Films you heard were bad turned out to be good

Jimmy Pierce

Jimmy Pierce

Well-known member
Films you read or heard were bad that turned out to be good. Let's keep it simple and just post the title and one sentence as to why it was good for you.


The Village (2004)

The atmosphere it creates kept me on the edge and the "twist" which came out of nowhere, I thought worked within the context of the story and raised a lot of questions.
 
Hanna (2010-11?)

Little girl gets trained by daddy (since age 2 or so) to be a hired killer....really? I though it would be ridiculous but the movie actually gave the premise some credibility. WAY WAY better than I thought it would be.
 
Cloud Atlas (2012).

An excellent story, excellently told by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and excellently edited by Berner and Wehlisch.
 
I will chime in. Maybe these movies don't quite fit the discussion's theme, but I know a lot folks didn't like "Southland Tales" Or "Watchmen" (or is it THE Watchmen?). I think Southland Tales is chaotic but decent, Watchmen I really liked up 'til maybe last 20 minutes-ish, when it really started to drag for me. Didn't see the director's cut 'cause I'd heard all the bad press and was afraid I'd be even more bored than watching the regular-length version.
 
Magic in the Moonlight (2014). I've always enjoyed watching Colin Firth and Emma Stone. Here I also liked the photography, sedate camerawork (so rare these days), and the writing, particularly the dialog and theme. Woody Allen used to amuse me but did not really resonate with me until recently.
 
Thing about Woody (obvious jokes aside) is he imprints that personality so strongly on everything he does, i.e. it's always so strongly from his POV and there's almost always a Woody stand-in character, that you have to really like that to like his stuff.
 
Josh Bass said:
Thing about Woody (obvious jokes aside) is he imprints that personality so strongly on everything he does, i.e. it's always so strongly from his POV and there's almost always a Woody stand-in character, that you have to really like that to like his stuff.
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In the case of Woody... and the thread subject title... this is sort of the antithesis of 'movies one hears bad reviews about'...

In the case of Woody, I gave up trying to watch his movies in the early 80's, as far as I was concerned his films are unwatchable. Then in the early 2000's... one hears 'he's changed'...

"Midnight in Paris"(2011)... ugh... not quite as unwatchable for me as "Anne Hall"(1977), but still ugh...
 
Speaking of Woody Allen, it may not be considered by a majority to be a bad film, but out of a number of films I've seen from Woody, "Zelig" (1983) was a really fascinating character study for me.

Another one that I've heard was a bad film, "Envy (2004)" with Jack Black & Ben Stiller. However I had already seen it and liked it before hearing about it. I haven't seen it in years so this is 2004 me talking. :tongue:

Every time I think about it though, I want some flan...

Everyone has different tastes. I'm a dry cereal, NO ketchup on or beside my fries kind of person. But if there's one thing I've learned is I can learn a whole bunch of other things from everybody else, and watching movies is a trying ritual like food. You try it, it's delicious, or it's not quite tasteful or it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but you survived and you can recommend it or disregard it.
 
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Another Woody Allen movie that is supposed to be awful, but I really enjoyed, was "Scoop." I'm a big fan of Woody Allen, and a friend of mine kept telling me, "Just wait until you see Scoop, you'll change your mind." Nope, Scoop was hilarious.
 
R.I.P.D.

Absolutely slated movie. So I expected nothing from it, but kind of enjoyed it. I mean it seemed no better or no worse than any other number of similar mindless summer blockbuster action flicks. Not sure why that one was singled out for the vitriol it got....
 
The Lone Ranger - went it with low expectations and really enjoyed it, that Train ride chase finale was amazing!
 
Regarding: Jack Reacher. Among the people that have read the Lee Child Reacher books, the movie with Tom Cruise was roundly reviled - mostly because the character in the book is kind of Duane Johnson size. I liked it. I thought Tom Cruise, his diminutive size notwithstanding, was really good in it and I thought it was a pretty good adaptation of the book. Plus it had Werner Herzog as a pretty bad ass bad guy.
 
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I've done some cleanup in this thread. Rest assured, attacking each other personally is not permitted here at DVXuser, and that includes statements such "put down the hash pipe."

People have different opinions on movies, and that's the entire point of this thread.

Further behavior along these lines will be met with harsher discipline.
 
I have films that I adore - but that I will not recommend to others. They're simply too odd for the average film goer. "Lair of the White Worm" and "Brazil" come to mind. I had read something about "Brazil" before I saw it, and even then, I barely was able to make out what the director had in mind. Lovely films, but not for everyone.
 
I must say that I'm amazed when people don't get certain films. Brazil is sheer brilliance to me. I recall seeing Nashville in a college class and attempting to explain to the other students why it was so great. "I can't believe I have to defend this movie!"

There are also the occasional gems that I've stumbled onto over the years that were not considered anything special in their time. Cutter's Way and Street Smart are two from the 80s that I recall. I remember randomly turning on the now-forgotten Winter Kills on a Sunday afternoon and being amazed by this buried movie. And a friend & I were literally a couple of kids looking to get out of the rain when we ventured into The Stunt Man. All of these films were certainly under appreciated in their time.

And for sheer lunacy stupid fun, I got a real chuckle out of Mom & Dad Save the World. I'm almost ashamed to admit that one.
 
That's a good point. Good movies can get buried, for whatever reason. The number-one rated movie on IMDB, The Shawshank Redemption, slept through its theatrical release and was rediscovered on home video.

Movies can get less than their fair shake because another hit movie overshadowed them in the theaters or the country is just not in the mood. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of hidden gems from past decades.
 
Transformers, Avengers and Pitch Perfect for me. Both of those I thought would be the worst movies of all time, but then I decided to give them a chance and ended up really enjoying them.
 
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