Over/Under-rated movies: the redux

I love this movie… it might be Coscarelli’s best… I liked it better than John Dies at the End (though the Phantasm films are amazing and classic sci-fi/horror).

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Also in this masterpiece.

Frequently heard at my house, “Mommy, why do you always suggest we watch George of the Jungle?”

edited to add: It’s ALWAYS appropriate to post this photo.

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Now let’s remember why The Mummy with Brendan Frasier will always be better than lame Tom Cruise.

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I’m starting to think Cruise bombing The Mummy may wind up being a great boost for Fraser’s career.

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Does the tom cruise version have book cases?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4hU_gQfQY1w

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Let us not forget about my man Boris.

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Does it have a Brontosaurus?

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Look what I just found…

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Is it over-rated or under-rated?

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I love that movie too, and not just for the >ahem< obvious reason. :heart_eyes: :blush: George of the Jungle is sweet and funny, irreverent and clever, one of the few “remakes” that truly captures the spirit of the original. Brendan Fraser isn’t the only good actor in the movie; there’s Leslie Mann, John Cleese (the voice of Ape), Holland Taylor, and Thomas Haden Church. (If you look closely, you might recognize Highlander- the Series’ Jim Byrnes as one of the bad guy mercenaries.) And there’s jokes for both kids and grown-ups, so everyone can enjoy it. I’d say GotJ is probably underrated as a silly kids’ movie, but it’s so much better that that.

@mindysan33: I liked John Dies at the End too, though I was a fan of the novel long before the movie came out. It’s incredible just how faithful the movie is to the book (except for the ending.) Coscarelli does a great job of filming a nearly unfilmable narrative.

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Unratable; it is a thing of unique beauty. :slight_smile:

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But I really like how you quoted the original post :slight_smile:

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The only thing that saves that wonderful bit of cinema oddness is at 60 minutes it counts as a short subject…

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In general, he has sharp eye for weirdness. Phantasm is probably my favorite horror franchise outside of Evil Dead.

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I watched Mad Max: Fury Road tonight. I’d heard lots of good things about it and it has 97% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes so I was somewhat surprised that it turned out to be a pile of shite.

  • there’s no characterisation
  • there’s no exploration of the world they exist in
  • there’s no set up to the plot so it’s unclear why any of them are doing anything
  • there seems to be something about genetic disorders but it’s never made clear why or how or even if
  • and is Peter Stringfellow really the best villain they could come up with?

This is not helped by Tom Hardy having no charisma in this film. In fact, given the mask and the growlly, incoherent voice I half expected to see Batman swoop in on the BatBike.

I can see how this can easily be converted into a videogame but they appear to have left out all the bits that make it a film. Nor does it even manage to be good at what it does do.

If I want to see cars destroy each other then I’ll watch any of the Death Race reboot (which is better); If I want to watch a vehicle struggle across an inhospitable landscape I’ll watch Ice Cold in Alex (which is better); and if I want a post-apocalyptic future set in the Australian desert I’ll watch Mad Max 2 (which is oh so much better).

Although I did like what appears to be a nod towards The Cars that Ate Paris

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Other than the first movie Max is not the main character, he is the eye of the storm of the unfolding of events. The movies are not about Max but the people he runs into and in this case Furiosa and her family she is trying to get back to.

Also I loved it. It was a 2 hour car chase and pure action cinema spectacle that kept getting crazier and crazier yet didn’t feel like it was out of place for the world setting for me.

ETA also this is movie that really needs to be seen on a big cinema screen. Your computer screen will do it no justice at all.

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That’s why I hated it. That, and that ridiculous scene at the beginning where the brides waste precious, potable water in the middle of a desert to take showers. My suspension of disbelief came crashing down during that scene and never worked its way up again. The rest just seemed so totally predictable – it’s even obvious what’s going to happen to the brides based on their hair colour.

I’m with @strokeybeard on this one. The friends I went to see it with assure me the second viewing is better (for one of them that would be the third viewing), but I have no desire to waste another two hours of my life on it.

I just can’t see what people are raving about. Chacun à son goût.

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It’s been pointed out to me that since the water shortage was artificial, chances are good that Immortan Joe wouldn’t have denied water to them. Though you’d think Furiosa would be clever enough to not let them waste it since they were cut off from that supply.

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Yeah, my take is it doesn’t matter how much water other people have. They’ve just become outlaws, and whatever is in or on that truck is all they have.

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I feel like Valerian might fall into the “underrated” category in some respects. The script could have used some more work (I particularly wanted the title character to have actually grown – I liked his supposed sidekick much more by the end of the movie than at the start but I could not say the same for Valerian himself). But I just can’t agree with a lot of the criticism I’ve read of the movie. And I recall that critics weren’t sure what to make of The Fifth Element at first either… while I felt that later rave reviews might have been giving it too much credit.

Not having read the Valerian comics, but assuming some level of faithfulness to them in this movie, I can definitely see how they influenced Star Wars and some of the characters and alien design. The movie definitely had a bit of “Star Wars meets Fifth Element” feel to it.

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