I love the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie. It's so much weirder than audiences were expecting and I enjoy every second of it. I tend to enjoy everything John Leguizamo touches (I also loved The Pest), but you absolutely cannot beat the casting of Bob Hoskins as Mario. It's so on the nose. I love the weird creepy slime, I love the insane take on Goombas, I love the scene with the moon boots. 10/10.

The fountain (2006) is heart achingly beautiful but seldom talked about still

While hardly a secret gem the first sicario movie is one of the best action movies ever.

Definitely not high cinema but Ten Things I Hate About You is one of my favorite films of all time and definitely my favorite of the teen dramedies of that era. The story is cheesy but heartfelt and there are so many great lines.

"Hello, Katerina. Make anyone cry today?"
"Sadly no, but it's only 4:30."

I rather enjoy Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk. It's not perfect but I don't get why it was so panned.

I am always internally shocked Event Horizon (1997) sort of counts (or does it? 6.6/10 on IMDb isn't bad). I find WH40K universe deeply poetic, and while the movie has flaws, it has the same heart.

Bloodshot (2020) was entirely predictable after the very first twist, but it was immensely fun. Almost Edge of Tomorrow kind of fun. I'm a fan of both concepts and see them related. I'm glad they're making a sequel. May even read the comics.

My feelings about Skyline (2010) are basically the same. Both are underrated.

But what really takes the cake, I'm sure, is Battlefield: Earth (2000). With its 2.5/10 and the irl connections, it's uh... difficult to defend. I mean, damn, from the costumes, to plot (?) holes, to casting, to characters, to character names... not good. And yet when I watch it I see what it could have been. Somehow, every flaw inspires me with oh-so-many ways to fix it, while a typical bad movie merely frustrates me.

Warcraft (2016)

I have at times been a massive fan of the Warcraft series, including WoW (I'm 2 years free from its grasp so far). I really enjoy the lore and worldbuilding they've done with it over the years. So I probably should've hated the movie for screwing around with the Warcraft 1's lore. But I didn't! I absolutely loved seeing this world (of warcraft) I'd been gaming in for years brought to life. There were a lot of mistakes made in the creation of that movie, but I just loved it. Damn shame we may never get the an Arthas/Lich King movie because of how badly it bombed domestically.

I've always been very fond of Run, Lola, Run, but most people I know have never heard of it and the ones I've shown it to haven't enjoyed it nearly as much as I did.

Luc Besson, the director of The Fifth Element, made an odd film in 2010 that few people talk about. It is The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec. I've always liked it, though it is one of the quirkiest movies I've seen.

Years ago, we had friends over and I got everyone hyped to watch The Phantom Tollbooth (1970). In less than an hour everyone was either asleep or on their phones. Even my wife was like, "Whhyyy are we watching this super old cartoon, again?". I was really surprised, I thought the movie was great but I guess it's another one of those that require nostalgia goggles.

Knight and Day. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. I think its fun action, funny, and there's never a boring moment in the movie. People either hate it or don't know it for some reason. But I feel like I can watch it on repeat.

I feel like the A-Team with Bradley Cooper is kinda the same way. I absolutely love it, but it seems to be mostly forgotten now.

I'd say the first three Spy Kids films, particularly the third. That one seems to get a lot of flack, but honestly? I just think it's fun.

I say that as someone who typically strongly values story and criticizes thin plots or bad writing, as well someone who hates kids movies that are stupid and obvious cash grabs that treat kids like idiots. Spy Kids 3 has a thin plot, and the special effects haven't aged well. But it's still fun. It's about kids entering a game world, with all the crazy levels and actions you'd expect from a game. The suits in the game feel unique and stylish, it's neat to see a badass grandpa, you have kids in most of the action roles, lava surfing, The Toymaker is a fun and zany villain—

All of it is just fun. Spy Kids 3 just taps into all the fantasies that kids have, and focuses on kids doing stuff first and foremost while leaning into some silly concepts without treating kids in the audience like idiots with no sense of taste. It got me all energized and excited to watch it, made me feel like I could play the game too. And it looks like most of the cast is having fun too.

Kids' movies don't need to be deep and complex, or have some moral. The most important thing for a kids' movie is that they're fun. I wish people would remember that, a lot of kids' films seem to forget that these days.

Meet Joe Black
It’s always embarrassing to rewatch but there is just something about the film I love irrationally. It’s such a 90’s movie that has not aged well. The romantic chemistry is stilted and awkward.
But you get to watch Brad Pitt get brutally killed in the first few minutes and it always makes me giggle from the juxtaposition of the minute before it happens.
It’s such a great concept that falls flat on its face so many times. The soundtrack is amazing to me and the main score locks me into my first viewing immediately. Plus it introduced me to Somewhere over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo’Ole.
Obviously Anthony Hopkins steals the show and does what he can with the script. The awkwardness and ending always puts a smile on my face and it will always be my guilty pleasure at least once a year.

The man from Earth (2007)

I love the way this movie was done, it's just a group of colleagues sitting in a living room talking the whole time (also a scene outside the house), but the story the main character tells about how he's actually thousands of years old and that's why he moves away and starts over so no one will question why he doesn't age, it just pulls you in and makes you want to keep listening.

So many people will say this movie makes no sense or call out the mistakes they made and say it ruins it, but if you just let your imagination run wild for a bit it can be a really good watch, this is actually in my top 3 movies I would say.

Miami Vice (2006) by Michael Mann. I enjoy the visuals, the realistic violence, the music and the admittedly "wooden" performances.

It was not well received by audiences at the time. Perhaps they wanted something more akin to the tv series, which was so popular when I was a kid.

I know many critical comments were aimed at the oddly detached "romance" between Colin Farrell's Sonny Crocket and Gong Li's Isabella. But for me I read it as: this is romance between two people that cannot let their guard down for even a second. Maybe this is what love looks like when you are surpressing your true identity? I dunno, lol. Probably reading too much into it.

The visuals are so beautiful, like those overhead shots of the cigarette boats cutting through the water.

Thing is I get why people wouldn't like it.... it's slow, the characters are not all that likeable. But I still enjoy it every time.

Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. I watched the first season of the show and went into the movie. I did not think it was as bad as most people say, it was basically a Nickelodeon live-action movie the director made for his 10-year-old, and I felt it was an alright movie that only suffered from trying to condense 23 episodes of show into a less than 2 hour movie. I feel like adults who watched the show were mad at the movie and it became one of those great fandom circlejerks that infected the broader discussion.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) - I have shown so many friends this movie, and no one has enjoyed it like I have.

I grew up from a very early age watching The Holy Mountain (1973) with my grandfather (seriously, I was probably 5 or 6 the first time he showed me). That movie is weird, excellent, and just wrong. Highly recommend it.

Edit: I also loved Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021) starring Nicholas Cage, this is by far his weirdest, strangest, most out there movie yet with just so many ideas happening all at once.

Mission to Mars. It's not good but rather exceedingly mediocre but I love it. And Gary Sinise is always a treat.

The Postman. Heavily slated but there's just something about the story that I like. Dystopia man saves world by pretending to be a postman.

I thought someone would have mentioned it but it seems I'm alone in this. The Crow, staring Brandon Lee, was awesome to me. The acting isn't great. The studio budget was low. The idea and the graphic novel was awesome. I really enjoyed the movie adaptation.

“Neighbors”, a John Belushi / Dan Ackroyd film from the novel by Thomas Berger.

Last year's Skinamarink was that movie for me. One other friend and I thought it was the most revolutionary and downright piss-your-pants terrifying horror film to come out in the last decade, but I was super surprised that wider reception to the film was a lot of negative stuff.

It's for sure not for everyone, the film asks you to put yourself into an environment where you'll be immersed in it and many people don't go in knowing that. Watch it late at night, all the lights off, alone or with a quiet friend or two, and you'll be peaking through your fingers at the screen by the end of it. It's also a really good theater experience since that's already the kind of environment you're in. But, if you don't play on the films level, it will be an extremely different, and probably bad, experience.

It's also very slow, never gives any answers or conclusions, it's just pure child-like existential dread all the way through. It genuinely made me, a grown ass adult, afraid of the dark for a good two weeks after viewing and I still think about it's imagery (or lack thereof) very often.

But yeah, apperantly a lot of people did not connect with it the way I did and that's a big shame for me. It will still be my first recommended horror film to anyone looking for a scare!

For me, this movie used to be MacGruber. Every single person I knew who watched it thought it was stupid and awful.

At some point, people seem to have come around on it, and now it's considered stupid and hilarious. Kind of like Wet Hot American Summer. I guess it grew into a cult classic and in both cases they ended up getting TV continuations.

Recently, Amsterdam. David O. Russell is one of the great American auteurs and in ten years time this is gonna get a better rep. It’s beautifully shot, the performances from Christian Bale and Margot Robbie are great. Really the only weak point is John David Washington, who’s always the worst part of any movie he’s in, and who’s character and story line would have been better served by Michael B Jordan who was originally cast.

Bubble Boy with Jake Gyllenhaal I think is pretty hilarious. Its fast, quick witted, and shows an early Gyllenhaal’s comedic chops, something he’d only bring out again later in his career..

I love the Hellraiser franchise, or rather I have a love/hate relationship with it. Being a fan of Hellraiser (and The Hellbound Heart, the original book,) is a combination of pain and pleasure...

The book is much more well-written than the movies, but the first two movies did have a lot of elements that were groundbreaking for horror at the time - an older female lead/villain who was openly sexual, and BDSM (and sexuality in general) being used as a horror element. Unfortunately, those things were executed poorly in the films, with very little nuance. The whole concept is that the Cenobites tempt their victims with the full spectrum of pain and pleasure; Clive Barker intended there to be far more sensuality in the films, but the MPAA wouldn't allow it, and instead the film studio decided to just replace it with more obscene violence. I mean, damn, it's a horror movie about BDSM, and the MPAA wouldn't allow a scene with spanking to be included in it. Yet, they were fine with the countless scenes of human bodies being torn apart by hooked chains, so the films ultimately come across as cheap slasher flicks. There was no way for Barker to make much of an impactful or creative statement with the films, as much as he tried (when he was still involved with them.)

Despite all of that, Barker's unique take on horror still shines through in the first two films, and they are wonderfully strange films with great character design, fantastic special effects for the time (and budget,) and a lot of B-movie style charm. I re-watch the franchise most Halloween seasons, usually giving up somewhere in the middle of the franchise depending on my appetite for bad movies at the time.

It doesn't totally fit your original ask, since of course not everyone hates the films and some are considered cult classics. But I figured it fits well enough since the Hellraiser franchise is generally recognized as a joke, or at least it's seen as an over the top slasher franchise without much else of value to bring to the conversation. It is also one of the most obvious examples of a low-quality horror franchise that churned out absurd, direct-to-DVD films that have very little attachment to the original story. I believe there are more Hellraiser films that are just generic horror scripts with "Pinhead" shoehorned in, than there are Hellraiser films that were written to be about the Hellraiser story. And the bad films are really, really bad, some not even in a fun way.

The YouTube channel In Praise of Shadows has a fantastic breakdown of the strengths, flaws, and potential of the franchise. It's part of his series "Anatomy of a Franchise," where in each video he covers a different horror franchise. I cannot recommend his channel enough to people who are interested in films/horror/B-movies, how they are impacted/shaped by society and culture (and visa versa.)

Oscar
Not only have I met few fans of Oscar, I've met few who've heard of it. A 1991 comedy starring Sylvester Stallone as a Prohibition-era gangster going straight, and with Marisa Tomei, Ornella Muti, Vincent Spano, Chaz Palminteri, Peter Riegert, Tim Curry (among others) in his way. Critically panned, culturally unknown, but it's my all-time favorite movie.

So this made me pretty curious and I exported all of my IMDB ratings, filtered down to just movies and then separately filtered all films with an overall rating <6.5, and those with fewer than 5000 votes. Then in each list I looked for films I rated >7, ignoring documentaries. It came back with a few films that clearly I enjoy and nobody else does, and one that apparently "nobody else" has seen.

Films I love with fewer than 5000 votes:

• Shuffle - a low budget mystery/romance/thriller about a guy who wakes up every day in a different year of his life

Films I love with low IMDB ratings:

• Infinity Chamber - low budget sci fi thriller about a guy locked away inside a solitary cell in an entirely automated prison
• Monsters - a very reserved "monster movie" that uses an alien invasion as a backdrop, while being more of a character driven story of two people trying to travel safely through a no-go zone
• Mr. 3000 - An excellent sports underdog movie starring Bernie Mac (RIP)
• Johnny English - Rowan Atkinson's superb James Bond parody. Such a quotable film that I still throw out lines from it to this day

Congo (1995). Being based on another Michael Crichton book only a couple years after Jurassic Park came out I think this got an unfair amount of criticism. It's just good, cheesy 90s fun. And such an amazing cast! Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Joe Don Baker, also Joey Pants has an uncredited role, and of course the king himself Bruce Campbell... and you can tell they all had a blast making this. Its flaws are pretty obvious when I re-watch it but I still have a blast every time.

"STOP EATING MY SESAME CAKE."

End of Watch - I absolutely love that movie, it never disappoints. The bromance is fantastic.

Also I can never seem to get into any Wes Anderson movie, but the exception is Grand Budapest Hotel which I have probably watched 10+ times. The movie is perfect in every way.

Megaforce (1982). I'm willing to bet that the cocaine budget for this movie dwarfed the production budget, but six year old me didn't care. The movie was made, as far as I can tell, to sell HotWheels toys, and I had all of them. Weaponized dune buggies, motorcycles that flew, and frickin lasers man! Watching it now is an exercise in restraint and fortitude, but it always brings me a massive dose of nostalgia. So I deal.

Screamers (1995)

I haven't re watched it in a LONG time so I'm honestly not sure if I still like it. I do think about it a lot as an example of a short story turned into a movie as opposed to a book. IMO books rarely adapt well because of how much you need to cut.

Kyn Dza Dza

It's a soviet science fiction movie in which you, along with the two protagonists, have to learn just enough alien-speak to get by and hopefully back home. It's really funny, both in a slapsticky way and because it's clever. But it's pretty long, and most of the dialogue is in a made-up language, when it's not in Russian. Most of the folks I know are good with subtitles but for whatever reason can't do a long movie. The folks who aren't good with subtitles should steer far away.

What I enjoy is how committed it is to its premise. It begins pretty abruptly - two guys are on the street, a barefoot man approaches them, they touch a metal square, they're on an alien planet. From that point forward, they have to just figure shit out themselves, and you have to do it too. They meet folks along the way, and figure out what the hell they're saying and why they're doing what they're doing. The movie even takes time to show you a little glossary of terms about halfway through, keeping you up to speed. It isn't clear there even is a way home, but it's all they can do with themselves and the aliens already know how they'll treat a couple of outsiders (read: mostly beat them).

The entire movie is on Mosfilm's youtube channel, and there's plenty other stuff from that place and time there I've found really interesting. The environment for creatives was very different, and in some ways able to support projects that likely couldn't exist elsewhere. My understanding was moviemaking was at one point subsidized, on the condition of course the subject matter avoids a few particular things. Plenty folks ran with that. Tarkovsky is a director to check out if you want real serious-minded stuff. I was going to reply with Stalker originally but realized Kyn Dza Dza actually had a nicer overall impression.

Stalker is related to Roadside Picnic, and helped to inspire the video game. I got to it by way of that order backward - the game led to the book led to the movie. The movie is composed of long, slow shots to establish a really strong sense of place, and that place is somewhere people are not meant to be. I think that concept is the throughline of those works and the movie accomplishes it as well as the others, but if you're not like, really into how the film is shot or what the characters discuss, you're in for a real boring time.

Although beloved in the grand scheme of things, the Avatar movies are usually disliked in online forums. I like both.

In the opposite, I don't think The Batman is as good as people believe, and it is absurd to say it is better than The Dark Knight.

I firmly believe Magic Mike XXL is one of the best American films of the last decade. I haven't yet talked to someone who liked it, apart from my small circle of online friends I discuss films with, but even there there are a couple of dissenters.

I'll use my basic internet anonymity to finally admit that I found "Zoom" with Tim Allen rather likeable.

While certainly no masterpiece I did enjoy the twist on different super hero tropes and some of the "humanity" they gave characters..

Judging by the 4% on RT there might be dozens of us who like it..

Cats (2019)

I had a friend who is big into movies, and he watched it in theatres. He came back and got us interested and set expectations. We knew it wasn't going to make the most sense. So a group of us got together and went to the cheap theatre

For those on the fence, Cats is about gellical cars going to the gellical ball to decide the gellical choice, who gets to go to the heaviside layer. Do I know what a gellical cat is? No. Do I care? Also no. Do you want to watch a movie where Taylor Swift as a cat drugs a room full of people? If so, Cats is for you. Do you want Judy Dench to stare into your soul as she monologues about the difference between cats and dogs? If so, Cats is for you. If you are expecting a serious musical you will be disappointed. If you are expecting a nonsensical plot that barely makes sense being used to string together songs of cats introducing themselves, you may enjoy it.

One of my favorite comedies is Hot Tub Time Machine. I mostly wrote it off from the trailers, but I’ve now watched it countless times. Love all the 80s references. The running gag with the one-armed bellhop is great.

Shine

Watched this movie for the first time many decades ago in my high school music class, and since then have re-watched it a good dozen times. I am surprised not more people know about it.

Mister Beans Holiday. I remember the whole movie, I watched it so many times. I like these kinds of comedy movies and dont really understand why it has such bad ratings. It might be because nostalgia but I rewarched it like a year ago and I still liked it.

I don't think I'm the only one who enjoyed it, because it has good reviews overall, but for the longest time I thought Martyrs (2008) was only a movie worth it only for the shock value because that's what most people usually talk about, however I was greatly surprised and it's actually a great movie with a very interesting concept and I was SO hooked.

So if you have ever been put off by people saying it's "sickening" or whatever (sure it has some rough scenes but imho it's not that bad) and you are not very easily put off, do give it a try.

Another movie that usually got bad reviews but I loved when I was younger was Halloween III: Season of the Witch which is usually considered the black sheep of the franchise, but I though it was cool. I'm also a fan of Saw and Final Destination which for many people, except maybe a few entries, are considered cheesy, cheap and bad.

Ang Lee's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

I know off-hand it wasn't a big box office earner, double-checked the critical response and:

On website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 44% based on 158 reviews, with an average rating of 5.35/10.

And I don't really get it, I love that movie.

I think a lot of the attention it got on release went to the 120fps 3D 4K filming they did, mostly centring on the technical aspect of it. Lee followed it up with Gemini Man, utilizing (and marketing focusing on) the high fidelity aspect of it. Gemini Man probably makes a more natural fit for what you think a movie with absurd visual fidelity would entail -- a fast paced action movie. Billy Lynn is not that, its a war movie that centres mostly on these soldiers making their titular half-time walk, with little snippets of action from the Iraq War sprinkled in.

It's an anti-war movie, fundamentally, focused on the domestic aspect of a country at war. It's a parody of American thought towards the war and American society during the Iraq War, and I think it does an amazing job skewering it, while progressing through a character study of someone incidentally forced in to being a soldier.

The Blank Cheque podcast had a great episode on it (https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/9ibwbb/podback_mountcast_billy_lynns_long_halftime_walk/), with the hosts going out to see the full 120fps 3D 4K experience in a theatre. They did a better job of talking about the movie than I will, but come to the same conclusions: watching this thing in the highest fidelity possible brings this strange photoreal experience, going beyond watching a movie from a distance, and stepping in to being in intimate contact with the characters in the movie.

I think what did the movie in was a weird set of expectations set and marketing for it. It's a war movie, but its not really about the action. A lot of emphasis was put on the high fidelity aspect of its shooting, which is a huge positive for the movie, but not how most theatregoers would see it, and sets an expectation of it being more of a big epic action blockbuster. What it is when it comes down to it is a satirical book being adapted in to a movie, with the direct asides and eyewinks from the book left out. What you're left with is a character study of someone forced in to war, comes back a "hero", finds himself alienated by the society he comes from, and screwed over by people trying to use them for financial gain. I found it very touching, and left it a different person.

Robot Jox is a terrible 1989 dystopian futuristic film where the world issues are not settled by war, but rather by one on one combat with giant Gundamesque robots. Russia is the bad guy, the acting is terrible, tons of cliches, bad plot and shit effects, but I God damn love that movie. Almost no one I've ever talked to has heard about it.

Solarbabies is a 1986 film, also post apocalyptic dystopian future. The world has run out of water, there's apparently no parents and all kids live in a dessert prison like camp. They play a future variant of lacross against each other in gang like nomadic teams. Lucas Hass discovers an alien orb (think locnar rip off from heavy metal) and their quest to free themselves and restore the earth's water resolves in epic fashion... Everything about this movie is disjointed and priced together in editing but again I love this movie so much and no one knows about it.

I have digital copies of both is anyone really wants see, just message me.

Southland Tales. The director of Donnie Darko was given a blank check to make a dystopic thriller and ended up making a flawed and surreal comedy. Ensemble cast, soundtrack has some surprisingly wonderful choices. You're left wondering if so many of the choice lines are a put-on or for real. Explains a lot of the mid-2000's.

Me and my friend really like American Animals, its a heist story based on true events

Everyone we tried to show it too didnt like it