Colossus: The Forbin Project Or lets build a supersmart overseeing computer complex to take over the defense of the United States what could possibly go wrong like them pesky Ruskies making their own and then the 2 join up and rule the world? Nahh could never happen. One of my favorite SciFi movies that is good at capturing the cold war feel and paranoia as well as a thoughtful story that while on the face of it impossible but idea wise not implausible.
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Did anyone here watch Mortdecai? I heard it was awful but I’m reading the book right now and it’s quite funny.
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Having seen it recently: I think the The Guardians of the Galaxy is underrated.
I expected whizbang special super duper 3D extra special effects with never-ending fight sequences. i expected the story to be forgettable and nothing I would remember, and I figured I’d watch it while doing something else. Y’know, like everything that’s been coming out Marvel these days. It was actually pretty good, and I thought it had heart. The timing was good, they kept the story simple enough and the action sequences all had an actual purpose. Even the final showdown wasn’t dragged out for no good reason.
I was genuinely surprised by how good it was, and I think it’s a solid movie that didn’t try too hard or sink too low. More importantly, and this is something I see a lot of movies neglect lately, the characters are consistent in their motivations and behavior. You get a good feel for Yondu’s relationship with Peter in the beginning and by the end, you know how he’s going to react, and he doesn’t surprise you in a way that leaves you scratching your head.
I’m not saying it’s the movie of the century, but considering how little care has been going into franchise films lately, this was refreshing.
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one film i can watch over and over is “fata morgana” by herzog.
i’ve seen several people mention “city of lost children” but what about “delicatessen?” i thought it was the better film.
nice to see mentions of “punch drunk love” which is the only sandler film i can stand to watch all the way through.
for my tastes “texas killing fields” is my favorite with sam worthington. somewhat underrated.
“spider,” “history of violence,” and “crash” notwithstanding, cronenberg may never have done it better than with “videodrome.” it is the essential cronenberg and underrated imo.
has anyone seen “la jetee?” the inspiration for “12 monkeys” but a much less baroque method of storytelling than gilliam’s.
my most underrated films–
“barry lyndon”
“super”
“inland empire”
“the andromeda strain”
“electra glide in blue”
“addio tio tom”
my most overrated movies–
“american graffiti”
“withnail and i”
“zero dark thirty”
“birdman”
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oh, and speaking of movies which so changed the vocabulary of film that it seems cliched even though the cliched aspects were daring and new when the film came out, i have to mention “koyannisqatsi.” i have seen that movie over 100 times and find new things in it every single time.
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We really enjoyed this movie, too. It’s on our “purchase during Thanksgiving weekend” list now.
This last weekend we watched a movie that I had very low expectations for, and came away pleasantly surprised; the Robocop remake. It had a more coherent story than the original, an actor with better emotional range than the original, and the exterior Detroit shots were actually filmed in Detroit.
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Because I am in the middle of the 2nd of the new OSS117 films I figure I should mention them as I don’t see them get regular mentions at least in 'murrica.
OSS117 Cairo Nest Of Spies and OSS117 Lost in Rio. The total 50’s and 60’s look in the respective films is great. Jean Dujardin is wonderful as the totally clueless #1 French spy Hubert de la Bath. The pokes at cultural imperialism and sexism of the day are hilarious and well done. These are way better super spy spoofs than the Austin Powers films.
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Well, it had pretty great critical response and did great box office (#2 film of 2014, if you also count American Sniper as a 2014 film).
Interestingly, I had high expectations when I saw the film after it was released to Blu-Ray, and then thought maybe I had it wrong when I saw the horrible CGI used at the very beginning when the CGI “rat” jumps through water and makes fake-looking splashes. Given how polished everything else in the movie was, I still don’t understand why they would make one of their first effects so crappy, but that was basically the worst thing in the movie for me.
It’s really highly rated—by far the highest regarded movie of any you list. 19th best film, according to the directors polled by Sight & Sound in 2012.
http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/film/4ce2b6bc285f7
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Really? I thought it was dreadfully insipid (I also watched it a week or so ago). Missing all the gleeful madness of the original.
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I’m not the biggest fan of Sofia Coppola but nevertheless I give her props for trying some different things. We caught The Bling Ring on streaming - I think we saw it on Amazon but possibly Netflix. We got it free with Prime so I’m not sure how I’d have felt about this film if I’d paid for it, but despite some pretty negative reviews on IMDB, I thought she made a solid, compelling movie with an interesting narrative arc. I was surprised my husband also liked it, as it is way off the base for his kind of thing.
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Popcorn flicks, man, YMMV.
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you make some good points. despite the fact that i led off with it i almost dropped “barry lyndon” after i typed up my list. i guess i kept it on the list because i’m just old enough to recall the incredible critical drubbing it took when it came out and even though it has become more highly regarded since then it really wasn’t considered very highly then.
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I don’t think anyone’s mentioned this one yet, it came on TV last night much to my delight–the 1986 Jonathan Demme film Something Wild. There’s a lot of individual elements which I love–actors, locations, sets, cameos, props, costumes, music (oy, the music!)–but what I love most about it is the very fact that I don’t know how to describe why I love it so much. It isn’t any type of movie, it’s like every type of movie according to the situation. It cannot be pinned-down. It just has this je ne sais quoi about it that is really unique. It had a decent budget, but it still has this raw quality to it. I dunno, how would you describe it?
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I lurv Barry Lyndon - haven’t seen it in 4+ years, so its high-time to find it back.
I always liked the Hammer-film Lost Continent. Based on a novel I never read, after an incomprehensible opening scene that has everything but bikers and the kitchen sink, the first third reads like film noir - a bunch of people stuck in a ship in a storm, all with shifty reasons they are in rapid flight, and a cargo-hold full of water-explosive potassium; the storm passes, and they are stuck in the Sargosso Sea – which is comprised of carnivorous plants, and filled with descendants of other shipwrecks, and Conquistadors and the Spanish Inquisition, who walk around on top of the carnivorous plants with snow-shoes and helium-balloons. Oh, and a giant lobster. And a guy getting shot in the stomach with a flare gun - out of all the insanity in the film, this is the image that stuck with me from seeing it on a neighbor’s tv as a kid. It’s filled with uncut crazy, but also tons of atmosphere.
on-set shot:
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Love this film, and you know, I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition…
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Underrated:
- The Lawnmower Man. As a movie about VR, it’s awful. But, it isn’t a movie about VR. It’s also not a Stephen King movie (and is much better than any movie legitimately based on that story could be). Instead, it’s a horror movie about human enhancement where some of the set pieces happen to involve VR-related teaching tools; it fits more into the vein of Monkey Shines (which probably inspired it), and is almost certainly better than Lucy. Just watch it and forget how it was marketed.
- Batman Returns. This is not a movie about Batman; it’s a movie about Gotham, centering around a cast of characters far more interesting than Batman, and focusing on the social dynamics that separate Gotham from our world. The things that happen in Batman Returns wouldn’t happen in our world, in part because Gotham is run by the extremely wealthy to a much greater extent. Batman Returns also has a really interesting narrative structure, really different from later superhero movies; on top of that, it really has a thing going with a feminist critique of capitalism, which I feel like has been mostly ignored or laughed off.
- The Adolescence of Utena. Basically everybody who watched Utena failed to notice the initiation plot. The Adolescence of Utena makes the initiatory theme a lot more explicit. Instead of recognizing it, people just claimed that it was incomprehensible, and that the dream logic indicated that little effort was being put into it. Re-read cosmic trigger and then watch The Adolescence of Utena, and see if it sparks a few thoughts.
- A Scanner Darkly. The most accurate PKD adaptation. Keanu Reeves is perfect for the role, because Bob Arctor is also permanently confused. It does a good job of emphasizing exactly how well PKD predicted 1994.
- Total Recall. The most thematically accurate PKD adaptation. Nearly every PKD adaptation recasts itself as second- or third-generation cyberpunk, the same way Blade Runner did, and ignores the fact that PKD was most definitely a comedic writer working primarily with pulp tropes; PKD embraced the cheesy elements of 50s and 60s sci-fi and created weird and wooly worlds that were compelling even as they were flawed. Total Recall embraces this, and brings in common elements from PKD novels (the asshole robot taxi driver; indigenous martian mutant civilizations), rather than taking the most shallow thematic interpretation and pasting it on top of a streamlined apple-store/flat-pack future.
- The Last Action Hero. This is, in a sense, the first of the meta-genre of films that try to be a postmodern deconstruction of a genre while also being an example of the genre in question (Scream, Cabin in the Woods, RED, The Expendables, Kick-Ass, Super, Watchmen, Buffy the Vampire Slayer…). It does a pretty good job, and is arguably merely ahead of its time. Watching it today, it’s pretty easy to classify, and it was the first to mock large sets of action movie tropes that were in a far less ridiculous position at the time when it came out. That said, it certainly has shades of the Airplane- and Naked Gun- era wacky comedy, which comes on a little too strong for modern tastes.
Overrated:
- Spirited Away, and pretty much anything from Miyazaki (though Spirited Away is the best example of my complaints). His pacing is slow to the point of being nap-inducing; his plots are meandering to the point of being meaningless; his themes are rarely original or interesting. Miyazaki substitutes high production values (in the form of absurdly smooth animation) for content. If it wasn’t the case that Ghibli productions had english dubs and english distribution channels at a time when english official anime releases were rare and low-quality, Miyazaki would be forgotten in the west.
- Dracula (the Universal Studios 1930s version). The script was barely competent; little effort was put into producing meaningful tension or atmosphere. Characters were combined arbitrarily. Large parts of the story were left out even when they would make for a better script. Were it not for Bella Lugosi’s iconic performance, this film would be forgotten. Watch the 1972 Argento version, or the 1990s version with Keanu Reeves instead – both do a better job producing a compelling story and adapting a heavily flawed (and also overrated) novel.
- The Dark Knight. Despite everything, this film manages to be both less original and less gritty than Batman Returns. It’s not a bad film, and probably does a better job creating a believable Joker than the Tim Burton version, but it adheres fairly closely to a by-now-standard action movie format.
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The Men Who Stare at Goats was really heavily adapted into a comedy. To get a better idea of what the book’s like, watch the documentary version that Ronson made while writing the book - Crazy Rulers of the World. It’s a great deal darker & more serious.
The hollywood adaptation takes five or six different real people and combines them into single characters, then adds in cheap jokes at the expense of hippies.
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I agree Spirited Away may be somewhat overrated, but not up with all the Miyazaki bashing 
I think The Wind Rises is underrated and Mononoke is correctly rated.
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I like the sound of that but it rings false for me. In the same way as when people say “Everything in moderation, even moderation”. I always think. “No. When you moderate moderation, you just tend toward further moderation.”
In my mind there’s an asymptotic approach to a never fully realisable ‘perfect moderation’ and enacting any kind of moderating behaviour proceeds toward that boundary.
What people should really say is “Everything in moderation, except when I don’t feel like it.”
In the same sense, stating that you have built your knowledge on a foundation of scepticism does not prove there is a chance you have perfect knowledge. Being ready to admit that there is a chance you have perfect knowledge undermines ‘the possibility’ of actually having perfect knowledge. Which you would have, even about itself.
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Watched The Theory of Everything yesterday.
I wasn’t very impressed, to be honest. Not enough science.
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