I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
As much as I love Denis Villeneuve, I still love David Lynch’s Dune more. Yes, the acting is spotty, and there were more than a few questionable changes to the plot, but I can’t get that art direction out of my mind. That being said, I haven’t seen part two yet.
I respect this opinion. I just read the original Dune a few years ago. I heard there was a new film coming, so in preparation I watched the Lynch extended cut. It wasn’t bad, in fact it followed the plot better than I expected, and the Gob Jabbar scene was amazing. The shields had such a cool effect too. But I didn’t totally love it. Maybe this cut was too long and stiff. I do kinda like Lynch in general, I’ve seen Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet and all of Twin Peaks. His Dune was overall good in his unique bizarre way. I’ll probably watch it again someday.
But then, the Villeneuve film. Damn, that one nailed it. The characters, set design, the sandworms, even the ornithopters looked almost exactly like I had imagined when reading the book. I’ve never had that happen, most films look so ‘wrong’ after a book. But IMO Denis nailed it, except the Gom Jabbar that Lynch already perfected. It was otherwise so true to the source material. Well ok, Frank Herbert’s novel had an excessive use of the word presently, so honestly, good riddance to that. Anyway, I can’t wait for part 2 of the new film and beyond! Guess I better pick up the other books though.
One of my favorite fourth wall breaks is in Trailer Park Boys when Bubbles randomly ends up on Jimmy Kimmel and then Snoop and Tom Arnold show up, and Tom Arnold’s a fan of the show and his mind is blown that he’s actually there.
One of my favourites is the episode of Supernatural where they cross some barrier and end up in “our world” where they’re just actors on a tv show, magic isn’t real, and Castiel is actually a needy beta who keeps wanting to hang out.
They knew that, by that stage of the show it was just shlock so they leaned into it.
The meta episodes of supernatural were some of the best of the later seasons.
Definitely unpopular. That season was easily the worst in the series specifically because of that part, in my opinion
Maybe a better way to put it is that of all the 4th wall breaks I’ve seen, it sucks the least. I generally hate 4th wall breaks, but this one was kinda fun.
The season did suck though, and definitely as a result of that exact thing. No disagreement there.
Nobody actually enjoys watching Citizen Kane. It’s the Wuthering Heights of the movie world: you get to feel pretentious and cultured for having checked it off your bucket list, but the actual experience was a total slog and you’re probably never going to re-watch/read it ever again.
Truth. Mostly its the first movie shown to media students because there is simple concepts and camera tricks there, and its always best to start with the basics.
This is probably true of Citizen Kane. However, this isn’t true of all the arty farty, black and white, older, or foreign stuff.
Some of those aren’t just ‘good for their time’, highly rated because they were/are innovative/interesting, or because people want to be pretentious. They’re still fucking good.
Eg. I watched Tokyo Story (1953) when I was in my early twenties. Tops critics lists. Seems like it’s just another pretentious movie. Black and white, boring, pondorous, gave up on it. Watched it a few years later when I had a bit more life experience. Hit me like a truck. Openly wept in the movie theatre.
Sometimes if you push through, you will be rewarded.
Generally agreed, but there’s a reason why I called it the “Wuthering Heights” and not, say, the “Pride and Prejudice” of movies.
I’m going to watch it twice now just to be that much better than most. Also I can say things like, “I personally enjoyed my second viewing much more than my first.”
I completely understand why people who watch Citizen Kane would find it boring. Compared to movies made in this day and age it is very boring. However, this movie was made in 1941 and was groundbreaking in many ways.
The cinematographer Greg Toland was a master who could have worked on any film he wanted. He chose to work with 25 year old first time director Orson Welles. He was tired of the Hollywood movie studio BS and saw that this kid wanted to do something revolutionary. Over 50% of the movie contains special effects most of which had never been done before. If you watch this movie next to any other movie of that era it is amazing how much different the style, camera angles, shots, etc are comparatively.
All of the American movies at the time (and this pretty much holds true even today) had someone who started with nothing and became successful or won against all odds etc. Citizen Kane flips this and takes one of the richest men in the world who starts out as the hero and turns him into the villain who ends up sad, bitter and alone. Again this is much different than other films of this era. I would argue that it is still much different to the vast majority of films today.
Charles Foster Kane is clearly supposed to be William Randolph Hearst who was the media mogul of the time. They made a movie about one of the most powerful people of that era and make him look like a sad douchey a–hole. The writer Mankiiewicz was someone who regularly attended the parties at Hearst Castle and many details in the movie are spot on about Hearst’s real life. Rosebud (Kane’s final word and the plot device for the film) is supposedly Hearst’s nickname for his wife’s private area. Hearst did everything he could to stop this movie from playing in the theaters and was pretty successful in ensuring it lost money at the box office. It wasn’t until about 10 years later when people in Europe started watching and appreciating the film that they decide to re-release it in the US. By this time Hearst was dead and there is no campaign against the movie. This is when it really gets wide recognition as a great film.
So basically a 25 year old upstart took on the most powerful media mogul of the day with a movie that had groundbreaking special effects, style, and story line. I can’t think of any film to this day that can compare to these accomplishments. Many of the worlds greatest film makers were inspired by this movie. It is for all these reasons why it is looked at as one of the best movies ever made and shown to all film students.
This is true for most “important films”. They were the first to do something well enough that the entire industry latched onto it, but their stories and presentation don’t stand well against the test of time. 2001 and Casablanca also fall into this.
I thought of this too. Is it because modern social media has destroyed my attention or it it because all movies just suck nowadays.
removed by mod
Most movies have always sucked. We remember the good and forget the trash, so the past seems better than it was. Social media and other forms of entertainment have changed things, but never underestimate survivorship bias and nostalgia.
The Dark Knight has fucking terrible editing and a lot of bad, hammy acting. The opening bank heist is just bad, with really on-the-nose dialogue delivered pretty badly…even William Fichtner seems like he’s trying a little too hard, and he’s an otherwise good actor.
I know the editing has been covered in some YouTube essay that made the rounds a number of years ago so maybe that’s not such an unpopular opinion, but it really sticks out to me like a sore thumb.
Before anyone gets totally mad at me, I still enjoy the overall story, a lot of the action, and I think both Ledger and Bale (dumb batman voice aside) are great. Also, Morgan Freeman, Michal Caine and whatshisname who plays Harvey Dent are also very good too.
My unpopular opinion, I don’t think Heath Ledger’s acting is particularly good in that film.
That’s fair
I actually fell asleep watching The Dark Knight in a movie theatre. They fucked up the pacing.
Another instance of this is the second Spider Man (the one with Doc Ock). It was so sluggish that I forgot there was a villain halfway through the movie. Then it cut to Ock doing something and I was like “Oh yeah, that guy still exists”.
Another unpopular opinion I have is that spider-man 2 is pretty good, but not on the level people seem to put it on. The train fight is good, the overall plot is decent, Alfred Molina is a good choice as Doc Ok, but the whole split personality thing came across to me as kind of cheesy. At least Willem Dafoe’s scenery chewing in the first movie was highly entertaining.
Aaron Eckhart
That’s the one
deleted by creator
The Mario movie was incredibly mediocre, despite its high production value. I’m talking MCU-levels of truckloads of money spent with shockingly little to show for it.
Huge Mario fan here, I unironically think the 90s movie is better.
I wasn’t even born when that movie came out so don’t “hur durr nostalgia” me
The story feels rushed and incoherent. Characters without character and chemistry. It’s a film in which every aspect of its production was solely determined by the amount of money that was put into it. If Jack Black can’t save a mediocre film…
You mean the 93 movie? I loved that!
This is the only Mario film
I’m still mad it basically kicked the DnD movie out of theaters. If it wasn’t for all the hype for Mario, I think the DnD movie would have done a lot better, but that’s partly their fault for choosing a terrible time to release a movie - a week or two before the biggest video game franchise of all time releases their movie.
I made it through 5 minutes before I stopped and deleted it. Most of the time I just close the player and plan on coming back to it when my mood is different, but with Mario I felt this visceral sensation of “nope.”
No regrets.
What expectations did you have going in?
I don’t follow advertising hype for anything because I generally despise advertising of all types, so I had no expectations for this movie. The only information I had about it beforehand was that Chris Pratt would be the voice of Mario instead of the longtime English voice actor.
One day not long ago, it was a trending torrent so I picked it up.
I guess I am very far from the target audience. Immediately the tone, pace of the editing, and the dialogue did not sit right with me. It felt like a worse version of Detective Pikachu, which I thought was average at best.
When I first read this comment, I thought you were talking about Super Mario Bros (1993) and was about to throw hands. Because that movie is actually good, if deeply flawed. Its flaws make for a more entertaining movie altogether.
John Leguizamo is a hidden gem of cinema so the OG Mario punches way above its weight class.
I finally watched it after hearing good things and wow, yep. Incredibly mediocre, cashing in on nostalgia.
I did enjoy the music, though, but probably mostly because of nostalgia and my love for NES/SNES Mario games.
Mediocre is too kind. The Mario movie was bad.
I took my kids. They kind of enjoyed it, but forgot about it almost immediately.
removed by mod
I can’t speak to its reception with film critics, but the word of mouth opinions I heard were very positive. It was also nominated for a number of Oscars.
I am NOT going to even consider watching the new Death Stranding movie when it’s out.
Just like Morbius, that movie is a “would rather ask my in-laws parenting advice than ever watch it”.I don’t like Hereditary. I tried to watch it 3 times but I just can’t get through it. I think the beginning is great but I dunno, I just didn’t like it. I do love Midsommar however.
I watched it, I didn’t liked it, there’s literally one scene that’s shocking, the rest is just boring.
I agree with both of you. I don’t understand the love for that movie. Another one I truly don’t understand the love for is The VVitch.
Interstellar is a bad movie. The story takes too long, the supposedly smart characters are acting obviously dumb, and the whole “we solved it all along because we figured out timetravel” trope is the most lazy way to wrap up a story.
Oh and of course the small artifically built space colony near Jupiter does not care for fitting many humans, but instead is a shitty american suburb with lavish lawns. Because who needs to safe people from other cultures amirite?
Wow, I’m surprised it took me so long to find this comment. Probably THE worst space movie and THE worst time travel movie. Even the Music video of Year 3000 was more believable than Interstellar.
Muuurph!
I definitely struggled suspending disbelief when they wasted all that time on the time-slowed tsunami planet when it was really obvious before they even landed that it was not going to work out. Definitely felt like they decided to check on the planet in person solely because the script writer thought it would be a cool astrophysics concept to show off. And like, it was definitely a neat planet, but it also definitely felt like smart people being inexplicably stupid.
I actually like the film. However what annoyed me about that part is this:
You’ve got a bunch of -mostly- super smart people. (Cooper not so much as he’s ‘only’ the pilot, but the others wouldn’t be there if they weren’t very clever).
And they also know and have talked about time dilation, and that every second down there is longer -about a day- than on Earth.
Yet they just gung ho it.They don’t really work out beforehand how long the person (miller, I think) would’ve been down there and what things would be like from their point of view.
No. It’s “uggg, signal. Follow signal. Most follow beep. Beep beep, hehe, beep”.And then they didn’t really have a plan for when they landed. They just landed and went out for a walk like it’s a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park.
On a planet with such excessive time dilation.And that’s not the worse part. No then, THEN, when shit hits the fan they send the robot (TARS, I think) to very speedily pick up the trapped person.
Now I’m no rocket scientist, but even I would want to know everything about that planet. The estimated time of how long miller (?) was there. And the quickest way to get the info needed, then get off asap.
They should’ve “Okay, time dilation is going to fuck us up. So we follow the signal. Land as close as poss. Send out the robot to pick up the person and info etc. Then gtfo of there sharpish. Agreed. Nice. Let’s do this.”
But nooooo, it’s… let’s half arse it. Go for a fucking walk. Fuck things up. Then, and only then, panic but then do things correctly.Nolan, wtf were you thinking?
There’s nothing great about Studio Ghibli movies, they have appreciable hand-drawn effort but that isn’t what makes a movie.
If you ever want to ruin Princess Mononoke, just think “what exactly does the main character guy do to advance the plot?” The answer: almost nothing haha
I don’t think that ruins it for me, rather the opposite. Ashitaka is a member of a tribe far away from the places in the movie. When he gets there he is just an observer to the war between industry and nature and wants to form his own opinion. He gets sucked into it and even if he did nothing the story would have continued almost the same, bar the ending where he then has made up his mind. I’d have to watch it again and spare more than a few minutes before sleepy time to write a better response, but those are my two cents
By this logic, Raiders of the Lost Arc, is pointless. Still a great movie, but Indy does nothing that changes the outcome.
I don’t know…I watched princess mononoke and was pretty impressed by the movie. Only other anime I’ve watched is ghost in the shell which I thought was alright. I’m not really an anime fan but I’m super glad I watched princess mononoke!
I think Mononoke was easily the weakest of Miyazaki’s movies but it’s the one everyone raves about because it was the first one to see a widespread and non-butchered release in the West on DVD.
The earlier Totoro, Kiki, and to a lesser extent Laputa are all better movies, in my opinion. The former two shine exceptionally by being charming slice-of-life vignettes from a time before that sort of thing was the mega genre it is today, managing to be captivating stories that somehow don’t need or contain any kind of villain, quest, or cliché call to adventure whatsoever.
Laputa does – in spades – but it’s still great. It’s got so many villains that it’s got two sets of bad guys, but one set of bad guys turn out not to be bad guys and basically the entire damn movie is a flying scene of some type or another and it’s fantastic. Castle of Cagliostro is also awesome, and it was arguably one of those pivotal Citzen Kane style moments for the medium that turned out to be surprisingly influential to subsequent works, both animated and not. (And also introduced an entire generation to the only version of Lupin who is not an huge asshole, much to the surprise of everyone who watched this movie first and went on to check out… any… other Lupin III works.) Cagliostro was so influential that Japan’s (former) Princess Sayako based her real life wedding dress off of Clarise’s dress from the movie, and said so.
Have you ever watched Alita: Battle Angel?
I mean some of them show their age a bit and ok some of them rehash ideas from preceding ones, but it’s hard to think of any Miyazaki movie that did nothing for me at all.
One of the most recent ones I watched was Whisper of the Heart. It can be summed up as “girl meets a cute guy, girl wants to be an author, writes about a cat in a parallel universe, finds an antique shop, random proposal at the end”, it was like watching a clipshow. I remember reading reviews for Totoro and them trying really hard to beat around the bush with “ah it doesn’t have a cohesive plot, buuuut…” and then the rest of the review, almost like they didn’t care because it was Studio Ghibli. I’ve seen movies panned for that (e.g. Alita Battle Angel or Spiderman 2).
-
Studio Ghibli today is a pale shadow of what it was in the 80s and 90s.
-
Most of the new stuff they did has been repeated over and over again to the point that they are no longer ‘new’ to a modern audience. Half of modern Japanese pop-culture, and a significant share of modern Chinese and Western pop culture borrow from their three early films (Cagliostro, Nausicaa and Laputa). Nausicaa is probably the single most influential animated movie in history.
-
To fully appreciate Totoro, you have to watch Grave of the Fireflies first.
-
That sounds tedious.
I loved Spirited Away but everything else Ghibli did just grates.
All of them? No. But there are so many great things in them you can’t just bury them away like Spirited away, your neighbour Totoro…
You don’t like them? I understand that totally, but they are masterpieces.
Like I just hate the Bolero and think Mosart is ‘meh’ I guess (toccata&fugue in D minor by Bach, now that rocks!).
I mean in general, not really all of them (for example, Spirited Away gets honorable mention on every list). I remember reviewers for Totoro trying their hardest to not spotlight the fact it has such a jumbled plot when movies have been panned for that before. A masterpiece is supposed to impart something onto someone, but except for Spirited Away and arguably Marnie, my main reaction was little more than “well now I can say I saw it”.
Grave of the fireflies left a deep impression with me. I recently saw a bunch of them with my girlfriend and I’ve come to the conclusion that most are nice looking long TV show episodes. Which is fine for what the are.
Right, outside, lets fight!
Those movies are amazing, maybe what you’re missing is that the age of the main character is the age of the target audience.
Being all their ages didn’t change a lot for me (not sure how normal that is amongst those age groups). Except for Totoro which I watched when I was four if I remember correctly, I was roughly a preteen to teen when I watched all of them (or all the ones I watched, which is all but three) up to The Boy and the Heron (which just came out, I’m an adult now) which would only put me out of range with Ponyo and Porco Rosso when I watched those. Most people have a good sense of feeling for a story that adds up. I was little when I watched Totoro and little me had to stop myself from getting distracted from the movie itself.
That “The Man from Earth (2007)” is the best movies there is. I recommend it to people all the time but no one seems to realise how profoundly interesting it is. And it doesn’t need any scenery or special effects. It’s literally just conversation and dramatic music, tuned to perfectly tell a story that touches on many philosophical questions. I just love that film.
Thank you! I caught that movie on TV years ago and never knew the name.
This is an incredible film! Forgot about it.
Way too many good movies to have a single best, but that one is one of my favorites certainly. If I recommend it to someone I avoid any spoiling of the twist because it was so great when it happened. It might be obvious before that point for some, it came from left field for me.
And while I heard the sequel wasn’t all that great, I felt that even if a sequel could be good it was totally unneeded. It’d be like trying to make a second Highlander movie, if one could even imagine that.
I’ve watched the film and it’s nothing more than okay. It’s reduced to the point of being bland. The good script can’t carry everything else that is mediocre at best.
Many a sequel is lost in Lake Laogai
I just watched it, solely from your comment.
I really enjoyed that movie! Thank you.
I agree, and i think everyone i know that has seen it does so too. You should check out the one where they hop into a tent to travel through time(primer 2004) , it has a similar ‘production value’ vs ‘delivering plot’ ratio!
Primer and The Man from Earth are two of my all time favorite films. Production value is nice and all, but an interesting idea explored well wins every time for me.
If you liked those two, I recommend Coherence. Low budget but great execution imo.
Blade runner 2049 was a boring slideshow of backdrops with the “bwaaa” music overlaying it and occasionally plot happened. What plot is that? I don’t fucking remember.
deleted by creator
Damn. This comment is more insulting than the first one.
Ill upvote you, because its an appropriatly unpopular opinion, but ill have you know I’m truly offended.
Painfully upvotes
Inception is one of the worst executions of an interesting idea. My imagination can imagine anything. Hollywood’s? Well I guess you imagined too hard so now there’s people with guns. Oh and this applies to everyone.
If you haven’t give the anime Paprika a watch. I don’t think its a smarter movie necessarily but it is great and I’m pretty sure a couple scenes from inception were basically pulled directly from paprika.
In theory I agree, but in practice? The amount of people having a hard time following the timelines of inception show that you really can’t make a more complex execution, the average viewer simply won’t get it. You have to simplify it to make it more digestible.
For comparison Dark is an exceptionally well done series that doesn’t hold back with the complexity. How many people can say they “got” Dark when watching it the first time around? I’m an attentive viewer and even I had wrap my head around it to really understand what had happened. My wife, who is not an attentive viewer, pretty much gave up after S2 because she simply lost the plot. Too many bits of information was thrown in her way and she couldn’t keep track of what was happening.
Personally, I give Nolan props for even trying to execute interesting ideas because the average high profile movie is pretty barren of interesting ideas. Would I like to see more interesting ideas with complex executions? Absolutely. Do I think it can be done? Considering who the target audience is, not really.
Most movies are incredibly dumb and boring.
Give us an example of one you do like!
Hmm, so I like movies that kinda play with your expectations and turn out to go into a completely different direction than you’d expect.
Dragon (2011) with Donnie Yen is a good example. You think you’re getting another Kung Fu flick, but it turns out to be more of a detective story of almost Sherlock Holmes-style complexity.
Yes there’s kung fu but it’s mostly esoteric and there’s only a few fights, but it’s still a fascinating movie.
