What movie did you hate the first time you saw it, and now after a later viewing is one of your favorites?
For me it's Fargo. I remember hating it when I say it 20 years ago, but after about a 10 year break I gave it another shot and can't imagine how I ever hated it in the first place. Now one of my favorite movies of all time.
For a little more context, I think when I was a younger person I found myself trying desperately to route for the characters in the film and found myself increasingly frustrated that they all seemed to make worse and worse choices until they descended into little hell's of their own making. I suppose after a decade of exposure to the real world and a fresh set of eyes, I was able to see the movie for what it is. A rather humorous farce that tells the story of terrible people reaping terrible rewards for their terrible motivations. And a damned well told story.
Hot Fuzz. I didn't get the humor at all the first time. Now it's my favorite movie of all time and I've seen it, no joke probably around 100 times. The foreshadowing and callbacks in it are just second to none and it still makes me laugh my ass off.
I think it happened because I dropped some of my own pretentiousness, to be honest. I was young, had lots of fun with the first movie, but always under the pretense of it being "philosophical", and then the sequels turned the ridiculousness to 11 — but it's not like the first one was tame, in retrospect. I rewatched all of them after the fourth movie came out and now I really enjoy and respect the second one. The Wachowskis didn't play it safe, wore their hearts on their sleeves even harder, shot some badass and equally silly action scenes, and made a genuine story about love that I found really endearing
The first time I watched As Above So Below, I hated it. I thought it was cliche and boring and predictable. But it stayed somewhere in my brain for some reason. I watched it again a couple of months later because I couldn't stop thinking about it and I fell in love with it. Its now one of my favorite horror movies and I've seen it 5+ times.