Good point–I didn’t check that out. I’m an Aerosmith fan myself (though probably not at your level), but the melodrama that was amped up approximately every thirty seconds at the possible death of X, or the leaving of Girlfriend Y, or the choosing of piecrust W, completely wiped away any thought I had of enjoying the soundtrack. There isn’t a single moment in that movie that doesn’t get the sappy treatment–it’s like swimming in an ocean of high fructose corn syrup. So instead of the action carrying me to the point of being excited to see if the actor lives through some particular issue, the issue is mined for how many sad/concerned faces they can show.
Within ten minutes of the opening, I wanted every one of the “drill team” (or whatever the hell they were called), including everyone on earth, to die in horrible, asteroid-induced agony.
Deep Impact was a much, much better film.
after seeing it in the theater, I rented it (on VHS!) to show someone who hadn’t seen it yet. it was actually really cool because there’s a bunch of easter-eggs hidden in it that don’t register the first viewing. they’re pretty well done, and since it’s not the theater you can rewind and pause and geek out on them
also, when I worked in college radio, we got a huge press kit months before it was released which included a pink bar of soap with the logo stamped into it. “why the fuck do they think we want a bar of soap advertising their shitty movie?” I said, and into the bin it went ;_;
and @IronEdithKidd
although I like all the actors in HTTM, it seemed to skate on that appeal and shoe-horned a dumb mid-life crisis story onto it. I would’ve respected it (and laughed) more if it was merely an all-out parody of the types of films Cusack was in as a teen without any serious plotting at all.
Moon was fucking awesome, though. I thought it was highly rated, though? is it just not as well-known as I’m assuming?
The cast of HTTM just didn’t seem to gel for me, and like you, I enjoy all the main cast actors in the film. I guess that Cusack has been around for so much longer (to my knowledge) than Corddry, Duke or Robinson, that he belongs to a much different acting set. I’m probably off base about it, but that was the feeling I got.
“Fight Club” is one of my favorites for a number of reasons, but especially because I was living in Wilmington, DE, when I saw it (Delaware being special due to its low corporate taxes, IIRC, and hence home to a large number of major corporations).
“<a href=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489327/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_13>Venus” was a movie that I absolutely enjoyed, but I’ve yet to see it on the list here. Peter O’Toole, man, that dude was the bomb.
Ok I retract that, but it is a bit overrated there, putting it in front of strangelove and on the waterfront is a tall order.
Oof, oof, a thousand times oof. Yeah, I’m one of those Aerosmith fans. I’ve always hated their bombastic ballads of the 90s and beyond. I blame this factor:
Part of Permanent Vacation's commercial success involved producer Bruce Fairbairn whose production touches (such as sound effects and high-quality recording) added interest to the album and the use of outside songwriters such as Desmond Child, Jim Vallance, and Holly Knight who assisted the band with lyrics. While the group was initially hesitant to using outside songwriters, including Tyler being furious for Knight getting songwriting credits for changing one word ("Rag Time" became "Rag Doll"), the method paid off, as Permanent Vacation became the band's most successful album in a decade.
They should have trusted their initial judgement, sez I. But then… they wouldn’t quite be the gazillionaires they are now.
With all the press I’ve seen about it lately, it certainly has built up the likelihood of being terrible. I haven’t read the book as I generally avoid stuff that gets so much praise, but who knows? Maybe it’ll be grand?
Thank you for that–I wholeheartedly agree.
Oh wow–forgot that one. Absolutely agree. Haunting, bizarre, troubling, just sort of horrible in its beauty.[quote=“sam, post:161, topic:19345”]
Shawshank Redemption at #1 it hugely overrated, so many of the other movies there are just so much better. It did not really leave me wanting to watch it again.
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Again, agreed. Just the other day I was sitting by some young ladies doing some sort of college paper, so I inquired as to their purpose and found that they were film students. Shawshank was the film they named as the best film they’d ever seen. I had to drum up a list of stuff that they likely forgot within twenty seconds.
Here’s one most folks would never have heard of - an Aussie crime flick called Gettin’ Square. Rated 6.9 on IMDB; I’d give it an 8.
International viewers will recognise Sam Worthington and David Wenham, who absolutely steals the show as a surprisingly sly junkie… there’s a courtroom scene that’ll have you in tears. Timothy Spall puts in a good performance too.
It starts and finishes like there’s a music vid guy directing; it’s bookended with slickness, but the rest of it isn’t so stylistically jazzy, which is a shame… great music throughout though.
After checking out the plot on IMDB, I’m pretty sure this is a remake of an older B&W flick I watched a couple of years ago after seeing someone nominate it an exemplary thriller.
Can’t remember any more than that, so I have NFI how to dig it up…
Wait a sec, IMDB, duh - here we go.
I didn’t enjoy Gummo on the usual levels, probably the contrary… but as a comment on disinvesting in humanity, it’s in rarefied company, if not peerless.
Bang, right there - Rushmore has to be the most underrated film identified so far given it’s not in the IMDB top 250.
And thanks for taking the guilt out of my pleasure from Punch Drunk Love.
…
Ooh! Ooh! Here’s one - The Dark Crystal.
Now I know it’s well underrated at 7.2, but far more so because the term ‘Skeksis’ hasn’t entered the lexicon to denote our scumbag overlords.
Nooooooo, I’d fucking KILL for some real Fight Club soap!
That’s weird, I’ve never heard about any sequels to The Matrix…
are these some kind of difficult-to-find Anime or something?
I couldn’t believe how bad I fucked up after I saw it. It wasn’t just me, the whole station passed it up. It sat in the free merch bin for a long ass time before it got tossed. We got promo items every day and usually the larger the label/studio, the lamer they were. All we knew was it was a Brad Pitt movie. For that fact alone it had “suck” written all over it. Being jaded, 90s college rock people didn’t help. There was zero indication that it correlated to the film (a film we thought would suck anyway) and just seemed like dumb merch, like getting a beach towel with the Reality Bites logo on it or something.
I’ve avoided seeing how much those soaps go for on ebay. please don’t tell me.
Kinda felt the same way about Trainspotting before it came out.
It’s not like I threw away any free heroin or anything but it was not the movie I expected.
For the kiwis/aussies in the hizouse, how about “Once were warriors”? It follows the breakdown of a Maori family for a number of reasons (drugs, alcohol, spousal/child abuse) and can be kinda hard to watch. Post-viewing I felt a little bit like I did after seeing “Saving Private Ryan”, but as a lens into the modern-day Maori culture, it’s quite a kick in the head.
Edited: I feel like I’m mentioning more movies that I either really, really, liked, or really, really didn’t, instead of looking to whether those same flicks were well or poorly regarded by the culture at large…so, my bad.
There’s disappointment. And then there’s Matrix sequels disappointment.
I take it you didn’t see Kalifornia earlier in that same era, then. Pitt plays a deranged redneck a little too well.
Now I’m curious what movie you were expecting? I was expecting a whole lot of Ewan McGregor and did not leave disappoint. In fact, got a bit more of him than I was expecting. 
See also: 12 Monkeys. And Se7en. And True Romance
Also: Fight Club had Ed Norton coming straight out of American History X the year before.
I remember seeing the preview for Fight Club and thinking “Oh hellz yes I am going to see that”, as opposed to “Eww, Brad Pitt movie”. Sure, Brad Pitt had made “Meet Joe Black” just before Fight Club, but he had been in enough movies that I genuinely enjoyed to assume that Fight Club was going to be pretty awesome.
