Hey there!

So the title of the thread is limited in terms of number of caracters, so let me explain this better. I'm looking to have a discussion that involves movies that the general public ranks high and that you rank low, or movies that the general public ranks low and that you rank high.

If you'd personally rank a movie at least 3.5 stars higher or lower than it's ranking on IMDb, than this might be a movie that fits in this thread.
http://www.imdb.com/?ref_=nv_home

Of course, I don't want a list of names, I want an actual discussion. So if you list a few movies, make sure to explain why you picked them and what you dislike or like so much about and that others seem to like or dislike.

The Fifth Element
IMDb rating: 7,7/10
My raiting: 3/10
This movie is one of the few that I had in mind when making this thread. This movie by renowned french director Luc Besson is considered by many as some kind of science fiction classic. One of the things that bothers me about this movie is that it doesn't seem to find a real "tone". It tries to mix the epic adventure action of sci-fi movies à la Star Wars while trying to be funny and light-hearted, but it doesn't work. Unlike Die Hard, which shares both Bruce Willis and this attempt at combining slapstick-ish humor with action, The Fifth Element really fails, IMO. The acting really isn't on point in this either. I comes to be expected from Jovovich, but even actors who shine in other movies are terrible in this, especially Oldman. But I blame the writing for this... not the actor. It's tough to deliver shitty lines properly. Chris Tucker is also absolutely insuferable in this...

Bram Stoker's Dracula (Coppola's Dracula)
IMDb rating: 7,5/10
My rating: 2/10
If there is an adaptation that is deeply removed from the original Dracula book by Bram Stoker, it's this piece of crap by Francis Ford Coppola. Very bad adaptation that doesn't represent the very conservative tone of the original book and it's way to hide everything and anything sexual. The late 19th century context really isn't represented well, and every scene with the redhead friend of Mina, Lucy, being depicted in a very erotic way. I mean, if you're going to do it that way... why insist on calling it "Bram Stoker's Dracula"... Strangely, this is another movie in which Gary Oldman appears, haha!

Wayne's World
IMDb rating: 7/10
My rating: 3/10
I know that this one really is a either you like it or you don't sort of deal, but I'm not really getting it. The movie doesn't really have a plot to speak of, and if there are a few very memorable lines in this movie, I don't think it's the masterpiece that some people make it out to be.

Funny People
IMDb rating: 6.3/10
My rating: 1/10
Holy shit! This movie is a giant turd. It's funny that when people talk about Sandlers' lower points this turd often slips under the radar. But it's bad! Very bad! This movie shares both the worst elements of Sandlers and Seth Rogen's filmographies. It's bad sex puns over bad sex puns... a sad attempt at a plot... a shitty and predictacle romantic twist... I remember renting this movie back when it came out and stopping midway through it because of how unbereable it was.

The Last House on the Left (2009)
IMDb rating: 6.6/10
My rating: 2/10
I've always disliked movies that need the shock value to actually get the audience involved in the movie. Here, it's not the characters and how they are written that gets you involved in the movie, no, it's the 5 minutes long rape scene. This scene only serves as a pretext for the audience to hate the main vilains and it justifies all the horrible tortures that the vilains get to endure when the parents of the girl who got raped confront them. Cheap revenge/horror movie that borderlines on exploitation movie.

Alien Resurrection
IMDb rating: 6.2/10
My rating: 2/10
A massive shit stain on the Alien franchise. This one was also made by a famous french director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who gave us amazing movies such as Amélie, which is probably my all-time favorite romantic comedy (if it can even be described that way). But in this last part of the original Alien quadrilogy, Jeunet completely dropped it. Shitty dialogues, and a plot that borrows so much from the first two movies of the quadrilogy, it should be considered as plagiarism. Can you imagine that they pulled the "Oh wow! There is a cyborg in our team and we didn't know it!" move AGAIN? Seriously. This movie also has a huge problem with tone. Stupid slapstick humor, mixed with tensionless action scenes and characters we don't give a fuck about.

Man this is 110% my opinion as well. I constantly see it in lists of best-ever sci-fi (imdb etc) and I just have to shake my head. I was about 13 when it came out and the prospect of seeing Jovovich nude reeled me in, but the storyline was so wafer-thin and boring, I couldn't sit through the entire thing.

Here's my take:

Freddy Got Fingered
IMDB rating: 4.5/10
My rating: 7.5/10
This is a fucking hilarious movie. I don't think the people who reviewed this movie really evaluated it on the terms it should've been evaluated on - it's a collection of smutty, childish skits. "Well this isn't exactly Citizen Kane" isn't a legit critique. You can't compare something that was intentionally crass and immature with this hifallutin notion of what you think "cinema" should be. It's like the movie was reviewed by people who use the term "film" exclusively to distance themselves from those blockbuster MOVIE-watching plebs, but they went to town on it out of spite. And it's bloody unique. There really aren't many movies like it - maybe Run Ronnie Run, which was also panned by those guys. Basically, movie critics have their heads up their arses. Christ, I'm not advocating total anti-intellectualism but let fun be fun.

The Exorcist
IMDb Rating: 8,0/10
My Rating: 0/10
Not only is this piece of shit one of the most overrated films of all time, it is unquestionably the most overrated horror film of all time. For years when I was a kid I was scared to watch it, because everyone told me of how incredibly shocking and scary it was. When I finally saw it (I was 14) I couldn't be more disappointed. Long, slow, boring, not scary and it represents the devil in a completely ridiculous way. Lame.

I'd disagree with a lot of the low ratings you guys are giving these... except for Bram Stoker's Dracula, fuck that movie; but I guess if I had to pick my own, Cloud Atlas's 7.5/10 rating is totally unwarranted in my opinion as that's very high for iMDb. I find this to be a simpering, pretentious mess of a movie that tries to seem smart and profound but is actually extremely un-subtle and contains a sugary, substanceless message that you could glean off a doormat somewhere. I hate movies that forsake a plot in favor of everything being a symbol or message of some kind - I find it lazy, hack screenwriting that fails to capture the human experience. It's elementary, storytelling 101 type shit and we've moved past it.

Lot of people enjoy The Conjuring too - another 7.5/10. This shit is baffling to me. This movie is completely un-scary and not even remotely threatening, full of terrible attempts at scares. The story is cliche garbage we've seen before done way better. No good character development or interesting twists. It's just a vapid film and does absolutely nothing for me, but people were treating this like the second coming of horror or something.

On the flip side, seems like The Bad Batch has a fairly middling reputation. I thought it was fantastic and one of the best movies this year. Pure emotional, colorful ride that tells a good story about an outsider finding her place. Violent at times and sweet at others, it's unique and I've never seen anything quite like it.

criticizing Besson for being super eclectic is like criticizing Mortician for not having technical riffs. your missing the key element. it's a fucking bonkers movie that's super goofy and actually entertaining as fuck. smdh, kids cant have fun these days.

Yup - it's a total visual spectacle and a shitload of fun. I need to get on rewatching that shit. Just a barrel of cool colors and designs and a fast paced, entertaining story.

While I agree that The Exorcist isn't exactly a scary movie, I wouldn't be surprised if you had pissed in your pants had you seen it at the age of 14 when the movie actually got released.

Yeah, I guess the problem with The Exorcist is that it hasn't aged well - I can see how it might have been scary when it first came out, but these days it's just laughable.

Nah, watched it again this October and it is still some of the scariest shit out there to me. I think it's aged perfectly. Great flick...

What movies would you say are scary?

I have always loved The Exorcist. Incredibly dated, sure, but the 70s were stamped indelibly with the fashion of the time. The clothes, hairstyles, cars, furniture, everything from the 70s is just so goddamn... 70s. Still a good movie. Just pretend it's a period piece.

The one movie in my mind that has always stuck me as overrated is The Matrix. Aside from the vague desire to cruise around in one of those electric tunnel-truck-things, there is not a single aspect of that movie that I find worthwhile, at all. The very concept is stupid.

I will also second The Fifth Element. That one, I can at least understand enjoying it, because it's kind of a romp. But that's all it is.

I literally just watched The Exorcist for the first time on Saturday (obv I already knew all the main beats due to pop culture, but still). I have to say, I think people who watch and expect solely the possession scenes to be scary are missing the point a bit. The whole movie has this weird, unsettling "empty" feeling that permeates beyond just when we see Reagan possessed. The only other movies I can think of offhand that managed to build up such an "off" feeling outside the explicit scares were The Shining and The Witch. Maybe I'll try to write up a bit clearer of an analysis when I have more time.

Also, I never understood people who disliked the demon being so crass and explicit. To me, evil in its purest form would just be chaotic, animalistic rage. It makes more sense to me that a being of pure evil would represent itself with almost childish spite and impulsivity. That honestly scares me a lot more than seeing evil entities presented as being calm and collected.

A little harsh, but I do agree with you that The Matrix is by no means a classic. I liked it, it's good; but how it became such a massive cultural phenomenon is beyond me. Plus Reloaded was just a confusing mess.

Y'all need to leave The Conjuring alone! Sure there's nothing remotely new or unique in there, but a 7.5 rating is not a gross inflation. For what it is, it works.

How so? I just find everything about it to be bland and lackluster. There's nothing to latch onto at all for me - as I said, no good scares, no good characters, etc.

Fully agreed on Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Last House On The Left... The former is just flat out not a good movie by any means. It had great potential but was really sub-par. The latter is just wretched torture-porn (though the original was far more disturbing and one of the handful of movies I really regret ever seeing).

I love Southland Tales but it's only got a 5.5 on IMDB. I'd give it an 8 or 9.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405336/

This thread would be a lot more interesting if you posted movies like Turner did i.e. defend your high opinion of movies that are seen as critically poor, don't get rated very high on places like IMDB and/or didn't get good viewership when they were released. Or if you are going to put down a critically/otherwise acclaimed, please try to be at least a little bit more elaborate than a sentence of putting down with adjectives with no actual substance to back it up. Or "it sucks because I didn't like it".



Regarding these, I'm personally not very fond of The Fifth Element either. It's visually impressive and Oldman delivers as per usual. His character is just a tad flippant and over the top, but then again, so is all of the movie and its tone. I don't really think there's any mixture of what the tone here is. It's very much a fun adventure romp with an added depth afterthought which, I grant you, is rather slipshod. The 90s Dracula I'm also not very fond of, but again, I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of it. It's not meant to be a strict adaptation of the book nor does it strive to represent the 19th century properly. It is more of a bringing the book's story to the 90s and stripping some of the Victorian prim and properness out of it.

Hands down one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

I really wouldn't put much stock in IMDB ratings. Like with metal-archives, it's review contents that are actually informative. A lot of these opinions of yours are perhaps more common than you realise. I think most people find Alien Resurrection to be the worst of the series. The Fifth Element has been largely considered an ambitious failure for years. last House is yet another unnecessary horror remake; of course nobody really likes it as much as the original, and if they didn't like the original, they're not gonna like this one either, probably. That version of Dracula is scoffed at by most everyone I've ever spoken with, and has to fight against the dozen or so other interpretations on celluloid going all the way back to the early thirties; of course it hasn't a chance.

I mean it's not a bad thread idea, but you're shooting fish in a barrel with some of these....

Both Conjuring movies are great retro haunted-house movies, y'all're wack.

Wanna talk boring horror movies? Hellraiser. That right there is a movie that has no scares, and it's way too convoluted and full of too much mystic mumbo-jumbo bullshit for a simple plot about a woman killing people to bring her lover back. And the characters are all one-dimensional stereotypes whose fates left no impact. The special effects aren't even impressive when much better showcases like The Thing and American Werewolf in London exist. Hellraiser is mediocre in every way, and there's no crime in entertainment worse than mediocrity.

Hellraiser is just one of those weird cult movies that shot off like a rocket with hype when it was really just OK. I agree that the whole plot about the woman killing a bunch of lovers was just contrite and unimaginative... I dunno, I always wanted to like that movie better because of the cool imagery but it was just never terribly exciting to me. The characters were all aggressively unlikable too, I just didn't care about even one of them. Not as bad as the sequels though.

The Exorcist is one of the best movies of all time, horror or not. It's just great. There are a lot of little things that happen that are really powerful, like when Kinderman admits that he wants Chris's autograph for himself. Or Father Karras running around the track to get over his mother's death. My dad actually ran on that same track. Anyway, it's just a great movie.

Yeah, The Exorcist ain't scary, but it's pretty great. The atmosphere is thick and engrossing in that film.

I kind of figured that the fish would shoot back a little bit when I mentioned The Matrix. Everyone I know freaking loves that movie and gets really defensive about it.

Anyway, yeah, Hellraiser. Such an awesome concept, so so poorly executed. A waste. Same goes for Candayman, Dread, Nightbreed... Is there a good Clive Barker movie?

Another one - John Wick. Never heard anyone say a bad word about it. But I just find it so boring and lame. I never got into the emotion intended in the story, Keanu Reeves sucks and the whole thing just feels like you're watching someone play a so-so video game for two hours. Just not into it.

Oh, I'm having a lot of fun with movies. Just not this one.



I guess it might be a little overated, but it's not a bad movie by any means. There are parts that are genuinely scary, and there aren't too many jump scares. I really like the part with the kids clapping hands when playing hide and seek



It's a general feeling kind of thing. It's the aesthetics, the whole mix of dark urban sets with computer hacking, martial arts and early 2000's goth culture. I don't know, it really just works for me. I like the idea of a dystopian future in which you don't even notice that you're in a dystopian future. The idea that we're in a virtual world. I know that the "red pill" thing as been kind of tarnished and as become a symbol or retarded conspiracionist right-wing kids on YouTube. But if you put it back in it's context of creation, it's still a great movie.



Agreed!



The sequels to The Matrix were pretty bad, yeah. The Matrix was a pretty authentic effort that was later turned into a cashgrab franchise.



Yeah, I was told the first one was actually worst. I'm not into that kind of stuff. It works in death metal lyrics, but doesn't make good movies, haha! I don't think I'll ever watch the original.



Why call it Bram Stoker's Dracula then? It's not like we need to be told that Dracula was written by Stoker. That's a given. So why the name if it is not supposed to be faithful to the original novel?

Doesn't it feel kind of anachronical to strip the story from it's "Victorian prim and properness"? This also feels to me like a pretext to show some tits in a vampire movie. Which doesn't bother me. But it feels kind of off to me in the context of a Dracula movie.



I'm not pretending that these criticisms couldn't or have not been made before. I also disagree that the scores on IMDb are irrelevant. They show what is the tendency among a pretty large sample. Of course if we're talking about actually going in depth, the reviews are what matters the most. But that's not my point. Like with Alien Resurrection, it is true that it is considered by mosts as the worst of the quadrilogy. But that's not saying much. The first two are masterpieces. The third, while lacking in execution had a pretty neat atmosphere and the central elements of the plot were interesting. The fourth one is obviously the worst of the four. But it's score is still pretty high on IMDb and a lot of people still defend it. If it was really despised by everyone, than it would have a shit score like Battlefield Earth.

I'm pretty sure you can understand that IMDb serves more as a tool to start the discussion here than as some kind of scientific tool.

Expendables 2 and 3- more or less hated both of them, as instead of being badass hard R action movies, they ended up being shitty cgi parodies.

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I've never watched a Superhero or comic book film I enjoyed. Ever. I've tried numerous times, and I think I'm done trying now.

This includes The Dark Knight. I thought it was the most overrated film I've ever seen. I guess I'm just completely uninterested in these types of films.

"Begotten" is creepy as fuck. And the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", of course.

BTW, what do you folks think of "The Blair Witch Project"? A couple of scenes in it actually scared me.

I thought Begotten was a bore. Hearing what it was about got me pretty excited to see it. Not awful or anything but just not the kind of movie for me I guess.

I like all movies that other people dislike and dislike all movies that other people like.

I like the director's cut of Aliens better than the theatrical cut of Alien. I also think the nest scene is scarier than anything in any other movie.

As a side note, the Stranger Things 2 tribute to that nest scene was

I'm not a huge fan of superhero movies, except for the new X-Men movies and Nolan's first two Batman movies. I can see why you'd think The Dark Knight is overrated if you're not particularly fond of the genre, but it's a good movie even beyond the typical framework of superhero movies. What did you dislike so much about it?



To talk about Blair Witch Project you really have to put yourself back in the context of when the movie was released. Back then, the production team did everything to sell this as a real found footage movie. There were websites with infos on Blair Witch, the witch and the backstory.

Of course it was kind of silly to believe that there would be screenings of a movie in which teenagers would have actually died in mainstream movie theatres. But it still kind of worked. People talked about it a lot, and this kind of marketing was pretty atypical back then.

As for the movie itself, it kind of works, but some of the characters behaviors are pretty annoying. Like the fact that they are shown with a survival book, but they still cross the same river like 3 or 4 times when they are lost in the woods instead of following the stream, like any survival book would tell you to do. But the atmosphere was scary, and the less is more approach to horror movies really works here. There is very little shown in this movie. Everything is suggested and you are left wondering what is going on for most of the movie. Plus, the final scene of the movie is pretty neat in the way it mixes the pictures captured by both cameras, but with the audio of only one of the cameras (because the other doesn't capture sound). It's a very nice scene.

Eraserhead 9.8/10

This film is probably the most unorthodox movie I"ve ever seen. Arguably, Eraserhead is one of the best directed films of all time.

But which direction did the director direct it?

Jesus, did I use the word "direct" that much? I should've caught that! It's clearly a accidental error so it's kind of redundant to point out.

I agree with everything you said. And the final scene is great indeed.

BTW, I find it interesting to see so many of you bashing "Bram Stoker's Dracula". To me it's a gorgeous film, and I've seen plenty of Dracula films... *shrugs* (Then again I haven't read the novel... )

It was nice-looking, but Gary Oldman looked ridiculous and Keanu Reeves was shit as usual. And the story was super in the background compared to the visuals, which didn't work for me here.

Yeah, I guess Keanu Reeves was cast only because they needed a good-looking guy. And his english accent was dreadful.

As for Gary Oldman looking ridiculous, I've always felt Christopher Lee looked far worse...

Oh, and the OST was awesome!

I feel like I'm the only one who actually liked the "Blair Witch" (2016) movie. I guess it's a bit of a "guilty pleasure" in some ways because I understand where people are coming from about some of the stuff that seemed to misunderstand or completely go against the point/concept of the original film (that pointless grossout scene with the worm comes to mind). However, despite that I did think the film had a genuinely creepy atmosphere (especially the last 5-10 minutes) and was overall not as horrible as people made it out to be.

I don't have many "controversial" opinions about movies but I remember fucking hating that movie Bjork was in, "Dancer in the Dark" back when I saw it. In my defense I was an edgy 16 year old and I think part of the reason I hated it so much was that I had to leave the house for some reason about halfway though, and when I sat back down to watch it later, it was right when the "plot" started moving forward (with the attempted robbery + neighbor's suicide) and it just felt like a totally different movie to me. I guess the flow was interrupted, or I just couldn't appreciate it cuz I was an idiot, who knows?

Damn I enjoyed watching Poultrygeist - Night of the Chicken Dead! It's a Troma movie, which can be a good or a bad thing, I suppose. Previous one was Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000). Poultrygeist came out in 2006, but I was it a while ago. It lit the spark to watch more Troma movies! Any suggestions? Must-sees?!?!

The movie itself is a musical, which genre I absolutely hate, more or less. For some reason (gore, pus & shite I guess, did it for me) on this one it works. It feature Ron Jeremy, and his moustache. It works also as a statement against fast food/processed food.

I'll throw a post here to see how people feel.
I hate The Lego Movie. It felt like a giant commercial for the modern sets and I didn't really like the human element. Visually I can't hate it but I can hate everything else.