I’ll start: “Happy Death Day”
Ghosts of Mars by John Carpenter
Set on a colonized Mars in the 22nd century, the film follows a squad of police officers and a convicted criminal who fight against the residents of a mining colony who have been possessed by the ghosts of the planet’s original inhabitants.
Ghosts of Mars received mostly negative reviews and was a box office bomb, earning $14 million against a $28 million production budget.
Ghosts of Mars has received a cult following since its release, with critics praising the action sequences, soundtrack and blending of genres.
…hot tub time machine; absurdly better film than its pitch had any right to be…
I figured out why that movie is so good because it bothered me for a while.
The casting is absolutely perfect. Its not terribly special in any other way, but they nailed the cast. Even dumb lines like “cox n dix” work.
I mentioned this one on another post. It’s good enough I’m gonna throw it out there again. Kung Fu Mahjongg. All 3. …and Kung Fu Hustle
Edit to add, thier whole troop is amazing. Silly stories made amazingly entertaining, due to the charismatic cast and, creative and well executed choreography.
Kung Fu Hustle was amazing. Watched it randomly and still think it’s the best Kung Fu movie I’ve ever seen.
There are so many movies I could list but for now I’ll go with About Time (2013). Everything about it makes it seem like it would be a dumb sappy romcom but it manages to hit hard.
EDIT: This is the type of image they used to market the film, which is really misleading.
This was a great one.
This is my favorite movie. It’s the best that was ever written about mindfulness.
I’ve only ever watched it once, but this movie will haunt my mind until the day I die. Fucking amazing movie.
Absolute stealth hit. The last table tennis game… Man that hits hard.
Teknolust (2002)
CW: y2k aesthetic, Tilda Swinton in multiple roles.
Do not read wikipedia’s synopsis of it first unless you want to spoil it. you can find it here on archive.org.
Warrior with tom Hardy/joel edgarton/nick nolte. Marketed as a shitty MMA cash grab. It’s fantastic. Also has like 2 finales that crescendo so hard one after the other.
I love this movie, but the audio mix kills me. One minute you are struggling to hear characters speaking and then your eardrums get blown out when they cut to the next fight starting. I do have tinnitus so I may be biased a bit.
That’s a fair point. The movie needs a basic compressor pass lol
I was surprised at this movie, too. I think it was one of Tom Hardy’s early movies, so it’s pretty unknown.
Star Trek First Contact
My proof reading has failed me yet again (original fuck up: Star Trek First Conact)
I think people are missing that this movie is spelled differently than “Star Trek First Contact”.
Star Trek First CONACT was a cheap, B-movie knock-off straight to DVD movie that should have sucked, but didnt.
Angela Lansbury was not nominated for an Oscar for her preformance as the Captain, but Brooke Shields notably was also in the movie as an alien.
/s
Wait, what are you saying. There is.a.dooferent movie named “first conact”? (Google didn’t help me)
I disagree. This both looked and was awesome.
Exactly. It was one of my top three ST movies, and by all accounts. Ebert reviewed it positively, as one of the best of the franchise.
I wonder why they put it in the “looks like it’d suck” category?
Haters gonna find a way to hate? 🤷♂️
Well, by including it they imply they liked it, so I’m guessing not a hater. Just curious why they said it “looked like it would be bad”.
I was assuming they were knee-jerk reacting like “It’s Star Trek, so it must be terrible,” and then found out otherwise. I could be wrong though.
As a Trekkie it looked awesome to me but to my civilian friends it looked like made for TV garbage, then they saw it and loved it
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is always a good mention.
It’s a fun and very accessible movie.
I may be biased, as an RPG nerd, but man, they hit all the notes so damn well. That was such a good movie.
I never played d&d or any games of that style, and probably missed out on a bunch of the catered moments, but I still enjoyed it very much
It’s very much worth watching the older dnd movies just to see how amazingly bad they were(i still like the first one they did but acknowledge how bad it is)
Agreed. Also doesn’t hurt that I enjoyed Pine when he played Kirk
I thought it might be a stupid movie to hate watch but I enjoyed it. The bread crumb trail quest line type of movie scratched the itch for me.
Which is precisely the problem: I am not, and not only was I mildly bored, I also found the narrative to be just plain incoherent. It was obvious to me the story was driven by some Reference Guide on RPG stuff, and not on captivating an audience.
I guess it hit every nail on the head. That’s all it hit, actually.
I sometimes like to pride myself on my ability to take a different viewpoint, but today it’s absolutely failing me, lol. I really thought this was a movie everyone could at least enjoy.
I guess it hit every nail on the head. That’s all it hit, actually.
That’s a fascinating statement. Could you elaborate a bit?
Not much to it outside of trying to convey “perfect by RPG standards, tropes and parameters (probably)”, but failed to “hit” me in any way.
Watching it, I was expecting to see something akin to a Franchise movie, where you may miss a bit or two if you’re not in on all the lore. But I was also expecting true entertainment with striking visuals, gripping storytelling, stuff like that
Imagine watching a spy movie. 20% in you have adversarial hierarchy, 30% in the car chase, 66% in the romantic pause, 80% in the unexpected traitor, 95% in the final hand-to-hand fight to avert the end of the universe or whatever… And it’s boring, but everybody around you is telling you it was so great because it’s got it all, the car chase the traitor the, the.
Doesn’t make a good movie.
On the contrary, the best part about it is that it’s not a compilation of references the audience is supposed to already know about. It’s just a fun adventure movie. The reason the RPG crowd sing it praises is that in addition, if you know how to read it, the actual plot is “girlfriend is curious about what we’re all doing every Tuesday evening”
Yeah, the entire story follows the major beats of a group of people playing DND. Everything that happens would be familiar to a player. Your party always gets captured and thrown in a prison from where you must escape. Dungeon Masters (the people running the game) will frequently introduce an overpowered “helper” NPC to move the party along in the right direction, but that character won’t engage in the fights. Parties will find several puzzles that the DM has spent hours creating, only for the party to use some magic or tool in a creative way to bypass the entire puzzle.
To someone expecting standard fantasy storytelling, it’s jarring and weird. The anachronistic language, the character decisions that don’t make sense, the magic artifacts that seem to just happen to be exactly what the party needs in the moment, it’s all stuff that would happen around a table in someone’s basement. It helps to think of each character as a regular person you know today playing a game where they make all the decisions for the character. Convenient contrivances or frustrating failures are the DM having fun with the story. Sometimes the dice rolls 20 and you do something miraculous, and sometimes you roll a 1, trip over a pebble and stab yourself in the face.
You don’t have to be a dnd player to enjoy the movie, but you do need to understand the lens through which you’re watching it. Otherwise, the tone and pacing seem really strange.
It had a lot of heart and you could almost “feel” the good/bad dice rolls happening.
The Paladin had me in stitches
One of the best movies of the year for me, and I was expecting hot garbage.
Good call! Wife and I watched that one on a whim, thinking it would be a good “bad” movie to watch while having a few drinks and were pleasantly surprised!
You probably need be at least familiar with RPG/fantasy tropes to fully enjoy it, but it definitely felt like it came from a place of love and self-awareness, rather than the cynical cash-grab I was expecting.
Pine as a character and narrator def carried a lot of the weight.
This movie took me completely by surprise by how good it was. I feel like you could tell everyone involved had experience playing TTRPGs, from the director, to the writer(s), all the way down to the catering crew!
Although the interviews with the cast are hilarious just because Hugh Grant doesn’t have a single clue about DnD but also couldn’t give a single fuck about it.
I don’t rewatch movies unless its been a few years and I really enjoyed.
Ive provably watched that movie 10x by now. Jarnathan would know what I’m saying if he were here.
I just went and watched it for the first time because of this message. FANTASTIC movie! Excellent recommendation!
Absolutely loved that movie. It’s mixture of slapstick humor and melodrama are a perfect representation of actual D&D.
Originally, Pirates of the Caribbean. A movie made because of a Disney ride seemed like a stupid idea.
The first one was fairly clever in that they had probably 50 years of collective ideas and inspiration to work off of. It’s a story that needed to push no boundaries and hold to established tropes, with no expectations because it was a ride: perfect for Disney.
Now when Disney gets their hands on an established franchise full of expectations…
The first one was my obsession when it came out in dvd
Johnny Depp fucking carries that franchise.
He nailed Jack sparrow so damn hard I can’t picture anyone else in that role. It sets the pace of the movie too.
I just think of it as a live action Monkey Island.
Does that actually work? I have only played the 1st 20 minutes of Monkey Island lol
Wait…the movie is based on the ride, not the other way around?
Dude, way to make me feel old lol.
They updated the ride after the movies, so… It’s kind of circular at this point.
Clue
Movie based on a board game? Blegh
But it’s awesome. Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Lesley Ann Warren
This is top 3 of all time for me. There is so much happening in every scene you can watch it multiple times and still catch little jokes or sight gags each viewing.
No matter how many times I see it I can never figure out if it was 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 or 1 + 2 + 1 + 1.
It was 1+2+1+1 or 1+2+2+1
Unless Scarlett is right!
It is then we’re reminded of the ability of good writers and performers to take even a low-potential idea and fucking kill it. With a pen. In the study.
I also expected a disaster. I wasn’t prepared for how entertaining it was!
Having John Landis write the story didn’t hurt.
Absolutely one of my favorite movies
Tremors
Looks like a B movie, cheesy horror flick.
It’s got a great cast with supurb acting. The script is easily one of the tightest ever written. Every line is important to the overall story. And it’s just fun to watch.
There’s also Tremors 2: Aftershocks.
Plus there’s Tremors 3: Back to Perfection.
Followed by Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.
Then Tremors 5: Bloodlines.
Don’t forget Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell.
One might think Tremors: Shrieker Island, AKA Tremors 7: Island Furry (I spelled that wrong on purpose, it has nothing to do with furries) would be enough for Michael Gross to quit his acting career but how else was he going to pay for his ludicrous railroad memorabilia obsession and also the railroad he owns and the ‘safety first when crossing railroad tracks’ campaign?
So no, it didn’t end there. They kept the franchise going, choo! choo! with the imaginatively titled television series, Tremors: The Series.
If you skip the credits, you can watch all of it in less than 24 hours.
If you skip the credits, you can watch all of it in less than 24 hours.
LMAO, any Tremors fan around here?
The first sequel is so so, but the others that are all centered around Burt Gummer are plenty of silly fun too.
Came here to say exactly this. Only commented cause I can’t upvote twice.
Omg, Tremors…I haven’t watched it in years. That was such a good movie.
“The Adventures Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” 1984
Great script, great cast, young Johnathan Lithgow and Christopher Llyod, Peter Weller in one of his best rolls, and bonus Jeff Goldblum as they new guy.
Whole thing is still a perfect package, looking like a B movie you’d totally skip.
Such a great movie!
I got this at a DragonCon. They did a pre-release showing and gave these out to the audience.
That’s a real treasure! Very nice.
Jealous!
I’m lucky it’s survived so long. I got it in HS, and in between:
- Did a tour in the Army
- Went to college
- Lived in Germany
- Have moved over a half dozen times
So many valued possessions have gone missing in that time, due to roommates and sheer carelessness, it’s a minor miracle it’s still with me. The only original possession I have that’s older is a Bloom County Opus plushy that I got in junior high.
One of my all time favorites, so quirky
Thank you. I still watch the end credits from time to time. Brings back these sweet eighties memories!
I like to think of it as a sci-fi movie sequel/equivalent to the short story (but not the movie) “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and Renfield were absolutely amazing and I think they fit the bill
I’ll give you the first one, way better than it had any right to be. 2nd was ok.
For the direct sequel of the 1931 Dracula movie starring Nicholas Cage in a toxic boss/employee relationship in a gory B movie-esque film, I think it was pretty amazing !
Any movie where Cage “acts” mentally unstable is going to be the best fucking movie that year. I still can’t get over his role in Color Out of Space.
Renfield
I’m perpertually locked in Cage but both my s/o and myself passed out on two seperate watch attempts 🫠
Osmosis Jones.
A half-and-half cartoon and live action film with Chris Rock as the titular character from the late-90s/early-00s. The movie was a flop, but I think it had more to do with lousy marketing. It was actually pretty good and a fun way to look at how things affect the human body.
David Hyde Pierce as the enormous Pill was a great choice, and Bill Murray was hilarious.
And Laurence Fishburne as Thrax. He was pretty horrifying when he would let loose and make people explode.
It was fantastic. The spin-off show was good too
I love this movie!
Around the time this came out, I, having had no idea about the movie or its premise, wrote a story that was along similar lines in creative writing. Specifically, it featured the immune system and other cells as characters and whatnot.
I was accused of ripping off the idea.
The Long Kiss Goodnight
https://imdb.com/title/tt0116908
Geena Davis and Samuel L Jackson. He said in 2019 that it was his favorite role. It was released after a flop for Davis and director Renny Harlin (then her husband), and may have had poor press related to that.
It has an unlikely hero, plenty of action sequences, some fun performances (I had to pause it after a funny line from Brian Cox cracked me up), and heart. Solidly entertaining. But low expectations might help.
I watched this movie when I was in middle school and thought it was badass. I completely forgot about it until your mention and now I gotta see if it holds up. All I remember is that it takes place in winter and Samuel L. says "Pussy is pussy " at some point.
It holds up. Geena Davis is a straight up bad-ass boss mutha fucka!
Tap for spoiler
“You’re gonna die screaming and I’m gonna watch” will never not be a badass line, and “I propose that whatever he is trying to dislodge is either gone for good or there to stay” will never stop amusing me.
I wouldn’t say those are definitely the best lines in the movie, but probably top 5, definitely top 10.
Hilarious!
