Better Than Expected Flicks...?

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

I know we - well, I - moan about flicks a lot on here.

So to flip that around... when were you last surprised by a movie that was much, much better than it had any right to be?

 

I'd been unsure about the D&D flick but heard good buzz and outrageous audience scores.

(Which may have been a little OTT given what the actual flick was like, but that's me.)

 

The one I'm going to put forward for your attention is Game Night.

So, three assorted couples - well, two, plus Ryan and his ever-changing date - host a regular, very suburban party night where they play any board game, mystery game, or so on they have to hand. While trying to avoid their hypercreepy cop neighbour.

 

Our host's a**hole elder brother shows up, takes over, and offers to host the best game night ever - a kidnap mystery. Humiliating, sure, but... well, what could go wrong?

 

Or how could this fairly tedious-sounding movie be any good?

 

Well... unless you don't want to spoiler yourselves...

Spoiler

  ...watch this.

 

 

[Ulysses Dare]

Wild Things (1998). Caught this one as part of a double feature. Based on the marketing my friend and I had assumed it was going to be some forgettable teen drama or romcom. Instead we got an excellent suspense thriller.

[TheOtherTed]

Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.  I'd been disappointed by "The Phantom Menace" (midichlorians?  really??) and given that Tolkien is difficult to do well on a good day, I had no hopes for Jackson's films.  Years later, a friend of mine who is not only a Tolkien nerd, but has no reservations about bringing all his Naval training in cursewords to bear on anything that even remotely ticks him off, told me he really liked the movies.  So I gave it a go.

 

There were parts that bothered me to be sure, (e.g., everything Faramir, Aragorn's "death by warg" scene, and, in the extended version, Gandalf acting in very un-Gandalf ways at least twice), but by and large the changes Jackson made were reasonable adaptations.  And while I didn't miss Bombadil (the aforementioned friend and I had long discussions about whether he was relevant to the original story at all), I was glad to hear Treebeard deliver one of his lines.  In fact, it sounded better coming from a big shaggy walking tree than from Tommy B.

 

Runner up would be "Glengarry Glenn Ross," a full production movie with only 5 simple settings (give or take) and a very "this isn't a movie, it's a play" vibe.  To be honest, the street between the office and the local bar feels more like an actual character to me than many actual human-played characters in other films.

[Techwright]

Three sprang to mind immediately:

 

News of the World (2020) with Tom Hanks.  I saw this for the first time a month ago.  I'd been on a multi-month tear through classic westerns (and some not so classic) that I'd never seen, and Amazon popped this one into my list.  I'd never heard of it (possibly due to the chaos of the Covid year in which it was released), and the title didn't really sound western-ery enough.  I was about to pass on it, then thought: "it's Tom Hanks. Give it a try."  So very glad I did.  It felt like the Hanks role could have been played by Jimmy Stewart or possibly Gary Cooper, but Tom filled it wonderfully. I was astonished at the subtlety of acting the two stars brought to the screen.  The director apparently has a gift for making a scene speak without words, and he uses that often here.

 

The Rookie (2002) with Dennis Quaid.  I was alone on a rainy Friday night when I showed up at the theater.  Nothing playing appealed to me, but I wanted movie popcorn (extra butter), so I grabbed a ticket for this film.  I didn't expect much with a "G" rating for a "based on a true story", but was stunned by how good it was, and I left the theater very happy. 

 

Undercover Blues (1993) with Dennis Quaid (again), Kathleen Turner, Stanley Tucci, and a few other recognizables.  This is nowhere near Academy Award territory, but it proved to be a lot funnier than I expected.  Quaid has great chemistry with both Turner and Tucci, and Tucci absolutely steals every scene he's in and the scenes before and after them, too.  The man's a riot of slapstick comedy as Muerte, a clueless New Orleans street thug whose vanity is bigger than his switchblade.  It almost make me wonder if Tucci got slapstick lessons from Stan Laurel's ghost.  This is strictly a popcorn flick but I can honestly say that everyone I've shown it to were howling with laughter.

[InvaderStych]

On 4/4/2023 at 5:01 AM, TheOtherTed said:

Runner up would be "Glengarry Glenn Ross," a full production movie with only 5 simple settings (give or take) and a very "this isn't a movie, it's a play" vibe.  To be honest, the street between the office and the local bar feels more like an actual character to me than many actual human-played characters in other films.

 

I didn't realize until I looked it up that David Mamet didn't direct that one. I thought he wrote and directed it, but just the screenplay apparently. It has his fingerprints all over it though; particularly his early stuff that has a very "Filmed Play" feel like Oleanna.

 

Since we're talking Mamet though ...

 

State and Main was 200% funnier than I expected it to be.  It might be funnier to folks who've worked on a movie set before, but I imagine it translates.

 

The Spanish Prisoner also caught me by surprise, I think because I started watching it without realizing who I was watching.

 

When it comes down to it though, it was Redbelt that was the biggest surprise. Easily my favorite Mamet film.

 

 

[biostem]

Does it have to be a stand-alone movie?  I recently finished the first season of an anime "Campfire Cooking In Another World", and it was quite entertaining, (although the main character being a bit of a coward got grating at times).

 

Picture this:  You're a "regular guy" from our modern world, sucked into a high-fantasy medieval world.  Usually you'd be given cool powers, but instead you have an "online market".  You're dismissed as other "potential heroes" were also summoned, and while cooking for an adventuring party one day, an uber-powerful magical Fenris wolf is drawn by the smell of the food, and forms a contract with you in exchange for continuing to cook for them... adventure ensues!

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, biostem said:

Does it have to be a stand-alone movie?  I recently finished the first season of an anime "Campfire Cooking In Another World", and it was quite entertaining, (although the main character being a bit of a coward got grating at times).

 

Picture this:  You're a "regular guy" from our modern world, sucked into a high-fantasy medieval world.  Usually you'd be given cool powers, but instead you have an "online market".  You're dismissed as other "potential heroes" were also summoned, and while cooking for an adventuring party one day, an uber-powerful magical Fenris wolf is drawn by the smell of the food, and forms a contract with you in exchange for continuing to cook for them... adventure ensues!

 

Are you sure Terry Brooks didn't write the script?  It has a vibe like his "Magic Kingdom For Sale" series of books.

[Techwright]

I was just reminded of another that I loved back in my youth.  I've not seen it in 30 years, I think, so I'm not sure how it holds up today, but there's an early 80s action movie variously called ffolks, North Sea Hijack, or Assault Force.  It stars Roger Moore, James Mason, Anthony Perkins, and Michael Parks.  It was directed by Andrew V. McLagland, a director known for Hellfighters, Wild Geese, and a sizeable list of movies and TV episodes to his name, especially westerns.  McLagland is son of Victor McLagland, who was part of John Ford's acting troop and often paired with John Wayne. 

 

Perkins plays the leader of a group that takes a trio of North Sea oil rigs hostage, and Mason is the admiral who recruits the highly eccentric but very skilled Moore to lead the charge to retake the rigs.  While it leans towards a stock action film of its time, the movie stood out to me for Moore's performance as a lethal eccentric, and for using Perkins as the villain. 

 

 

[TheOtherTed]

I just remembered another movie, and I'm thoroughly embarrassed that I'd forgotten about it.  "Big Man Japan."  It starts as a comedic riff on Kaiju flicks, but its central theme is both deep and sad.  I won't say much more because it's one of those movies where different people take away different things.

[Fire Chief]

I saw Wild Things up above and the title brought to mind one of my all time faves Wild Target. 

[Techwright]

39 minutes ago, Fire Chief said:

I saw Wild Things up above and the title brought to mind one of my all time faves Wild Target. 

That is a remarkably impressive cast!

[Coin]

Not better than it has a right to be, but waaay better than I was expecting.

 

Everything Everywhere All At Once.

 

I'd somehow missed most of the hype in advance of it, never saw it at the cinema, watched it at home having heard it was apparently pretty decent and.....DAMN!

 

Such an amazing film.

 

 

Also, The Martian. I'd read the book and loved it, but, with almost every movie adaptation, wasn't expecting much, but it's one of the most faithful adaptations that I've seen. Polar opposite of Ready Player One.....which I also loved both the book and the movie 😄 

 

[biostem]

Another that comes to mind is 13 Eerie - it's basically your run-of-the-mill low budget zombie flick, but the protagonist is a forensic student who is clever and capable, without veering off into Mary Sue territory.

[Oubliette_Red]

Kingdom (2019) mini-series

 

I don't normally go in for zombie movies, despite the thumbnail image on Netflix I don't think I was expecting the "mysterious plague" to be zombies. Period piece set in 17th century Korea. Ju Ji-hoon as the crown prince does a phenomenal job of transition the Crown Prince as a bit of a clueless idealist to a detective to a protector of his people. Lots of intrigue and power-play.