I think for me it’s alien: covenant. I was really interested in the ideas explored in prometheus and covenant just expanded on them. I don’t get much into the details of why it is or isn’t a good movie.
Luckily, though, HBO ran raised by wolves which really delved into ideals about AI and planet seeding etc. So that itch got way scratched even if the run was cut short.
Tron: Legacy
Also Ready Player One. I like the movie where the person go into the computer :)
I like the movie where the person go into the computer
Have I got an MST3K for you then… Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
“Mother… my nuts.”
Lol, I really like premise too. It can be done better, tho.
That’s why I support all sorts of sci-fi that is complete garbage. I want the genre to thrive and if we stop showing up Hollywood stops giving money.
Give me the soundtrack, that’s all I need.
Love it. Sad Daft Punk may not release anymore music.
I still hope that Disney throws a small fortune at them for the Tron 3 OST
Last thing I heard was that the soundtrack is being made by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s the next best thing, if you ask me.
Yeah, sad about Daft Punk but this is the next best option I could think of
Johnny Greenwood would be another great option.
I think one of them is going deaf sadly
Wait, people dislike Tron? I had no idea
I’ve watched it when I was younger a couple of times but for me personally it was just a movie I watched amd the idea of rewatching it feels boring to me
The Daft Punk soundtrack against the hyper-electronic visuals is a fantastic blend for the senses.
I still think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen got unfairly dragged. 16% on Rotten Tomatoes.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/league_of_extraordinary_gentlemen
A lot of people were confused about Dorian Gray, but adding him was pretty inspired.
Watched it not long ago. Didn’t realize the people rating it have no appreciation for decent movies.
It wasn’t phenomenal by any means but it was quite entertaining for the duration of it.
Surprised it hasn’t come back as a streaming channel series of films like “Knives Out”. It’s got a lot of potential.
I still think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen got unfairly dragged. 16% on Rotten Tomatoes.
It is a pretty mediocre movie overall, but it is just a lot of fun and I have watched it a dozen times.
Definitely not a 16%'er.
For critics, yeah I think it is 16%er but that is because critics are looking for different things in movies than the audience who wanted to see the movie.
I remember screening league of extraordinary gentleman and all I could think is it was probably not for me. Not to say someone else wouldn’t like it. I feel like not everything should be rated based on its wide spread appeal.
I don’t disagree that it’s a terrible movie, it’s just a terrible movie that I happened to really like.
I absolutely enjoy this movie as well! Nemo kicking ass is a joy to watch
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. Yes it’s utterly ridiculous. I don’t care, it’s still a masterpiece of absurdity to me. That 13% on RT is a shame.
Also how has it been 23 years since its release.
My girlfriend got me plastered and showed me this fever dream of a movie. 10/10 experience
That movie rules. Shaolin Soccer is also pretty good.
You’re thinking of Kung Fu Hustle, which is brilliant in every way.
And I think it doesn’t qualify, because it was fairly well reviewed and did quite well at the box office.
Yes, that’s the one! Now I guess I have to watch Kung Pow as well.
Kung Fu Hustle is Kung Pow, but good.
Hell yea!
I’m sure on some planet this movie is impressive, but its weak link is: this is Earth.
Bladerunner 2049.
I know a lot of people disliked it compared to the first one, even Ridley Scott himself. But I love the direction Denis Villeneuve took this film in.
Did people dislike it compared to the first one? It’s got an 88% on rotten tomatoes, and anyone I’ve talked with about the films prefers the second one.
I agree with you, by the way, I just don’t think that’s the unpopular take (Ridley’s opinion is meaningless at this point).
I love BR2049. In fact I think I liked it more than the original, and that’s saying something.
Gorgeous film
This is my all time favourite movie, whereas the first probably isn’t in the top 5, low top 10 max.
Ridley Scott is famous for his shit opinions. When he released The Last Duel in the middle of COVID, he complained that “them kids can’t even get off their phone for 2 hours to enjoy art” as thr primary reason it wasn’t making money.
One of the few sequels that did credit to the original. Like the original Alien trilogy, it’s best if you consider them movies in the same universe but different genres. Like, Aliens (I) was a suspense; II was a sci-fi action; III was a horror thriller.
Maybe the Blade Runners weren’t so very different in genre, but yeah - good sequel, and in its way faithful to the original.
I love that movie!!!
Well it’s not a shit rating but I do think A Knight’s Tale is way better than its mediocre scores. Perfect comfort movie.
‘but it’s not historically accurate!’
Y’get to see heath ledger in armor win the girl, bust heads, and have a grand time doing it! All to a solid soundtrack.
The lack of historical accuracy also isn’t due to a lack of research, but a deliberate style and tone choice, as demonstrated at the very beginning of the movie when the trumpeters play We Will Rock You and the crowd claps and stomps along.
Tell me about it. Anybody who saw the first few minutes of the film and still expected the rest to be historicaly accurate should probably get tested for autism. The director made it clear from the very start that A Knight’s Tale is satire.
Really, cool. I’ll have to watch it one of these days, if it ever comes up on streaming
Cancel all your subscriptions and look into Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid. For $3/mo you could have any show or movie you want, streamed directly to your TV, without having to wait for it to “come up on streaming”.
Literally the opening scene of the movie.
Thanks, that certainly makes it seem like a fun movie. I wonder how many ren faires did that back then
A Knight’s tale is a cult classic. That it’s not well rated is absurd.
Edit: it’s 1% shy of a fresh rating on rotten tomatoes and has an audience score of 79%.
Jupiter Ascending is, in my opinion, a masterpiece. Bees can sense royalty? Fantastic. The bureaucracy android having to bribe his way through the system he was literally created to navigate? Marvelous. Don’t even get me started on the air roller skates. Eddie Redmayne’s four million year old teenager was perfection too. Two volume levels: harsh whisper or screaming.
It was marketed as some kind of amazing epic, so people approached it wrong I think. It was a Wachowski film. What were they expecting? I went in there assuming it’d be like their Speed Racer movie, but in space. I was not disappointed.
Second vote would be for Speed Racer, lol.
My biggest issue with that movie was the complete lack of chemistry between Mila Kunis and that beefy guy who was her love interest. I found that painful to watch.
Who was the beefy guy again, completely forgotten everything about the movie except for Mila Kunis’s face because I’ve seen her in more movies
Channing Tatum.
Oh the guy with the punchable face
“Ninjas? More like ‘Non-Jas’. Shame what passes for a Ninja these days…”
And with that, John Goodman became my favorite, ever. :)
Lol about Jupiter ascending. I wanted so bad for that movie to be good just because mila kuntis. I cant call it a masterpiece.
13th Warrior. Solid action. Antonio Banderas and Vikings. Dudes taking care of business.
Was that the one loosely based on Beowulf? I saw it in the theater and didn’t have a problem with it.
Aha!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13th_Warrior
“based on Michael Crichton’s 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead,[5] which is a loose adaptation of the tale of Beowulf combined with Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s historical account of the Volga Vikings.”
Crichton, man. His influence was just astounding. Obligatory “fuck cancer”.
I enjoyed it for the most part, but the scene that’s always stuck with me is when Antonio Banderas’s character learns to speak the Viking language. Hearing the way he said “I listened” made me want to listen more to see what I could learn.
That was a great line
When you die can I give that to me sister?
This is one of those that HBO or something played non-stop for no apparent reason. It took me like 20 times clicking past it to finally watch it all but in the end I was ok with it.
Bears?
IS THERE A CAVE?
The Day After Tomorrow - It’s campy but underrated
Had one gag that made me literally LOL… intentionally…
They’re trapped in a library, debating the morality of burning books in the fireplace to stay alive.
“How about all these tax books, can we burn these?”
Also:
“Is there a chance that it will run…” grabs a bottle “…on this?”
“Are you mad? That’s a twelve years old scotch!” reveals cups
How is this movie underrated?? It’s popular af!
Despite not rewatching this movie in over a decade, I think about it monthly.
my answer for this is always BASEketball
one of the funniest movies of all time yet only has 41% on RT
I hear your sister’s going out with Squeak!
Dude.
Dude. No said no more journey psych outs
I swear if you guys rip on me 13 or 14 more times, I’m outta here dude.
What’s a bajoina?
You kids and your Dan Fogelberg and your Zima (I may be misremembering)
What constitutes a “shit rating?”
Big Trouble in Little China is 7.2/10 on IMDB, and it got positive reviews; it was, however, a commercial failure, making only half what it cost to produce. Great movie.
Wizards rates only 6.3/10 on IMDB, although it did well at the box office. That may be my favorite movie of all time.
Dredd failed at the box office but gets a 7.1 from IMDB. I think it’s grossly underrated.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 6.4 and generally gets poor reviews; it did fine at the box office. But I love that film.
If you want you get esoteric, Lord Love a Duck (1966) was a financial failure and gets only 6.3 from IMDB, but it’s wonderful.
Disney’s 1979 The Black Hole gets a 5.9 and didn’t do well. It’s a lot of fun and the ending is an acid trip.
The Prophesy (1995) got really bad reviews and 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, proving there’s no accounting for taste. Absolutely worth watching.
Hawk the Slayer (1980), 5.3, is in the “it’s so bad it’s good” category. This includes Zardoz (1974), and Krull.
And, Dune (1984). 6.3 IMDB, total loss at the box office, and one of the best movies of all time. I kinda think Herbert might have hated it where he’d have liked 2021, but the cast, the atmosphere, the music, the hyperbolic representations of the characters; it is a masterpiece. And it features a young, mostly naked Sting (which is the lure I used to use to get my girlfriends to watch it).
S.O.B. (1981). 6.4 IMDB, but 81% RT. Box office failure. Hilarious, and a topless Julie Andrews (sigh).
Red Dawn (1984). 6.3/48%. Not my favorite movie, but worth a watch. Surprising decision to not utterly vilify (unhumanize) the Russian antagonists.
You just listed a bunch of great films. All of them reason to ignore the reviews and ratings. I love Big Trouble. One of Russel’s campiest and most fun films.
Thanks!!
Big Trouble may be one of the Great Movies. Honestly, I think it’s just about perfect; for being so over-the-top, the characters are both imperfect and utterly believable. Even Lo Pan.
I think (my own personal opinion) is that Big Trouble in Little China did something so crazy and wacky that no one actually recognised it at the time.
If you look at the film from a certain perspective, Jack Burton was the sidekick, and Wang was the main character. And they just filmed it from the perspective of the sidekick who thinks he’s the main character, which is a conceit I’ve always adored.
Excellent! I love that perspective. Seriously, it’d be a shorter film, but you could actually do a cut with Wang as the lead, and it’d work. Although, Gracey makes that a little harder; there isn’t much to work with on the Miao Yin romance angle; there are almost no scenes with her and Wang, except at the end, and she’s not a very active character.
Regardless, that’s a great view!
Great choices, I gotta watch the ones you mentioned I haven’t seen yet.
This guy just won the thread. 🥇
Gee, thanks!
I just ignore imdb all together. The ratings they give are not useful and seem almost random.
Yeah, normally I do. It just happened my quick-n-dirty web searches were returning mostly IMDB and rarely Rotten Tomatoes, so that’s what I used.
Wait what? Big trouble in little china got- Pardon I’m gonna need to process that for a moment as that’s one of the few things me and my stepdad will call time out on arguments on. It’s a great carpenter adventure movie. It’s literally a sendup of the modenr john wayne archatype. Hell, jack isn’t even stupid, he’s just, to borrow a tv tropes term, wrong genre savvy. Also I recommend the boom comics when/if you can.
it contextualizes him refusing to kiss Grace Law at the end and… it is utter heartache in the best way.
Dredd … needed a netflix mega city one police proceedural followup. with Urban’s Dread showing up a couple times when thigns get above everyone’s heads both to prevent his overuse and to remind everyone WHY he is feared.
I’m gonna admit i saw the Dune novels as overrated, but i liked that the 80’s movie tried to have fun while telling the story.
Well at the point red dawn was made, we were starting to thaw on the russians, even as Regan kept juicing the Empire of Evil rhetoric. The message ‘war destroys everyone’ is a good one.
I really do not know why Dredd didn’t get a sequel. I thought it did pretty well in theaters.
It didn’t. It cost them $30-40M to make, and only grossed $41.5M at the box office. Studios don’t make sequels for break-even films.
It got good reviews, fans liked it - even John Wagner, the guy who created the character, liked it. I don’t know why it did so poorly at the theaters.
They filmed it in 3D, a BluRay of which I’m a proud owner, and it’s fantastic in 3D. It also explains some of the framing of many of the shots, even though (I think) they also work fine in 2D.
Wizards was awesome!
That was such a fantastic ending.
Yeah. I don’t know if I’d claim it is the best movie ever made, but it’s certainly my favorite movie.
And, hey! We now have an IRL Blackwolf; we only need an Avatar.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Tron Legacy
Guyver: Dark Hero
Strange Days (get the ultimate extended edition fan edit if you can.)
Wild Wild West
Demolition Man
Judge Dredd
Highlander II
…
Jacob Barlow vs the Demonic Toys
There are a lot of fun movies that are considered garbage.
Demolition Man was prime AF!
What seems to be your boggle?
Mostly this:
Judge Dredd was quite good even though Stallone took the helmet off a bunch. IIRC he was willing to do the whole thing in helmet, but I bet the money guys needed to see his face.
Never thought I’d see the Angel Family on film, that was wild!
Bonus: The actor playing psychotic cannibal Pa Angel would go on to be the kindly farmer Herschel on Walking Dead.
Karl Urban did a better Dredd. He doesn’t take off the goddamn helmet for even one second :o
Oh, he definitely did, but I think the Stallone version better captured the absolute bonkers feeling of the comics.
I just hope the next time someone tackles it we get the Dark Judges storyline, but that might be too expensive to pull off outside full animation.
Damn, never made that connection about herschel. I like Stallones dredd just because it’s so quotable.
Eat recycled food. It’s good for the environment and okay for you.
Highlander II
Liking Highlander II is so far out of my worldview that I didn’t realise it was an option. What was it you enjoyed about the film?
Keep in mind i am not at all going to claim it is… Good. or logical… or any of that, but it had the almighty BALLS to go big with being WEIRD.
Wait… Stallone Dredd, or Urban Dredd? Because the Stallone one was awful and a crime against the source material, while the second should have had an immediate sequel.
League I can’t even put into the “so bad it’s good” category, as much as I’d like to. I think I can’t forgive them for wasting such a cast and such a source on the result.
I hated Legacy, but entirely for reasons having to do with loyalty to the original; it isn’t faithful to the original vision, IMO. That aside, I can grant it was better than it was received.
🤝 on Strange Days. Fantastic soundtrack, too. Did it get bad reviews? I thought it did reasonably well.
Same for WWW - didn’t it do well? I thought it was brilliantly irreverent of history. Fun times. Same for Demolition Man!
Highlander II, though… No. Just no. A running joke with a couple of my friends is that they insist we all saw it together in the theater, but I insist I’ve never seen it. They say it was so bad that I just blacked out my memory to avoid the emotional trauma of having seen it. Honestly though, I have no memory of the film yet a deep revulsion at the idea of watching it.
Stallone Dreadd.
I am in complete agreement with everything you said about it being a crime against 2000 AD Dreadd, yet if one can excize rob schnider from it? It’s popcorn. I’ve asked a few fan editors to have a crack at it because for me it has the same issue as Constantine. It is its own thing I can both appreciate it for being its own thing while also being a crime against the source material…
Urban Dredd? I kept hoping netflix would pick that up as the pilot to a mega city one police proceedural. that was just some solid movie making and wish we’d gotten more, though conceed ‘what would you do for a sequel?’ thus the idea of direct to stremaing platform show giving any of a number of plots time and space to breathe.
For me Tron Legacy was a case of ‘disney squandered what they had, then when that one airbrushed movie bombed and they got the MCU they shelved Tron’ … likely permenently. Had a fun soundtrack. Ya the father/son story is a cliche but it’s more an excuse to tour the world more than anything. I liked Legacy’s look as both Kevin’s use of late 80’s ‘money is no object’ hardware vs late 70’s likely PDP based hardware alongside software changes. After all by the end of the eighties the Unix Wars had happened and the landscape had changed. Plus Uprising, while flawed, had promise and showed what life was like in the early days of the regime when CLU kept a facad of normalcy.
Strange Days feels like one of those movies a LOT of people sleep on and gloss over. I am seriously recommending finding the fan edit scene and seeking it out, because the work done just… elevates it.
I can respect your opinions of Highlander II. again, fan edits do a lot to save this one for me but even at base ‘eh it’s in the slush pile of shit movies I can run in the background. It’s goofy it’s dumb… run with it.’ Then again I’ve kinda hated most of the highlander movies past the first one for having very little that interests me. Though I did love the show. It was a fun ride even when it got weird. Though I will admit it is guilty of helping popularize the ‘katanas are just better’ trope.
See, Constantine I had no issue with because I had never read the source. I thought it was fine, as a movie.
Urban Dredd almost makes me cry. It was so good, in so many ways. Maybe it, too, wasn’t faithful to the source, which was pretty intentionally campy and Dredd was more grimdark than even the comics. But I just loved Urban’s Dredd; he is Dredd for me. An Urban-less Dredd is like imagining Deadpool without Reynolds. Sometimes the actor embodies a character so well it overshadows even the source.
I agree completely with what you day about Legacy. Tron does and should reflect the technology of the times; computers have gotten more glossy and organic. I just love the inner universe and aesthetic of the original Tron, and it’s hard to compete with first love.
Yeah, I think Strange Days was just too weird for the time. I think if it were released today it’d do better. The target audience was still too niche, maybe, back then. I need to watch it again; I haven’t seen it in forever.
I think it’s best if we just not speak of Highlander. The first is among my favorite movies, and as you say the series was surprisingly not at all bad. But all of the sequel films (3, right? God let it be only 2 abominations)… best left in the oubliette of forgotten memories.
The problem with Strange Days is… the same problem cyberpunk as a genre has.
it served as a warning. A lot of people in the world took it as a blueprint.
It certainly turned out that way, didn’t it?
Little Nicky, with an IMDB rating of 5,3 lol. I guess it’s a nostalgia thing.
Little Nicky is the shiznit!
I still quote that movie to this day. Especially if I eat Popeyes Chicken
The deep south.
Release the evil
Any film where people ride around on rollerskates in a post-apocalyptic society.
I’m especially partial to SolarBabies (1986), but I’ll also accept ‘Roller Blade’ and ‘Prayer of the Rollerboys’, where young Patricia Arquette and downsloping Corey Haim don the skates. Rollerball from 1974 is the Citizen Kane of this genre. The 2002 remake with LL Cool J is its red headed step-child.
Even though it’s not apocalyptic, Airborne (1993) is one of my all time favorite movies. The main character is great, Seth green is in it, Britney Powell, Chris Conrad, young Jack black, Alanna ubach (from Waiting). It’s about a high school surfer from Cali who gets shipped to Ohio for 6 months and has to fit in. Hilarious and just amazing. I’m not gay, but Shane McDermott… It’s also amazing he went into real estate, I thought he played a great character on screen. All about rollerblading since nowhere to surf.
Oh my god I saw that a long time ago, I just checked the trailer and it is what I remember.
Even as a teenager I remember thinking that the final race was absolutely unhinged. Like what about the enormous pile of dead or maimed teenagers that the camera cut away from just in time to maintain its G rating?
In the trailer there’s a bunch of kids that slide under a moving semi trailer but lose too much momentum to make it out the other side, or it looks like they do. We never see what happens to them. Main character even looks back at them for a second, just long enough to see that they’re still on the ground and not moving but fuck them because our hero made it and he’s on his way! Huzzah!
I mean the movie is memorable, it’s fun and all, but that scene just lost me so hard. Like actually maybe fuck everyone who thinks this race is a good idea and worth winning. They can have their race, and I will win the broader game of natural selection.
Thank you for that recommendation. I do remember watching it on video, probably about the time it came out. Then absolutely wrecking myself on a hill after I took the brake off my own skates. Fun times indeed. Did not remember Jack Black or Seth Green being in it though. Also you are totes not gay for 90s Shane McDermott. Understood.
Seth had shoulder length red hair lol
I’m… At a loss for words but I’ll screenshot this and put everything on my bucket list
Great! :D Good to hear that this weird niche from the trash-heap of cinematic history may yet claim another victim.
Funnily enough, the day before you posted this, I was reminded of Return To Oz (I was at the zoo and someone… Scared the crap out of me). That’s probably not exactly post apocalyptic or solarpunk, but definitely takes place after a societal collapse of Oz and has creepy weirdos on something like rollerblades. Just in case you want to expand - or dare I say, roll towards the horizon.
Oh you mean these fucking guys? They went out of their way to make them especially scary. The whole film is infamous for being basically a kids horror film. Like the bit with the corridor with the disemmbodied heads of the witch all screaming as Fairuza Balk runs through it? Yea…
There seemed to be an era where traumatising children was part of the draw for the audience and I wonder if it has kind of died out. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was another one that my parents had to switch off.
I’m not the film police and your argument for its inclusion as ‘post-apocalyptic but fantasy’ is all cool. So yes I will take it and roll, awkwardly across sand and gravel, mud and debris, into tomorrow’s ongoing dystopia.
Not roller skates but I’m sure you’d dig Turbo Kid if you haven’t seen it.
I love every stupid minute of SolarBabies.
“You are Chikani!” is one of my favorite badly-delivered bad movie lines.
If you have not heard the episode of How Did This Get Made about it, you should definitely give it a listen: https://www.earwolf.com/episode/solarbabies-live/
Thank youI haven’t come across that podcast before. I will definitely check that out. It is a wonderfully silly film.
I had totally forgotten about solarbabies… and tonight I’m gonna make sure to drink enough to forget it again.
the 80s man… phew
Boondock Saints. It’s so bad, but I love it.
Oh damn that’s a perfect example of what OP was asking for. 23% rotten tomatoe rating with 92% audience rating
I had to go look it up, I couldnt believe it!
Such a good movie!
I only liked the first one. The ones after weren’t so good.
“THERE WAS A FIREFIGHT!!!” Willen Dafoe was brilliant.
There’s only one sequel with a 2nd supposedly in the works.
This shows how much I didn’t enjoy the second one - I couldn’t even remember if there was one or two sequels, but I do remember there was supposedly another instalment in the works.
Great recommendations in here. One thing that surprised me personally was
civil war (2024)
great movie, had a blast. Was surprised rotten tomatoes / IMDb seemed to hate it.
My running theory on this is the Americans really didn’t like how close it hits home/stings, and just gave it a bad rating
I wouldn’t say 81% fresh and a 7/10 are necessarily bad. I might rate it a little higher personally, but those are decent scores.
Though as Coaxil says, given curent events I’m not sure I can ever re-watch it. :(
Oh cool, its audience score seems to have improved considerably compared to last time I checked‽ That is good news for the filmmakers.
the hitting close to home part - yeah I get it. If you are in a red state I hope you stay safe and find a way out of the situation. It sucks so bad if the government stops working for you.
