What movie is in your top list despite its absolute shit rating?
I think for me it's alien: covenant. I was really interested in the ideas explored in prometheus and covenant just expanded on them. I don't get much into the details of why it is or isn't a good movie.
Luckily, though, HBO ran raised by wolves which really delved into ideals about AI and planet seeding etc. So that itch got way scratched even if the run was cut short.
I think everyone should see the 2019 Cats. I was not bored, and I had a strong emotional reaction to the movie. Was it shit? Oh absolutely, in ways that I didn't even know movies could be shit. But it was not boring! So if I were going to recommend a movie to someone who hadn't seen it yet, Cats would be near the top of that list.
Movies that I actually love despite them having poor ratings...
Event Horizon - 6.6 IMDB / 35% RT - Haunted house in space. Great performances from a great cast. Properly fucked up. Love seeing blue collar workers in scifi.
Death to Smoochy - 6.3 IMDB / 42% RT - See Robin Williams go hard on the R-rating playing a children's show host on a downward spiral. One of my favorite Williams performances.
Legend (1985) - 6.3 IMDB / 41% RT - Shot entirely inside of a huge bag of cocaine. All vibes, don't question any of it, logic has no place here. Watch the theatrical cut with Tangerine Dream, because the director's cut with Jerry Goldsmith is honestly just vague fantasy noodling, and the 80s power jams are at least 40% of the charm.
I think the thing with Cats is that it's totally OK if a broadway musical has no plot and doesn't make sense
As a lover of musicals, HELL no! Cats is probably the worst musical I've ever seen and that's INCLUDING every amateur production. Yes, school play originals too.
Apart from the not making sense, it has ONE great song (the others ranging from awful to meh), which it repeats so many times that you're on the verge of getting tired of it by the time the Elder Kitty reveals that cats aren't dogs.
-10/10, would force Trump, Musk, Putin, and Netanyahu to watch on repeat until they die as punishment for their crimes against humanity.
complaining about jellicle in Cats would be a lot like walking out of a Smurfs movie complaining about "Man, they sure do say 'Smurf' a lot."
Thing is, there's a lot about the source material that, if you're not there for it, then you shouldn't even be in the theatre. No plot, sexy cat monsters, absurd lyrics, that's all there from the beginning. No, the 2019 movie is fucked up in ways that have nothing to do with T. S. Eliot or Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Shit, I forgot about Legend! I didn't consider it because I thought it did OK, critically.
Shot entirely inside of a huge bag of cocaine.
I'm saving that one; it's funny, because it's true. You can also say that about Caddyshack, except that the latter was literally fueled by cocaine - I think it's been confirmed that almost everyone involved was high during filming.
I've seen two versions of the film; one I don't like as much only because small differences cause cognitive dissonance - I have the first version I saw mostly memorized line-by-line, and the other version is just enough off to feel awkward. I thought they were just different cuts for different media - film vs VHS, for instance - but now I wonder which is "my" original. Probably not the director's cut, since I'm pretty sure I first saw it in the theater, and then repeatedly on cable which was probably just the theatrical release.
Are you sure no Tangerine Dream is in the theatrical release?
Scott's first cut of Legend ran 125 minutes long. He then believed there were minor plot points that could be trimmed and cut the film down to 113 minutes, so he tested this version for an audience in Orange County. However, it was decided that the audience had to work too much to be entertained, and another 20 minutes was cut. The 95-minute version was shown in Great Britain and then the film was cut down even further to 89 minutes for North America.
At the time, Scott said, "European audiences are more sophisticated. They accepted preambles and subtleties whereas the U.S. goes for a much broader stroke." He and Universal delayed the North American theatrical release until 1986 so that they could replace Jerry Goldsmith's score with music by Tangerine Dream, Yes lead singer Jon Anderson, and Bryan Ferry.
Scott allowed Goldsmith's score to remain on European prints and the composer said, "that this dreamy, bucolic setting is suddenly to be scored by a techno-pop group seems sort of strange to me". Normally, Goldsmith would spend 6–10 weeks on a film score, but for Legend, he spent six months writing songs and dance sequences ahead of time.
The Goldsmith score is... fine, I guess, but it doesn't convey the intense 80s-ness of the movie as well as Tangerine Dream. It's like Flash Gordon or Highlander without the Queen songs.