Movies you hated, that everyone else liked

[Morgenstern]

Really? I liked his contribution to Forbiden Kingdom and thought his input on The One made that movie a lot more elegant than it would have been otherwise.

Oh, and on The Mummy, you are still just wrong . Great movie. Bow down before it or you will be bowed !

[Crafty_Pat]

X3, Superman Returns, The 2nd and 3rd Matrix films.

No one likes those films.

Um... (raises hand) I liked X3 (not as good as the first two but surprisingly fun). Superman Returns was a valiant effort to showcase Superman the person and for that I have to applaud the effort, and Matrix Revolutions was almost the movie I wanted both sequels to be (80% real world, 20% Matrix focusing on the war between the humans and the machines, with none of the ill-conceived superhero crap or infuriating pseudo-philosophy).

[Crafty_Pat]

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Boring from start to finish, boring fight scenes and Zhang Ziyi, the most over-rated actress in movie history. Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh are two fo my all time favourites and they struggle valiantly to rescue it, but this movie was so slow paced with such an uninteresting ending that i left the cinema feeling a little empty and slightly annoyed. Curse of the Golden Flower was so much better.

Amen. This is why I can't watch most anime actually - the pace is just too slow. By contrast...

Michael Bay: The Rock - rubbish. Bad Boys - rubbish. Armageddon - rubbish. Pearl Harbour - rubbish (even with Kate Beckinsale). The Island - rubbish. Transformers - rubbish. He produced the remakes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, both of which were crimes against humanity. I think the thing that annoys me most about him is how darn arrogant he is. He's convinced that he's a visionary who is hated because of he talent. Michael Bay is the Devil in disguise.

I'm a huge Bruckheimer/Bay/Scott fan, but then, I don't go into those movies expecting more than over-the-top action and under-the-brow melodrama.

Also, Rob Schneider has failed as an actor and as a sentient being.

Ah yes. I can add all of his movies to my list, along with any comedy whose primary value proposition is laughing at someone acting silly. Silly, on its own, is not funny - it's... silly, and when people laugh, it becomes sad.

I largely agree with some of you on Jack Black. His comedies are kinda inane but I think the rest of his stuff is actually pretty good.

[TheAuldGrump]

* A funny one - all superhero movies that do not have "man" or "boy" in the title. (think about it)

Even The Incredibles?

The Auld Grump, no capes!

[NezMaster]

John Woo. I completely fail to grasp why one of the greatest directors in the WORLD can't make an american film that isn't complete crap. AS long as he makes the film in China, it's amazing. If he comes to America where they hand him large clumps of money, he dives into the suck pit faster than a flushing toilet.

Killer, Better Tommorow, etc are fantastic movies.
He's never made a tolerable (much less good) action movie in the US. I wish I could figure out why.

[Krensky]

John Woo. I completely fail to grasp why one of the greatest directors in the WORLD can't make an american film that isn't complete crap. AS long as he makes the film in China, it's amazing. If he comes to America where they hand him large clumps of money, he dives into the suck pit faster than a flushing toilet.

Killer, Better Tommorow, etc are fantastic movies.
He's never made a tolerable (much less good) action movie in the US. I wish I could figure out why.

Too many pigeons?

[Sletchman]

Superman Returns was a valiant effort to showcase Superman the person and for that I have to applaud the effort.

I will applaud what they were trying to accomplish, but I still think that the original Superman did a better job of that [and everything else].  Or perhaps Christopher Reeves was just such a vastly better actor then Brandon Routh.  Plus the plot of Returns was gibberish.  Really pushed ones ability to accept that "no one" knew that Kent = Superman.

And a little SNAFU on my part with including Hellboy in a list of movies without the word boy in their title.  Still I did like it [and the second looks pretty epic], even if they aren't 100% faithful to the comic, I think they retain the comics core style and feel.

[Crafty_Pat]

Superman Returns was a valiant effort to showcase Superman the person and for that I have to applaud the effort.

I will applaud what they were trying to accomplish, but I still think that the original Superman did a better job of that [and everything else].  Or perhaps Christopher Reeves was just such a vastly better actor then Brandon Routh.  Plus the plot of Returns was gibberish.  Really pushed ones ability to accept that "no one" knew that Kent = Superman.

Don't get me wrong, the movie wasn't good - not by a long shot - but its heart was in the right place.

[Mister Andersen]

Don't get me wrong, the movie wasn't good - not by a long shot - but its heart was in the right place.

No it wasn't. Returns was an empty shell that tried far too much to be another movie and had utterly no voice or soul of its own. It's only "achievement" was to continuing the tendenc of the Donner films to paint Superman as a thoughtless self-centered jerk.

Now, I'll admit that it was largely boned from the start thaks to Smallville claiming the character's origin story (with has its own healthy dose of thoughtless self-centered jerkhood from Clark), but that's no excuse for the unmitigated trash that was hurled into cinemas.

The only right place for that movie's heart is in front of .50 cal antimaterial rifle.

[glimmerrat]

Jet Li - I loved The One and Fist of Legend (it might just have been called The Legend), the one about Fong Sai-Yuk? He was good in Fearless too i thought. I thought his acting was spot on... 

Admittedly i may have liked The One purely for the ott carpark cop fight with too much CGI and 'Bodies' by Drowning Pool playing. The malicious violence-loving 8 year old in me nearly fell off his chair at that scene.

[ThunderMonkey]

John Woo. I completely fail to grasp why one of the greatest directors in the WORLD can't make an american film that isn't complete crap. AS long as he makes the film in China, it's amazing. If he comes to America where they hand him large clumps of money, he dives into the suck pit faster than a flushing toilet.

Killer, Better Tommorow, etc are fantastic movies.
He's never made a tolerable (much less good) action movie in the US. I wish I could figure out why.

Studio influence and perhaps a lack of cohesiveness between the director and the screenwriters.

"John, here's the script... go forth."

[Desertpuma]

I blame the studios actually. They had him cut out 20 minutes of M:I 2 and another 22 minutes out of Paycheck with Ben Affleck. His first three American films are actually his best: Hard Target, Broken Arrow, and Face/Off. This is probably due to Travolta backing him when the studio wanted to change stuff.

[glimmerrat]

Broken arrow was good. And it has princess daisy in it. Priceless lines.

"Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?"

[Crafty_Pat]

Don't get me wrong, the movie wasn't good - not by a long shot - but its heart was in the right place.

No it wasn't. Returns was an empty shell that tried far too much to be another movie and had utterly no voice or soul of its own. It's only "achievement" was to continuing the tendenc of the Donner films to paint Superman as a thoughtless self-centered jerk.

To be fair, Superman is a thoughtless, self-centered jerk. People can rave about the animated Justice League interpretation, the Elseworlds books, and what have you but the Donner films were ultimately in-line with the character as created and perpetrated for fifty years in the comics.

This is actually one of the few things I like about Superman (I'm generally in Alex's corner that the character's worthless because he can't be plausibly or regularly challenged). I like that when you dig into the character of Superman, the person that hovers somewhere between Clark Kent and the All-Powerful Alien Overlord, you get someone who's no better-adjusted, no more emotionally developed than your average adolescent, and that - coupled with the power he wields - has legs.

[Morgenstern]

Returns fails for reasons that are persistently overlooked.

It's a nemesis movie. The core drama is not carried on Superman's shoulders but on Lex's and Lex Luthor (while well acted in the film) has been done far, far better since the first three movies than the systematic mimicry of the 80's cretin we had to endure in this film.

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I also find it a bit distressing that Superman's son's first demonstration of more than human abilites is to kill someone. That's not exactly a fine start for the inheritor of the -el legacy.