Controversial film opinions

[Rayn]

I've been going through a few turkeys from the 80s over the last couple of months and I've concluded that I actually love Howard the Duck. I don't care if it's regarded a shit movie, it's entertaining from the opening credits to the very last second. 

[Festoon]

19 minutes ago, Rayn said:

I've been going through a few turkeys from the 80s over the last couple of months and I've concluded that I actually love Howard the Duck. I don't care if it's regarded a shit movie, it's entertaining from the opening credits to the very last second. 

 

Theme song is great too.

[Bluejam]

Firefox is a great 1980s film

 

Star Trek 5 isn’t that bad considering all the shit Shatner had to put up with and has got an amazing soundtrack

 

Lifeforce is amazing (and not just because of Mathilda May) 

 

 

 

 

[Gabe]

@Bluejam Agree with you on Lifeforce, it's a decent space-vampire flick. 

[Plissken]

1 hour ago, Bluejam said:

Firefox is a great 1980s film

 

No.

 

But it isn't bad.  It's just dull.  Not helped by the setup - you know he's going to nick the plane, so the first three quarters of the film are superfluous and lacking in peril.  So you are left waiting for an underwhelming dogfight solved by... telepathy.  Liked it as a kid though.

 

Speaking of which, I remember liking Howard The Duck as a kid too.  I suspect a rewatch as an adult would be unkind, and I think that I would prefer my memories to stay favourable.  Also, Lea Thompson made me feel all tingly.

[monkeydog]

4 hours ago, Plissken said:

Liked it as a kid though

 

My childhood drawings were full of planes with canard wings making trees bend over.

[boomeh]

The John Wick movies are not good action movies.

 

Sorry, the action sequences feel so overly and rigorously choreographed it all comes off as rather anaemic to me. 🙁

 

Puts me in mind of the light sabre battles of the prequels. 

[Festoon]

8 minutes ago, boomeh said:

The John Wick movies are not good action movies.

 

Sorry, the action sequences feel so overly and rigorously choreographed it all comes off as rather anaemic to me. 🙁

 

Puts me in mind of the light sabre battles of the prequels. 

 

I agree. My exact problem with superhero movies - the overlapping sequences of action make sense when being animated but not to watch. The choreography make them feel unlikely and staged and therefore threatless and lack power.

[sandman]

35 minutes ago, boomeh said:

The John Wick movies are not good action movies.

 

Sorry, the action sequences feel so overly and rigorously choreographed it all comes off as rather anaemic to me. 🙁

 

Puts me in mind of the light sabre battles of the prequels. 

I thought it was just me!

[Sabreman]

54 minutes ago, sandman said:

I thought it was just me!

 

Nah. There's definitely a mechanical quality to them, moreso as they go on. Just a succession of stuntpeople queueing into shot to take a series of specific bumps. No sense of organic movement. It reminds me of martial arts flicks where each move is connected by a pause, where you can almost see everyone mentally counting the choreography out. The end of Nobody suffers the same fate (although I rank that film way above any John Wick).

[Gabe]

I thought Nobody was great, and a refreshing spin on things, even though it uses the standard template. 

 

I agree on John Wick though. I thought the first film was visceral and impactful, but hated the sequels, partly for the reasons above. It doesn't help that Reeves really isn't particularly charismatic and is, let's be honest, pretty wooden. 

[Ry]

Gattaca is one of the best Sci fi films of all time. 

 

Is this even controversial? Film is an underated gem. 

[Couch Corpse]

4 hours ago, boomeh said:

rigorously choreographed

That's a large reason for why people like them, there was an emphasis on real-world techniques and disciplines that wasn't showcased to that extent before. It didn't help that Reeves was 50 at the start of the franchise. I definitely agree the sequels diminished in quality, Dacascos was a much needed injection of character in 3 though.

[dumpster]

Freddy Got Fingered, the Tom Green Movie described as the worst thing to happen in America in 2001, is actually a work of art, a two fingers to the movie industry, a knowing admission from it's star and is frankly, brilliant and hilarious.

 

Red Letter Media did a Re:View episode on this very topic. That explains it way better than I can.  But in summary, at a time when sex comedies like American Pie were doing good business some stuffy bloke in a suit, seeing Tom Green's popularity on MTV, chucked a few million dollars at him and told him to make a film.  Tom Green made a film about an artist who gets given a huge sum of money by a stuffy bloke in a suit who expects him to come back with a comic book of his characters.  Not having any experience and suddenly finding himself with loads of money, he blows loads of it on jewels, and finally takes his finished comic, only to be told the characters have no depth, the story makes no sense and, what, you spent all the money? Which is exactly what the producer of this movie probably said to him, word for word.  Reappraised in the present, with the benefit of hindsight, theres a million other movies from the same era that a re just bawdy sex comedies but FGF stands out as a work of art.  Roger Ebert gave it zero stars. 

 

 

[Camel]

4 hours ago, Ry said:

Gattaca is one of the best Sci fi films of all time. 

 

Is this even controversial? Film is an underated gem. 

It shouldn’t be controversial, it’s a truly great film.

 

Withnail & I does nothing for me. I find it and its characters irritating.

[Simmy]

15 hours ago, boomeh said:

The John Wick movies are not good action movies.

 

Sorry, the action sequences feel so overly and rigorously choreographed it all comes off as rather anaemic to me. 🙁

 

Puts me in mind of the light sabre battles of the prequels. 

 

My biggest problem with the films, apart from what you mentioned, is the lack of squibs.

 

Nothing takes you out of a film quicker than a gun flash Adobe asset and a CGI blood splatter lol.

 

Shite!

[Nick R]

I guess my opinion (that the action in the three John Wick films is consistently great and gets better as they go on on, and the second film is overall the best one) is now the controversial one to hold?

[CarloOos]

The thing with the John Wick films is that they snuck in a subtle genre shift. The original was an actual thriller with some surprisingly decent action scenes, whereas the sequels are straight up martial arts films (with guns). Pushing the limits of the choreography is now the whole purpose of those films, not the plot, which only exists to serve the set-pieces.
 

It was the right decision imo, you’ll never re-bottle the build up and release of the original so you may as well laser-focus on what people enjoyed and see how far you can take it. I get why some people bounce off them, but for me they’re the closest thing we’ve ever got to a big-budget version of 90s Hong Kong films.

[mr_woo]

Big one for me is that the first Mission Impossible 1 is shit and Mission Impossible 2 is a lot of fun and one of my favourites of the series because of how utterly nonsensical it is.  I very specifically dislike the first film because of what they did to Jim Phelps though and my love of the original TV series, I still hate him being the bad guy to this day and it remains one of most disappointing things in a film, I just don't like it damnit. 

[pledge]

13 minutes ago, mr_woo said:

Big one for me is that the first Mission Impossible 1 is shit and Mission Impossible 2 is a lot of fun and one of my favourites of the series because of how utterly nonsensical it is.  I very specifically dislike the first film because of what they did to Jim Phelps though and my love of the original TV series, I still hate him being the bad guy to this day and it remains one of most disappointing things in a film, I just don't like it damnit. 

Who directed #2 @mr_woo? 

[mr_woo]

11 minutes ago, pledge said:

Who directed #2 @mr_woo? 

 

I knew I was gonna be hit with that  But I do love De Palma which is why MI disappointed me so much and genuinely like MI2 a lot.

I'll tell you the bit that made me love MI2 unironically, at the end with all the mask revealing, i nearly cried laughing so hard and I couldn't help but love it because of that.  It's just silly.

 

 

 

[Plissken]

I think the first MI film is absolutely brilliant.  I remember being in a packed cinema and when Cruise almost falls on the floor during that heist sequence, you could hear half the audience gasp out loud.  (I didn't obviously, because I am far too cool to gasp audibly).  But yeah, making the MI team the bad guys made me realise that you didn't need to call it Mission Impossible to make it a brilliant film.  It just a superb thriller in its own right.

 

MI:2 is so OTT as to be tremendously silly fun.  And contains the best thing Limp Bizkit ever did - which is an exceedingly low bar indeed - but it's a brilliant reworking of the theme.

 

Another film that would be much more highly regarded if they simply changed the title and character names: 2003 version of The Italian Job.

[womblingfree]

Terminator 2 is the watered down Scrappy Doo PG Terminator.

 

Silence of the Lambs isn’t that good at all.

 

Natalie Portman is rubbish in Leon.

[Festoon]

1 hour ago, womblingfree said:

Terminator 2 is the watered down Scrappy Doo PG Terminator.

 

Silence of the Lambs isn’t that good at all.

 

Natalie Portman is rubbish in Leon.

 

1. Wrong (ish)

 

2. Wrong (ish)

 

3. So, so right. She's terrible.

[sandman]

1 hour ago, womblingfree said:

Terminator 2 is the watered down Scrappy Doo PG Terminator.

 

Silence of the Lambs isn’t that good at all.

 

Natalie Portman is rubbish in Leon.

1 correct

2 utterly incorrect 

3 incorrect 

[Don Wiskerando]

On 04/08/2022 at 11:40, Bluejam said:

Star Trek 5 isn’t that bad considering all the shit Shatner had to put up with and has got an amazing soundtrack

And it gave us this

 

[Waggo]

By default Ben Afleck is the best movie Batman.

 

Michael Keaton was great as Bruce Wayne but not so good a Batman, While Christian Bale was a brilliant Batman but a piss poor Wayne.  

 

Afleck is decentish as both and so wins in the all rounder stakes.

 

Edit:  Shit I forgot about Pattison, but again he was a good Batman but poor Bruce Wayne so the arguement still stands.

[monkeydog]

37 minutes ago, Waggo said:

By default Ben Afleck is the best movie Batman.

 

Michael Keaton was great as Bruce Wayne but not so good a Batman, While Christian Bale was a brilliant Batman but a piss poor Wayne.  

 

Afleck is decentish as both and so wins in the all rounder stakes.

 

Edit:  Shit I forgot about Pattison, but again he was a good Batman but poor Bruce Wayne so the arguement still stands.

 

You also forgot to mention Adam West, who was in the only Batman movie titled  "The Movie", so frankly that was a piss poor effort.

[womblingfree]

59 minutes ago, Waggo said:

By default Ben Afleck is the best movie Batman.

 

Michael Keaton was great as Bruce Wayne but not so good a Batman, While Christian Bale was a brilliant Batman but a piss poor Wayne.  

 

Afleck is decentish as both and so wins in the all rounder stakes.

 

Edit:  Shit I forgot about Pattison, but again he was a good Batman but poor Bruce Wayne so the arguement still stands.

Keaton was ok as both but the only thing I really remember is the terrible suit that gave him all the manoeuvrability of a rubber bowling pin.

 

Christian Bale is a terrible Batman and is out acted by every other character in the movie. A relatively dashing Wayne I guess.

 

Affleck is great as both but really, really deserved his own Batman movie.

 

Adam West is king.

 

Pattison is great but is so alien to me as Bruce Wayne I need a year or two for the emo to sink in.

[ZOK]

On 04/08/2022 at 15:35, boomeh said:

The John Wick movies are not good action movies.

What’s controversial about simply stating an observable fact?