Inspired by the linked XKCD. Using 60% instead of 50% because that's an easy filter to apply on rottentomatoes.
I'll go first: I think "Sherlock Holmes: A game of Shadows" was awesome, from the plot to the characters ,and especially how they used screen-play to highlight how Sherlocks head works in these absurd ways.
That is absurd! Event Horizon is the only legit Doom movie.
That was the idea all along and they even used the sound clip from the spawn cube in the movie.
Also, although I am not a 40k fan, I know some people see this as a prequel to Warhammer 40k as the moment in which humans first get to use the Warp.
It was ruined by execs, but it is a masterpiece, especially in the production design.
I love the dismissal of critics as a while because a movie you like scored low. It's a good creepy movie but it's no that good of a movie overall. It's very cheesy, the dialogue is poor, the story is minimal. It's got great creeps though.
What? I still hold that movie as the scariest thing I've ever seen. It grips me just thinking about some scenes. It's an amazing movie. Can't believe the score
I like those too, in particular Dune and the Chronicles of Riddick, but they all have audience scores above 60% (and Stargate and Dune are from the last millennium if we're sticking to that requirement).
TRON Legacy is one of those movies where I watch it purely for its visuals and music. It's a let down in terms of story and action, but I stop everything to look at it when its on.
There's one reason the original TRON wouldn't play today, and it's not the 1980s fake computer graphics. It's the pacing. TRON is slow. There's no jitter. It looks like a 1980s video game, not a 21st-century video game.
Or, really, just contrast the Wendy Carlos score with the Daft Punk one. The original is majestic swoops through a digital dreamscape, not jitterbug pop for robot dancers.
A thought that may help you enjoy Tron: Legacy - The pacing and style changes are meant to represent the changes in computer technology and specifically gaming, between the eras when the two films came out.
In TRON, there's a mechanistic pacing that reflects the early computer clock cycles.
In TRON: Legacy, there's a lot of imagery and plotting around characters trying to find peace, or achieve slowness, or even just rythm - trying to escape the attention starved modern algorithm.
I loved Ron Perlman's Hellboy, but the Hellboy 2019 movie was the best. Felt more like a comicbook pulp story and less of a 2000-ish action comedy. But the public and critics has spoken; if it ain't a standard superhero action comedy flick, it is a "soulless" reboot.
Loved the characters, but the movie plot felt like a clipshow of a bigger plot that didn't fit into 2 hours. I haven't watched the anime but it probably was.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Sure it's campy and way over the top. But I kinda like it for that. Plus the characters are awesome, the designs were pretty cool, and Sean Connery was great. Currently at 17% on rt.
I genuinely loved that movie. Watched it as a kid, got the DVD as I got older, downloaded the torrent when I was in college, watched it with friends for movie nights.
I had no idea it was supposed to be bad! I loved the weird fusion of camp, bizarre situations, and genuine action. Although I did have to chuckle at one of the reviews criticizing its CGI, written twelve years after the movie came out.
It was great up until the last 15 minutes, I remember. And it was beautifully artful. But I was a bit colored by the comics, the villain and his motives was just so much better there.
I feel like prince of Persia missed on timing more than anything. It came out too close to dragon emperor imo. And the same year as clash of the titans. It's a decent flick, but not good enough to outrun the comparisons on what all 3 did poorly. (Mostly dialog)
Kung Pow only has a 13% critic rating and I love that movie. 69% audience score though so that might disqualify it.
I remember quite liking Slackers when I saw it (haven't rewatched it though, so my opinion might have changed). I think if this movie every time I hear the song "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain".
The Big Hit
Movies I saw 20 years ago it seems when maybe my tastes (and me too let's face it) were a little immature. Still love Kung Pow though
This is unfortunately an accurate description of that movie.
Think of something like Airplane! or Ghostbusters. There are so many memorable and/or silly parts and lines that people remember well and will repeat over and over. But of course, each also has a real movie to go along with it.
All the clips and lines and other zany parts of Kung Pow can be hilarious, but the movie itself is pretty bad.
The scene with the wounds on his hands, something like:
"does it hurt?"
"Not really"
Pours salt in wounds "Does it now?"
"No"
Breaks thermometer into the wounds "how about now?"
"A little"
"Aww! Poor baby!" Bandages wounds
That scene has played on a loop in the back of my brain for decades. It's fucking hilarious. That and when the evil master reveals his name is Betty, and plays Big Butts. I loved that movie before I started smoking weed, and I loved it even more the first time I watched it stoned.
I, Robot, especially after reading the books. It functions as a combo of the books, but set roughly where the first book took place in, using a variant of the protagonist from the sequels. The robots taking over as they did, though, wasn't really accurate, even just regarding the laws of robotics, but it worked for the movie's conflict. In the books, they get a larger hold on humanity, but to help them go past Earth to become an intragalactic society. For a one-off, though, I can see the directions the movie took to give it that close-ended feeling. Also, the implications of robots and humans, and Spooner as a chracter were pretty faithful to the source material, IMO.
On the topic of Isaac Asimov stories on the big screen, I nominate Bicentennial man. 36% critic and 59% audience score respectively.
I thought it did a good with the themes it brought forth and Asimovs testing of the types of conflicts that would occur with Robots gaining sentience and humanity seeing them as just machines.
Despite the one event near the end that would create a conflict with the laws of Robotics and the effect it should have on a positronic brain.
I would say the only thing the movie has in common with the book is that it mentions the book's main character and the laws of robotics. The book is all about weird behavior of robots that actually obey the laws but the movie just treats them as some corporate doublespeak.
Yeah, I don’t think Spooner is identical to Elijah Baley, but I see they connect on the technophobe aspects, if nothing else. It’s been a while since I’ve read the books, in other aspects they’re probably vastly different.
What!? Hackers at 31%? The one with young Angelina Jolie? The critics gotta be some uncultured swine. That movie was gold! It was The Matrix type of cool before The Matrix. It put the punk part into cyberpunk for a lot of kids.
Also its a bad influence: Got kids inspired to learn about phreaking and phone systems.
I liked Chappie a lot when it came out, I was and still am a fan of Neill Blomkamp's work, but found this one harder to enjoy over the years the more I learned about how awful the two people from Die Antwoord are in real life.
Tank Girl. No one liked that movie when it came out. I left the theater with the biggest grin on my face. Absolutely awesome. Still one of my favorites.
It was completely different than the comics but it was still very fun. Especially in 1995.
I'll have to remember that; I only saw it just after its release and don't remember being anything other than indifferent. I've never read the comic though; the author/artist of the comic is part of the duo of the Gorillas, correct?
I didn't understand the hate Sucker Punch got until I found out that the theatrical release was cut down to a PG-13 movie. To make it PG-13 they had to cut the core themes from the movie since they were not PG-13 appropriate.
I had only watched the unrated directors cut and never saw the theatrical version so any time I talked about this movie people had no idea what I was talking about. The story and supporting scenes were completely gutted and that's why people say the movie didn't have a good story - it was removed.
Hook with it's 29% tomatometer rating. Dustin Hoffman—sexual misconduct allegations aside—fucking nailed it as Hook, and I think the general concept of an adult Peter Pan returning was pretty cool. Also, who doesn't love Robin Williams? It was a movie I loved in my childhood so I am absolutely biased, but 29% seems absurd. I still find the "Don't try to stop me, Smee" scene hilarious to this day.
Yes, it doesn't follow the book 100%. Yes, there are some goofy or cheesy moments. For a 90s viking adventure though, I think it's fun.
People might take issue with Banderas playing a Muslim, but Spain was once part of the caliphate that conquered northern Africa. Having a viking who speaks Greek, considering the Kievan Rus had explored the Mediterranean and fought for the Byzantines by now, added to the historical aspects of the story.
Even the original manuscripts get a bit fantasy, so I like to think of it as the movie reeled it back to a more historically accurate story over the greater fantasy on the book.
It was so far ahead of its time that critics just didn't get it because the world they were satirizing was still about a decade away. (Instagram, fame, product placement, fanboyism...)
Also, bonus answer. The Big Hit. Because fuck it. Lou Diamond Phillips knew exactly what kind of shclock movie he was in and chewed the scenery fantastically.
Reign of Fire only has a 42% (Critics), 49% (Audience) rating on RT, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. The visuals and sets create a nice moody post-apocalyptic vibe, and the actors deliver decent performances imo.
Idiocracy is one of my favorite movies. When it came out, it was far below 50%, but after some of the things on the movie started becoming true, it became popular.
Speed Racer is such a rad movie. Definitely suffered from the tendency I noticed in the past of hyper-stylized/”weird" movies getting trashed by critics just for aesthetics. That does seem to be lessening quite a bit, given the reception to movies like you mentioned. Here's hoping it keeps going!
Passengers is a pretty cool sci-fi movie. I like the first half in particular, the way it shows how "dumb" A.I. will be the bane of our existence feels very accurate as far as futuristic predictions go. I'm also a sucker for "lost on an island" stories, which this ultimately is. I will never understand how so much was made about the decision the main male character makes at a certain point, because the movie very clearly shows that a) he really struggles with the decision for a long time, knowing it's wrong and b) finally does it after almost killing himself and being heavily intoxicated, immediately regretting it. The only real gripe I have with the movie is that Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence have zero chemistry, which kind of kills the whole romantic element of the film.
It's glorious. It's a comedy that only Raul Julia is in on. Everyone else playing it dead serious, but a super hammy scenery chewing villain, with some genuinely great lines.
It's what modern movies are missing. Especially the recent MCU fare. Jonathan Majors and Josh Brolin may well be great actors, but they're not great villains. They're a better fit for mumbling their way through a 3 hour Chris Nolan epic.
Think Tim Curry or Alan Rickman in practically anything they were ever in. The earlier movies had this spark with Jeff Bridges and Tom Hiddleston, but they've lost it now. These things live and die by their choice of villain. They are after all the reason for the movie to exist.
I really enjoyed the concept and story of In Time, which apparently has a 37% tomato meter and 51% audience score. That was probably the first less than 60% one I saw I particularly liked.
Edit: I take it back, I choose Elysium. It has a 59% audience meter and I frickin LOVE that movie, all the way down to the villain being super crazy and virtually unintelligible.
I actually Enjoy The Lost World: Jurassic Park, a lot, and though it's not as good as the original, it is definitely the only other good movie in the series afaic.
I also don't hate the 1998 Mathew Brodrick Godzilla Movie, and it was actually that movie that kickstarted my interest into Godzilla. I still watch it from time to time. Not as a Godzilla movie, but as a decent late 90s disaster movie.
I like Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace, but I'll admit it is purely for nostalgia. I remember the ad campaign from the time, and watching the movie warps me instantly back to 1999, eating Taco Bell and playing Pod Racing on the N64. It's not a good movie, but it brings me happiness.
Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a fun movie to watch. Sure it is insane and unrealistic, but it has some of my favorite Harrison Ford Quotes in the series, and for as CG heavy as they are, I do enjoy the action scenes. I definitely like it better than Temple of Doom, so for me, it's the 3rd best movie out of the 5.
The live action Super Mario Movie is legit a great movie if you understand that it is a way different thing from its source material. The movie has a great sense of humor, Bob Hopskins and Dennis Hopper are brilliant in their roles as Mario and Koopa, The set design is legit cool, and gives me heavy Blade Runner Vibes. And it has the best version of the Walk the Dinosaur song.
If we are going by Critical score instead of Audience: Godzilla King of the Monsters 2019. I was so hyped for that movie, and it delivered everything I ever wanted out of a Godzilla film. Much more Godzilla screen time than the 2014 movie, great fights dressed in great locations. Rodan popping out of the volcano was one of the most hype scenes I've seen in a G film. and my boy King Ghidorah! THEY. MADE. HIM. LOOK. AWESOME! The whole fight over DC was one of my favorite fights in the franchise, and me and my friend were so hyped, we were shouting up and down during our screening. Thank god no one was in the theatre with us lol. Yeah it was a dumb movie with a dumb hollow earth plot, but IT WAS ONE OF THE BEST MONSTER SMACK DOWNS EVER PUT TO FILM!
Wild Wild West is a dumb but fun Will Smith movie, and my favorite part about it is all the steam punk technology scattered throughout the film. Steam Punk is already an underserved genre, but especially so for live action films.
Late for the party, but just want to give my +1 for Wild wild west. Just watched it. It's not nearly as bad as reviews paint. It's fun and has its charm.
Okay, so I hit rotten tomatoes, checked movies that were both critics rotten AND audience rotten, and started perusing titles for stuff I thought rocked.
abraham lincoln: vampire hunter
waterworld
hellboy (how is this in here? I thought this was universally loved)
mars attacks! (56 and 53, I also feel like this shouldn't be on the list. It's too good, and not in a bad way)
x-men origins: wolverine (again, is this not considered awesome? I thought it was great)
daredevil/elektra (I enjoyed both movies)
and now for stuff I've watched at least five times:
the ninth gate
planet of the apes (2001)
avp
prince of persia
green lantern
van helsing
I'm dead serious, I was looking forward to MORE green lantern movies along the lines of that first one. I bought it on amazon having heard nothing about it (I was in a societal black hole for a few years there), watched it, loved it, and was like "sweet, when's the sequel coming out? I wanna see sinestro do his thing...wow, this did not do well. Fuck."
I wasn't super happy with ALL of the writing, but that's comic stuff in general and I thought the whole thing was still quite enjoyable. Like, multiple rewatches enjoyable. Seeing Hal Jordan on screen and having Ryan Reynolds do it was great.
Some of the stuff on your list is pretty bad, but a lot of it is intentionally appealing to a niche audience, which with how Rotten Tomato scoring works, will give it a bad score.
Mars Attacks is an example of a love it or hate it movie. If you are on the right wavelength with the humor and style, it’s amazing and hilarious. If you aren’t, then nothing about it appeals to you.
Rotten Tomatoes scoring favors movies that the majority of people find “Pretty ok, I guess” rather than movies which create strong reactions.
Listing Daredevil is pretty daring though. The Netflix show, and the Punisher show which is something of a spin-off blow it out of the water.
Waterworld is such a great movie with a lot of misguided hate. Many dont like it because of its reputation of being an expensive flop but havnt actually bothered to watch it.
I personally love it, I also enjoyed The Postman too which was another unloved Kevin Costner post-apocalypse movie
Don't know if it quite qualifies, since it's sitting at a 61% audience score, but my favorite horror film Event Horizon has only a 33% critic score. I find a lot of good horror movies sit at or below the 60% mark on Rotten Tomatoes though. If a horror movie is too well rated, it's probably not very scary and not interesting to me.
Jingle All the Way (the original, not the abomination with Larry the cable guy). 19% RT.
I think most people think it's too "weird", but I genuinely love it. It's got all the great 90s tropes, a cartoony core in a live action movie, an anti-consumerism message in a Christmas movie, and Phil Hartman. What's not to love?
Gonna go with Mortal Kombat (1995) 45%, a video game to film adaptation of a fighting game is never going to be deep, but this is a fun ride.
Could add in the follow up, Annihilation (1997), 4% and the 2021 film which sits at 54% too. Don’t expect much and they are fun films.
Same for me. That film ended my many years of obsession with a song I once heard on the radio and only managed to record half of it. The pain of living in a time before Shazam & Co existed was horrible. With no track lists on the web, the best way to identify a song was humming it to an employee in a record store.. and good luck with that.
The acting, effects and story aren't all that great, but still fun to watch IMHO. But I will always love that movie just for picking Halcyon from Orbital in its ending scene.
I love the MK movie, everyone always told me it was terrible. Watched it for the first time few years back, maybe it was the lack of expectations for it, but it was fun.
It felt ahead of its time because it was basically a tech demo showcasing their 3D modeling abilities. It was partially a foray into video media, but it was mostly a "hey, look what we can do". It came out 17 days before Final Fantasy X, which was their move into much more realistic graphics and longer cinematic cutscenes. It was basically an ad to convince people to buy the next 100 hour game.
Still a great movie tho. Shows how far you can go when you're truly passionate.
The critic vs audience score divide is pretty telling for some movies. Ant-Man: Quantumania and both Venom movies come to mind as movies that were critically panned but had pretty high audience score. They're nothing spectacular but still dumb fun movies.
Every person who likes horror movies can probably name a few examples. Horror movies are somehow really weirdly understood by a lot of people, including critics. Or perhaps I watch them for the wrong reasons, I don't know.
47 Meters Down, A Cure for Wellness, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 Remake), All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Blair Witch, Contracted, Creep, Darkness Falls, Devil, Doom, Don't Knock Twice, Eli, Gothika, Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters, ...
There are many more.
I have no idea what is wrong with my brain, but each of these movies generally entertained me much more than movies with a significantly higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But critics give movies like Blair Witch 38 % and Avatar 82 %.
Edit: removed Friday the 13th and Halloween The Curse of Michael Myers because they're pre 2000.
That's right, the prequel to the 1997 horror film Cube. Where people are trapped inside a cube that keeps killing them.
I feel like I'm cheating because it got some positive reviews, just not enough to even have a critic score. Audience score is in the 20's. I don't know why! It's a great follow up. Much better than the sequel, Hypercube. It gives us some much needed backstory on why the cubes exist and what their purpose is.
Oblivion . Didn’t know anything about it going in, went to go see it with the attitude that if it was going to be worth watching the theater experience would help it.
Not saying it’s in my top 50, or likely even top 100, but it’s a perfectly serviceable afternoon nap movie.