
Upon learning why he's there, he declared excitedly, "a giant snake! This must be the missing link!". Between what and fucking what? Normal-sized snakes and even bigger undiscovered snakes? What are you even saying right now?
Among the first prisoners to be housed in the incomplete complex (guess you didn't really need that hole dug in the first place) are an Iraqi weapons scientist - depicted as a bald, white, biker type, because who knows what a middle-eastern person could look like, a fiery red-haired IRA explosives expert, a hacker kid, and a Chechen politician who tried to purchase a black-market nuke. Remember this, it could be important.
The prison staff, scientists and prisoners are going to need to team up to survive the onslaught and escape the imperiled facility. Quoth the warden, “you guys know a hell of a lot more about breaking out of prison than we do”. Mate, what in all their elaborate backstories gives you that impression? First arrest for all of them, and they just got here.
Fortunately, we have this collective set of skills that could be useful to … nope, just bodies to rack up for the snake. Oh well. Maybe it wasn't important. A snake which, by the way, is a cold-blooded reptile that can tunnel through ice and reinforced concrete, but holding a metal grate down with your foot seems to confound it.
I won’t spoil the ending, and what other elements are set up and completely forgotten by this first-draft ride of a script. I’ve been in love with this movie since I first saw it on VHS, 20 years ago. I can’t believe there isn’t a cult following à la Plan 9 from Outer Space or interactive screenings like The Room. Deliberate B-trash monster movies (sup Sharknado) that are made to be this bad on purpose just don’t hit the same as an honest, though low-budget and rushed (producer, director and screenwriter Phillip Roth had 5 other movies to make that year) attempt.
In summary, I can’t recommend it highly enough, nor can I possibly argue with its Rotten Tomatoes score of 20%.
200 mph (2017)
It's an objectively terrible, wannabe Fast & Furious. It's not quite so bad it's good, more like so bad it's entertaining. It's a lot of fun to watch with a group of friends and try to untangle the mess of a plot and to try to find all the weird continuity errors.
The 2006 Miami Vice movie is a flawless, digital tone poem and I won't be told otherwise.
And the end with Mogwai’s Auto Rock playing.
I love Dawn of the Dead but I think Day of the Dead is even better. It’s a mean-spirited, nasty movie. Dawn isn’t exactly hope filled, but Day is so much darker.
I remember once reading an interview with Romero where he said he always had tons of people come up to him and tell him how much they loved Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, but every once in a while a real weirdo would come up to him and they’d always say Day of the Dead was their favorite.
Agreed, the ending is made all the more impactful if you look at all the other movies released around the same time.
Romero wasn’t exactly know for his happy endings though.