Good movies with bad ratings
August 10, 2019 9:40 AM Subscribe

Some movies are just good, others so bad they’re good. But what about the movies which are genuinely good with terrible ratings? Those movies that were panned by critics and loved by audiences or loved just by you – let’s celebrate them.

xkcd's Unpopular Positive Opinion Challenge: Name a movie that…

you genuinely like (not “so bad it’s good”),
came out it your adult life post-2000, and
is rated below 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.

More good movies with poor reviews:

posted by Margalo Epps (246 comments total) 43 users marked this as a favorite

I really like the Guy Ritchie-directed film "Revolver" from 2005, but it was slated when it came out, it has 16% on RT.
posted by mokey at 9:50 AM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I tried to view movies rated below 50% on Rotten Tomatoes and was unable to do so without a ridiculous amount of scrolling.
posted by Sand at 9:50 AM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm not ashamed to say Alien v Predator, the first onewith Sanaa Lathan. A b-movie but better than it needed to bein every respect. stpd broke keboard.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:57 AM on August 10, 2019 [16 favorites]

I'm curious as to what movie has the largest difference between Tomatometer score and Audience Score. I'd figure it out, but it appears that Rotten Tomatoes discourages idle curiosity: "Please note that at this time we no longer support unauthorized use of our data (e.g. unofficial projects, non-user facing data integrations)."
posted by donpardo at 9:57 AM on August 10, 2019 [7 favorites]

I love the hell out of Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which barely squeaks in on two counts, being from 2001, and having 49% on rotten tomatoes.
posted by aubilenon at 10:01 AM on August 10, 2019 [13 favorites]

With the possible exception of Robin Hood, which I haven't seen since I was a child, all of those 18 rotten movies are indeed rotten. Some (Boondock Saints, Hook, Fear and Loathing...) are among the worst movies I've seen in my life.
posted by dobbs at 10:03 AM on August 10, 2019 [11 favorites]

Hook is a great pick on the Screenrant list. Such a heartfelt movie. I can't believe it got panned.
posted by Popular Ethics at 10:05 AM on August 10, 2019 [12 favorites]

Now I have to fight dobbs I guess
posted by Popular Ethics at 10:05 AM on August 10, 2019 [38 favorites]

The list of ten is wrong in every particular, excepting Madagascar, which I haven't seen. The list of 18, I've seen 8 and would likely rate Oblivion as above 50%, albeit not great, it's serviceable, at. Least worth a 60%. Boondock saints had a sort of world internal logic that worked at the time but I suspect it may not have aged well.
posted by biffa at 10:06 AM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

My pick would be Jupiter Ascending. That's a world I can believe in!
posted by haemanu at 10:08 AM on August 10, 2019 [29 favorites]

For years I’ve been a huge fan of Adam Sandler’s ”The Waterboy”. I would hesitate to include it here, fearing it would fall under “so bad it’s good”. Just a couple weeks ago though I was on a long flight and having trouble finding any current movie selections that caught my interest. “The Waterboy” was one of the options so I thought it would at least pass the time. I’m sure my seatmates were wondering who the lunatic sitting next to them was dressed up in professional clothing doubled over real life LOLing with abandon.

I’m middle age now, and it still cracked me up. It’s not just funny, parts of it I would argue are genuinely clever. Yeah, the premise and situations are silly, but you can tell that a lot of thought went into making it as funny as possible and it worked for me and obviously the majority of users (much higher user rating than critic rating on RT).
posted by The Gooch at 10:09 AM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist by Paul Schrader is an excellent movie with a paltry 30% Rotten Tomatoes score.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:10 AM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's pre-2000, but I've always had a soft spot for The Blood of Heroes (13% on RT). Rutger Hauer is always great.
posted by DowBits at 10:11 AM on August 10, 2019 [7 favorites]

Easy: Bamboozled, followed by Tideland.

Arguably the best films these fantastic directors have made. Almost universally hated by critics and (at least in theaters) audiences.
posted by eotvos at 10:11 AM on August 10, 2019 [12 favorites]

southland tales. i keep meaning to rewatch it. i suspect that its zany over the top parody of the bush years will seem like straightforward reportage here in the age of trump and qanon.

basically like it might be true that the future is more futuristic than scientists have anticipated.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 10:13 AM on August 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

Most of these (Screenrant list) movies fall into a span of time where film critics were moving through a slow transition from is this a great film in the classical sense of script, cinematography, acting, etc. to does this movie do what this sort of movie is supposed to do well as a basis for reviewing.

A lot of the films on the Screenrant list fall into a category (for me) of movies that aren't great, but are good at doing what they're supposed to. Nobody's going to say Home Alone lives up to Citizen Kane standards of filmmaking, but it's a great slapstick comedy for kids. Boondock Saints is just awful by every reasonable measure but really accomplishes its goal of being a dumb action movie where boneheads shoot things and crack wise. Etc.
posted by Shepherd at 10:13 AM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

It's an interesting exercise to see what falls through the cracks, because some good movies certainly do.

But what I'm getting out of this exercise is that I can really save myself a great deal of time by never seeing anything with a RT rating below 50%, because virtually all of those films are garbage.

Even the ones I like are heavily flawed enough that I wouldn't want to volunteer as their advocate.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:13 AM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

I'm curious as to what movie has the largest difference between Tomatometer score and Audience Score.--donpardo

Don't know the largest difference, but here are a few (critic/audience):
Venom 29%/81%
Warcraft 27%/77%
Bright 26%/84%
posted by eye of newt at 10:14 AM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

their list-generating mechanism will inevitably be highy corelated with"horror-ish movies i like"

supernova with weird muscley spader
ghosts of mars
jason x
resident evil

stopping looking now
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:14 AM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

I didn't know Disney's Robin Hood had such bad reviews. I like that movie a lot! But I also love Roger Miller, and his soundtrack is definitely a factor in my appreciation of that movie.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:16 AM on August 10, 2019 [18 favorites]

I really don't get the hate for Fear and Loathing. It's not perfect, but it's genuinely true to the source (in spirit, at least) and a hell of an entertaining and very well made film. It's far better than the vast majority of movies who attempt similar things.
posted by eotvos at 10:17 AM on August 10, 2019 [26 favorites]

The right answer is Jennifer's Body (2009, 44% on RT, gee).
posted by bigendian at 10:18 AM on August 10, 2019 [30 favorites]

Semi-related: the best gift I have given to myself movie-wise over the last year is: I no longer pause bad movies. If I'm watching a movie that hasn't been good, and I pop up to go to the kitchen for a sec or take a call, I just let it play.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:19 AM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

My wife and I thought The Strangers was pretty good, but the hour or so I saw of Jim Carrey's Grinch movie was an actively unpleasant experience. Even my very young niece said the Grinch looked "gross." I thought it was pretty universally despised.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:19 AM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Hot Rod. I love it. It’s so good-natured and dumb. I was confused and delighted the first time I watched the “Cool Beans” scene. It’s a mid-90’s Sandler movie without the hostility.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 10:25 AM on August 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

Mine is The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), at 38% on the tomatometer.

Sure, it doesn't have the relatable characters of the first The Fast and the Furious, nor the tight action sequences of Fast Five, but in my mind Tokyo Drift is the purest expression of the original Fast & Furious premise: The only people in the world are street racers, and the only way to accomplish anything is through street racing.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:26 AM on August 10, 2019 [31 favorites]

I also came here to say Southland Tales. Two of the music numbers alone are worth the price of admission for me -- the one with Justin Timberlake as a traumatized vet hallucinating naughty nurses as he lipsyncs to The Killers, and the one where Rebekah del Rio heralds the apocalypse with the most ominous Star-Spangled Banner I've ever heard. The movie is a crazy, uneven, brilliant mess, and I love it.
posted by ourobouros at 10:26 AM on August 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

The summary judgement for Fear and Loathing is "Visually creative, but also aimless, repetitive, and devoid of character development." which is a pretty accurate but also why I love it. I mean Hunter Thompson was not really someone you read for a straightline narrative or redemptive character arcs and if they'd tried to wedge those into the movie, it would have ruined it.
posted by octothorpe at 10:27 AM on August 10, 2019 [21 favorites]

(Entire Fast & Furious franchise on Rotten Tomatoes, for comparison.)
posted by mbrubeck at 10:27 AM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm curious as to what movie has the largest difference between Tomatometer score and Audience Score.--donpardo

Found a Guardian article that lists the most extreme Tomatometer splits. I'm not sure the list is useful since most of these are little known with few critic reviews.
Here's the top two:

Rad 0%/91% (BMX bike movie)
Fall 0%/84%
posted by eye of newt at 10:28 AM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I think Jackass (49%) is a work of genius. As is Jackass #2. #3 drops off quite a ways but still has its moments.

I think the Jackass franchise is one giant absurdist masterpiece.

At the time they were yet another sign that The World Is Going to Hell in a Handbasket. Wrong! It was going to hell in a giant shopping cart.
posted by argybarg at 10:32 AM on August 10, 2019 [13 favorites]

We've been discussing this on Slackfilter, but my nomination for the ultimate disaster movie is Roland Emmerich's 2012, with John Cusack, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, among others. It's everything great about disaster flicks, turned up to 11.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:34 AM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

I only saw one movie in theaters the winter of 2010.

It was Tron: Legacy.

I saw it three times. It is so good, you guys. It has a kick-ass daft punk soundtrack! It has Michael Sheen! It has Olivia Wilde! It has Jeff Bridges! Twice! There's hacking and gaming and rogue AIs and sweet cyber-motorcycles and sweet real motorcycles and Bruce Boxleitner and dogfights and why doesn't anyone else love this movie as much as I do
posted by phooky at 10:36 AM on August 10, 2019 [44 favorites]

John Carter (2012) at 52% on RT just barely doesn't qualify. However, it occupies a space very similar to The Mummy (from the second link which doesn't quite qualify either). It's a better than competent popcorn SF film, with the benefit of some really good secondary performances by ~~Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony~~ Ciarán Hinds and James Purefoy. But then at our house Flash Gordon (1980) also gets a lot of repeat views, mostly for similarly great performances by Blessed and Sydow and the soundtrack, ofc.

Seeing The Fall in the mid 50s on RT is incomprehensible to me. It's a masterpiece, not a popcorn movie. I can see low culture films here easily; this is largely their purpose, to be mocked by critical review but appeal broadly, but The Fall is not that kind of film. It's an amazing piece of visual film.
posted by bonehead at 10:41 AM on August 10, 2019 [32 favorites]

My problem with Tokyo Drift is that it clearly should have been named “Three Fast Three Furious”. My brother used to work at Paramount as a script reader and swears up and down that the original script for this film was the best thing he read in his tenure.
posted by q*ben at 10:41 AM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

D.E.B.S. (2004, 39% on Rotten Tomatoes.) IT IS SO GOOD.
posted by kyrademon at 10:42 AM on August 10, 2019 [18 favorites]

My favorite "bad" movies are definitely National Treasure (at 46%) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (at 36%). I love those movies so much. They are so dumb, but so much fun. I'm also a trained archaeologist with extensive experience in archival research, including many dozens of hours at the National Archives. It is so much fun to see the Archives (and the Library of Congress, and so on) in those movies, even if I'm also yelling at the screen about how an archivist, of all fucking people, should know not to handle a document that way. But seriously, if I'm having a bad day, I can put either one of those movies on and my day will be a little less awful. My god, I think I'm going to go watch one of them, again, right now.

Fun fact, every so often when I've been doing research at the National Archives, I've witnessed someone come in and ask to speak to an archivist about their incredible conspiracy theory find regarding one of the Founding Fathers. I don't know how often that happened before the National Treasure movies came out, but I can't imagine they helped.

While it falls into the "so bad it's good" category, one thing I genuinely love about the Dungeons and Dragons movie from 2000 is seeing how much fun Jeremy Irons is having. Seriously, that's my go-to for watching an actor go to town chewing on the scenery and clearly loving every second of it. (Another one is Masters of the Universe -- Frank Langella played Skeletor because his kids loved He-Man, and he's clearly having a blast doing it.)
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:43 AM on August 10, 2019 [33 favorites]

Blade 2 is rated Rotten but not under 50% but I'm still gonna pick it. Saw it three times opening weekend and many times since.

Mods delete me if you must.
posted by Reyturner at 10:44 AM on August 10, 2019 [7 favorites]

Southland Tales is definitely...memorable.

There are political intrigues, time-space-continuum-rips, revolutionary counter-forces, echoes of 9/11, and it ends when SPOILER ALERT two Seann William Scotts hold magic hands and cause their ice cream truck to rise into the sky where a kid in a doo rag can shoot a missile launcher at a Zeppelin.

This is accurate. I wouldn't go so far as to say I *liked* it outside of a couple of scenes (including the aforementioned Justin Timberlake musical number) or that it was a *good* movie, but it's definitely not boring.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:44 AM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

It was Tron: Legacy.

I wish there was an audio option to watch with just the Daft Punk music and no dialogue.
posted by octothorpe at 10:46 AM on August 10, 2019 [14 favorites]

I'm actually going to go so far as to say that the National Treasure movies aren't just my favorite bad movies, they are actually among my favorite movies, period. They make no sense if you give them even the tiniest bit of thought, but I don't care. I just love them.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:50 AM on August 10, 2019 [7 favorites]

Someone else loved Tideland?

Dare I test the waters with Super Mario Brothers?
posted by Alex404 at 10:51 AM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

I can't believe lousy critics DUNKED on BASEketball
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:57 AM on August 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

One of my favorite movies is No Strings Attached. (I actually think of as one of those Friends With Benefits movies and had to go to the shelf to check which one it was I liked best.) It's rated 49%, while it's not quite as enjoyable counterpart got 68%. And it is just so funny and does the beats of romcom so well and the characters and their motivations are so plausible. I don't necessarily ask for that in a romcom, but it is a nice extra.

I've actually noticed for romcoms that the sweet spot for good ones (that are still romcoms) is 60-70%. 80% and above are invariably not actually romcoms anymore, but thoughtful dramas or too quirky films that happen to have a character pairing in the background. Reviewers either don't understand what a romcom is or just dislike it as a genre but review it anyways.
posted by Margalo Epps at 10:57 AM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Boondock Saints is an *awful* movie sober. Watching it after 4 pints or so with friends, particularly if you live in Boston and are staying in on St Patrick's Day because what kind of idiot would go out on St Patrick's Day, is what's responsible for that 91% audience rating.
posted by xthlc at 10:58 AM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Rad 0%/91% (BMX bike movie)

Rad is one of my favorite movies from my childhood. It isn't like, "great", but it is a ball of '80s fun with a great soundtrack. I mean there's a BMX dance off, how can you not love it?

For years it failed to make the jump from VHS to digital, and it was my totally stupid white whale movie. Thankfully it aired in HD on a station in Canada at some point, and ended up available via various means.
posted by tocts at 11:01 AM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

Surely the only reason nobody has mentioned Speed Racer yet is that you all assumed that it must surely have scored higher than 40% on RT. Because who could give a bad review to the best Wachowskis movie?

(I will never forgive the critics who discouraged me from seeing this movie in the theater when it came out.)
posted by straight at 11:06 AM on August 10, 2019 [22 favorites]

You get a lot of this kinda stuff if you hang around film festivals - movies that are trying something maybe unusual that works pretty well as an experiment but left some other parts of the craft by the wayside to try it. If you really respond to the thing that sets them apart, you might find your favorite oddball movie that way, but nobody tasked with any kind of "objective" criticism would be responsible to recommend it. I watched The Strongest Man at a festival and liked it a lot a lot for example. It had an infectious kind of love for its characters and an interesting visual style, but it was also kinda hinky and inconsistent. Sort of a "What if Napoleon Dynamite was actually sincere" kind of thing.

I also really liked Winter Passing and Don't Come Knocking. Moody character dramas about trying to fit in with the world, bordering on comedy but not really. Maybe critics were just a bit tired of that act after Garden State opened the twee floodgates in the 2000s? I donno. I really like that kinda thing.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 11:09 AM on August 10, 2019

On the topic of Boondock Saints, I would highly recommend the documentary Overnight. It's about Troy Duffy, the director, as he tries to get the sequel made. It is astounding to see how much of an utter piece of shit he is. A+
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:11 AM on August 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

I promised myself I wouldn't use this space to talk about goofy sci-fi movies that I love, but straight is right. There isn't a moment of Speed Racer that fails to be fun and inventive. It got done dirty.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 11:12 AM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I truly feel ashamed to mention it, but I don’t hate “Elizabethtown” (29% RT) manic pixie dream girl burdened as it may be.
posted by thivaia at 11:14 AM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Another vote for the National Treasure movies. They are indeed National Treasures. My only problem is apparently never getting to know what's on page 47.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:16 AM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Yeah, dance movies. I love dance movies. They don't usually get critical love. Step Up has 20% on Rotten Tomatoes and Step Up 2 The Streets has 27%. I have watched them both multiple times. Of course their audience scores are in the 70s and 80s. Because talented dancers, doing what they do, is just entertaining as hell.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 11:21 AM on August 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

Quintet: 22%
Breakfast of Champions: 26%
Sweet Movie: 45%

Plus many mentioned above.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 11:29 AM on August 10, 2019

Often female-directed films (Jennifer's Body, Waitress -- Rotten Tomatoes is saying Waitress is at 90%, but I remember when the film came out and the reviews were kind of bad!) are better than their initial reception. Female-led comedies (recently the Spy Who Dumped Me, or The Heat which squeaks through with a 64% but is very funny and deserves better) are similarly undervalued.

I've always loved Constantine and thought its reception suffered from a weird combination of a) being a legit bad character adaptation of a specifically beloved comic character b) Keanu Reeves post-Matrix nadir c) genre movies being unpopular at the time. It's a compulsively watchable movie (featuring Tilda Swinton in one of her glorious psycho David Bowie roles) that is kinda racist, but also I still enjoy it.
posted by grandiloquiet at 11:30 AM on August 10, 2019 [24 favorites]

Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is at 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. I subject my future friends (and enemies) to it if they haven’t seen it. 😀
posted by Roentgen at 11:30 AM on August 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

The Fall is one of my favorite movies, and The Mummy and Ghosts of Mars are tons of fun. Horror/Fantasy/SF/genre films (other than "hard" SF stuff like The Martian) often get no respect from mainstream reviewers (still!), in my experience.

Outlander (2009) movie is a lot of fun. Space Alien + Vikings vs. Alien monster, with a bit of Beowulf on the side.
posted by gudrun at 11:35 AM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

One of my recent favorite movies (I saw it a month ago) is Alexander Payne's Downsizing (48% c / 22% a). I was shocked to learn of it's poor reviews. It is so funny, and constantly surprising.
posted by Jonathan Harford at 11:39 AM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

Someone pointed this thread out to me last week, I did find it harder than I thought it would be to find one, but ended up with Drop Dead Gorgeous, which truly was a prescient movie.
posted by jeremias at 11:47 AM on August 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

I kind of miss the pre-internet phenomenon of not knowing that critics and other viewers hated a movie that you loved.

Like, it was just a few weeks ago that I learned that Labyrinth wasn't the smash hit I always assumed it was, because damn, how could anyone not love Labyrinth? I mean, it's Labyrinth, for Pete's sake!

And I don't know anyone who unironically loves The Rocky Horror Picture Show as much as I do. I don't love it as "so bad it's good" or because I enjoy talking back to it or making fun of it with 500 other people or throwing things at the screen. I love it because I think it's legitimately awesome both as a work of art, a loving tribute to B-scifi, and a work of social commentary.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:49 AM on August 10, 2019 [22 favorites]

Not they they're bad films but seeing the relative acclaim for The Martian or Interstellar or even Contact get for pedestrian SF outings compared to say District 9 has always been a bit baffling to me. Sure production and acting means a lot, but a dull, conservative plot is still a dull conservative cliche. A dead centre means even the best technical work seems lifeless. All three of those have been done, time and again in SFlit, and many times better. Sort of the flip-side of the post's list: mediocre movies that get unaccountably good reviews. But then, I thought Avatar was crap too, so what do I know.

At least we got a reasonable outing in Arrival, even if they chickened out on the title. I'm still waiting for an actually thoughtful and original first-contact Butler or Meville adaptation though.
posted by bonehead at 11:51 AM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

> I love it because I think it's legitimately awesome both as a work of art, a loving tribute to B-scifi, and a work of social commentary.

well and also it's not exactly my thing but "don't dream it, be it" is such a huge touchstone for a lot of people in my circle. it did some serious good in the world. seeing it is kind of like being taken to a really good service at Queer Church.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 11:56 AM on August 10, 2019 [7 favorites]

Camp is art.
posted by bonehead at 11:58 AM on August 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

I saw Tron: Legacy in 3d in an IMAX with my partner*; we were both as comprehensively blitzed on acid as it's possible to be while still vaguely capable of navigating to the cinema and back. The visuals and music were stupendously amazing and I didn't stop grinning at any point and I was mostly able to avoid noticing the awful clunky dialogue and dubious sexual politics and I never want to see it again because it's just never going to be anywhere near as good.

I can't work out whether this counts as "genuinely likes".

* Partner says: "Any time they tried to have a plot, I just admired all the sparkly bits until they stopped". Sparkly bits may or may not actually have been in film.
posted by doop at 12:00 PM on August 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

I mean, it's not just parody or sentimentality. It contains it's own virtue.
posted by bonehead at 12:00 PM on August 10, 2019

why doesn't anyone else love this movie as much as I do

I am with you, to the point that I intend to go through that movie frame by frame at some point to fully enumerate the obscure niche nerdery shoutouts therein.
posted by mhoye at 12:04 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

My go to answer was going to be The Art of War with Wesley Snipes, Donald Sutherland and Anne Archer. It's a political action movie, what if the UN has spies and assassins! But done well for what it is and pretty tight all things considered. I watched it again and while I don't think holds up is the right phrase to use, it's still fun and enjoyable!

That was before I knew national treasure was panned. How the hell can you not like that film? It never even occurred to me that it would be an option.
posted by Carillon at 12:20 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

> I never want to see it again because it's just never going to be anywhere near as good.

A couple of my university housemates did shrooms, went to see Batman Forever and came back talking about the evening like it was some sort of religious experience. I'd seen it sober and could only conclude that those must have been some quality shrooms.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:23 PM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

Freddy Got Fingered is the obvious (and obviously correct) answer, coming in at an impressive 11%.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 12:28 PM on August 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

My go-to for this is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; so deliciously cheesy that it feels like everyone in it was in on the joke except for Kevin Costner. Especially Alan Rickman who's doing a straight-up pantomime performance.

Sadly fails on both the post-2000 and the below-50% tests; 1991, 51%.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:29 PM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

I really love The Lion King that just came out. Just beautiful and the movie for me is every bit as powerful as the original. Seeing it again this weekend. Critics be damned.
posted by pushing paper and bottoming chairs at 12:47 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

freddy got fingered is almost too easy to name, but i don’t feel comfortable naming it because (as the late lamented roger ebert observed) it’s impossible to tell whether it is idiotic (90% chance) or a buñuel-esque masterpiece (10%). I remember really enjoying it back in the day, but also back in the day i was really into esoteric edgelord shit (see, for example, all the uncomfortably hitlerphilic art house shit that crispin glover made after he got super rich off of bttf and then tried to kick david letterman in the head).

re: southland tales, watching that musical routine with justin timberlake over and over again is one of the ways i got through a particularly dark period in my life. a few observations:

note how they got justin timberlake, esteemed singer and dancer, right at the height of his popularity... and then they give him a musical routine where he pointedly neither sings nor dances. right at the end he does this little shimmy that alllmost turns into dancing, but then he’s like “fuck all y’all if you want to see that go watch another movie,” and then messily slams more budweiser into his face
note how although you’d expect this sort of thing to be a drugged-out stoner comedy, the primary alterant of choice — even for the people who shoot up the movie’s sci-fi heroin equivalent — is shitty american beer. all these scenes with people baptizing themselves in budweiser and then stumbling drunk through the apocalypse. and note that no one can drink without drenching themselves. my favorite is the one where the rock is stumbling around venice beach (i think) holding an entirely opened six-pack of... bud lite, was it? and every so often pouring it over himself, with only the tiniest splash actually getting in his mouth.
it’s been too long since i’ve seen it — maybe i’ll watch it again? dibs on the fp post about it, though i’ll retract my dibs if i haven’t gotten around to it in a week. and so but anyway zooming out from the timberlake scene a bit, the stumbling-drunk beer-blind aesthetic gets at the spirit of our times. it really was a prescient movie — humans playing with all this tripped-out superscience and high-tech power generation and surveillance technology, but also because we’re barely sentient we can’t do anything with it but messily and hilariously kill ourselves.
way back in 200x they were willing to postulate neo-marxists as playing a meaningful (if terroristic) role in american politics. folx i feel so seen by this movie.

i have heard that there is a director’s cut (shown at sundance and then promptly buried) that’s like 90 minutes longer and features an entirely new subplot featuring janeane garafalo, who in the release version only appears briefly as an extra in the crowd on the airship during the end of the world party. does anyone know if that ever leaked? because i legit would give a toe to see it.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 12:49 PM on August 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

also all the talk about jennifer’s body and the wachowski films might give us a strategy for finding movies that are excellent but that get terrible reviews: look for movies that were panned because of america’s misogyny, and especially because of america’s transmisogyny. it’s so delightful watching the wachowskis over time going from doing boy stuff with a hint of transfemininity to it to showing us full-on candy-colored dress-go-spinny transfemme glory.

did you know that in the original script for the matrix the character switch — what a name! — presented as male while outside the matrix? because she did!
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 12:55 PM on August 10, 2019 [25 favorites]

seeing the relative acclaim for The Martian or Interstellar or even Contact get for pedestrian SF outings compared to say District 9 has always been a bit baffling to me

the first three are pleasant tales with conflict but not really villains but District 9 is, while good, pretty darn unpleasat
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:56 PM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Teegeeack AV Club Secretary: As for The Martian, it's not especially memorable.

That's because they cast Matt Damon as Mark Watney instead of casting Richard Ayoade as they clearly should have.
posted by tzikeh at 12:58 PM on August 10, 2019 [28 favorites]

Second time I've commented on this film this week. And a definite winner. The 13th Warrior takes in Antonio Banderas as a (real life) ambassador from Arabia to the Vikings, cannibalism, the origins of Beowulf, city defence, politicking and learning a whole language just by listening, plus lots of sword fighting. All directed by the man who gave us Die Hard. Written by the man who gave us Jurassic Park. Starring the man who was in that thing which Antonio Banderas starred in. Rated a measly 33% by the know nothing critics, 65% by audiences. It's a cracker! I've just persuaded my SO to watch it right now!
posted by biffa at 1:12 PM on August 10, 2019 [24 favorites]

I love Tron and Tron: Legacy. I searched the internets in vein for a deep dive into the metaphysics of those movies. (If you’re in the computer where are you exactly? Are you you you? How do you know?)
posted by device55 at 1:18 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

The answer is Reign of Fire.
posted by schoolgirl report at 1:19 PM on August 10, 2019 [28 favorites]

But it's nice to have the quiet, peaceful side of SF too. Something we don't get very often, which is probably one reason for the critics reaction.

I agree, I just don't any of those films are actually good stories. There are thousands of better quiet and thoughtful SF pieces with carefully drawn characters that actually make good thinkpieces. Le Guin and Chiang have made it to big screens, but they're in the minority, a film or two every decade. It is a shame to me that there is a whole body of literature seemingly can't get made into film. Who wouldn't want to China Mountain Zheng or Metropolitan adapted for a movie?
posted by bonehead at 1:22 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

> "Often female-directed films ... are better than their initial reception. Female-led comedies ... are similarly undervalued."

Huh. Is that why the beloved-to-me female-directed, female-led comedy D.E.B.S. has, as I mentioned above, a 39%?

And if so, where can I register a complaint and/or burn down everything?
posted by kyrademon at 1:22 PM on August 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

Reign of Fire its a work of genius. Screw the McConnaissance, this is the high point for McConaughey, and probably Bale, certainly Butler.
posted by biffa at 1:26 PM on August 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

schoolgirl report: The answer is Reign of Fire.

YES IT FUCKING IS!

OMG that movie takes place in 2020, as in NEXT YEAR.

We need to have a FanFare liveblog watching party....
posted by tzikeh at 1:26 PM on August 10, 2019 [15 favorites]

Reign of Fire is another one I just found out wasn't loved by everybody as much as by me. Come on, society!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:31 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

That's because they cast Matt Damon as Mark Watney instead of casting Richard Ayoade as they clearly should have.

A sudden vision of a world where the potatoes are not the most interesting characters in The Martian.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:32 PM on August 10, 2019 [25 favorites]

I'm usually with XKCD on things, but I didn't even need to get out of this year to look up like 5 locks and 5 more maybes.
posted by French Fry at 1:42 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Jupiter Ascending and The Village. Also here for Tron: Legacy, and I can't believe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) has such a low score.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:49 PM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Northfork (56%) just squeaks above the 50 and these days comes with a pretty hefty tw; James Woods, but c'mon - it's got Darryl Hannah and Anthony Edwards acting their faces off in a desolate dreamscape while Nick Nolte gets to be a priest possibly caring for dying angels.

It cannot get better (unless you edited JW out, I guess)
posted by scruss at 1:50 PM on August 10, 2019

who’s gonna defend the 1993 super mario bros.? i’ll do it if i have to but i only sorta liked it and i wanna let someone else take a shot at singing its praises.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 1:52 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Oh, that's a fantastically fun and weird movie.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:54 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Hell yes Reign of Fire!
posted by biscotti at 1:54 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Dude, Where’s My Car? (17% Tomatometer, 47% audience) does everything it sets out to do, posits a mystery that is solved by the characters without hand-waving or deus ex machina, and (amazingly) passes the Bechdel test. If you just don’t like Seann William Scott or Ashton Kutcher, fine, but the movie works.
posted by Etrigan at 1:55 PM on August 10, 2019 [19 favorites]

Tango & Cash is so fucking perfect as the final buddy cop movie of the era. It has two top stars at their prime and Jack Palance literally cooing “tango... and cash....” while he runs rats through a maze in his god damn villain lair.

Also soundtrack A+.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 1:55 PM on August 10, 2019 [13 favorites]

Mouse Hunt! Starts out with a coffin being dropped and the body shooting into the air and down through a manhole, and continues along like a kids' movie directed by the Coen Brothers from there.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:57 PM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Surely the only reason nobody has mentioned Speed Racer yet is that you all assumed that it must surely have scored higher than 40% on RT.

No. It's legitimately awful.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 2:04 PM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

speed racer is brilliant i will fite you

also cloud atlas

and jupiter ascending isn’t my bag but i will not abide anyone saying a single bad thing about it.

the wachowskis are so pure and good
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:11 PM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

I love Rocky Horror too, but it doesn't belong in the discussion— its Rotten Tomatoes scores are 80%/85%.

As for bad movies I liked... one would be Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which is visually amazing and pretty true to the source material. The title character is annoying, but eh, so was Ruby Rhod. But you may have to love French comics to be able to enjoy it with the sound on.
posted by zompist at 2:20 PM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is at 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. I subject my future friends (and enemies) to it if they haven’t seen it. 😀

Same. I love Kung Pow. I have learned from experience that basically no one agrees with me, but I think it's hilariously original.
posted by makoi at 2:23 PM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

Happy to see my Reign of Fire peeps in here. Second the 2020 watch party idea!
posted by snwod at 2:24 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

I quite liked Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control, which Rotten Tomatoes audiences and critics agree is 43% of the movie it should have been.
posted by oulipian at 2:26 PM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

I also came here to say Southland Tales.

I got to see a rare 35mm print of Southland Tales at a local repertory theater the week after Trump got elected. It was amazingly therapeutic for me. They even had Richard Kelly there for a Q&A session. I got to meet him & I asked, "Did you realize you were making a documentary of the future?" And he explained that he made the film after being depressed that George W. Bush got re-elected.
posted by jonp72 at 2:27 PM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

I thought the Wolfgang Peterson/Brad Pitt Troy was a solid old-school type of epic. I liked it.
posted by zardoz at 2:29 PM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

1997, but since I will cheerfully spend three years haranguing you about why you should love The Postman (9%?? O you charlatan scriveners; you brickbat-tossing yahoos), I say it qualifies.

I'm serious: I've been singing its praises since back when the the collapse of the US into fascist chaos amidst a worldwide ecological disaster was considered to be the kind of dystopian sci-fi scenario only a Kevin Costner would think to make a film about.
posted by Zeinab Badawi's Twenty Hotels at 2:31 PM on August 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

I will never not love “Blade: Trinity” (2004), which gets a 25%/59%. It’s batshit insane, and also has a kickass woman lead. And Ryan Reynolds is damn good in it.
posted by holborne at 2:32 PM on August 10, 2019 [7 favorites]

> As for bad movies I liked... one would be Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

that movie was a hot mess but the existence of the scene with the giant hat and the giant lemons and the brainpan-remover completely justifies the whole thing.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:33 PM on August 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

The right answer is Jennifer's Body (2009, 44% on RT, gee).

Came here to post this.

It's a genuinely good movie and I really like it and the critics were stupid and probably misogynistic.
posted by Justinian at 2:39 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

seeing the relative acclaim for The Martian or Interstellar or even Contact get for pedestrian SF outings compared to say District 9 has always been a bit baffling to me

I don't understand what you mean. On the Tomatometer, the Martain and District 9 are virtually tied (91/90) while Contact is a distant 63. Critics were much more favorable to District 9 than to Contact, and liked the Martian equally well. Top Critics: If you look at the Top Critics' score, a little more light opens up between the Martian and D9 (91/85) but Contact falls even further to a dismal 43. There is no sense in which Contact more more highly acclaimed than D9, and it's barely true of the Martian.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:46 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Clifford, in which an adult Martin Short plays a tyrannical, evil tween attempting to exploit his uncle Charles Grodin into taking him to a dinosaur theme park. Ebert panned it with extreme disgust but it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever watched.
posted by sallybrown at 2:51 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

At this point I'm not sure "actually, Jennifer's Body is quite good" counts as an unpopular opinion. I think that's becoming the consensus view, critics from 2009 be damned.
posted by Justinian at 2:52 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

This clip from Blank Check has an amazing description of Speed Racer.
posted by kmz at 3:05 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Speed Racer is a masterpiece. It is wildly inventive, not at all heavy or serious, and succeeds in being exactly the kind of movie it is trying to be. I don't know. Maybe its haters were hoping for a gritty, realistic, grimdark racing movie, and not the confectionary delight with ninjas and themed racing teams that they got.

As for movies not mentioned yet, Hardware is better than its 50% RT score. Early 90s goth/industrial sci-fi? Yes, please.

Also, Cabin Boy.
posted by surlyben at 3:05 PM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

I can't think of any.
posted by PHINC at 3:08 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

This is so, so easy for me: What Just Happened, which is pretty much reviled by everyone, except I love it because it is the truest representation of life in Hollywood as I have personally experienced it. I keep hoping that someday it'll be reassessed by, basically, everyone.
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:17 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Based on the above discussion I am typing the following movie names to reinforce them in my memory when I sit down and turn on Netflix:

Southland Tales
Reign of Fire

Okay, adding:

What Just Happened
posted by hypnogogue at 3:18 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor”. I honestly can’t recall a grimmer or more unpleasant movie, but it’s “better” than 34%. You may not “like” it, but that doesn’t make it a bad movie. On the contrary it’s searingly ugly look at an unconscionably ugly world. It’s the only film I can recall that does justice to the kind of violence regularly reported out of Mexico involving the drug cartels shipping into the USA.
posted by hwestiii at 3:25 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Wait how has this whole thread gone by with no Malibu's Most Wanted? Just 31% on Rotten Tomatoes for a startingly deep exploration of the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves and the people we're trying to become by pretending to be.
posted by escabeche at 3:36 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I’m sure this is just me, and I apologize in advance.

Leaving Normal

Growing up with emotionally unavailable parents, a movie where the protagonists are making their own family and home with strangers hits very close to home for me.
posted by shorstenbach at 3:45 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I might have mentioned this before, but I honestly like Adam Sandler's movies. I think that we kind of went through similar life stages together, so his comedies changed in the same way my life was changing and it has been oddly comforting to me.

Of course he is fabulously wealthy and I am... not, but the films still kind of resonate with me in a weird way.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:46 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

The Prophecy: Murderous Archangel Gabriel is the role Christopher Walken was born to play.

The Cell: Decent plot, stunning visuals reminiscent of The Brothers Quay.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:55 PM on August 10, 2019 [13 favorites]

The Sweetest Thing (2002) clocks in at a piping 26% fresh. Dear Reader, I liked it.
posted by Beardman at 4:01 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I have a great memory of seeing Tron: Legacy on Christmas Eve with some friends and I'm reluctant to see it again just because I enjoyed the viewing experience so very much. We had Tron on a bootleg videotape that came along with a very early, top-loading VHS player and basically wore the video out.

My go-to for this is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; so deliciously cheesy that it feels like everyone in it was in on the joke except for Kevin Costner. Especially Alan Rickman who's doing a straight-up pantomime performance.

Alan Rickman's performance is downright brilliant and you feel like he is having an absolutely brilliant time.

My go-to is America's Sweethearts.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 4:03 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Here for Speed Racer. The first ten minutes are a masterclass in modern digital editing, and the rest of it is just a delight. Also, when I tell people the way to think of Speed Racer is that it is taking place within The Matrix, you can see the top of their head pop right off (metaphorically).
posted by jscalzi at 4:05 PM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

I unironically enjoy Death to Smoochy. 42% on RT, and I would not make a case for it rating higher than that. But it’s still great.
posted by Paragon at 4:06 PM on August 10, 2019 [14 favorites]

I'm the only person I know who liked the 2019 Dark Phoenix with Sophie Turner (23% on rotten tomatoes, rife with reshoots and production problems, pointless to many, subject matter that has been retread a zillion times, etc) movie, an opinion that I have been too embarrassed to share anywhere until this thread. I thought the performances were pretty good, I liked Magneto's crust punk hideout, and the final scene was dope.
posted by moons in june at 4:14 PM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

Another vote for Drop Dead Gorgeous (though it's 1999, technically juust out-of-bounds), which I think is still a singular, completely unexpected, side-splittingly funny and spot-on satire. I somehow managed to see that in the theater* and remember being utterly confused as to why my friend and I were the only ones laughing our asses off in a mostly silent (but full) theater.

*(same summer as The Matrix, which now that I look it up, included some pretty great movies along with these two: Election, The Thirteenth Floor, Existenz, The Mummy, Notting Hill, South Park, The Blair Witch Project, Eyes Wide Shut, The Sixth Sense, The Iron Giant, Bowfinger, The 13th Warrior (mentioned above)....most of the attention was taken by a few on that list, plus Star Wars E1. Wow, typing out that list makes me realize what a dead zone the multiplex has really become.....)
posted by LooseFilter at 4:19 PM on August 10, 2019 [7 favorites]

a warning to all the people about to watch southland tales: despite all the utterly deranged stuff that happens in it, the movie has this slow sleepy drifting hallucinatory feel that can sort of hypnotize you. it is not at all zany, despite the flying ice cream truck and the time traveling dwayne johnson and jon lovitz as a racist cop. the music you hear at the end of the “i got soul but i’m not a soldier” scene washes over the whole movie and might put you to sleep. it is action-packed, but doesn’t feel action-packed.

it will overpopulate your senses and your brain may shut down midway through and then refuse to accept any more of it. but it’s also maybe the best representation of 21^st century los angeles that i’ve ever seen.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:19 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm curious as to what movie has the largest difference between Tomatometer score and Audience Score.
Head in the Clouds, with Charlize Theron, has a large difference. Super long WW2 melodrama in UK, France, and Spain. Could have practically been a tv series. And I've seen it about 10 times.
posted by Harry Caul at 4:37 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

oh also southland tales starts with this completely bonkers data dump that only sorta matters to the plot. you don't have to remember it to enjoy the movie. it's not really there to catch you up on how the world of the movie works, it's just there to disorient you.

basically the movie gets you completely disoriented right from the start and then spends like three hours keeping you disoriented.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:47 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist by Paul Schrader is an excellent movie with a paltry 30% Rotten Tomatoes score.

I'm not sure I'd call it excellent, but at least it had ambitions. People may be confusing it with the dreadful Exorcist: The Beginning from Renny Harlin, which is the exact same movie strained through the filmmaking instincts of the guy who made The Adventures of Ford Fairlane . I mean literally the same movie: the studio paid Schrader for his recasting of the Exorcist story to its psychological horror roots (which it actually had in additoin to the spinning heads and the pea soup), looked at the movie which inexplicably lacked 22-year-old-girls taking their shirts off, and gave to to Harlin to reshoot the movie*. He could not get all of the cast back so he had to recast some roles and watching the two versions back-to-back is faintly surreal, as you will see a scene with the same character on the same location in the same wardrobe saying the same dialogue but it is now a different actor. After it flopped, Warner Bros. said, "What the hell, let's release the Schrader version as well." Harlin's version has 10% on RT, by the way.

*I confess I saw it only once a decade ago, so I cannot actually recall if there are topless performances. I have seen Renny Harlin movies though.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:51 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

One of my recent favorite movies (I saw it a month ago) is Alexander Payne's Downsizing

What?! NO!

What?!

This movie is unequivocally garbage. I am stunned to see it at even 48%. Absolute garbage.
posted by dobbs at 4:52 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I also enjoyed the hell out of Death to Smoochy, and don't completely get what other people's problem with it was.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:56 PM on August 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

I thought the Wolfgang Peterson/Brad Pitt Troy was a solid old-school type of epic. I liked it.

Likewise. I find it lackadaisical and a little underwhelming for the cast it has, but I do not understand the hatred for it. I will state unequivocally that it has the best opening for a battle epic: after we hear a voiceover by Odysseus (Sean Bean) with the self-consciously mythic:

Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?

... we see Agamemnon (Brian Cox) and I think Triopas (Julian Glover) meet at the heads of their respective armies for any last-minute negotiations before battle is joined. Agamemnon surveys the battlefield and the tens of thousands of massed CGI troops and wearily says:

Good day for the crows.

It started out as a very promising deconstruction of sword-and-sandal epics, although ended up playing it pretty straight-faced.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:02 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

> After a voiceover by Odysseus (Sean Bean) with the self-consciously mythic...

wait how is sean bean odysseus? do they rewrite the iliad so that odysseus dies? because it's not a real sean bean role if he doesn't die.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 5:04 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I really like all of the Resident Evil movies. Yes, all of them. Not claiming they are good, just that I like them. Also adding my plus 1 to Constantine, Speed Racer, The Prophesy, Reign of Fire, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:41 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

But then, I also liked the ending of LOST, so what do I know?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:43 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I looked through my candidates on my Criticker list. None of them are perfect but I can recommend each with some reservations. There are a fair number of my favorites that come close to dropping below 50% (for example S1m0ne is quite underrated) but the first winner is The Ice Harvest. It's a feel-good Christmas classic! Or at least one of those things. The film opens with rain instead of a white Christmas; it captures that feeling when you're hoping for a nice Christmas but have a pessimistic side that's not surprised when things go south.
posted by Monochrome at 5:44 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Remember the RottenTomato score (and their user score) is not like a percentage grade. It's merely the percentage of positive reviews. So a movie could get all lukewarm reviews and still get a 100% on the tomatometer.

Metacritic attempts to provide a grade type score.
posted by srboisvert at 5:48 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

I was at the IHOP in Harvard Square eavesdropping on some kids who had just seen Speed Racer. One of them said “it was like watching jellybeans have sex.” This was over a decade ago and I still haven’t forgotten it.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:52 PM on August 10, 2019 [11 favorites]

They’re right that Boondock Saints is not a bad film.

It’s a terrible film.
posted by maxsparber at 6:29 PM on August 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

I also immediately thought of Southland Tales. I put it in my odd subgenre of movies that are full of ungainly details that put you off - I'd put I Heart Huckabees in there, and probably Shock Treatment (the post-Rocky Horror Richard O'Brien film) and many others I can't think of at the moment. Almost accidentally Brechtian.

Tideland is an extraordinary film that I'm very glad I don't have to watch again.

There was a time when a TV channel was showing a Matrix movie every Friday night in rotation for weeks, and I found that after a few repetitions I was enjoying the two that everybody hates a lot more than the one people like.

I enjoyed The Lone Ranger a lot, and, in fact, enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean movies much more after I saw it. What they have in common is that they are movies about the stories that people tell about those periods rather than movies set in the periods, it's just that The Lone Ranger is explicit about it. I mean, I understand the problems that people have with it, but if it's on TV I'll watch it and enjoy it.

I quite enjoyed the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. To me everything that isn't the radio series is a cover version, anyway, and it was diverting and fun. Admittedly, the ideal casting for Arthur and Ford (at that time) would have been David Mitchell and Robert Webb, but I can't see a studio going for that.

That said, for a long time (such that I've typed it in this box many times before), I've not really had much use for the concepts of Good and Bad. Meaning isn't inherent in the text, it's present in the act of reading, and each act of reading is personal to the individual reader - hence, although responses may conform to a bell curve (as do so many other human things) and you might have the appearance of a consensus, I don't see any less value in a response that diverges from the norm.

There are also loads of well-loved movies that I stop watching after fifteen minutes or so because they really don't push my buttons (and others I should have stopped watching, because sitting through them just made me resent them, and that's probably not fair on the movie).
posted by Grangousier at 6:31 PM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

I really like The Libertine, in which Johnny Depp plays the poet Jon Wilmott, Earl of Rochester. The movie gets a 33% on RT but has some great scenes and performances and overall the sets are great. Yes, the movie has problems, mainly that its plot arc lacks a bit of payoff, and that's fair enough. The movie tries a little too hard to *make a point* without landing a plausible punch. The critics are right about that. But if that's ignored and the movie is seen as more of a slice-of-life kind of film, I think it works pretty well!

I also really like Shutter Island, which doesn't qualify for this contest as it gets a 67% rating. But I'd argue that that number doesn't seem to reflect the reviews linked to on the site itself, which are nearly all rotten green splats. Even the ripe reviews when you read them don't seem to give the film much credit. I think it's not a great film but very cleverly done and a fun ride.
posted by Philemon at 6:33 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm glad to see SOUTHLAND TALES emerge as one of the recurring titles in the thread.

Much of the reason SOUTHLAND TALES plays so much better to audiences today than it did in 2007 is that while the film was structured as a satire of the schism of the political left versus the right (and still works beautifully on that level), much of the plot hinges on a disruptive wildcard character who was a little too weird for audiences.

This character was really far out for 2007. Here was a megalomanic alternative energy baron who had filled LA with electric vehicles charged via wireless emanations, who creates advertisements that literally feature those cars having sex, and who tops off the film with the triumphant maiden flight of his wireless-electric MegaZeppelin. Oh, and he's a neo-Marxist. At the screening I attended, even having being hypnotized by the film, there was still a feeling of "what am I even watching here??"

Twelve years later, we all can think of a certain megalomanic alternative energy vehicle manufacturer who roughly fits the profile. Richard Kelly shot SOUTHLAND TALES in 2005, long before Tesla released its first car. I truly don't know how he got something like this as right as he did, and it's weirdly thrilling to see a satirical target come into focus as life seemingly imitates art. At the time of the film's release, I would never have bet that there would be a celebrity in the public imagination who would fit the general profile of Kelly's oddball Baron, but there it is.

There are other examples of this kind of prescience in the film that allows it to play differently today - like with the casting of Dwayne Johnson as one of the focal characters. In SOUTHLAND TALES, a major plot point is that Johnson's character is a blackmail target since he's one of Hollywood's biggest, most high-profile stars. In 2007, in his first film not billed as The Rock, he still wasn't quite considered a mainstream A-lister, and the notion required some suspension of disbelief. Watching it today, he's now one with the role, and the absurdist scenario in which he's blackmailed - which involves a ridealong with a racist cop - plays like a modern headline.

It gets really disturbing at times. One of the characters in the film is a porn star trying to break into the mainstream pop world with her single Teen Horniness is Not a Crime. In the context of the film this is played as a sort of low-brow goof, a tepid sex joke. But if you listen carefully to the lyrics - especially if you listen to the whole song on the soundtrack album - it's very clear, in a shockingly blunt way, that the track is about trying to prevent mass shootings by young incel men - something that wasn't really much of a topic in 2007 (even with Columbine, which is directly referenced in the lyrics) but is now on the minds of many.

Don't get me wrong. Even as the world becomes more like SOUTHLAND TALES every day, there's still plenty of heady, imaginative sci-fi weirdness and curiously hilarious satire within the film that keeps it far, far away from being a documentary (and still a little "too much" for many people's tastes). But the world has changed in ways that make it so much easier to identify the concerns that Richard Kelly had, about elections, surveillance, war, sex in popular culture, reality TV, political strife and alternative energy.

While it's been a long road of defending the film, I'm thankfully not the only one who thinks it plays better these days. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's worth a chance, free from the notion of it being a flop.
posted by eschatfische at 6:36 PM on August 10, 2019 [12 favorites]

I did a search for Day After Tomorrow, which is the best disaster movie ever (44% on RT). Philistines. I'm surrounded by philistines.
posted by Hactar at 6:40 PM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

"Dude, Where’s My Car? (17% Tomatometer, 47% audience) does everything it sets out to do..."

I like this movie because it plays like someone made a movie out of a c-grade interactive fiction game. A beautiful string of increasingly surreal macguffins, linked by dialog that very deeply believes that repetition repetition repetition is the soul of comedy.

I remember having a great time seeing Tron Legacy, but always had hear about whether it's actually good, or just the major motion picture about open source software that the world desperately needed.
posted by kaibutsu at 6:57 PM on August 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

I wanted to also mention a few other post-2000 films that I love which scored under 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. All of these have a unique, deliberate style but were given pans by both audiences and critics who weren't on the film's distinctive wavelength; they're all fairly intense and uncompromising, albeit in different ways. There should be a different way of classifying movies that are not to everybody's taste, but which are innovative, well-produced, and certainly not bad.

THE RULES OF ATTRACTION (2002): In order to appreciate this film, you have to know going in that this is a companion piece to AMERICAN PSYCHO, the protagonist literally being Patrick Bateman's college-age brother. 2002 audiences didn't - it was marketed as a teen comedy, and it's way too dark and intense for that. But unlike other Bret Easton Ellis adaptations, director Roger Avary is not only able to savage the misplaced bourgeois privilege of its characters, he also understands the outsize emotions and, at times, the humanity at the fringes of all of the bad behavior.

DETENTION (2012): This is music video director Joseph Kahn's frenetic, highly-meta exploration of teen horror films. This is a satire with a lot of angry bite, filled with visual brio, plot twists, oddball jokes and vitriol. There's so much going on so quickly and with such intensity that it's easy to feel unmoored and disconnected, but if you like meta-comedies and can manage to hang on, there's a lot of payoff.

THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS (2014): a sensuous fever-dream of impeccably-composed Italian horror motifs, razor-sharp editing and crisp sound design. While the film is a triumph of design and a joy for the senses, it got low ratings from those expecting a more linear, less evocative narrative or who weren't fully up to speed on certain genre tropes.

HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES (2018): This one got saddled with a terrible, terrible title (taken from the original Neil Gaiman story) that in no way prepares the audience for the kind of anarchic, pan-sexual weirdness contained within. No, this is an ignored tour de force by HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH's John Cameron Mitchell, with a unique sweetness, sexiness and musicality.

At the end of the day, don't trust the critical consensus. There are unique pleasures to be had in films that were brilliant but too much for the mainstream audience.
posted by eschatfische at 7:22 PM on August 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES (2018): This one got saddled with a terrible, terrible title (taken from the original Neil Gaiman story) that in no way prepares the audience for the kind of anarchic, pan-sexual weirdness contained within. No, this is an ignored tour de force by HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH's John Cameron Mitchell, with a unique sweetness, sexiness and musicality.

Oh! I loved this one! Rules of Attraction, too!

So many movies I wanna rewatch.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:40 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Ghostbusters (2016) is "certified fresh" at 76% critic support, but 50% audience score ... because of fragile white men.

But it's a fantastic movie. It's not perfect, but then the original Ghostbusters has problems, too.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:51 PM on August 10, 2019 [15 favorites]

anyone in this thread who said downsizing or ghostbusters 2016 should be ahsamed of themselves
posted by Bwentman at 8:28 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

ghostbusters 2016 is also beautiful and pure. if you didn't cry when they all kicked ass at the end you have no soul.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 8:39 PM on August 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

Reign of Fire (2002), with a 40% score based on 164 reviews.
The Cave (2005), with an 11% rotten score.
Apollo 18 (2011), with a 24% rotten score based on 72 reviews.
Knights of Badassdom (2013), with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 62% -- that's with 8 positive and 5 negative reviews. I'd say that counts.

Hocus Pocus (1993) is comedy gold. Bette Midler sings! So does Sarah Jessica Parker! Kathy Najimy is glorious! Who are these people with the 33% score... oh, only 49 reviews.
posted by TrishaU at 8:52 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Nobody I know admits to liking Beetlejuice, one of the best films of all time.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:02 PM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

Really? I'll take Michael Keeton in Beetlejuice over anything else he has ever done.
posted by TrishaU at 9:24 PM on August 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Johnny Wallflower: Nobody I know admits to liking Beetlejuice, one of the best films of all time.

I do! Me! I admit it! I love Beetlejuice!
posted by tzikeh at 9:26 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Continental Divide. FIne work from Belushi.
posted by thelonius at 9:35 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I’ve sung Speed Racer’s praises before. Everybody should rewatch that movie. I honestly believe it is one of the best movies ever.
posted by gucci mane at 9:41 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Nobody I know admits to liking Beetlejuice, one of the best films of all time.

Then you know terrible people. Terrible, awful people. Terrible, awful people with less taste than the back of a postage stamp.

(Then again, I, myself, am strange and unusual...)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:54 PM on August 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

POOTIE TANG (2001) is 27% on the tomato website, so there’s one.
posted by chrchr at 9:56 PM on August 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

Oh man, I love Beetlejuice. It was my favorite movie for a while when I was a kid. I watched it again somewhat recently on the plane, and I still loved it. Who doesn't like Beetlejuice? I mean, really.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:04 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I’ve gone on record here how Fast and Furious 3 is the pinnacle of the franchise, and the beating, drifting heart of the most perfect subgenre of all: films set in Japan, written and directed by people who have clearly never been to Japan before production began in earnest (see also: The Hunted, Black Rain, and to some extent The Wolverine, but not Lost in Translation , because fuck that soulless piece of garbage about utterly self centered assholes that just happened to be set in Tokyo).

That said, buh? Fear and Loathing is bad? According to? It’s a pretty damn fine adaptation of the book, and I don’t know what more one needs.

Reign of Fire is wonderful. Thirteenth Warrior is the movie I try to convince other people to see, just so I have other people I can share it’s utterly bad ass quotes with.

Oblivion, though, is a terrible garbage movie that makes no internal sense whatsoever, but has one visually cool idea in the Gun Katas that was utterly wasted by how dumb the movie was.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:14 PM on August 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Gun Katas are Equilibrium, not Oblivion.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:17 PM on August 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

I really like The Libertine, in which Johnny Depp plays the poet Jon Wilmott, Earl of Rochester.

I saw it only once, in its initial release, and I hardly recall it now. I do want to see it again, as it has a bunch of actors whom I barely knew at the time and really like now (Rosamund Pike! Tom Hollander! Johnny Vegas!). Of course, I have a problem where I confuse it with Restoration, another period piece set during the, er, Restoration, with some of the same historical figures as characters and a passel of actors I did not really know then but whom I have grown to appreciate (Ian McKellen! Polly Walker! David Thewlis!)
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:28 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pootie Tang 27%? Wanata?

Granted, I did see it in a combined medicated haze/fog of pain in a distractingly luxurious Las Vegas hotel room, but still. Awesome movie.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:37 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Hah! I liked the idea of Gun Kata. In most movies with lots of shooting the bad guys can't hit the good guys even in close range with machine guns which upsets the 'suspended belief' we all partake in when we watch movies. With Gun Kata, they actually came up with an explanation for this--the guy is trained to predict where the shot will come from and to dodge it. A highly trained Gun Kata expert can dodge lots of people shooting at him. I thought Equilibrium was silly but fun.

Gymkata's an even sillier movie. But if it gives a gold medal gymnast a chance to make some money and show us his gymnastic moves while beating up bad guys, I'm all for it.
posted by eye of newt at 10:38 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

The Libertine was great on so many levels, but it's worth a watch if only for the "Signior Dildo" production number.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:41 PM on August 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Pre-2000s: Congo

Post-2000s: Knowing, Pain and Gain, I Feel Pretty
posted by lon_star at 11:37 PM on August 10, 2019

I’m sure I could think of others, but off the top of my head:

“Unknown”, Jim Caviezel, 2006, 38%
Maybe I’m a sucker for amnesia and ensemble casts, but I genuinely liked this movie.

“Darkness”, Anna Paquin, 2002, 4%
I am led to understand the PG-13 theatrical cut was poop, but I haven’t seen it for comparison to the unrated version, which is one of my favorite horror movies.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 11:46 PM on August 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

who’s gonna defend the 1993 super mario bros.? i’ll do it if i have to but i only sorta liked it and i wanna let someone else take a shot at singing its praises.

I'm sure I've seen it at least ten times - my friend had it on VHS when we were kids and we watched it all the time. Watching it now I can't really evaluate it outside of that nostalgic context but I've never seen what makes it terrible. It's a silly movie that put its weirdly high budget into production design and it has Dennis Hopper as the villain.
posted by atoxyl at 12:28 AM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

> "This movie is unequivocally garbage."
> "... should be ahsamed of themselves"

It is not really a bold take to say that you dislike films that were widely disliked. You are not exposing the people who love these films to a new opinion they have never before encountered. So maybe leave this space for people to celebrate some films they never get to celebrate elsewhere?
posted by kyrademon at 12:46 AM on August 11, 2019 [25 favorites]

I love Tron Legacy, Troy, and Suicide Squad.

Not Ghostbusters 2016, though.
posted by Chronorin at 2:49 AM on August 11, 2019

It's not post-2000 but I've been an adult since 1986, so Hackers (33/68). It's utter nonsense and I love it. Quotable quotes, nutso bananapants plot, horrible dated dialogue and all.

Also totally here for the Reign of Fire & 13th Warrior fan clubs.
posted by Ilira at 3:57 AM on August 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

I did a search for Day After Tomorrow, which is the best disaster movie ever (44% on RT). Philistines. I'm surrounded by philistines.

The summer of 2004 I was living in Halifax. My work schedule had me working every Friday starting at 4:00 PM or thereabouts. It was my custom to catch a matinee at the Park Lane Cinemas most Fridays before work which resulted in my seeing a shocking number of films mentioned above, each of which I found some entertainment in: Troy, Alien vs Predator, The Village, The Day After Tomorrow, as well as a few more that meet the parameters but are so far unmentioned (King Arthur, Man on Fire, The Forgotten, or maybe The Chronicles of Riddick, anyone?).

Really, my entire impression of 2004 film is one of, “Well, that was not great but it had its moments,” which was my near-universal reaction to all of these. In fact I can think of only one absolute classic — Collateral — and only one real stinker — Van Helsing — in my run of movies there. Something about being 25 feet under Spring Garden Road somehow gives a movie a cheesy and slightly ridiculous appeal for me.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:25 AM on August 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

there was something about The Notebook that made it a hit and catapulted it into the annals of romance movie history.

Despite its ability to make everyone with a heart get a little teary-eyed...

I'm pretty sure I have a heart, but my eyes did not tear up during that movie. Well, maybe a little bit from the pain of rolling them so frequently.
posted by pangolin party at 4:58 AM on August 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

Gun Katas are Equilibrium, not Oblivion.
posted by mbrubeck at 3:17 PM on August 11

My bad, I’ve only ever seen it on Japanese cable tv, and the Japanese title is Oblivion, pronounced with an incredibly heavy katakana accent.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:55 AM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (43 percent). It's endlessly creative, packed with weord visuals and cool concepts. The plot is genuinely thought provoking. I mean, yeah, Dane Dahaan is a charisma free void, but Cara De LaVigne more than balances him out. I watched it twice the first time I saW it.

Still baffles me that people who love Fifth Element hated this one.
posted by skullhead at 5:57 AM on August 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

Really. Fear and Loathing. So then the whole site is useless, then. That movie is perfect. Every scene with Benicio Del Toro is pure sweet unadulterated joy, mainlined. If there had been even 30 seconds more of Benicio Del Toro, people would have died in their seats with beatific smiles their embalmers would've been unable to massage away. That movie completely made up for all the hours anybody spent trying to actually read HST. That movie is why HST was born.

The Day after Tomorrow needed more stormporn, less slogging through snow, and zero dialogue. Know your strengths, disaster movies. Don't make me watch you plow through yet more romper-room "character development" when you know all I want is to see gorgeous 200-foot-high walls of CGI water obliterate your imbeciles.
posted by Don Pepino at 6:00 AM on August 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

kaibutsu said: I remember having a great time seeing Tron Legacy, but always had hear about whether it's actually good, or just the major motion picture about open source software that the world desperately needed.

What did you think of Antitrust (2001, 24% Tomatometer)?
posted by brainwane at 7:45 AM on August 11, 2019

Antitrust is absolutely the best movie in the "Bill Gates is really an evil serial killing crime boss" genre.
posted by octothorpe at 8:21 AM on August 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Mine is The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), at 38% on the tomatometer

Someday the Fast And Furious franchise will get the Criterion Release it deserves.
posted by nikaspark at 8:43 AM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

I love Equilibrium. It's just so earnest. But I love it. Yes, it tries too hard and is clunky, but it's gorgeous and the little wink at the start of the last big fight scene is just *chef kiss*.

Also anyone who gave Blade: Trinity a bad review either didn't watch it or is a nofun-nik. Not only does it have Ryan Reynolds in full quip-mode, it has Parker Posey chewing scenery (sometimes literally), it has pro wrestler Triple H (AKA Hunter Hurst Helmsley) being large and carrying around a vampire Pomeranian (yes, you read that right), and the aforementioned Jessica Biel being extremely badass. AND PATTON OSWALT. I completely unironically love it. It's by far the most entertaining film in the franchise, and it's nicely shot too.
posted by biscotti at 9:06 AM on August 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Low comedy gets no respect, so I'll nominate one of my personal favorites, 2001's Bubble Boy starring Jake Gyllenhaal rated at 30% on RT.
posted by fairmettle at 9:47 AM on August 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

It was Tron: Legacy.

thank god, I thought it was just me.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:16 AM on August 11, 2019

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet and seems to meet the criteria, I'll nominate The Core from 2003 (RT score 40%). It's a prevent-the-end-of-the-world pic about drilling to the center of the earth that seems to be well aware of its own silliness, since the metal essential to the drilling rig is actually called "unobtanium" in the film. It's not "good" really, but it is entertaining in a ridiculous B-movie sort of way.

Also, I've never understood why Blade: Trinity seems to be so reviled. As biscotti notes in their comment above, it has a lot of fun elements in it - I particularly liked the scene with Jessica Biel kicking ass in the subway station - and pretty much accomplishes what it sets out to do.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 10:20 AM on August 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

Rotten Tomatoes started in 1998, and took a while to build up steam. Its ratings for anything pre-2000 are skewed - they're based more on people's memories than what they felt when they first watched the movie. Older movies are more about "did this age well" than "was it great at the time" or even "would it be fun to watch now."

There is no way to get an accurate move rating for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There are people who love it, people who hate it, people who love or hate how campy it is (which is separate from the "movie" rating), people who love the experience and don't care about the movie, and people who've had personal experiences with attending it (drug trip, spring break party, etc.) that entirely shade their evaluation of the movie. There are probably a handful of other "cult movies" with similar ratings problems: there is no way to get a rating that's useful for, "so, if I sat down in my living room with three buddies who've never seen this before, will we enjoy it?"

I have, at this point, no idea if I like RHPS or not. But I still have the majority of it memorized, along with lines to shout at approximately every 30 seconds of the script.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:58 AM on August 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

TRON: Legacy was good, better than the critics and popular opinion at the time made it out to be, but at the same time there wasn’t much there in it, I don’t feel like it’s hold up to repeat viewings.

Speed Racer is all that, though. Film Crit Hulk stans it every chance he gets, so here’s one of his essays on it in conventional u&lc for your edification and reading pleasure. Whatever he said about it I’ll back up.

The first of the Nicholas Cage Ghost Rider movies scored 27/48, so basically nobody loves it. But I enjoyed it. It was exactly what the material deserved, a knowingly cheesy and overacted spectacle. It doesn’t conform to contemporary templates for comic book movies so it’s going to be difficult to advocate for a revival, but I am willing to bet that it and the Ang Lee version of The Hulk (which at least scored a lukewarm 62% tho the fans drubbed it) will both eventually be appreciated.
posted by ardgedee at 11:17 AM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

There are certain films like TRON: LEGACY (which is above 50% on RT, people!) where I wonder if the screening format had something to do with the ratings. I'm not a huge fan of TRON: LEGACY - look, I wouldn't really want to watch it on someone's 32" LCD - but as an encompassing experience with 3D visuals and a cinema sound system, it's quite incredible. I've got it on 3D Blu-ray - a genuinely remarkable format that's been maligned in prior years - and it's pretty astounding, but I'm not sure it translates outside of that experience.

That said, I agree wholeheartedly with everyone who endorses SPEED RACER. It's everything that it sets out to be, and if the beautifully kaleidoscopic opening credits don't draw you in, there's not much that I do to make it a good experience for you. A remarkable combination of sound and light, the Wachowskis gave it even more, with a narrative about the extension of personal ability against the constraints of corporate control. After having read this thread, I had dreams last night about the kaleidoscopic world of SPEED RACER, and that didn't happen without skilled filmmakers at the helm. I really hope more people see it, on the kind of big screen where it works best.
posted by eschatfische at 11:32 AM on August 11, 2019

It is not really a bold take to say that you dislike films that were widely disliked.

You're right, but to be fair, Boondock Saints (I know that's not the one you're quoting him about) honestly pissed us off when we watched it, and we were teenagers who loved Tarantino. So I know how he feels.
posted by atoxyl at 11:36 AM on August 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

Rotten Tomatoes has never been any kind of useful guide to help me decide whether a film I haven't yet seen is worth watching or not. It's not like I can say "oh, that one only got a 40%, so I'll probably like it", even. The only correlation that exists is in the inverse. Any film I really enjoy, enough to care to watch it again, always turns out to be very low on the tomatometer. Always.
posted by wierdo at 12:12 PM on August 11, 2019

Guessing I'll be alone on this, but: I remember thoroughly & unironically enjoying Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), which only has a 14% rating on on RT. I would guess that at least some of the critical panning was disappointment that it wasn't like the (amazing) Blair Witch Project. It's not really a sequel at all, & was a totally different kind of movie--both a more familiar horror movie (with a Carter Burwell soundtrack!) and also sort of meta: it had some some self-aware tongue-in-cheek warnings about the perils of trying to cash in on an existing property, & I remember it being pretty funny. (It's also where I learned the word widdershins, I'm slightly embarrassed to say.)
posted by miles per flower at 12:13 PM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

What? No love for Iron Sky (2012)? 39%/37%

I don’t care, just discovered the sequel (33%/27%) is on Amazon, and I’m going to enjoy the hell out it.

Haters gonna hate.
posted by drfu at 12:44 PM on August 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'm so glad to see the love for Valerian -- I thought it was lots of fun, I liked the effects and the settings, and I watched it twice in a row when it popped up on streaming. I think Rihanna was onscreen a total of four minutes but she was terrific.

The Brothers Grimm (38%) has some moments! I watched it again the other night and I was entertained. Maybe newer Gilliam and/or fairy tale stuff just does poorly with critics these days?
posted by mochapickle at 12:48 PM on August 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

this has been maybe my favorite metafilter thread in years

also i'm gonna go watch reign of fire now
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 12:58 PM on August 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

If Steven Spielberg had produced it in the 80's, it would likely be a cherished childhood favorite, but 2017's Monster Trucks ended up an underrated kids' movie at 32% on RT - - I believe many critics couldn't get past the title.
posted by fairmettle at 1:30 PM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

On the topic of Boondock Saints, I would highly recommend the documentary Overnight. It's about Troy Duffy, the director, as he tries to get the sequel made. It is astounding to see how much of an utter piece of shit he is. A+

This. It is the kind of movie where you expect members of Christopher Guest's circle to turn up in supporting roles as absurdly colourful characters.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:45 PM on August 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

Oh! In Time (37%)!

You've got Amanda Seyfried, you've got Justin Timberlake. You've got a great premise -- time is literally money, and when your time is up you're dead (everyone has a built-in visual countdown to watch! and everyone who's wealthy looks 30!), and there's a huge gap between the haves and have nots. You've got a likeable, capable protagonist framed for murder. And it's directed by Andrew Niccol, who did both The Truman Show and Gattaca.

It's more than worth its popcorn.
posted by mochapickle at 3:58 PM on August 11, 2019 [7 favorites]

Wow, many of these seemingly rotten movies are interesting, funny, well-constructed films. What is wrong with these people? I'll add another plug for 'The 13th Warrior', which is a genius historical action/adventure with a literary twist.

Reminds me a bit of late 20th century, thumbing through Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, any selection with the magical combination of: "BOMB" (zero stars) + "inevitable cult hit" = worth watching at our house! (Much of which were not well-constructed, but often funny).
posted by ovvl at 4:03 PM on August 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

The Island
Wet Hot American Summer
The Mothman Prophecies
The Village
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:47 PM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Boondock Saints was the go-to “Netflix and chill” (well, VCR/DVR and chill) movie my first year of college. Boys’ dorm rooms, Malibu rum, and that vaguely Irish theme music. Three things I don’t ever want to experience again.
posted by sallybrown at 5:43 PM on August 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

I actually liked Ryan Gosling's first attempt at directing: Lost River (2015), 31%/38%. It's on Netflix!

Also, Carlos Reygadas's Post Tenebras Lux (2013), which at 53%/49% doesn't quite count. It won him Best Director at Cannes, but the screening attracted "belligerent boos and hooting". I think of it as very odd, dreamlike, hypnotic, almost psychedelic, but I can see how some might prefer to call it an "offensively self-indulgent cubist folly".

Jack The Giant Slayer (2013) also squeaks past with 52%/55%, despite not being able to settle on a consistent tone. I kept catching glimpses of it on a fuzzy old CRT TV in the corner of a room decorated with many explicit sex sculptures during a bizarre and wonderful dinner party at my landlady's house during a tropical storm on an remote island and was sufficiently intrigued to download it and watch it myself later. It's not exactly good, yet somehow, perhaps by accident, it captures the weird off-kilter horror that runs through folk tales (folk tales as opposed to children's stories, which is how we normally think of Jack and the Beanstalk).

Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor”. I honestly can’t recall a grimmer or more unpleasant movie, but it’s “better” than 34%. You may not “like” it, but that doesn’t make it a bad movie. On the contrary it’s searingly ugly look at an unconscionably ugly world. It’s the only film I can recall that does justice to the kind of violence regularly reported out of Mexico involving the drug cartels shipping into the USA.

I often ask people "hey, did you know that Ridley Scott directed a thriller about Mexican cartel violence in 2013, from the first and only original script that Cormac McCarthy has ever written, and it starred Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt?". The answer is usually along the lines of "whaaaat, how have I never even heard of this?", which was exactly my reaction when I came across it in a pirate DVD shop in Beijing. Oh my god it is bad. It's grim, but it's also risible. It's full of ludricrous plot devices (sending a dead body along with a shipment of drugs for no reason! the self-tightening mechanical garrote!) and excrutiating dialogue (the film opens with a sex scene between Fassbender and Cruz that is toe-curlingly embarrassing, and doesn't get better from there, ever). And it takes itself incredibly seriously. There's no better way to explain it than to note that in an ostensibly dark and gritty film about the grim realities of the drug war, it was to decided to give Bardem, the terrifying drug lord character and principal antagonist, this hairstyle throughout.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 5:48 PM on August 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

What, you didn't like the scene where Cameron Diaz has sex with a convertible??

The Counselor gets my vote for worst movie post-2000. That's a sliding scale thing, obviously, as there are movies that are technically way worse, but for the all around talent level involved in it I could not believe how awful it was. I actually turned it off about an hour in but then spent the next few days so bothered by it that I had to go back and finish it to see if it turned things around in the final act.

Spoiler: It Doesn't.
posted by mannequito at 7:20 PM on August 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

As suggested above, The Counselor is a movie that given the personnel involved, you really think you should have heard of. Once you’ve seen it, you kind of understand why you hadn’t heard of it, and you search your soul for reasons why you watched it.

Then you half-remember it years later and think, wait, was that just a dream I had one time? It doesn’t seem all that plausible that it actually exists and there is no way Cameron Diaz would do that, would she?

The only rationale I can offer is that Ridley Scott works like a man possessed and has made four features and two shorts in the last five years, which seems a lot of work for a guy turning 82 in a few months (IMDb lists him with about 70 projects as “upcoming”.) His movies will not all be Blade Runner. Hell, a lot of them won’t even be White Squall.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:03 PM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Running in late to say that Kids In the Hall: Brain Candy has only 40% approval on RT. Made in 1999 but who is counting. Also featuring one of the best soundtracks of the 90’s.
posted by q*ben at 8:38 PM on August 11, 2019 [7 favorites]

The Island could have been a great movie if it had started when the hatch opens and the clones are wandering around the desert. If it had been a movie that explored the ramifications of the wealthy and powerful having clones essentially imprisoned to be kept around for forced organ transplants, and how society reacted to that revelation, it would have been great, if, you know, it had been a totally different film.

Instead, Michael Bay, so car chases and explosions that have nothing to do with the story, but look cool.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:53 AM on August 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

It was Tron: Legacy.

I wish there was an audio option to watch with just the Daft Punk music and no dialogue.

But then you'd miss the Jules Verne joke, which is still one of my all-time favourite throwaway lines, and Olivia Wilde is honestly the best. There's so much wrong with that movie, but it absolutely succeeds as spectacle.

I really like The Libertine, in which Johnny Depp plays the poet Jon Wilmott, Earl of Rochester. The movie gets a 33% on RT but has some great scenes and performances and overall the sets are great. Yes, the movie has problems, mainly that its plot arc lacks a bit of payoff, and that's fair enough. The movie tries a little too hard to *make a point* without landing a plausible punch. The critics are right about that. But if that's ignored and the movie is seen as more of a slice-of-life kind of film, I think it works pretty well!

There are so many great things about The Libertine, not least of which is the fact that it's filmed like a horror movie, with insanely effective use of natural light. The weird camera movements during the climactic speech—it honestly looks like they're *picking up* the camera and moving it to keep pace with the shambling horror that Rochester has become—shouldn't work at all but is so much more effective than if they used a conventional dolly shot.

Confirming my love for: The 13th Warrior & Resident Evil. The 13th Warrior is waaaaay better than the book it's based on.

Re: The Martian and other "pedestrian" SF films. While I'd love to see something like China Mountain Zhang (a favourite of mine) onscreen, it would be a nightmare to make happen effectively. Films like Arrival are pretty rare; CMZ would work best as a miniseries, but even still most of what's good about it is the interiority of it, and the bits that work as spectacle would more than likely be disappointing, imo, because there have been a million versions of those things on screen and the spectacle is the least interesting thing happening in it. You'd wind up with something that looked like Alita and had all the emotional impact of a pod race. One of the reasons films like The Martian work, imo, is because the source material already plays to the strengths of film as a medium. Le Guin et al... don't.

Anyway, come talk to me when y'all are ready for the glory that is The Pirate Movie (1982).
posted by Fish Sauce at 6:59 AM on August 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Fish Sauce: you are SO RIGHT about what would happen to China Mountain Zhang as a film or miniseries.
posted by brainwane at 7:17 AM on August 12, 2019

ghostbusters 2016 is also beautiful and pure. if you didn't cry when they all kicked ass at the end you have no soul.

A 20 minute CGI fight where they have random KEWL weapons like knuckledusters and whips for ghosts?

yeah, so... pure...
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:48 AM on August 12, 2019

The most recent Ghostbusters film was terrible. It was a waste of a fantastic cast. There was obviously some kind of huge dance sequence or something cut from the end of the film, but only partially. But I blame Paul Feig, whose work I despise. I haven't seen anything he's done that's been anything other than awkward garbage.
posted by Fish Sauce at 7:53 AM on August 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

do i have to actually fite you?

nerdy queer-leaning weirdo women saved the world with superscience and bravery and careful application of their most nerdy obsessions, and they also got to shoot lazers at monsters in slow motion. pure and good. we need more of it.

the channers were correct to view ghostbusters (2016) as a threat to them. it is a threat to them. so pure, so good.

if you want to do the boring thing and bag on a movie that gets bad reviews, i recommend you come over here so that i can fite you.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:07 AM on August 12, 2019 [9 favorites]

I admit that Big Top Pee-Wee (35%) is not as good as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, but it's still silly and sweet and in the spirit of the first film. Although nobody else in the theatre did, I laughed all the way through it. Also, it has Vance the talking pig!
posted by PatchesPal at 9:31 AM on August 12, 2019

The Island could have been a great movie

You're not wrong but I chuckle a bit at every red light because I think of this movie.

There's a scene where Clone!Ewan McGregor is hanging out with Prime!Ewan McGregor, and Clone is driving around in Prime's sports car. Prime calmly points out the red light Clone is accelerating towards, and then starts yelling more and more frantically because it turns out someone raised on an island without cars doesn't know that you're supposed to stop at a red light.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:37 AM on August 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

The 2004 Jerry Bruckheimer-helmed "King Arthur" (31% critics, 59% audience). I seriously love every damned thing about that movie, including Mads Mikkelson's weirdly Asian Tristan.

2002's "The Time Machine", starring Guy Pearce (29%/37%). The ending is... not the best, but this is another movie that I love wholeheartedly. The actual time-travel effects are still stunning, 17 years later. The concept of the disaster that split humanity is really well implemented, and Pearce's earnestness shines through in every scene.
posted by hanov3r at 9:39 AM on August 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

ah I missed the 2000 rule
posted by thelonius at 10:12 AM on August 12, 2019

Anyway, come talk to me when y'all are ready for the glory that is The Pirate Movie (1982).

OMG buried memory alert: this was the first movie I saw where they used the plot device of ‘you were born on February 29 in a leap year, so you’re actually only a 5-year-old!’ I seem to remember music and teen romance too?

Because of this thread, we’ve watched 2012 (awesome) and have The 13th Warrior, Speed Racer and Reign of Fire up next (the last with Rifftrax if we so desire!), and specifically because of Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon’s enthusiasm, Southland Tales is in the queue for the whenever the next evening spent a-shrooming may be. Great thread.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:32 AM on August 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Shame on y'all, how come only ONE OTHER PERSON has named Wet Hot American Summer? SHAME
posted by sugar and confetti at 10:46 AM on August 12, 2019 [4 favorites]

While juuuust above the line on the rating criteria at 51%, I always had a soft spot for Titan A.E.

It's a pretty solid sci-fi action adventure movie, though the main issue is some weird tonal shifts due to some of the people in charge seeming to think that animated = kids' movie, even though it's really... not and more of a mid-late teens young adult screenplay. Notably, there's a gratuitous comic relief alien in the beginning of the movie which gets zapped by a raygun in a cartoon violence fashion , leaving it's mouth to sputter one last dumb quip, and then at the end there's a character who just gets straight up murdered on screen by having their neck snapped. A few things like that.

I mean it's not as iconic and memorable as something like Star Wars, but it's a solid film that I've enjoyed rewatching, even as an adult.
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:46 AM on August 12, 2019 [4 favorites]

But I blame Paul Feig, whose work I despise. I haven't seen anything he's done that's been anything other than awkward garbage.

Freaks and Geeks is a masterpiece.

Ghostbusters 2016 is fine, as a fantasy action movie. It's like Jupiter Ascending in that it's definitely not worse than the other films in their genres but they get shit on for being girly fantasies rather than tween boy wet dreams.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:02 AM on August 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

While I'd love to see something like China Mountain Zhang (a favourite of mine) onscreen, it would be a nightmare to make happen effectively.

If you take the view that SF has to escapist to be worth telling, sure. There are lots of movies set in present day or period pieces that have done interior and implied stories (even without bored flat-affect voice-overs and clone slaves).

I mean, it's not been done a lot, or often very well, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't or couldn't be done. Personally, I'd really like to see a character study in a future society that is radically different, but a plausible future, where the narrative is not a desperate race against ruling dystopia to change everything adventure story, but people figuring out how to live and be human in a foreign context. Just having the one kind of allowed story per genre is boring. I like popcorn, but that doesn't mean I want it breakfast lunch and dinner. There should be more than one kind of SF story allowed. There shouldn't be a fear of mixing the ideas of one sort of movie with the techniques of other genres.
posted by bonehead at 11:14 AM on August 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

also i postulate that it is impossible for any movie that kate mckinnon is in to be bad. every second she's onscreen, i'm transfixed.

oh and the improv routine that chris hemsworth does about michael hat (his dog; mike hat for short) is toooo much.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 11:15 AM on August 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

Anyway, come talk to me when y'all are ready for the glory that is The Pirate Movie (1982).

I am here for this conversation. One of the things that helped bond my ex-wife and I was a love for TPM, to the point that "Happy Ending" appeared on the mix CD we gave our guests AND we tried to figure out how to incorporate that dance into the celebration.

"He tore the god-damned sail again!" always makes me laugh.
posted by hanov3r at 11:30 AM on August 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Shame on y'all, how come only ONE OTHER PERSON has named Wet Hot American Summer? SHAME

OK, for my part, I just assumed that the two Netflix series made after the movie meant that collective consensus had shifted to recognize the original's awesomeness. But hell yes, Wet Hot American Summer is fantastic. Exhibit A. Exhibit B. Best summer camp (meta-)movie ever made.

And my issue with the 2016 Ghostbusters is that it starts out wonderfully and then sort of forgets it's a comedy halfway through, and turns into an action movie.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:45 AM on August 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

My father-in-law doesn't read Metafilter, but he'd be sad in a cosmic sense if I didn't step up to argue for the merits of Con Air and Deep Blue Sea. Neither is below 50%, but they're both below 60%, i.e., "rotten." What Rotten Tomatoes fails to realize is that these movies are awesome and hilarious.
posted by zeusianfog at 11:48 AM on August 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

Oh shit, I love Wet Hot American Summer. I had no idea it got such bad reviews! Really, this is just proof that critics' opinions aren't any kind of objective measure of quality, even though they're often treated that way.

"We used to make drawrings... CAVE DRAWRINGS!"
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:54 AM on August 12, 2019 [5 favorites]

I was going to make the embarrassing admission that I like Prometheus, but it turns out it's not rotten, so I dodged that bullet.

Oops.

(C'mon: Future Howard Hughes hires Future Erich Von Daniken to look for magic aliens. It makes perfect sense that everyone on the ship is dumb, irresponsible, and bad at science. They're all hucksters and fakes! It's virtually in the text!)
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 12:47 PM on August 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Ok I haven’t seem this since I was a kid and I’m sure it’s problematic in many ways, but I loved B.A.P.S., which has 16% on RT with a 67% audience score.
posted by inkytea at 12:54 PM on August 12, 2019

Anyway, come talk to me when y'all are ready for the glory that is The Pirate Movie (1982).

I'm still not sure that my husband actually loves me because he wouldn't plunk down $35 for a DVD copy of The Pirate Movie for me (it's now up to $60 on Amazon). I do have the soundtrack on vinyl but it's just not the same.

pumpin' and blowin'....
posted by cooker girl at 1:02 PM on August 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

PhoB beat me to it. But I still must say:

But I blame Paul Feig, whose work I despise. I haven't seen anything he's done that's been anything other than awkward garbage.

Freaks and Geeks though. It is awkward gold.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:16 PM on August 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

this was the first movie I saw where they used the plot device of ‘you were born on February 29 in a leap year,

I am more impressed by the people born on February 29 in a non-leap year. They have really put the work in.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:56 PM on August 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

I was going to make the embarrassing admission that I like Prometheus, but it turns out it's not rotten, so I dodged that bullet.

Heh, same. I went to RT to check after people kept insisting that Valerian and the City of 1000 Planets is good (it isn't). Prometheus at least has a knockoff robot Lawrence of Arabia and looked great in IMAX. (Also "wtf these scientists are IDIOTS" is not a problem I have in a sci-fi horror movie, that's where the horror comes from.)

I'm shocked that Wet, Hot American Summer was poorly reviewed! It came out when I was a kid, and I actually clicked through the links to figure out why I so firmly believed that it was well-liked...it turns out the one really enthusiastic positive review was from Entertainment Weekly, which I was subscribed to at the time.

Melissa McCarthy's The Boss gets a 22% from RT. I'm not ready to argue that it's a good movie, but it's better than 22%. There are some jokes in it that still make me laugh when I think of them. Music and Lyrics (romcom starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore) actually passes at 62%, but it's actually one of the only good romantic comedies made since the early 90s and also deserves better.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:19 PM on August 12, 2019

I unashamedly love the 2005 Matthew McConaughey vehicle Sahara, sitting on Rotten Tomatoes at a sad 38%. I will agree with some of the critics that the plot is ropy, but it's no worse than any other adventure film.

Oh, but what adventure! Inventive set piece fights, a fairly unique car chase, beautiful on-location shots (I happened to visit some of the derelict sets in Ouarzazate, Morocco!), and a truly stellar cast. Steve Zahn is the perfect comedy sidekick to McConaughey's shirtless bravado.

Plus, they shoot down a helicopter with a dang-old black powder cannon!
posted by Enkidude at 12:52 AM on August 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

Anyway, come talk to me when y'all are ready for the glory that is The Pirate Movie (1982).

I didn't know anyone else had ever seen it! It was on HBO constantly around the time my family first really had cable TV, so I saw a lot of it. It was the film that gave me my late childhood/early teen crush on Kristy McNichol.

(Yes, I know. Let twelve-year-old me have his dreams.)
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:24 AM on August 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm curious how many people know that the studio actively encouraged and exploited the "controversy" on Ghostbusters 2016. Yes, there are stupid people of all walks of life who will say stupid things so my barometer of whether or not something is enjoyable to me isn't based on who it is pissing off anymore. I had a lot of acquaintances declaring they'd go see it to spite the trolls. Seemed basically like what people did after Chic-Fil-A got all that blowback for supporting anti-LGBTQ stuff. It stuck in my mind as a turning point where I was like huh, I don't think I like any of the internet anymore.

I just wish it had been a movie I enjoyed.

The movie Sahara is based on those Dirk Pitt books by Clive Cussler. They're fun dad reads. My dad and I used to read them when I was a teenager. Dirk finds a civil war submarine in the desert! What's not fun about that?!
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:27 AM on August 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

rewatched ghostbusters (2016) and oh my god it is excellent and such fun. my only problem with it is i have trouble paying attention to any scene that kate mckinnon is in because whenever she's in the background doing things with her face i can't look away.

and she is always doing things with her face.

i reassert that anyone who doesn't feel a little bit like they want to cry during the climactic action sequence has no soul.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:13 PM on August 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

also kristen wiig is hilarious, especially when she's perving on kevin.

the tenure denial scene is going to give me nightmares, though. it was completely sadistic of them to cast tywin lannister for that part.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:31 PM on August 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

I watched The 13th Warrior because of this thread and good fucking god, that movie is beyond ridiculous, in the best sense. Just the concept alone - Antonio Banderas as an Arabian poet who joins a Viking war party - is so out there, but then they wind up helping defend a village against these half-man half-bear creatures, and it's like a brutal horror movie, heads are getting ripped off and shit, but it's played like some sort of swashbuckling adventure story with Spielbergian music. Wild.

...and then, only in the end credits did I realize this was based on a Michael Crighton novel, and it actually does have an interesting historical bent - it's the story of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, repurposed to imagine him experiencing the Beowulf myth.

Very fun movie watching experience though, exactly what I hope to find from a thread like this, thanks y'all.
posted by mannequito at 10:54 PM on August 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

I love how he learns to speak English/Old English after hearing guys talk for like an hour at a campfire. "I listened," he says.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:48 PM on August 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

post-2000

I don't understand this part of the criteria.

On the topic of Boondock Saints, I would highly recommend the documentary Overnight.

I've never seen Boondock Saints, but I've seen Overnight and it was something.
posted by bongo_x at 4:11 AM on August 14, 2019

post-2000

I don't understand this part of the criteria.

Rotten Tomatoes officially launched in 2000, and its aggregation from before that (both critics and audiences) is a little spotty.
posted by Etrigan at 7:45 AM on August 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

Also, “almost one-third of world’s 7.7 billion people born since ’01" and “Generation Z, or those born after 1997, made up the largest generation in the United States as of 2017."
posted by kirkaracha at 7:55 AM on August 14, 2019

Push and The Losers were the movies that made us realize Chris Evans isn't just the titanic douchebag like the roles he'd mostly played up until then. Go Petunias!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:07 AM on August 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's hard to remember pre-Captain America impressions, but Chris Evans does technically have what might be called a "punchable face"
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:28 AM on August 15, 2019

Hmm.
posted by grandiloquiet at 10:23 AM on August 15, 2019

Everyone has a punchable face.

Not me, my face is really far away
posted by aubilenon at 11:38 AM on August 15, 2019 [4 favorites]

Can't punch this.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:59 AM on August 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's hard to remember pre-Captain America impressions, but Chris Evans does technically have what might be called a "punchable face"

It's much more poetic to describe Captain America in German: Backpfeifengesicht.
posted by srboisvert at 12:17 PM on August 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

Hmm.

That's so weird. Why did they give him Ralph Fiennes' eyes and the bridge of the nose? It's like voldemort staring into the dark void of my soul.
posted by mochapickle at 12:30 PM on August 15, 2019

with the benefit of some really good secondary performances by ~~Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony~~ Ciarán Hinds and James Purefoy.

I still immediately think Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo when I see Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:28 PM on August 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

Thanks to this thread and the Matrix sequel thread, I watched Speed Racer (2008) for the first time, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
posted by mbrubeck at 6:04 PM on August 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

The closest I can think of (and one I'm surprised wasn't mentioned yet) is one of my all-time favorites: Aronofsky's The Fountain (2006), starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. It's so gorgeously shot, with luminous, breathtaking effects, an unforgettable Clint Mansell score, and deeply moving performances from the leads, but the mindbending, allegorical plot left critics divided and it ended up with a paltry 52% RT score.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:43 PM on September 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

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