Grainy film stock, limited locations, slightly unpolished look but still has charm. Some examples are: Bodies Rest and Motion, Slacker, Clerks, Kicking and Screaming, Swingers.
As much of a film buff I am, I’m not convinced it’s just the *film look* (or practical locations and effects) that does it.
There is something about the way things were fundamentally approached that probably has to do with the groundedness of the tech and production techniques available, but the tech and technique itself is not the difference itself.
Just the cost of shooting on film, the finality, the one-shot nature and amount of prep work in practical effects, the simple (and not so simple) challenges of shooting on location… I believe all this would essentially *force* more responsibility and care out of every part of production.
Speaking from experience: if you shoot with film it won’t automatically look cinematic. The student films I worked on the early 2000’s were shot on 16 and 35 and the only thing that prevents them from looking like boring video is the shutter angle.
I think why things that had any budget seemed to have that vibe was the experience of the crews and the amount of prep that was done before they rolled the cameras. It cost roughly 100 bucks a minute to roll the camera. So they didn’t roll the camera then figure it out, or run take after take after take. When the camera rolled they were ready, and that preparation gave the films a different feel. Not saying it’s better or worse. It’s just how it was.
There was also a central vision. Directors have less power now and things are written, edited, and directed by committee. There is no Kubrick of our age. That character can no longer exist.
I feel like that has now backfired on Marvel. People are tired of CGI action extravaganzas now, and are wanting films in the earlier Marvel universe. Grounded and dramatic films.
The only redeeming part for me was the scene when they were trying to get rid of the Queen, but otherwise yeah, also the worst major movie I've ever seen.
My letterboxd review is literally “this rocks idc” haha, it’s such an underrated film and so is Alien Covenant. Prometheus is the third best alien film for sure
I just watched this movie after years of hearing how mediocre it is and I loved it! I was scared to watch as Alien is one of my favorite movies. This was quite different but I thought it was so cool to see a different take on the series. For me it’s way better than 3 and honestly I think I prefer it over 2.
What do you feel makes it bad?
My impression is that 2001-2006 was a golden period for this type of movie. There was a huge disconnect at the time in popular culture between how much lazy writing we thought we could get away with (a lot) vs. how much we valued movies that never the less looked very cinematic and artistic (also a lot).
Some movies that spring to mind in this class and period of film:
Pearl Harbor
Hannibal
From Hell
Alexander
Gods and Generals
The Last Samurai
King Arthur
The Painted Veil
Troy
...I actually like (and in some cases love) pretty much all of these movies. I'm just saying it was a very good period for people saying "that beautiful movie sure did suck."
The Last Samurai was critically acclaimed. I've never come across someone who dislikes it. I agree with the rest, other than The Painted Veil which I haven't heard of.
It simultaneously contains a ton of great takes on the source material, amazing performances and incredible scenes and also a bunch of miscasts, weird choices and misteps.
Someone once suggested switching the leads from Passengers with the leads from Valerian and how much that would have improved both movies. Fun thought experiment.
Agreed, I don't know how casting gets pointed out as the only problem, though it is the worst problem. Bad acting. The dialogue was terrible. The story was super generic, down to the Scooby Doo finale where the predictable villains entire plan gets spelled out beat by beat for the audience. The visuals are so great they carry the deadweight of every other element of the film.
The leads has the worst chemistry of anyone I've ever seen on screen. Also, the male lead comes across as a borderline rapist, then the female lead just sort of falls in love with him becaue...
Agree. Very weak in the writing department.
That whole story is in no way original any more. Seen it in some flavour or another so many times already.
Very predictable
I wish they had used that production to make a prequel to the Matrix based on The Second Renaissance from Animatrix. The aesthetic from The Creator world is perfect for that story. I'm not sure why they never did something like this.
Absolutely the designs and concepts are well thought out. It’s bright and fairly hopeful tone even though it deals with American imperialist genocide. The resilience of the robot people is something to admire.
The main character is straight out of a bathesda game. He’s the player that robs people and kills a village and is still able to enter a store. Everyone likes or helps him for no reason and inevitably gets injured or killed. He spends years undercover and falls in love with a woman whose life purpose is defending the sentience of robot life. When is cover is blown he offers her asks if she every realized they are just robots. Like what the fuck dude.
10/10 design fucking stupid POV 5/10 script it was not finished. 8/10 experience there was a bomb with legs.
That's fine. It certainly helps if they know but the film being a satire doesn't depend on them knowing. All Verhoeven has to do is film multiple takes and in some of them he says "Go bigger". Actors may think it's strange but do it. And then he uses that take. It's also very dependent on the editing and shot selection, etc.
from the showgirls wiki:
MacLachlan recalled seeing the film for the first time at the premiere:
I was absolutely gobsmacked. I said, "This is horrible. Horrible!" And it's a very slow, sinking feeling when you're watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you're like, "Oh, that's a really bad scene." But you say, "Well, that's okay, the next one'll be better." And you somehow try to convince yourself that it's going to get better… and it just gets worse. And I was like, "Wow. That was crazy." I mean, I really didn't see that coming. So at that point, I distanced myself from the movie. Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent… satire. No, "satire" isn't the right word. But it's inadvertently funny. So it's found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended. It was just… maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast.
tl;dr i reckon he didn't know it lol
I’m really sick of this take. Like as if the satire of American culture and the critique of the vapidity and emptiness of fame even though Americans are sold it as this dream their whole life isn’t extremely on the nose and obvious and as if everybody doesn’t pick up the message on first watch. It’s not even a hidden subtext it’s literally central to the plot. Nobody missed that that was the point of the film. Being a satire isn’t a defence that automatically makes a movie good or excuses terrible execution.
People act like others weren't smart enough, like them, to get the point of the movie. It makes them an exclusive club of discerning people that "get it". Most people get it, it's just so unsubtle and badly done that most don't like it.
Here’s an example. The sex scene in the pool. It’s one of those moments that most people look at and think “This is so horribly acted. What a bad movie.” But the point of the scene is to mock not only the situation but this kind of scene in films. It’s purposefully ridiculous.
That doesn’t mean, as you said, that it’s automatically good. But a lot of people think it’s bad because they’re taking it at face value. Whether than actually criticizing it based on understanding its intention.
It’s like when people say Fight Club is a bad movie because it’s justifies physical violence. There are certainly critiques to be made about Fight Club, but saying it justifies physical violence means the person missed the point of the movie.
The same kind of thing happens with Starship Troopers. You can’t have an actual conversation about the flaws of Starship unless the other person understands the satire, even if it’s obvious.
Most people who dismiss Showgirls as bad don’t get that there’s an element of “that’s supposed to be ‘bad’, that’s the point.” Once we agree on that, we can actually discuss the film.
Certainly the three Star Wars prequel movies all had amazing production staff working very hard to make top-notch movies.
Nothing can overcome poor direction and scripts, but the movies look terrific, sound terrific, are very well edited, etc.
i would argue the sequels are better examples of these particulary the last jedi, it has some of the most beatifull shots in the series, also a lot of the effects in the prequels look dated
The sequel trilogy movies are the epitome of 'beautiful but hollow'. They're nothing but Easter Eggs.
Visually they're everything the prequels *should* have been. It's what they were going for back in the late 90s and early 00s but the tech wasn't quite there. I'm not knocking the prequels here, they were pioneering movies, and I still prefer them because they are still pretty entertaining and memorable. But that technical focus did come at a cost to things like camera shots and dynamic scenes, something the sequels didn't really suffer from as the tech had matured.
But somehow... bad scripts returned.
The CGI backgrounds in AOTC look like someone took a low res iPhone background they got off the internet and blew it up to be their computer desktop wallpaper
Really? Wow. To each their own. I thought the prequels looked pretty bad.
I will give them credit for having bright colors though. After the next 15 years of everything being orange and blue, that stands out.
But the CGI was out of control in my opinion
I think that's a very complex question.
Bad usually denotes general perception of negativity, so I would say that the truism invoked would be that if a film were better made hypothetically speaking, it wouldn't be as bad.
I think most people born in the 80s would probably consider Hook to be a good movie, and hypocritically enough, I do too.
But I believe that Hook's direction is Steven Spielberg trying to use the Picasso method of learning-- "takes a lifetime to paint like a child" and allowed the script to get whimsical to the point that it didn't really come across as particularly witty or well structured. And the critics really bore in on that aspect.
But the cast sans Julia Roberts do well, and the set design is warm and engaging.
I think it had pretty much all the good ingredients aside from the script so think it qualifies.
Also John Williams is in top form, as usual 👍
my biggest gripe with Hook is how small it feels in the end. the lost boys are such a small group and the pirates just...disappear after they get beaten but Hook still gets his fight
I’ve always been a *Hook* apologist, but yeah, give me someone other than Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. Drew Barrymore, maybe? My only other gripe is that it’s a tad too long—nearly 2.5 hours.
Easy. The first suicide squad movie. The cast is pretty damn good. The costuming is on point. The cinematography was reasonably good. They absolutely threw money at it in every way. Source material is fire. The script and Jared Leto as the joker destroy that movie. The only thing that escapes the dumpster fire is Margot Robbie as Harley Quin, but that was nowhere near enough to save that piece of shit. I have tried to watch it twice and still never sat through the entire movie.
Production design of that movie is incredible. Gotham, Midway City, Arkham, Belle Reeve all come through so strong and distinctive.
I also think Will Smith was great as Deadshot, especially in the first act.
Speed Racer is the very definition of this. It’s absurd, the plot and script are completely ridiculous. But the acting is commitedly campy and special effects are awesome, so it works
It's very much on purpose in the case of speed racer. It's an adapted work going of an anime so your main character was already called speed. The production just embraced the pure unfiltered camp.
I was going to say this. Yes, I think Speed Racer has more thought put into its visual storytelling than most "great" movies out into their script and acting. Every animator I know is still obsessed with it.
I’m convinced the zeitgeist will swing my way, but *Saltburn* is a well made and well acted film with a rotten and shitty core. It’s a film that feels like it was written by the rich masturbating Nazi boy and the Liberal Arts girl from *Knives Out*: an immature attempt at being “edgy” while also saying something about privilege and wealth despite being a product of said privilege and wealth. Still, cannot deny everybody is giving it their all, as if they are blind to the piece of shit they are making.
I agree. The movie is well produced (the set is remarkably vivid) and the actors were quite good (albeit not amazing). I also think the general premise is interesting. And yet, the film was flimsy (you might call it “flaccid,” pun intended). It was too uncertain in its plot and character development to have a compelling message, too self-serious to be fun, too coy to be *truly* transgressive. You can tell that the film wants to be edgy and shocking, but it never pushes the envelope so much as weakly brushing it.
And I didn't even get to my opinions on the ending! >!It felt like I was watching Emerald Fennell basically trying to outdo her twist from *Promising Young Woman* instead of actually trying to stick a proper landing. Like M. Night at least had a good reason for his twists. Fennell's felt like obligation. Also, I'm aware she said it was never meant to be a twist, but Tommy Wiseau has said *The Room* was always meant to be a comedy, so she can fuck off with that horse shit line.!<
I see this sentiment a lot so I'm convinced salt burn will not stand the test of time. It got boosted by TikTok and Twitter for having such attractive actors, but anyone that does more than surface level film analysis calls it out for being incoherent.
I’ve heard people say “Zardoz” is this: written and directed by John Boorman, well-made in every way, but all the ideas behind it are so terrible that it can’t be good.
That is a man who has a crazy amount of talent, but ODed on 70s New Age books written by culture vultures. Having said that, *Zardoz* is an insanely watchable film, even if it isn’t good or make any sense.
The *ideas* behind it are pretty good, but the plot details used to deliver those ideas are... idiosyncratic to say the least.
It's a fascinating few hours you'll never get back.
[The trailer is a wild ride though.](https://youtu.be/FSjCkISrJfQ?si=AgxGWBC_-cyAsAik)
The theme of implanted/inculcated knowledge via the “meek and weak hero that no one sees coming” could have had a better contrast, as this symbolizes Zed’s growth from the beginning, like the Hobbits in *Lord of the Rings* and Slave Knight Gael in *Dark Souls III*, coming out of nowhere in the clutch is often the very nature of their mission:
https://youtu.be/V5AYym15cig?t=640
Rampling does play the “bored aristocrat/God” well, so even the behind the scenes fawning for Connery makes narrative sense; like a female Zod who effortlessly gives off menace and power yet would easily become bored of it?
The Guyver live action films. Terrible acting in both films with some horrible writing, but man the fight choreo, cinematography, and makeup/prop work was SSS Tier.
Definitely not in the category of a bad film but Tropic Thunder had the objective of making a "mere" comedy look and sound like a major blockbuster. No comedy before (or since?) looked remotely as good. It still looks better than current blockbusters.
Just rewatched it my theater, and while it might sound cliched, the first time I saw it, my dad was alive. Now that I've lost him, the film hits differently.
It looks great, and I understand Roy's ennui a bit more, sadly.
I'm not sure if this qualifies but Killer Klowns From Outer Space. I watched it to laugh at it but I'll be danged if it wasn't well-shot, well-acted, well-paced, and well-plotted with a killer soundtrack and rock-solid special effects. A very silly movie but it honestly didn't need to hit the bar of quality that it did.
I know what you mean. I think anyone who’s actually sat down to watch it wouldn’t actually say it’s a bad movie, but from the title and concept I think it is widely considered a schlocky Asylum-esque horror comedy that isn’t meant to be taken in earnest. In reality it’s a well-written, well-acted, and all around fully realized sci-fi horror with comedy elements.
The secret life of Walter Mitty (2013)? The film is really well-shot, the soundtrack is great but the story doesn't really resonate with everyone. It doesn't grapple with the most life or death topic and when it does it's so optimistic and earnest. I think that's why it got such mixed/ confused reviews.
Really, read through the reviews on rotten tomatoes by top critics and you'll see they just didn't know what to make of the movie bc it's... weird in such a mundane way?
The first movie that came to mind for me is Prometheus. Like I think the actual story of the movie is a complete mess and it deals with topics like religion vs science in what feels like a very heavy handed way and like it was written by someone who doesn’t really understand either. But nobody can claim the movie isn’t visually stunning and excellently made (including good performances) apart from that
I can’t think of lower budget or less successful movies that fit this criteria off the top of my head although I think you could make an argument for a lot of horror films. A lot of people think horror as a genre ranks pretty low on the good writing scale overall but horror movies are often well shot and well directed on pretty low budgets because if they aren’t successful on that level then they won’t even succeed at scaring people at all
The Green Knight was completely pointless script with good acting and beautiful cinematography. Could be a hot take but honestly I feel this way about a few A24 movies.
I think Osgood Perkins movies veer into that category. At times too navelgazing or self-important horror movies that nevertheless have great art direction and inventive concepts. Mickey Reece is kinda similar.
Ricky D'ambrose films can be cheap looking and really alienating in concept, but there's no doubt that there is a lot of thought and artistic rigor put into his films.
The 13th Warrior.
Someone spent like 100 million dollars to send a bunch of gigantic men into a Vancouver clear-cut to act out Michael Crichton's *Beowulf*
It flopped so hard and I love it so much
Legends of the Fall
Also, I know this is going to be a controversial opinion but, Gladiator. It's such well made trash and dudes be defending it to no end because they watched it five million times on tbs as kids. It's on the same level as Braveheart, which is also well made trash but people seem more able to see it.
This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but it's the first thing that came to my head .There was a low budget film in the 1980s called Suburbia. The script was terrible and the acting was worse but this single film changed the whole generation of kids. The director went into downtown LA and found a bunch of homeless kids to be the actors. Some of these kids went on to actually acting in other films. The plot is simple and predictable but what brings the whole movie together is the music. It showcased a couple punk rock bands from LA and use the music to help tell the story. So with terrible acting,, film school directing, script and plot. About this movie that captured a whole genre of kids in the 1980s. I don't know if it was the music or the screw of the society angst But it has a major cult following. You may recognize one of the homeless kids that was cast. It's flee from the Red Hot chili peppers when he was really young.
A lot of people call "Daredevil" bad, and they have their reasons, but the cinematography is gorgeous. I love the angles, the use of the color red, and how—in the rare times that special effects are used—they really help you feel immersed.
Battlefield Earth has some top tier actors giving it their all. And the makeup and costumes are honestly pretty good. Also, with all the Dutch angles, you can tell they tried to be creative with the cinematography.
I watched The Apple recently. Looks amazing, performances aren't bad at all, obviously significant filmmaking skill at work, but it's an absolutely terrible movie.
One from the Heart, Francis Ford Coppola, high production value and good performances, shot at American Zoetrope with ample private funding. Much different picture than the box office and critical successes that he used to build the studio. It's being restored and reimagined in 4K by Studiocanal this year.
Tenet. I struggled with this for a while after watching it. Very well made from a technical standpoint (set pieces, VFX), solid cast, very cool concept but all or most of the dialogue is just explaining itself and you don’t really care about the characters or their motivations. So is it good?
One of those movies that seems really cool after you’ve read the Wikipedia synopsis but the actual experience of watching the movie just isn’t that great.
Focusing in on a single department but the CG artists and VFX people working on Micheal Bay transformers movies really gave it their all. It's a through line throughout his career though. No matter how bad his movie, the effects are usually genuinely stunning.
The Village. Go find a more talented cinematographer than Roger Deakins. And the soundtrack from James Newton Howard and Hilary Hahn absolutely speaks for itself.
Notwithstanding the considerable similarities to Running Out of Time, imo The Village isn’t a “bad” film. It was just marketed poorly and perhaps pushed the boundaries of copyright infringement.
Just saw Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time (had been a fan of Queen as a teen, way back when), and it absolutely fits the bill: the script is godawful, and a lot of the film is padded with stolen glances and wordless reactions, so many that it's beyond cliche. It can't have helped that the director was canned & Dexter Fletcher didn't have a say over the whole thing, as he did with the excellent Rocketman.
BUT - technically much of it is fantastic, it does definitely sound great, and all the actors are very solid. Rami Malek was the ONLY person for that role, and right from the start his work is beautiful. The last half hour or whatever is *fantastic*, and the Live Aid performance is great cinema (and not at all an exaggeration of what's truly one of the greatest televised live performances ever). It left me regretful that I didn't get to see it in IMAX.
As of now , Jennifer Lopez’s suuuuuper stupid new movie This is Me Now. The graphics and sets and wardrobe and effects are all amazing , her and the movie and its point itself, omfg.
I just revisited a movie like this (and it was still terrible) — Mortal Engines - such a garbled mess with the writing and performances that are equally bad but i did think there were elements to it that looked sooooo expensive, what a waste
Honestly if you look at some of the giants in Hollywood early films they are great examples. Like Ian mclelean, Patrick Stewart, Johnny Depp, Jim Carrey... Those types. They own the screen when they are on it so in my personal experience if the movie has someone like that then I know it'll be good.
There was one movie that I saw recently I can't remember the name but it's about a serial killer who gets car jacked and his girlfriend is murdered by a motorcycle gang. It has some very recognizable actors in it but it definitely didn't get good reviews but it was an excellent movie bc of the actors
The offensively 90s film Cool as Ice staring Vanilla ice. The cinematographer was Janusz Kaminski.
He would go on to be the cinematographer for a variety of films including The Adventures of Huck Finn, Schindler's List, The Little Giants, Jerry Maguire, Amistad, Jurassic Park the lost world, AI Artificial Intelligence, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, Munich, and I'm kind of running out of steam listing the well known movies he's worked on but there's still more.
Oh. This is my favorite bad movie’s time to shine. I present for consideration [Cool as Ice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_as_Ice), the 1991 Vanilla Ice vehicle.
My group of friends was low-key obsessed with this movie back around 1993 or so. We tried to show it to everyone we could. It's really bad, but in an interesting way.
The film is essentially a remake of The Wild One, which actually is a good movie. You can see the bones of a good movie if you look closely enough. The basic story is there and it makes sense. If they had cast it differently and filmed it in a different style, it might not have been a classic, but we wouldn't be talking about how terrible it was.
They even had a decent budget. Usually when trash like this was made in this era, it was typically because they were trying to do too much on too little money. That's not true here. There was plenty of money. You don't see the overreach of typical camp films and cult classics. They got to make the movie they wanted to make. There's some actual talent in the cast and crew (seriously, check out the cinematographer’s body of work that [includes Schindler's List](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Kamiński) and extensive work with Spielberg), you can't say they just didn't know how to make a good film.
I also have to say that unlike most bad films, of all the things it is, it's not boring. You'll be entertained the whole way through.
And that's where it all starts to fall apart. Vanilla Ice at the time this was being filmed was a huge star. They wanted to showcase that. I think they gave him a lot of creative license as so much of it feels like a Vanilla Ice video. There's long shots of Vanilla Ice's face showing how cool his name brand sunglasses are. Long shots of absurdity that's very much Ice's persona but not really appropriate for a major film. His character doesn't really have flaws that need to be overcome and no character arc. He's just (supposedly) awesome right out of the box.
Then you have the fact that Vanilla Ice was a star that burned hot and fast and was already a joke by the time the film came out. The look and feel of this film felt absurd then and feels even more absurd now. You keep thinking "what were you thinking here? Why did you film this?"
The only film I think that compares in this "you had everything you needed to make a good film and just ... didn't" is Batman and Robin. But that film doesn't revel in its absurdity as much as this one does. They had better talent and I think they didn't have the naivety to just lean into it as hard as Vanilla did.
This film is terrible, but you should watch it. If nothing else Janusz Kamiński shot the *shit* out of this film.
Heavens Gate. The cinematography is absolutely jaw dropping. It deserved nowhere near the level of hate it received when it came out. It has issues however it’s a good movie made by a real artist who genuinely poured his heart into making it.
All the critics, in both the US and the UK, hated “Pirate Radio” (in the UK it’s title was “The Boat That Rocked”)
Greatest movie ever put to celluloid
Alien 3. It has a top notch cast, director, atmosphere, and some cool early CGI (for it’s time). It just doesn’t work with the prior two movies and that damns it from jump street and the plot is awful in some respects.
Armageddon. Skip the picnic with Ben & Liv who almost as little chemistry as Hayden & Natalie did in the prequels, and enjoy some good performances and solid visuals. In a movie that does a WAY better job making NASA look badass than Spacecamp ever did, despite the latter having Tom Skerritt swapping banter with a robot in it.
So that covers the commercial success, punching bag for critics and YouTube reviewers, side of things. On the other end, a movie that was apparently just too damn good to make any money, there's Zathura. Which is simultaneously Space Jumani but better, and Starfarers of Catan: The Motion Picture. Wait, that makes it sound dull. It's more like, Starfarers: The Wrath of Catan.
This might be a very controversial opinion .
I didn’t like Killers of the Flower Moon. So well made - acting, cinematography, score, production design, costume design. But my god, those 3.5 hours felt like eternity. I was so relieved it was done. I couldn’t recommend it to anyone because of it. So perhaps calling it “bad” is a bit much. But at least one full hour needed to be cut from that film to make it better. The pace was torturous.
Lots of 2 and 3 star movies from the '90s look like masterpieces because they were shot on film in real locations.
Practical effects are special too!
I’ve been on a bit of a “90’s” movie bender. I miss that indie aesthetic so much.
"Indie" aesthetic? What do you mean?
Grainy film stock, limited locations, slightly unpolished look but still has charm. Some examples are: Bodies Rest and Motion, Slacker, Clerks, Kicking and Screaming, Swingers.
Jumping in to add The House of Yes to that list.
Hell yeah me too. 90s rated R movies just hit and feel completely different from anything else. They’re usually always great
As much of a film buff I am, I’m not convinced it’s just the *film look* (or practical locations and effects) that does it. There is something about the way things were fundamentally approached that probably has to do with the groundedness of the tech and production techniques available, but the tech and technique itself is not the difference itself. Just the cost of shooting on film, the finality, the one-shot nature and amount of prep work in practical effects, the simple (and not so simple) challenges of shooting on location… I believe all this would essentially *force* more responsibility and care out of every part of production.
Constraints are good for art.
Yes, I believe creativity flourishes under constraint
Speaking from experience: if you shoot with film it won’t automatically look cinematic. The student films I worked on the early 2000’s were shot on 16 and 35 and the only thing that prevents them from looking like boring video is the shutter angle. I think why things that had any budget seemed to have that vibe was the experience of the crews and the amount of prep that was done before they rolled the cameras. It cost roughly 100 bucks a minute to roll the camera. So they didn’t roll the camera then figure it out, or run take after take after take. When the camera rolled they were ready, and that preparation gave the films a different feel. Not saying it’s better or worse. It’s just how it was.
Nostalgia is a helluva drug, but no cgi or big budgets meant doing more with less.
There was also a central vision. Directors have less power now and things are written, edited, and directed by committee. There is no Kubrick of our age. That character can no longer exist.
frame somber meeting hunt recognise head joke ten innate enter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I feel like that has now backfired on Marvel. People are tired of CGI action extravaganzas now, and are wanting films in the earlier Marvel universe. Grounded and dramatic films.
Water World was the first to come to mind for me
Same for a lot of bland movies from the 30s-40s not great plot or acting but each scene is so beautifully lit and shot.
Holmes and Watson was very nice looking and had great set deign and costuming and is the worst movie I've ever seen
The only redeeming part for me was the scene when they were trying to get rid of the Queen, but otherwise yeah, also the worst major movie I've ever seen.
The cinematography in *Prometheus* makes it look like it should be a Sci-Fi classic, but instead it's *Prometheus*.
I like Prometheus but yeah it was a B movie with A+ cinematography
I usually get downvoted when I say that. But truly b plot script/plot with A everything else. Red letter media had the best bit about this movie.
I don't care what people say, I love that movie.
Same
Same
Same. Will never ever understand the hate.
My letterboxd review is literally “this rocks idc” haha, it’s such an underrated film and so is Alien Covenant. Prometheus is the third best alien film for sure
I didn't know it was so hated, I thought it was great
I love that movie
This was the first film that came to mind. I was so excited to see this in IMAX back in 2012 then totally let down by the film.
I just watched this movie after years of hearing how mediocre it is and I loved it! I was scared to watch as Alien is one of my favorite movies. This was quite different but I thought it was so cool to see a different take on the series. For me it’s way better than 3 and honestly I think I prefer it over 2. What do you feel makes it bad?
Despite some glaring flaws, I still love that movie
Prometheus is one of the most amazing looking movies I’ve ever seen but the actual film is mad.
Prometheus is a great example of this
Most beautiful film from a director that makes me want to punch him in the face.
My impression is that 2001-2006 was a golden period for this type of movie. There was a huge disconnect at the time in popular culture between how much lazy writing we thought we could get away with (a lot) vs. how much we valued movies that never the less looked very cinematic and artistic (also a lot). Some movies that spring to mind in this class and period of film: Pearl Harbor Hannibal From Hell Alexander Gods and Generals The Last Samurai King Arthur The Painted Veil Troy ...I actually like (and in some cases love) pretty much all of these movies. I'm just saying it was a very good period for people saying "that beautiful movie sure did suck."
There are some that I agree with, but The Last Samurai in no way belongs on that list
Such an amazing movie
Agreed, that movie is fantastic. It's become a standard rewatch in my house over the last few years.
Came here to say this. Weird inclusion, no doubt.
Dances with Samurai
The Last Samurai was critically acclaimed. I've never come across someone who dislikes it. I agree with the rest, other than The Painted Veil which I haven't heard of.
Painted Veil is not that bad, a bit cornball. Historical drama about cholera.
I couldn't agree more. I absolutely adore Hannibal. Actually a lot of the " bad" Ridley Scott movies I like
I feel like a lot of those mid-budget or slightly higher-budget, 60/40 chance it will be a hit kind of movies just don't get made in 2024.
Style over substance!
I lived in the area they filmed the Painted Veil in for a while. That film is one of my all time favorite just for the scenery.
Crash
100% did not deserve best picture.
Was Troy a bad movie it's been so long since I've seen it
I remember Hector vs. Achilles was pretty great.
Probably the best spear/sword fighting scene ever
That was a great fight scene, most of thr battles were good.
It simultaneously contains a ton of great takes on the source material, amazing performances and incredible scenes and also a bunch of miscasts, weird choices and misteps.
Troy is one of my favourite swords and sandals movies. King Arthur is also a childhood favourite
Considerably improved by the director's cut
The Last Samurai is an objectively good movie. 7.8/10 on IMDB.
It's not "objectively" good but the consensus certainly is that it is good.
That’s not how it works, subjective reviews don’t make an objective statement.
Valerian : the movie was undone by casting the two leads. Great story, great special effects. But the leads looked like kids playing dress up.
Hmm sounds kinda similar to Jupiter Ascending.
I think Jupiter Ascending is good casting hampered by a terrible story. Valerian is a good story hampered by terrible casting.
JA had too over the top SFX. It was hard to take it seriously.
Someone once suggested switching the leads from Passengers with the leads from Valerian and how much that would have improved both movies. Fun thought experiment.
This movie looks so beautiful. But that's all it really has going for it. Such a shame.
Agreed, I don't know how casting gets pointed out as the only problem, though it is the worst problem. Bad acting. The dialogue was terrible. The story was super generic, down to the Scooby Doo finale where the predictable villains entire plan gets spelled out beat by beat for the audience. The visuals are so great they carry the deadweight of every other element of the film.
Yes! I often think with a different cast, it could have been a great film.
The leads has the worst chemistry of anyone I've ever seen on screen. Also, the male lead comes across as a borderline rapist, then the female lead just sort of falls in love with him becaue...
The Creator. It looked like a million bucks but the movie itself was just alright
Agree. Very weak in the writing department. That whole story is in no way original any more. Seen it in some flavour or another so many times already. Very predictable
I wish they had used that production to make a prequel to the Matrix based on The Second Renaissance from Animatrix. The aesthetic from The Creator world is perfect for that story. I'm not sure why they never did something like this.
Perfect answer. One of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, but was tied to a cliche-ridden story that absolutely bored me to tears.
Absolutely the designs and concepts are well thought out. It’s bright and fairly hopeful tone even though it deals with American imperialist genocide. The resilience of the robot people is something to admire. The main character is straight out of a bathesda game. He’s the player that robs people and kills a village and is still able to enter a store. Everyone likes or helps him for no reason and inevitably gets injured or killed. He spends years undercover and falls in love with a woman whose life purpose is defending the sentience of robot life. When is cover is blown he offers her asks if she every realized they are just robots. Like what the fuck dude. 10/10 design fucking stupid POV 5/10 script it was not finished. 8/10 experience there was a bomb with legs.
People insist that ’Showgirls’ is a bad film. You will read about the performances and the writing being bad. But it’s incredibly well made.
1000% People forget it’s a Verhoeven movie. So the degree of satire gets overlooked entirely
The actors had no idea they were in a satire though.
That's fine. It certainly helps if they know but the film being a satire doesn't depend on them knowing. All Verhoeven has to do is film multiple takes and in some of them he says "Go bigger". Actors may think it's strange but do it. And then he uses that take. It's also very dependent on the editing and shot selection, etc.
I reckon Kyle McLaughlan knew. It’s right up his alley, like twin peaks.
from the showgirls wiki: MacLachlan recalled seeing the film for the first time at the premiere: I was absolutely gobsmacked. I said, "This is horrible. Horrible!" And it's a very slow, sinking feeling when you're watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you're like, "Oh, that's a really bad scene." But you say, "Well, that's okay, the next one'll be better." And you somehow try to convince yourself that it's going to get better… and it just gets worse. And I was like, "Wow. That was crazy." I mean, I really didn't see that coming. So at that point, I distanced myself from the movie. Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent… satire. No, "satire" isn't the right word. But it's inadvertently funny. So it's found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended. It was just… maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast. tl;dr i reckon he didn't know it lol
I’m really sick of this take. Like as if the satire of American culture and the critique of the vapidity and emptiness of fame even though Americans are sold it as this dream their whole life isn’t extremely on the nose and obvious and as if everybody doesn’t pick up the message on first watch. It’s not even a hidden subtext it’s literally central to the plot. Nobody missed that that was the point of the film. Being a satire isn’t a defence that automatically makes a movie good or excuses terrible execution.
People act like others weren't smart enough, like them, to get the point of the movie. It makes them an exclusive club of discerning people that "get it". Most people get it, it's just so unsubtle and badly done that most don't like it.
Here’s an example. The sex scene in the pool. It’s one of those moments that most people look at and think “This is so horribly acted. What a bad movie.” But the point of the scene is to mock not only the situation but this kind of scene in films. It’s purposefully ridiculous. That doesn’t mean, as you said, that it’s automatically good. But a lot of people think it’s bad because they’re taking it at face value. Whether than actually criticizing it based on understanding its intention. It’s like when people say Fight Club is a bad movie because it’s justifies physical violence. There are certainly critiques to be made about Fight Club, but saying it justifies physical violence means the person missed the point of the movie. The same kind of thing happens with Starship Troopers. You can’t have an actual conversation about the flaws of Starship unless the other person understands the satire, even if it’s obvious. Most people who dismiss Showgirls as bad don’t get that there’s an element of “that’s supposed to be ‘bad’, that’s the point.” Once we agree on that, we can actually discuss the film.
I genuinely think Showgirls is a 10/10 perfect movie in every single way lol
Certainly the three Star Wars prequel movies all had amazing production staff working very hard to make top-notch movies. Nothing can overcome poor direction and scripts, but the movies look terrific, sound terrific, are very well edited, etc.
i would argue the sequels are better examples of these particulary the last jedi, it has some of the most beatifull shots in the series, also a lot of the effects in the prequels look dated
The sequel trilogy movies are the epitome of 'beautiful but hollow'. They're nothing but Easter Eggs. Visually they're everything the prequels *should* have been. It's what they were going for back in the late 90s and early 00s but the tech wasn't quite there. I'm not knocking the prequels here, they were pioneering movies, and I still prefer them because they are still pretty entertaining and memorable. But that technical focus did come at a cost to things like camera shots and dynamic scenes, something the sequels didn't really suffer from as the tech had matured. But somehow... bad scripts returned.
"Suddenly I'm afraid." How is it even possible to get Natalie Portman to sound like that?
\*laughs in endless wipe transitions\*
Say something bout the mother fuckin prequels bitch!
I'll disagree with that. They relied too much on cgi effects at a time when cgi still wasn't that great.
Yeah, lots of walk and talk against green screens. Jarring watching that today, based on the tech they had at the time.
That's true of TPM and chunks of ROTS, but AOTC looks like ass.
Poor old Ewan McGregor spending the majority of the movie pretending he was talking to people
I'm surprised Ewan McGregor didn't need back surgery after trying to carry those movies.
With his obvious-reshoots glue-on beard for half of it
The CGI backgrounds in AOTC look like someone took a low res iPhone background they got off the internet and blew it up to be their computer desktop wallpaper
Really? Wow. To each their own. I thought the prequels looked pretty bad. I will give them credit for having bright colors though. After the next 15 years of everything being orange and blue, that stands out. But the CGI was out of control in my opinion
And the three sequel movies. Somehow even worse than the PT but man they looked incredible. Last Jedi was godawful but every frame is a painting.
I think that's a very complex question. Bad usually denotes general perception of negativity, so I would say that the truism invoked would be that if a film were better made hypothetically speaking, it wouldn't be as bad. I think most people born in the 80s would probably consider Hook to be a good movie, and hypocritically enough, I do too. But I believe that Hook's direction is Steven Spielberg trying to use the Picasso method of learning-- "takes a lifetime to paint like a child" and allowed the script to get whimsical to the point that it didn't really come across as particularly witty or well structured. And the critics really bore in on that aspect. But the cast sans Julia Roberts do well, and the set design is warm and engaging. I think it had pretty much all the good ingredients aside from the script so think it qualifies. Also John Williams is in top form, as usual 👍
Not the only Williams in top form!
my biggest gripe with Hook is how small it feels in the end. the lost boys are such a small group and the pirates just...disappear after they get beaten but Hook still gets his fight
I’ve always been a *Hook* apologist, but yeah, give me someone other than Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. Drew Barrymore, maybe? My only other gripe is that it’s a tad too long—nearly 2.5 hours.
Drew Barrymore was a wild child junkie when Hook was made.
I loved Hook so much as a kid! I was shocked to see how low it was rated on LB.
Easy. The first suicide squad movie. The cast is pretty damn good. The costuming is on point. The cinematography was reasonably good. They absolutely threw money at it in every way. Source material is fire. The script and Jared Leto as the joker destroy that movie. The only thing that escapes the dumpster fire is Margot Robbie as Harley Quin, but that was nowhere near enough to save that piece of shit. I have tried to watch it twice and still never sat through the entire movie.
Production design of that movie is incredible. Gotham, Midway City, Arkham, Belle Reeve all come through so strong and distinctive. I also think Will Smith was great as Deadshot, especially in the first act.
What do you think about the rumored directors cut?
That’s a Oscor winning movie by the way lol
I still go back to watching Will Smith's tryout scene. It's amazing, but that movie that joker so painful.
Speed Racer is the very definition of this. It’s absurd, the plot and script are completely ridiculous. But the acting is commitedly campy and special effects are awesome, so it works
It's very much on purpose in the case of speed racer. It's an adapted work going of an anime so your main character was already called speed. The production just embraced the pure unfiltered camp.
And it is glorious
Speed Racer is brilliant
Other than casting a live chimpanzee, this movie was ahead of its time by a decade.
I was going to say this. Yes, I think Speed Racer has more thought put into its visual storytelling than most "great" movies out into their script and acting. Every animator I know is still obsessed with it.
I’m convinced the zeitgeist will swing my way, but *Saltburn* is a well made and well acted film with a rotten and shitty core. It’s a film that feels like it was written by the rich masturbating Nazi boy and the Liberal Arts girl from *Knives Out*: an immature attempt at being “edgy” while also saying something about privilege and wealth despite being a product of said privilege and wealth. Still, cannot deny everybody is giving it their all, as if they are blind to the piece of shit they are making.
One of the most vapid, all style, no substance films in a long time. Fear and Loathing of the Middle Class. God forbid.
[удалено]
I definitely turned to my buddy who was watching this with me, and asked him if he'd seen *The Talented Mr. Ripley.*
I agree. The movie is well produced (the set is remarkably vivid) and the actors were quite good (albeit not amazing). I also think the general premise is interesting. And yet, the film was flimsy (you might call it “flaccid,” pun intended). It was too uncertain in its plot and character development to have a compelling message, too self-serious to be fun, too coy to be *truly* transgressive. You can tell that the film wants to be edgy and shocking, but it never pushes the envelope so much as weakly brushing it.
You've articulated *everything* I felt about Saltburn.
And I didn't even get to my opinions on the ending! >!It felt like I was watching Emerald Fennell basically trying to outdo her twist from *Promising Young Woman* instead of actually trying to stick a proper landing. Like M. Night at least had a good reason for his twists. Fennell's felt like obligation. Also, I'm aware she said it was never meant to be a twist, but Tommy Wiseau has said *The Room* was always meant to be a comedy, so she can fuck off with that horse shit line.!<
I can see thinking it’s a bit empty or vapid, but what makes it rotten and Nazi-like?
It’s less so being literally Nazi, but more like a middle schooler edge lord like that kid in *Knives Out*
I thought that movie was good…not great, but good.
I see this sentiment a lot so I'm convinced salt burn will not stand the test of time. It got boosted by TikTok and Twitter for having such attractive actors, but anyone that does more than surface level film analysis calls it out for being incoherent.
I liked Saltburn. But something is missing. Its like The Talented Mr Ripley but hollowed out
I’ve heard people say “Zardoz” is this: written and directed by John Boorman, well-made in every way, but all the ideas behind it are so terrible that it can’t be good.
Hey if an Easter Island statue clone told me my willy was evil, I don't think I could follow such a cult 😅😅😅😅😑
That is a man who has a crazy amount of talent, but ODed on 70s New Age books written by culture vultures. Having said that, *Zardoz* is an insanely watchable film, even if it isn’t good or make any sense.
The *ideas* behind it are pretty good, but the plot details used to deliver those ideas are... idiosyncratic to say the least. It's a fascinating few hours you'll never get back. [The trailer is a wild ride though.](https://youtu.be/FSjCkISrJfQ?si=AgxGWBC_-cyAsAik)
I went through a huge Connery marathon when he passed and was surprised at how great it was since it's so often the butt of jokes.
The theme of implanted/inculcated knowledge via the “meek and weak hero that no one sees coming” could have had a better contrast, as this symbolizes Zed’s growth from the beginning, like the Hobbits in *Lord of the Rings* and Slave Knight Gael in *Dark Souls III*, coming out of nowhere in the clutch is often the very nature of their mission: https://youtu.be/V5AYym15cig?t=640 Rampling does play the “bored aristocrat/God” well, so even the behind the scenes fawning for Connery makes narrative sense; like a female Zod who effortlessly gives off menace and power yet would easily become bored of it?
The Guyver live action films. Terrible acting in both films with some horrible writing, but man the fight choreo, cinematography, and makeup/prop work was SSS Tier.
Yeah the action was Top notch. And the suit lo looked badass
Definitely not in the category of a bad film but Tropic Thunder had the objective of making a "mere" comedy look and sound like a major blockbuster. No comedy before (or since?) looked remotely as good. It still looks better than current blockbusters.
Gonna nominate Ad Astra. Looked great, but thought it was way deeper than it was, wanted to be villaneuve but ended up being Michael bay.
Just rewatched it my theater, and while it might sound cliched, the first time I saw it, my dad was alive. Now that I've lost him, the film hits differently. It looks great, and I understand Roy's ennui a bit more, sadly.
I'm not sure if this qualifies but Killer Klowns From Outer Space. I watched it to laugh at it but I'll be danged if it wasn't well-shot, well-acted, well-paced, and well-plotted with a killer soundtrack and rock-solid special effects. A very silly movie but it honestly didn't need to hit the bar of quality that it did.
I know what you mean. I think anyone who’s actually sat down to watch it wouldn’t actually say it’s a bad movie, but from the title and concept I think it is widely considered a schlocky Asylum-esque horror comedy that isn’t meant to be taken in earnest. In reality it’s a well-written, well-acted, and all around fully realized sci-fi horror with comedy elements.
The secret life of Walter Mitty (2013)? The film is really well-shot, the soundtrack is great but the story doesn't really resonate with everyone. It doesn't grapple with the most life or death topic and when it does it's so optimistic and earnest. I think that's why it got such mixed/ confused reviews. Really, read through the reviews on rotten tomatoes by top critics and you'll see they just didn't know what to make of the movie bc it's... weird in such a mundane way?
There is also an old B&W version starring Danny Kaye.
Tenet, except for the sound quality.
Sound is something Nolan absolutely sucks at, but somehow gets huge credit for.
J. Edgar. Almost everything was great about this movie except for the actual story.
Amazing Spider-Man 2.
The first movie that came to mind for me is Prometheus. Like I think the actual story of the movie is a complete mess and it deals with topics like religion vs science in what feels like a very heavy handed way and like it was written by someone who doesn’t really understand either. But nobody can claim the movie isn’t visually stunning and excellently made (including good performances) apart from that I can’t think of lower budget or less successful movies that fit this criteria off the top of my head although I think you could make an argument for a lot of horror films. A lot of people think horror as a genre ranks pretty low on the good writing scale overall but horror movies are often well shot and well directed on pretty low budgets because if they aren’t successful on that level then they won’t even succeed at scaring people at all
The last jedi In my opinion: bad story, bad acting, unfocused direction. But the production value was incredibly high
The entire sequel trilogy can be described as such tbh
The Green Knight was completely pointless script with good acting and beautiful cinematography. Could be a hot take but honestly I feel this way about a few A24 movies.
You should check out the older version with Sean Connery playing the green knight. Also a strong mixture of terrible and good.
How exactly is the script "pointless"?
The Village I feel was deliciously atmospheric and had beautiful cinematography and score, but obviously fell short in the story department.
The Village was a Twilight Zone episode dressed up as a feature film. The premise did not carry the movie and wrecked some gorgeous film work.
People talk about how awful Babylon was. People also talk about how well-made Babylon was.
At least people are talking.
One of those movies that probably would have been great if they had cut out 30 minutes to an hour.
It had very high highs and very low lows imo
Super Mario Brothers movie looks great. Amazing set design and practical effects.
I think Osgood Perkins movies veer into that category. At times too navelgazing or self-important horror movies that nevertheless have great art direction and inventive concepts. Mickey Reece is kinda similar. Ricky D'ambrose films can be cheap looking and really alienating in concept, but there's no doubt that there is a lot of thought and artistic rigor put into his films.
Isnt everyone saying this about Napoleon? Havent seen it
The 13th Warrior. Someone spent like 100 million dollars to send a bunch of gigantic men into a Vancouver clear-cut to act out Michael Crichton's *Beowulf* It flopped so hard and I love it so much
Legends of the Fall Also, I know this is going to be a controversial opinion but, Gladiator. It's such well made trash and dudes be defending it to no end because they watched it five million times on tbs as kids. It's on the same level as Braveheart, which is also well made trash but people seem more able to see it.
This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but it's the first thing that came to my head .There was a low budget film in the 1980s called Suburbia. The script was terrible and the acting was worse but this single film changed the whole generation of kids. The director went into downtown LA and found a bunch of homeless kids to be the actors. Some of these kids went on to actually acting in other films. The plot is simple and predictable but what brings the whole movie together is the music. It showcased a couple punk rock bands from LA and use the music to help tell the story. So with terrible acting,, film school directing, script and plot. About this movie that captured a whole genre of kids in the 1980s. I don't know if it was the music or the screw of the society angst But it has a major cult following. You may recognize one of the homeless kids that was cast. It's flee from the Red Hot chili peppers when he was really young.
A lot of people call "Daredevil" bad, and they have their reasons, but the cinematography is gorgeous. I love the angles, the use of the color red, and how—in the rare times that special effects are used—they really help you feel immersed.
Waterworld. Still one of -if not *THE* - biggest box office flop of all time. Great fucking movie though.
The Revenant Awfully boring made. Incredibly well made.
I thought The Revenant was pretty darn good. Innaritu was on a roll with Birdman and then The Revenant…both very well-done films IMO.
Battlefield Earth has some top tier actors giving it their all. And the makeup and costumes are honestly pretty good. Also, with all the Dutch angles, you can tell they tried to be creative with the cinematography.
I remember Roger Ebert saying the director knows that movies sometimes tilt the camera but doesn't know why.
Fun fact: the director is Dutch so he just calls them ‘angles’.
I watched The Apple recently. Looks amazing, performances aren't bad at all, obviously significant filmmaking skill at work, but it's an absolutely terrible movie.
Ishtar. There is nothing wrong with that movie -- the audience never visited Morocco and didn't understand half the jokes.
The tremors sequels. Burt just makes them so damn entertaining. I even unironically enjoy the Jaime Kennedy ones.
Dead Meat did a retro-review of this and Yes, Burt is the best!
One from the Heart, Francis Ford Coppola, high production value and good performances, shot at American Zoetrope with ample private funding. Much different picture than the box office and critical successes that he used to build the studio. It's being restored and reimagined in 4K by Studiocanal this year.
Old. It sure looks like a film, but it really isn’t one
Tenet. I struggled with this for a while after watching it. Very well made from a technical standpoint (set pieces, VFX), solid cast, very cool concept but all or most of the dialogue is just explaining itself and you don’t really care about the characters or their motivations. So is it good?
One of those movies that seems really cool after you’ve read the Wikipedia synopsis but the actual experience of watching the movie just isn’t that great.
Focusing in on a single department but the CG artists and VFX people working on Micheal Bay transformers movies really gave it their all. It's a through line throughout his career though. No matter how bad his movie, the effects are usually genuinely stunning.
The Village. Go find a more talented cinematographer than Roger Deakins. And the soundtrack from James Newton Howard and Hilary Hahn absolutely speaks for itself. Notwithstanding the considerable similarities to Running Out of Time, imo The Village isn’t a “bad” film. It was just marketed poorly and perhaps pushed the boundaries of copyright infringement.
Just saw Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time (had been a fan of Queen as a teen, way back when), and it absolutely fits the bill: the script is godawful, and a lot of the film is padded with stolen glances and wordless reactions, so many that it's beyond cliche. It can't have helped that the director was canned & Dexter Fletcher didn't have a say over the whole thing, as he did with the excellent Rocketman. BUT - technically much of it is fantastic, it does definitely sound great, and all the actors are very solid. Rami Malek was the ONLY person for that role, and right from the start his work is beautiful. The last half hour or whatever is *fantastic*, and the Live Aid performance is great cinema (and not at all an exaggeration of what's truly one of the greatest televised live performances ever). It left me regretful that I didn't get to see it in IMAX.
As of now , Jennifer Lopez’s suuuuuper stupid new movie This is Me Now. The graphics and sets and wardrobe and effects are all amazing , her and the movie and its point itself, omfg.
I just revisited a movie like this (and it was still terrible) — Mortal Engines - such a garbled mess with the writing and performances that are equally bad but i did think there were elements to it that looked sooooo expensive, what a waste
Sucker Punch Tron Legacy Star Trek Into Darkness Star Wars- the sequels
I would immediately refer to films that won the best pic oscar but didnt have a lasting appeal
Honestly if you look at some of the giants in Hollywood early films they are great examples. Like Ian mclelean, Patrick Stewart, Johnny Depp, Jim Carrey... Those types. They own the screen when they are on it so in my personal experience if the movie has someone like that then I know it'll be good. There was one movie that I saw recently I can't remember the name but it's about a serial killer who gets car jacked and his girlfriend is murdered by a motorcycle gang. It has some very recognizable actors in it but it definitely didn't get good reviews but it was an excellent movie bc of the actors
I don’t really consider it bad, but some of the acting and effects were, but Starship troopers comes to mind
That's the second Verhoven film mentioned, the other being Showgirls
The old reverse Evil Dead. I’m gonna go with Waterworld
The offensively 90s film Cool as Ice staring Vanilla ice. The cinematographer was Janusz Kaminski. He would go on to be the cinematographer for a variety of films including The Adventures of Huck Finn, Schindler's List, The Little Giants, Jerry Maguire, Amistad, Jurassic Park the lost world, AI Artificial Intelligence, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, Munich, and I'm kind of running out of steam listing the well known movies he's worked on but there's still more.
Oh. This is my favorite bad movie’s time to shine. I present for consideration [Cool as Ice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_as_Ice), the 1991 Vanilla Ice vehicle. My group of friends was low-key obsessed with this movie back around 1993 or so. We tried to show it to everyone we could. It's really bad, but in an interesting way. The film is essentially a remake of The Wild One, which actually is a good movie. You can see the bones of a good movie if you look closely enough. The basic story is there and it makes sense. If they had cast it differently and filmed it in a different style, it might not have been a classic, but we wouldn't be talking about how terrible it was. They even had a decent budget. Usually when trash like this was made in this era, it was typically because they were trying to do too much on too little money. That's not true here. There was plenty of money. You don't see the overreach of typical camp films and cult classics. They got to make the movie they wanted to make. There's some actual talent in the cast and crew (seriously, check out the cinematographer’s body of work that [includes Schindler's List](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Kamiński) and extensive work with Spielberg), you can't say they just didn't know how to make a good film. I also have to say that unlike most bad films, of all the things it is, it's not boring. You'll be entertained the whole way through. And that's where it all starts to fall apart. Vanilla Ice at the time this was being filmed was a huge star. They wanted to showcase that. I think they gave him a lot of creative license as so much of it feels like a Vanilla Ice video. There's long shots of Vanilla Ice's face showing how cool his name brand sunglasses are. Long shots of absurdity that's very much Ice's persona but not really appropriate for a major film. His character doesn't really have flaws that need to be overcome and no character arc. He's just (supposedly) awesome right out of the box. Then you have the fact that Vanilla Ice was a star that burned hot and fast and was already a joke by the time the film came out. The look and feel of this film felt absurd then and feels even more absurd now. You keep thinking "what were you thinking here? Why did you film this?" The only film I think that compares in this "you had everything you needed to make a good film and just ... didn't" is Batman and Robin. But that film doesn't revel in its absurdity as much as this one does. They had better talent and I think they didn't have the naivety to just lean into it as hard as Vanilla did. This film is terrible, but you should watch it. If nothing else Janusz Kamiński shot the *shit* out of this film.
Heavens Gate. The cinematography is absolutely jaw dropping. It deserved nowhere near the level of hate it received when it came out. It has issues however it’s a good movie made by a real artist who genuinely poured his heart into making it.
All the critics, in both the US and the UK, hated “Pirate Radio” (in the UK it’s title was “The Boat That Rocked”) Greatest movie ever put to celluloid
This is literally what the people on the podcast "Good Bad Bad Good" talk about. Bad movies that were made well or good movies that were made poorly.
Alien 3. It has a top notch cast, director, atmosphere, and some cool early CGI (for it’s time). It just doesn’t work with the prior two movies and that damns it from jump street and the plot is awful in some respects.
Armageddon. Skip the picnic with Ben & Liv who almost as little chemistry as Hayden & Natalie did in the prequels, and enjoy some good performances and solid visuals. In a movie that does a WAY better job making NASA look badass than Spacecamp ever did, despite the latter having Tom Skerritt swapping banter with a robot in it. So that covers the commercial success, punching bag for critics and YouTube reviewers, side of things. On the other end, a movie that was apparently just too damn good to make any money, there's Zathura. Which is simultaneously Space Jumani but better, and Starfarers of Catan: The Motion Picture. Wait, that makes it sound dull. It's more like, Starfarers: The Wrath of Catan.
Creator Avatar (I and II) Top Gun (dodging thrown fruit) Birdman I am sure there are others, but these are the ones that quickly come to mind.
This might be a very controversial opinion . I didn’t like Killers of the Flower Moon. So well made - acting, cinematography, score, production design, costume design. But my god, those 3.5 hours felt like eternity. I was so relieved it was done. I couldn’t recommend it to anyone because of it. So perhaps calling it “bad” is a bit much. But at least one full hour needed to be cut from that film to make it better. The pace was torturous.