I’ll start: “Happy Death Day”
P.S. I love you.
When we were dating, my wife and I just went to the theater and picked a random movie and I left a blubbering fucking mess. We had to go directly to a bar to get a drink to take the edge off. We usually watch it once a year and it still destroys me.
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE!
Previews and premise made it look like it would be stupid, but that movie is pure gold. I’ve never been able to understand how such an entertaining movie had such a low rotten tomato score. So much great stuff is going on.
The Suicide Squad from 2021. The previous Suicide Squad movie was a disaster and you’re making ANOTHER ONE? That movie had no right to be as entertaining as it was.
Also The Batman. Comic book movie: check. Comic book character that has been done to death: check. Everything has to be grim and dark and realistic: check. When I say “everything has to be dark” I also mean the visuals: check. But it was fine, surprisingly.
Event Horizon. The trailers made it seem like just another 90s sci-fi horror flick trying to ride the Alien high, but it ended up being such a good movie with a tight script, beautiful set design, actually smart characters, and great acting.
Clue
Movie based on a board game? Blegh
But it’s awesome. Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Lesley Ann Warren
I also expected a disaster. I wasn’t prepared for how entertaining it was!
This is top 3 of all time for me. There is so much happening in every scene you can watch it multiple times and still catch little jokes or sight gags each viewing.
No matter how many times I see it I can never figure out if it was 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 or 1 + 2 + 1 + 1.
I thought Dude, Where’s My Car? was very entertaining - maybe not a cinematic masterpiece, but way better than the 9 out of 10 reviews I read that all said it was the worst movie they had ever seen. I’m not exaggerating - they didn’t just say it was bad, I remember nine of the ten literally called it “the worst movie I’ve ever seen.”
And then?
I used to love that movie, went to try and rewatch it recently and was hit with a blast of early 2000’s casual transphobia. Couldn’t keep watching after, it put a really sour taste in my mouth.
Teknolust (2002)
CW: y2k aesthetic, Tilda Swinton in multiple roles.
Do not read wikipedia’s synopsis of it first unless you want to spoil it. you can find it here on archive.org.
The Jumanji sequels. You are going to take a cult classic and “revive” it by changing the premise to be a video game? Stupid. But, it was much better than it should have been.
Idk, I thought the idea of the game changing itself to appeal to more people as time went on was a really cool idea.
That didn’t bother me at all, I just assumed the video game was a more recent release of the original board game, with the same weird properties.
The second one is more generic, but I agree with the first one
Tremors
Looks like a B movie, cheesy horror flick.
It’s got a great cast with supurb acting. The script is easily one of the tightest ever written. Every line is important to the overall story. And it’s just fun to watch.
There’s also Tremors 2: Aftershocks.
Plus there’s Tremors 3: Back to Perfection.
Followed by Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.
Then Tremors 5: Bloodlines.
Don’t forget Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell.
One might think Tremors: Shrieker Island, AKA Tremors 7: Island Furry (I spelled that wrong on purpose, it has nothing to do with furries) would be enough for Michael Gross to quit his acting career but how else was he going to pay for his ludicrous railroad memorabilia obsession and also the railroad he owns and the ‘safety first when crossing railroad tracks’ campaign?
So no, it didn’t end there. They kept the franchise going, choo! choo! with the imaginatively titled television series, Tremors: The Series.
If you skip the credits, you can watch all of it in less than 24 hours.
The first sequel is so so, but the others that are all centered around Burt Gummer are plenty of silly fun too.
Osmosis Jones.
A half-and-half cartoon and live action film with Chris Rock as the titular character from the late-90s/early-00s. The movie was a flop, but I think it had more to do with lousy marketing. It was actually pretty good and a fun way to look at how things affect the human body.
David Hyde Pierce as the enormous Pill was a great choice, and Bill Murray was hilarious.
I love this movie!
And Laurence Fishburne as Thrax. He was pretty horrifying when he would let loose and make people explode.
It was fantastic. The spin-off show was good too
Battleship.
Yeah, the movie based off the board(?) game.
Feel free to fire up the torches and start handing out the pitchforks, because I’m not playing by the rules.
It doesn’t just look like it will suck, it looks like a ‘so bad it is bad’ type of movie, an overbudgeted ‘this is what is wrong with movies these days’ sort of unmitigated hot wet trash from a dumpster fire in the bad part of town.
It isn’t well written.
It isn’t well acted.
I honestly can’t even promise a good time.
These are the thoughts that went through my mind when I read about it before watching: “This is going to be awful and a waste of my time. These actor names kinda look familiar but I don’t know who any of these people are. Is Rihanna her first name or last name? Isn’t she just a singer. It better not have that stupid umbrella song. Wait, Liam Neeson is in this? Is he doing okay? Did he lose a bet? Does he need money? I bet that evil Jar’jar forced him to to do this. Wait, running time over 2 hours?! How is that even… the board never took more than like 15 minutes… except cheaters moving their… fuck me, I already need a drink.”
Go into the movie with that mindset. Be angry at it before it starts.
I enjoyed it with a mindset of “This is an unofficial Crysis 1 (PC Game) movie adaption without the power-suit”.
I actually thought adding the alien element probably saved it from being a boring movie about ship combat.
I actually liked Rhianna in that film
First movie that comes to mind is the Power Rangers movie starring Bryan Cranston from like 7 or 8 years ago. Went fully expecting another Transformers-esque butchering of a nostalgic trip. Was delightfully surprised by the deep and relatable characters. I recommend it as an above-average super hero movie.
I actually loved this one, although the product placement was off the wall
the product placement was off the wall
And on the wall. And some of the walls themselves are ads. Also the rubble remains of some of the walls are also still product placement.
But yes, it’s a pretty good film.
Originally, Pirates of the Caribbean. A movie made because of a Disney ride seemed like a stupid idea.
I just think of it as a live action Monkey Island.
The first one was fairly clever in that they had probably 50 years of collective ideas and inspiration to work off of. It’s a story that needed to push no boundaries and hold to established tropes, with no expectations because it was a ride: perfect for Disney.
Now when Disney gets their hands on an established franchise full of expectations…
The first one was my obsession when it came out in dvd
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is always a good mention.
It’s a fun and very accessible movie.
I may be biased, as an RPG nerd, but man, they hit all the notes so damn well. That was such a good movie.
I thought it might be a stupid movie to hate watch but I enjoyed it. The bread crumb trail quest line type of movie scratched the itch for me.
I never played d&d or any games of that style, and probably missed out on a bunch of the catered moments, but I still enjoyed it very much
It’s very much worth watching the older dnd movies just to see how amazingly bad they were(i still like the first one they did but acknowledge how bad it is)
Which is precisely the problem: I am not, and not only was I mildly bored, I also found the narrative to be just plain incoherent. It was obvious to me the story was driven by some Reference Guide on RPG stuff, and not on captivating an audience.
I guess it hit every nail on the head. That’s all it hit, actually.
I sometimes like to pride myself on my ability to take a different viewpoint, but today it’s absolutely failing me, lol. I really thought this was a movie everyone could at least enjoy.
I guess it hit every nail on the head. That’s all it hit, actually.
That’s a fascinating statement. Could you elaborate a bit?
Yeah, the entire story follows the major beats of a group of people playing DND. Everything that happens would be familiar to a player. Your party always gets captured and thrown in a prison from where you must escape. Dungeon Masters (the people running the game) will frequently introduce an overpowered “helper” NPC to move the party along in the right direction, but that character won’t engage in the fights. Parties will find several puzzles that the DM has spent hours creating, only for the party to use some magic or tool in a creative way to bypass the entire puzzle.
To someone expecting standard fantasy storytelling, it’s jarring and weird. The anachronistic language, the character decisions that don’t make sense, the magic artifacts that seem to just happen to be exactly what the party needs in the moment, it’s all stuff that would happen around a table in someone’s basement. It helps to think of each character as a regular person you know today playing a game where they make all the decisions for the character. Convenient contrivances or frustrating failures are the DM having fun with the story. Sometimes the dice rolls 20 and you do something miraculous, and sometimes you roll a 1, trip over a pebble and stab yourself in the face.
You don’t have to be a dnd player to enjoy the movie, but you do need to understand the lens through which you’re watching it. Otherwise, the tone and pacing seem really strange.
It had a lot of heart and you could almost “feel” the good/bad dice rolls happening.
The Paladin had me in stitches
Good call! Wife and I watched that one on a whim, thinking it would be a good “bad” movie to watch while having a few drinks and were pleasantly surprised!
You probably need be at least familiar with RPG/fantasy tropes to fully enjoy it, but it definitely felt like it came from a place of love and self-awareness, rather than the cynical cash-grab I was expecting.
There are so many movies I could list but for now I’ll go with About Time (2013). Everything about it makes it seem like it would be a dumb sappy romcom but it manages to hit hard.
EDIT: This is the type of image they used to market the film, which is really misleading.
I’ve only ever watched it once, but this movie will haunt my mind until the day I die. Fucking amazing movie.
This is my favorite movie. It’s the best that was ever written about mindfulness.
This was a great one.
