I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
Films where I don’t recognize a single actor among the whole crew are almost always better than ones where I’ve seen such and such actor in other movies. Just more immersive. And even if they’re not the best actors I’d much prefer that over whatever the hell Chris Prat or Tom Cruise or Leo D are up to.
I knew being faceblind must have some benefit. I often only realise I know an actor when I see their name in the credits. Then again it can take me half a movie to realise there are two men with dark hair, a beard and glasses, so I wouldn’t entirety recommend it.
en again it can take me half a movie to realise there are two men with dark hair, a beard and glasses
I’m not face blind, but this is the reason I never watched another Mission Impossible movie after the first one: Every single male in that movie looked identical to me, and I couldn’t follow any of the plot line(s?), as I never knew who was doing what to whom. I can only imagine how annoying it must be when that’s the norm.
Regardless how you feel about “woke Hollywood injecting forced diversity into films,” it’s really helped the issue of telling all the good-looking white people apart.
My experience watching The Departed while almost entirely sober felt like a face blindness simulator. I was baffled when one of the characters that had been killed came back and none of the other characters acknowledged it. Cool movie but so confusing.
I’m somewhat faceblind but great at voices. There’s no escape. It also totally ruins a lot of animated shows and movies because a very small number of voice actors get a majority of the work.
So many well known actors play themselves playing the character.
Brand/name recognition + marketing.
It’s part of the blockbuster model, which does everything it can to reduce risk. Before the 70s, studios would go bust when an expensive movie flopped. Studios became very risk averse, especially for the expensive stuff. So they make a sequel to a movie that’s done well, or a plot similar to that of a movie that’s previously done well, based on an intellectual property that sold well in another medium(comic, book, tv-show, …), in a genre that’s previously done well with audiences, starring actors people previously liked, preferably very attractive actors so that audiences like looking at them, pushed by a saturation marketing campaign that gets as many people to watch it on the opening weekend as possible, so that if it sucks they can’t tell their friends not to go and see it. It’s like McDonalds. It’s not the best meal you’ll ever eat, but you know what you’re getting, so you won’t have wasted two hours or your life, or shit yourself after eating it.
Also, video killed the radio star. It’s rare to be incredibly beautiful. It’s rare to be incredibly talented. It’s incredibly rare to be both. If you have to pick one, pick the incredibly beautiful actor, who looks good on posters and in promotional material. Acting isn’t that hard. Even a pretty moron can be a passable actor.
Tom Cruise has employees rewrite movies he’ll be in to make his part more, and more in his style.
He has more acting range and ability than so many other actors
Especially when there are a few examples of amazing actors that you can know and still sometimes struggle to recognize them in their characters. Like Gary Oldman, and … uh… OK well I’m not in a movie headspace, but he’s not the only one!
Tons of lesser names that play great side/background characters and it’s hard to tell, too, so I totally agree others need chances at lead characters.
Those are the actors I’m never tired of because their characters are almost always unique characters.
This is basically what I told people when I started to watch some of the most amazing international and documentary cinema in the early 00s. Ciudade de Deus, La Cité d’enfants Perdus, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain, La Vita è Bella, Der Untergang, Lola Rennt, 올드 보이, Mononoke Hime, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Whale Rider. Documentaries by Adam Curtis or Errol Morris. So many people just don’t know.
True to an extent, there are a few famous actors out there who are genuinely good at taking on different roles and immersing you in the character. A great example is Jim Carrey. Obviously I know Ace Ventura and Truman Burbanks are the same person, but it doesn’t feel like that when you’re watching them. They might share similar qualities, but they’re clearly different characters.
Anthony Hopkins is a better example IMO. Or goddamn Gary Oldman…
I don’t know who Chris Pratt sold his soul to to get voice actor work, but I’m hating it and now hoping he disappears like 90% of the 2000’s actors.
If it’s an actor with a mansion then I know they didn’t spend enough on the actual movie
Terminator is better than Terminator 2, and as cool as it is Terminator 2 should never have been made (or should have a different script).
I know the mob is raising the pitchfork, but hear me out, there are two main ways time travel can solve the grandparent paradox, these are Singular Timeline (i.e. something will prevent you from killing your grandfather) or Multiple Timeline (you kill him but in doing so you created an alternate timeline). Terminator 2 is clearly a MT model, because they delay the rise of Skynet, but Terminator is a ST movie. The way you can understand it’s an ST is because the cause-consequences form a perfect cycle (which couldn’t happen on an MT story), i.e. Reese goes back to save Sarah -> Reese impregnates Sarah and teaches her how to defend herself from Terminators and avoid Skynet -> Sarah gives birth to and teaches John -> John uses the knowledge to start a resistance -> The resistance is so strong that Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah -> Reese goes back to save Sarah…
The awesome thing about Terminator is how you only realise this at the end of the Movie, that nothing they did mattered, because that’s what happened before, the timeline is fixed, humanity will suffer but they’ll win eventually.
If Terminator was a MT then the cycle breaks, i.e. there needs to be a beginning, a first time around when the original timeline didn’t had any time travelers. How did that timeline looked like? John couldn’t exist, which means that sending a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah was not possible, Reese couldn’t have gone back without the Terminator technology, which they wouldn’t have unless the resistance was winning, and if they are winning without John, the Terminator must have gone back to kill someone else and when Reese went back he accidentally found Sarah, impregnated her and coincidentally made a better commander for the resistance which accidentally and created a perfect loop so that next time he would be sent back and meet Sarah because she was the target (what are the odds of that). Then why is the movie not about this? Why is the movie about the Nth loop after the timeline was changed? The reason is that Terminator was thought as a ST movie, but when they wanted to write a sequel they for some reason decided to allow changes in the timeline which broke the first movie.
Horror films are where art flourishes and it has a huge culture of being outside of Hollywood which is just a plus. Also the acting is usually way better
I’m not sure whether to update or downvote. The first sentence doesnt seem too controversial, but hoo boy you nailed it on the second lol
Screw it, upvoted.
Amazing, every word is wrong
Most horror movies have worse acting than a porno.
There is no accounting for taste. Who’s to say what’s a better actor?!
I think you’re right and maybe that’s why I prefer horror movies so much over literally all else. And to your point about being outside of Hollywood, I really appreciate it when I don’t recognize any of the actors. It makes it much more immersive for me. Usually much better camera work and lighting too. And Less CGI - atleast the better ones. I hate it when the whole screen is just really good animation :(
Ouiji was the worst offender of this. The first half of the movie, it’s got some of my favorite subtle directing in it, keeping you on your toes, then BAM. Halfway through they’re showing the creature in full view and it’s some generic black goo. Not scary at all. Would have been way better if the horror never showed its face.
Horror is a divisive genre, because it has some of the higher highs, but also many of the lowest lows.
I never really watched any horror movies until this October we binge watched almost 40 movies from that genre.
I agree, some of the absolute greatest films are from that genre, and you can find very interesting stuff from there if you dig a bit.
I’m now kind of mad at how I didn’t find Evil Dead earlier in my life. Or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre…
Evil Dead 1&2, Army of Darkness are some of my favorite movies growing up. Just rewatched The Howling and it was good but not as good a American Werewolf in London. Friday the 13th and the Hellrazor series were awesome. Lost boys etc. The Gate. Pet Cemetery, Sometimes They Come Back and Cats Eye I thought were great Stephen King adaptations. I really enjoyed The Cube for its creativity and small set.
Still its the SciFi horrors get me the most. Alien series was awesome and Event Horizon were awesome. Something about having nowhere to escape to I think.
Talking about Stephen King, Misery is a great movie.
This post is so confusing. Do I upvote opinions I strongly agree with or down vote them?!
Last year’s DnD movie is the best film of the last ten or so years. It succeeded on every level, except in the box office.
My hypothesis is that Hasbro insisted on branding it “Dungeons & Dragons” to push the brand, and non-gamers figured it wasn’t for them. If they’d have made the main title “Honor among Thieves”, all the game nerds would have seen the DnD logo, and others wouldn’t have been turned off *. As it stands, people will find it and it’ll become the new “Starship Troopers” that bombed but shines forever in retrospect.
* See “Arcane”.
Interstellar is a terrible movie that doesn’t say or do anything special and I still don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s so amazing.
I did really like the robot guy though.
Tarantino is overrated. You have to watch a lot of movies to come to this realisation, because otherwise you don’t realise his movies are often in large part a collage of other movies. Movies which did what he does better. That means that it doesn’t actually matter that Tarantino is overrated for most movie goers. More generally, this is why critics’ opinions don’t actually matter that much. They’ve watched too many movies and likely know too much about movies, to tell the average audience goer if they’ll enjoy a movie.
Once you’ve watched a few thousand movies, and especially if you’ve ever studied film or read a few books about it, you’ll often find you enjoy interesting but shit movies more, than very well made but unoriginal movies. People who truly love film, invariably aren’t snobs. They enjoy absolute trash, they enjoy arty farty stuff. If someone has a related degree or even a doctorate or works in the industry, the likelihood is high that they’re also a fan of B-movies. They don’t need to pretend to be knowledgeable, because they are. A film snob will bore you with the details of a Tarkovski movie. A cinephile is more likely to bang on about 80s horror movies, lesbian vampire sexploitation movies, Albert Pyun’s Cyborg, or Troma’s The Toxic Avenger.
Every animated movie looks the same now
You’re wrong, and here’s just one example to prove it: Into the Spiderverse
Here’s another. Puss in boots
I think the new Disney movie, Wish, copied its style though.
Teenage mutant ninja turtles.
How bout a third? Aqua Teen Hunger Force movies!
And the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. The sad fact is that these are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Yup. That movie doesn’t even look like itself.
What do you mean? There are so many styles of animation, you mean like Pixar movies all look the same?
Pixar, DreamWorks, and Illumination are the largest studios that make animated movies these days and they all have such generic character designs now. Very soft, very round, large eyes, large mouths, and overall visually boring.
And they often have the same cliche actions and expressions.
Okay, so not every movie, just some recent popular movies from the same year from two of the largest studios with personnel and historical ties, and I guess illumination is also 3d animation if a different character style.
I understand the gripe, but that’s a very small section of animation.
I think it’s weird to put illumination with the other two because while it’s technically a financially successful studio, everything they put out is borderline bootleg quality compared to the other two.
I really think they’re re-using the assets for all the characters now, with slight tweaks from movie to movie.
Disney has been doing this for the last 80 years or so.
Join the dark side. Watch anime
The original Star wars trilogy was overrated, the sequels were underrated, and I’d rate them all to be equally mediocre.
The Mario movie was incredibly mediocre, despite its high production value. I’m talking MCU-levels of truckloads of money spent with shockingly little to show for it.
You mean the 93 movie? I loved that!
This is the only Mario film
When I first read this comment, I thought you were talking about Super Mario Bros (1993) and was about to throw hands. Because that movie is actually good, if deeply flawed. Its flaws make for a more entertaining movie altogether.
John Leguizamo is a hidden gem of cinema so the OG Mario punches way above its weight class.
If you like the YouTube channel “Some More News”, you should check out their “movie”. Yes, they made a movie and yes, it’s out there at times, but the way it ties real world to the 1990s Mario Bros movie is so fragmented that when they finally connect all the dots, it’s a mind blow!
Huge Mario fan here, I unironically think the 90s movie is better.
I wasn’t even born when that movie came out so don’t “hur durr nostalgia” me
Mediocre is too kind. The Mario movie was bad.
I took my kids. They kind of enjoyed it, but forgot about it almost immediately.
I finally watched it after hearing good things and wow, yep. Incredibly mediocre, cashing in on nostalgia.
I did enjoy the music, though, but probably mostly because of nostalgia and my love for NES/SNES Mario games.
Funny you mention the MCU because the audience for those movies is practically the same. For everything I’ve read and seen it basically sounds like a animated MCU movie
I made it through 5 minutes before I stopped and deleted it. Most of the time I just close the player and plan on coming back to it when my mood is different, but with Mario I felt this visceral sensation of “nope.”
No regrets.
What expectations did you have going in?
I don’t follow advertising hype for anything because I generally despise advertising of all types, so I had no expectations for this movie. The only information I had about it beforehand was that Chris Pratt would be the voice of Mario instead of the longtime English voice actor.
One day not long ago, it was a trending torrent so I picked it up.
I guess I am very far from the target audience. Immediately the tone, pace of the editing, and the dialogue did not sit right with me. It felt like a worse version of Detective Pikachu, which I thought was average at best.
I’m still mad it basically kicked the DnD movie out of theaters. If it wasn’t for all the hype for Mario, I think the DnD movie would have done a lot better, but that’s partly their fault for choosing a terrible time to release a movie - a week or two before the biggest video game franchise of all time releases their movie.
The story feels rushed and incoherent. Characters without character and chemistry. It’s a film in which every aspect of its production was solely determined by the amount of money that was put into it. If Jack Black can’t save a mediocre film…
Removed by mod
I can’t speak to its reception with film critics, but the word of mouth opinions I heard were very positive. It was also nominated for a number of Oscars.
The original Blade Runner movie is not nearly as good as the sequel. The sequel highlights how lesser the original’s plot was. We overly praise the first one because of the Tear in the Rain Speech.
I enjoyed Sucker Punch. I’ll admit it’s very male gazey, but it’s still a fun movie and has a killer soundtrack (am a woman)
That “The Man from Earth (2007)” is the best movies there is. I recommend it to people all the time but no one seems to realise how profoundly interesting it is. And it doesn’t need any scenery or special effects. It’s literally just conversation and dramatic music, tuned to perfectly tell a story that touches on many philosophical questions. I just love that film.
I agree, and i think everyone i know that has seen it does so too. You should check out the one where they hop into a tent to travel through time(primer 2004) , it has a similar ‘production value’ vs ‘delivering plot’ ratio!
Primer and The Man from Earth are two of my all time favorite films. Production value is nice and all, but an interesting idea explored well wins every time for me.
If you liked those two, I recommend Coherence. Low budget but great execution imo.
I just watched it, solely from your comment.
I really enjoyed that movie! Thank you.
Ah pfew im not the only one…. The sequel (yeah theres a sequel) is shit tho.
There is no sequel in ba sing se … wait … different show.
Many a sequel is lost in Lake Laogai
Thank you! I caught that movie on TV years ago and never knew the name.
Way too many good movies to have a single best, but that one is one of my favorites certainly. If I recommend it to someone I avoid any spoiling of the twist because it was so great when it happened. It might be obvious before that point for some, it came from left field for me.
And while I heard the sequel wasn’t all that great, I felt that even if a sequel could be good it was totally unneeded. It’d be like trying to make a second Highlander movie, if one could even imagine that.
This is an incredible film! Forgot about it.
I’ve seen this movie many times and introduced many to it. It’s one of those movies that sticks with you. I think about it a lot, I find, drawing parallels to it all the time.
A lot of commenters agreeing and recommending this, so I’ll probably look it up. That said, a movie where it’s just talking with music, seems pretty obvious why most people avoid it.
I’ve watched the film and it’s nothing more than okay. It’s reduced to the point of being bland. The good script can’t carry everything else that is mediocre at best.
Mine is- the Marvel/DC superhero movies all but entirely ruined cinema.
I actually liked Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Both main actors were objectively terrible, but I still liked the movie 🤷♂️
