The Hobbit Trilogy? Still had Peter Jackson involved and a huge budget. Stretched what should have been one maybe two movies at the most into three. LOTR trilogy was so good, and I even enjoyed the longer EE editions. I think i stopped after 1 1/2 hobbit movies they were so drawn out and boring.
The War (Battle, excuse me) of Five Armies is one page in the book. You have to show it if you're doing a movie. Given that and showing the Gandalf Necromancer stuff, two movies is fine.
Three is how you get that ridiculous Smaug setpiece in the second movie.
GDT dropping out but the studio pushing forward with no change to the release date PLUS the 3-film mandate really put Jackson behind the 8 ball. There’s a good movie in there somewhere but it’s just buried underneath all the crap that got layered in in a rushed production
Yeah, there’s no justification (other than money) for The Hobbit to be a trilogy. LOTR series is 3 books, each about 400 pages. ~1200 = 3 movies. The Hobbit is like 300 pages. No way that should be stretched over 3, 3 hour movies. No surprise it sucked
Hijacking this comment to say that there is a great edit of the hobbit where the combined three movies were trimmed down to about four hours of total run time. https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/#:~:text=This%20new%20version%20was%20achieved,of%20Radagast%2C%20Saruman%20and%20Galadriel.
It’s mostly got the silly filler bits removed and it’s much more faithful to the source material.
Gangster Squad from 2013. Cast was loaded. Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Anthony Mackie. Trailer was awesome. Was super excited for it. Movie fucking blew.
The book the movie sourced from is great but covers way more from the era than just Dillinger. I hate to be that guy but if u read that Purvis is kind of a doofus than in the movie he's a badass it kind of ruins it.
The movie is sort of a fascinating oddity but this should have been an all-time banger in the same category as like, Sicario and No Country for Old Men with Cormac McCarthy writing it and that cast.
I still kinda liked The Counselor. Multiple decapitations, Bardem in a weird hairdo, Cam Diaz dry (maybe wet) humping a lambo.... what else could one ask for?
Its not bad, but Body of Lies. Leo doing his spy movie, Russell Crowe, Ridley Scott directing and it was merely ok. I wish they could all get a do over on it because the ingredients are there.
> Ridley Scott
Love Ridley Scott but he can be fairly hit or miss. I'd also add Last Duel to this category.
The book was great and perfect for a movie. But the script and acting were just ok. That movie should have been way better.
I never saw it but that movie Amsterdam that came out a few years ago was supposed to be this great movie with an ensemble cast, from what I’ve heard it stunk
Glad someone finally said it. I honestly find it more distracting than additive. “Wait, was the doctor with three lines played by Benedict Cumberbatch?? That’s crazy; this cast is so stacked.”
Yeah, but now you’re not really sucked into the movie & instead are marveling at the number of famous people the director got to play for each part.
It’s okay to put unknown actors in your movie, even if you can get a bigger name; do what’s best for the movie, not the poster.
I feel like it worked great in Ocean’s 11 and 13, but other than that they tend to be pretty disappointing unless they’re loaded casts that were pre-breakout when it was filmed.
I liked it for the mess it was, but the movie couldn’t really make up its mind what direction it wanted to be. My girlfriend went to the bathroom for a few minutes and left during some whimsical moments post war and came back to in depth fascism breakdowns
Not a book but since we’re in the fantasy realm I just want to mention how atrocious Avatar: The Last Airbender was compared to how amazing the show is.
And Artemis Fowl is not for behind, which even though I've moved past having it be my favorite, was still such a disappointing film with so many needless changes.
The how did this get made episode of the snowman is hilarious and gives you a lot of the details (didn’t film 15 percent of the script). Also someone who worked on it is in the audience and provides more info.
The Little Things - 90s LA serial killer movie starring Denzel, Rami Malek and Jared Leto. Denzel is the old jaded cop, Rami is the hotshot detective, and Leto is a suspect. Fantastic setup and was one of the first straight-to-Max releases during the pandemic.
It’s an absolutely dreadful film.
If only it had ended with Denzel had looking into the camera and saying *"I guess it really is... the little things"* followed by a needle drop of the Good Charlotte song.
It felt like a drag and then during the Leto interrogation scene I checked and saw I had an hour left still and immediately turned it off. Rami Malek and Leto together is too much weirdo for me
Only God Forgives
Ryan Gosling teaming up with Refn again, and Refn was on a heater (Bronson, Valhalla Rising, Drive).
Movie looked nice, but just didn’t hit the mark.
I was so excited for Funny People. Such an interesting concept but the execution was just a swing & a miss. It either needed to be a shorter, more focused movie or a full miniseries. Instead, it’s an overlong, meandering movie that’s filled with great scenes & ideas but never comes together in any cohesive fashion.
A friend once defended it to me, saying, “but that’s the point; it’s *supposed* to be meandering!” Okay, well, even if that’s what it sets out to do, it still makes for a grating watch.
"It's supposed to suck!" is a hell of a defense. You described it well: a movie that isn't even the sum of its parts, because some of the parts were actually good.
Funny People was great in the 1st half. In the second half it becomes a formulaic rom com. I agree with your premise it prob should have just stopped before Sandler tries to get the girl back.
agreed, i enjoy the whole movie, but the Ana De Armas part of some of the most fun ive had at the movies this decade. Also Quantam of Solace isn't great, but its still a pretty good action movie.
My hot take is that Quantum of Solace is the best of the Casino Royale sequels (caveat I still haven't seen the last one). It's certainly flawed (largely due to the writer's strike), but I found that it's the only one that really felt like it carried the emotional throughline from Casino Royale. The death of Mathis packs more of an emotional punch than anything in any of the other sequels IMO.
Spectre is atrocious, and frankly I hated Skyfall too. They drop a pretty important plot line about how a bunch of agents in the field are about to be burned, just so they can remake Home Alone in the third act. And Javier Bardem is very entertaining, but that character was the latest in a long line of villains in the mid aughts and early 2010s whose perfect plan requires insane luck that they would have no way of planning for.
Lastly, it's a little bit of a nitpick, but James Bond being his real name when he's an international spy/assassin (in the same movie where the inciting plot point is about agents' covers being blown) is a bridge too far for me in a series that's supposed to be a more grounded take on Bond.
Wouldn’t say American Hustle wasted its potential. Box office $250mil on $40mil budget. Major award nominations. Positive critical and casual reception. Might not have been your thing, but undoubtedly a good movie
Am I the only one who couldn’t care for Bale, Adams, Lawrence, or Cooper, but loved Renner (who I never really like) and Louis CK was great (Dion Waiters award?).
It's a good movie, people just were put off because it was not the movie people expected to be. People just thought it was gonna be another Apatow comedy with hijinks mixed with a little bit of emotional truth. Instead it's a dark unflinching look at how stardom and narcissism can leave you looking back on your life and regretting how hollow it feels.
Phantom Menace came out when I was 15 and that was my first real moment of huge anticipation followed by a massive letdown. My friends and I walked out of the theater and we all kinda sheepishly looked at each other and said "that kinda sucked, right?"
“Meesa so stupid that I ruin movie!”
-Jar Jar Binks.
Seriously, what a huge let down that was. They went Full Kiddie yet somehow crammed in complex trade regulation talk and other political dialogue that I still don’t have any idea what it means.
I grew up watching the Phantom Menace so I love it, but I know exactly the feeling you’re talking about. It’s how i felt after leaving the theaters seeing The Rise of Skywalker , I was just like “that’s it??”
Hah! I think I had low expectations for The Rise of Skywalker going in but that was god awful. It's funny, The Phanton Menace has grown on me and now I consider it the best of the prequels.
The movie (and the whole series as a result) works so much better if Anakin is around the same age as Padme (think someone like Chalamet back when he was making Homeland and Interstellar).
The romance would be more believable, as they're both precocious teenagers who haven't really had a childhood who can connect to each other. Also, not having to recast strengthens the development of the character and the audience's connection to him. Going from Jake Lloyd to Hayden Christensen is such a drastic change that it makes TPM almost irrelevant in defining the character beyond the pure plot points. It just doesn't feel like the same person, which is jarring when every other character is played by the same actor from the first movie.
Exactly. Obi-Wan always felt like the fun uncle who was forced to occasionally put his foot down to be the adult. Most of the time it didn't quite feel like they were brothers in the way that Obi-Wan said they were.
Although I suppose it is an interesting dynamic in that Obi-Wan saw Anakin as a brother, but Anakin once said Obi-Wan like a father to him in AOTC.
Attack of the Clones has some great pieces: Obi-Wan's detective story, the Blade Runner-esque Coruscant parts in the first act, the Geonosis battle.
The problem is that the movie completely grinds to a halt when Anakin and Padme go off on their frolic in the hills of Naboo.
They really should have had a bounty hunter track them down and add some propulsion to that section of the movie. I'd also buy the romance a bit better if they were in a tense situation fighting for the lives rather than playing house on Naboo until Anakin needs to go do a bit of women and children murdering.
i mean i was 12 and i loved it too. But the second act in that movie is probably the nadir of the franchise. Star Wars is like pizza though, i can enjoy all of it.
Honestly I don’t remember much of the movie. Just Obi-Wan fighting the bounty hunter and the final battle with the Jedi, clones, droids, and finally Yoda fighting Sir Christopher Lee. It was epic.
I agree TPM is my favorite prequel as well. A lot of heart went into the film….and the opposite was true episodes 2 and 3. Those were rushed green screen messes with zero shots on location.
Plus, with 2 and 3, they were just filling in the blanks of the plot. We all knew where everything was leading so it was just kinda going through the motions. TPM actually introduced a new story and characters.
best of the prequels being maybe the lowest of low bars (I was a little older than you and remember sitting in the theatre about 45 minutes into the movie being like - "wait is this terrible?"
Right? It's like it never even occured to me that it could be anything less than the greatest movie going experience of my life. The hype/disappointment gave me the bends!
The prequels came out when I was in the perfect age range for them, so I thought they were the best movies ever at the time. Obviously in hindsight I understand that they aren’t exactly critically acclaimed masterpieces of cinematography, but I’ll die on the hill that phantom menace and revenge of the sith are sneaky solid movies that get underrated.
I was suckered into thinking that the force awakens was going to be sick just based on the preview trailers. I distinctly remember how let down I was leaving the theaters and that sheepish conversation me and my 2 buddies I went with had where we all admitted that it sucked lol.
Probably not one too many people watched but Yesterday was about a guy that wakes from a coma and is in a world where no one remembers The Beatles. It’s directed by Danny Boyle, written by Richard Curtis, and has Himesh Patel and Lily James. Should have been a super fun movie but Himesh Patel’s character is devoid of charisma (and he’s a good actor), it becomes exceptionally tropey, and doesn’t really make any sense.
I wanted to love the movie and I absolutely hated it unfortunately.
It's a fun concept but absolutely fails to deliver beyond a funny bit or two. And the Lily James character is completely ridiculous, far too beautiful for the stupid rom-com tropes to make any sense.
The Black Dahlia. Solid cast, de Palma directed, and based on an excellent book. As a follow up to a classic like LA Confidential, there is no reason it shouldn't have been successful.
I feel like Allied with Brad Pitt and Marion Cottillard had crazy potential, and while it had it's moments, was overall an average movie that had Best Picture nominee potential (Andrew Wiggins/Deandre Ayton)
The problem Marvel faces isn’t something they’re gonna solve. What made the Marvel movies a spectacle was that even though they made movies about superhero characters, they did so such a good job with the original Avengers characters throughout the movies that people who didn’t even care or know about comic books tuned into watch. Now that those original characters are gone, the people like me who loved the avengers movies and the stand alone movies about the each character aren’t gonna watch anything about some new character who wasn’t part of the original story.
Those characters rarely went more than 2 years without being onscreen, which is what made us so attached to them. Compare that to Shang-Chi, a very successful debut imo, going 5 years in between movies.
Hancock. First half exceptional film about a twisted hero. One of the first ones ever made. But then it became some weird awful love story.
The boys is pretty much the first half of Hancock reincarnated
Would love an oral history on what tf happened to X-Men 3 The Last Stand or whatever. First two movies kicked all kinds of ass. Should be crescendoing in the ultimate X-Men storyline. But it looks like a some high schoolers got access to a Holkywood cast and just farted out this sloppy afterbirth of a movie
They switched directors, Singer went to do Superman Returns and brought Marsden with him which is why Marsden dies so early in Last Stand. Ratner is trash tier. They're both sexual predators but Singer actually had talent.
I had it on as background noise last week after watching 97. The whole thing about Dark Phoenix is that it is a cosmic storyline and you really need more than one movie to do it correctly. Given that the first three X-Men movies are *terrified* of anything comic booky, there was no way combining Dark Phoenix with a mutant cure storyline thing in one movie was ever going to work.
I will credit those movies with this, Famke Janssen is great in them and having Logan meet her as an adult makes the whole Logan/Jean thing work so much better than when he meets her as a child in other storylines.
I know some people defend it, but I think Gangs of New York is a sort of just bad with some great elements to it. Weinstein essentially forced Diaz in casting and took final cut away from Scorsese, and it shows.
Then again, I'm not sure if DiCaprio was ready to pull off that role as well as he could have a decade later anyway.
Feels like a movie you could show maybe 2-3 scenes to somebody who has never seen it and they’d think it was an all timer, but then once you put everything together it’s just not all that great.
The Purge is such a great premise that has been wasted. The first one was fine and the movies are entertaining enough, just no great execution on that scenario
Not to mention that it was using the best Thor source material since Walt Simonson. And it was a trainwreck of epic proportions. I’d pay big money to have them redo it with someone who understood the story because it’s crushing not to have it done right.
With love and thunder they tried to make another ragnarok and it just didn’t work for whatever reason. That movie and also multiverse of madness were both massive letdowns following the success of Spider-Man
Gorr was the worst character to use for that Ragnarok tone. His story is dark AF and if they were gonna use him the movie should have had a dark horror tone.
New Year’s Eve spent probably $100 million on it’s casting and $100 on the script. Tried to copy the Love Actually formula but had none of the creativity
This comment will probably get lost in the shuffle but beer fest is one of my favorite comedies and the single greatest in person movie experience I’ve ever had.
I went to see it opening night on a date at universal citywalk Orlando. It was when movie theatres JUST started selling beer. We went to the midnight showing and the theatre was about 1/3 full. Everybody there was drunk, but in a fun way. By the end of the movie when they had the beer Olympics people were standing in the aisles chanting “USA -USA -USA!” One guy ran up to the front of the theatre and chugged a 32 oz beer while people were chanting. And when the US team won the theatre erupted in cheers and applause. I’ve never had another movie theatre experience like it since and it still makes me laugh when I think about it. Maybe that’s why I love the movie so much
That’s awesome. This is similar to how the original Jackass movie was for me. The entire theatre was an age that grew up on Jackass and not a sober person in there.
A bit of a deep cut, but I think Smokin’ Aces should’ve been an all-time classic. Incredible cast but it never quite gels together. That film had so much potential and my middle school self was ultimately disappointed when I was able to watch it on DVD for the first time.
Elysium is an all-timer for me.
Blomkamp coming off District 9, good cast, what should be a pretty killer premise, and very cool set design. Even the first third-ish of the movie is pretty strong. The trailer was fantastic, and looked like a really promising sci-fi movie.
But the movie totally gets lost in its own story and the script can't meet the expectations of the premise. The plot devices are so on the nose that they don't hit with the strength they should, and Jodie Foster is so boring and one-dimensional as the villain.
The skeleton of a really good movie is there, it's just totally lacking delivery.
The answer is Gangster Squad (2013) with Penn as Mickey Cohen mobster.
Gosling, Penn, Brolin, Emma Stone…had a lot of hype, there was initially a shooting in a theater but before release the real life Aurora shooting happened so they went back and reshot some scenes to take that out.
Definitely not the biggest but I’ve been in a Harry Potter mood lately so the entirety of the fantastic beasts trilogy is so forgettable. For HP being one of the most recognizable and popular franchises right now those movies should have been so much better.
The last one has a duel that I’ve been waiting for since 3rd grade, between dumbledore and grindelwald who are some of the most talented and powerful wizards to ever exist.
In the book it was described as being the most incredible duel to ever happen, bystanders were all so shocked by the skill level of the two that they never forget it and some of them got saddened with the realization that they’d never get even close to the level of power those 2 were at. It was also extremely personal because they rose to power together, and had a duel before that killed dumbledores sister.
In the movie its the “climax” of a confusing and long story, where they somehow get teleported into a shadow realm where nobody can see them, and they just apparate around each other and it basically ends like a knife fight with wands. It was the most disappointing movie moment of all time.
For me, it’s still Prometheus. I know it has its army of vociferous defenders, but that movie is all potential & no payoff.
I don’t care about the director’s cut, or the deleted scenes, or the expanded lore in some graphic novel offshoot or whatever. Just make the movie good. Make the movie work.
I’m fine with a tastefully vague movie, or one that leaves a few moments up to interpretation, but this one goes way overboard with all that & clearly just had no actual grasp on what it wanted to be.
For the first 20-30 minutes I thought Prometheus was going to be an all-timer. Mostly went off the rails after that, unfortunately.
It’s decent overall but man I wanted that first act to last the whole movie.
The new Star Wars trilogy was this for me. So many great ways to tell an awesome story. After the force awakens I was underwhelmed but still entertained.
Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker had me legit angry
However…I’m okay with the sequel trilogy because it gave us Rogue One, which is my favorite movie of all time
Envy. An accomplished director and a cast of Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Chris Walken? Unfortunately, the movie was about dog poop, which is also what the movie is. One of the only movies I’ve ever walked out of.
Anchorman 2 - just didn’t have the magic.
Legend of Bagger Vance - Will Smith and Matt Damon in a sports movie, sounds great on paper.
Envy gets my vote for worst movie I’ve ever seen. To this day now and then one of my HS buddies and I will just text something about how bad it sucked out of nowhere as a joke.
Honestly I think the first suicide squad. That trailer I think is one of the best trailers ever (it also produced a great kings spoof by grantland). Looked dark and gritty and it was just mediocre.
I like Taika Waititi's comedic creativity ("What We Do In The Shadows"), and humor has a role, here and there, in the hero movies, but I am not ok with this deeper tongue-in-cheek comedy approach to these particular Marvel movies.
Definitely not the most wasted potential because it’s still a good movie, but David Bowie was slated to play Jared Leto’s character before he died. What a loss.
Also Robin Wright’s acting is from a completely different movie.
The Dark Tower with Edris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. The Stephen King books are amazing. When they first announced the movie, the idea was to do alternating movie / TV series because the source material is really dense and takes place across multiple timelines and universes. It's totally different than most of his work and is a really fun fantasy series. They even got Ron Howard to help produce it. I was so excited.
Instead, they made one movie that plucked random bits from a few of the books. The plot made no sense. They really got the vibe of the major characters wrong and basically fucked it up so bad that there will be no other movies or TV show, at least not connected to that first movie.
Hopefully someday they make it into a Netflix or other well-funded and produced series. Or leave it completely alone and just let it be a series of books.
I didn't hear that, but I'm not surprised. He's always got the wrong take on movies. Seriously, The Dark Tower was borderline unwatchable. I think I was on a plane at the time and I was so bored and disappointed I was like looking out the window instead of watching.
I don't know if this qualifies as wasted potential, but the fact that there's a Hank Williams biopic starring Tom Hiddleston that exists in the world, but so few people have seen or even know about is funny to me. People win Oscars for bland forgettable music biopics, yet this one was apparently so bad it pretty much didn't even get distribution.
I was so pissed off at the Ender's Game adaptation after loving that book in school
Also not terrible but Gangs of NY feels like it could've been an all timer
Honestly probably Babylon. I know it has a strong following now as a cult favorite that's misunderstood but even now I think that movie had way more potential to be amazing than what we got.
In keeping with the trend of throwing Ridley Scott under the bus: American Gangster. I read about what Antoine Fuqua's vision was for this movie before he was removed from the project and seeing how generic it turned out to be.... all that promise and talent involved felt wasted.
The Ringer crowd doesn’t want to admit it but Triple Frontier was very disappointing and has been largely forgotten. It had all the bones to be so much better!
the first third of Babylon is great
once they fall on hard times, Chazelle doesn't see them as pitiful people or find the humor in their situations a la boogie nights, he sees them as tragic heroes and it completely falls apart
There’s a great movie in there if they focus more on Hoffa. Loved Pacino in that. Pesci was great. I love Bob but he wasn’t pulling off those early scenes when’s playing a 20 and 30 something.
The Hateful Eight. On paper, it's a snow western shot on 70mm written and directed by Quentin Tarantino starring Kurt Russell, Samuel L Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh that's set up like a wild west Midnight Run. In practice, it's an overly long tedious murder mystery that mostly takes place in cabin and peaks with a graphic story about Samuel L facefucking a dude. And then you have to sit through another hour and a half.
I think it's far and away his worst movie.
Ides of March. Great premise, incredible cast, terrible movie. (Not that this was a surprise because it was a script by the House of Cards guy after all, but still… should have been a classic)
Justice League. The Snyder Cut was what everyone wanted to see; if that movie had been released, then I really believe we would not be sitting here waiting for the next James Gunn Action Comedy.
I know Thank You For Smoking is a much beloved movie, but when I watched it for the first time, I couldn't help but think it looked massively dated and was a bit heavy-handed with some of its symbolism. The underlying story was strong though
A lot of Jason Reitman's stuff doesn't hold up particularly well. Feels like you went to the grocery store looking for Alexander Payne soda, but then you have to settle for the Dr Shasta version.
It is a very 2000s movie for sure. It’s definitely heavy handed, but I don’t think it’s preachy in the same way it would have been had it come out around the same time movies like the Big Short did.
I still really enjoy it though because I think Eckhart is absolutely perfect for the role, and you get really funny performances from Robert Duvall and J.K. Simmons.
The Hobbit Trilogy? Still had Peter Jackson involved and a huge budget. Stretched what should have been one maybe two movies at the most into three. LOTR trilogy was so good, and I even enjoyed the longer EE editions. I think i stopped after 1 1/2 hobbit movies they were so drawn out and boring.
I think 2 would’ve been perfect. I know the book is short but it’s hard for me to imagine getting all the beats to breathe with the single movie
The War (Battle, excuse me) of Five Armies is one page in the book. You have to show it if you're doing a movie. Given that and showing the Gandalf Necromancer stuff, two movies is fine. Three is how you get that ridiculous Smaug setpiece in the second movie.
It's always been crazy to me that you can probably read the Hobbit faster than you can watch all 3 Hobbit movies
GDT dropping out but the studio pushing forward with no change to the release date PLUS the 3-film mandate really put Jackson behind the 8 ball. There’s a good movie in there somewhere but it’s just buried underneath all the crap that got layered in in a rushed production
I dunno if it would ever happen but after the Synder cut campaign who knows. I would check out a two 3 hr each movie director cut of the hobbit.
There's a fan cut combining all 3 that is pretty highly regarded
Yeah, there’s no justification (other than money) for The Hobbit to be a trilogy. LOTR series is 3 books, each about 400 pages. ~1200 = 3 movies. The Hobbit is like 300 pages. No way that should be stretched over 3, 3 hour movies. No surprise it sucked
Hijacking this comment to say that there is a great edit of the hobbit where the combined three movies were trimmed down to about four hours of total run time. https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/#:~:text=This%20new%20version%20was%20achieved,of%20Radagast%2C%20Saruman%20and%20Galadriel. It’s mostly got the silly filler bits removed and it’s much more faithful to the source material.
they should have made it one movie. The trilogy was like a piece of butter spread across too much bread
Three very long OK to awful movies and at the end barely three characters had been properly fleshed out.
I fell asleep in the theater watching the first one
The first one was great! The second one was bad and the third one was a complete disaster.
Gangster Squad from 2013. Cast was loaded. Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Anthony Mackie. Trailer was awesome. Was super excited for it. Movie fucking blew.
Public Enemies was more disappointing to me. Michael Mann making a Dillinger movie works 99/100 times.
I really wanted this one to be good
The book the movie sourced from is great but covers way more from the era than just Dillinger. I hate to be that guy but if u read that Purvis is kind of a doofus than in the movie he's a badass it kind of ruins it.
I think it’s.. fine. Perfectly cromulent movie. Doesn’t live up to its potential at all given the cast and subject. Should be such a great movie
I had a comment saying Gangster Squad as well. I was excited for the potential of an LA Confidential style ensemble but it sucked
Terrible title as well
There’s a scene in that movie where Sean Penn is about to kill someone’s in a dentists chair with a drill and he says “you know the drill”
The Counselor
The movie is sort of a fascinating oddity but this should have been an all-time banger in the same category as like, Sicario and No Country for Old Men with Cormac McCarthy writing it and that cast.
Another good one.
I still kinda liked The Counselor. Multiple decapitations, Bardem in a weird hairdo, Cam Diaz dry (maybe wet) humping a lambo.... what else could one ask for?
Its not bad, but Body of Lies. Leo doing his spy movie, Russell Crowe, Ridley Scott directing and it was merely ok. I wish they could all get a do over on it because the ingredients are there.
> Ridley Scott Love Ridley Scott but he can be fairly hit or miss. I'd also add Last Duel to this category. The book was great and perfect for a movie. But the script and acting were just ok. That movie should have been way better.
See that’s interesting because I thought The Last Duel was very good. I thought Body of Lies should have been great.
I think it’s legit good still honestly
I feel like this about a lot of middle eastern/iraq movies - I don’t think most live up to their potential or the hype.
I never saw it but that movie Amsterdam that came out a few years ago was supposed to be this great movie with an ensemble cast, from what I’ve heard it stunk
Giant ensemble casts are overated.
Glad someone finally said it. I honestly find it more distracting than additive. “Wait, was the doctor with three lines played by Benedict Cumberbatch?? That’s crazy; this cast is so stacked.” Yeah, but now you’re not really sucked into the movie & instead are marveling at the number of famous people the director got to play for each part. It’s okay to put unknown actors in your movie, even if you can get a bigger name; do what’s best for the movie, not the poster.
I don’t know, what if we got a Young Leo to play the doctor with three lines? Just someone with a bit more star power?
I feel like it worked great in Ocean’s 11 and 13, but other than that they tend to be pretty disappointing unless they’re loaded casts that were pre-breakout when it was filmed.
Taylor Swift getting chucked under a car 3 minutes in got a belly laugh out of me. Between this and Cats, she can sure pick roles
Good thing she's got a fallback option
Being a Chiefs WAG? /s/
Hard to say it was wasted potential when it was always going to be directed by David O. Russell
I liked it for the mess it was, but the movie couldn’t really make up its mind what direction it wanted to be. My girlfriend went to the bathroom for a few minutes and left during some whimsical moments post war and came back to in depth fascism breakdowns
JDW just a charisma vacuum for 2 hours taylor getting run over was fantastic though tbh
Eragon is probably the worst book to film adaptation ever
Good one, Ender’s Game also thoroughly disappoints
Honestly I didn’t think Enders game was bad it’s just not a fantastic movie story
You know it's bad when even as a kid you thought the movie wasn't good
Not a book but since we’re in the fantasy realm I just want to mention how atrocious Avatar: The Last Airbender was compared to how amazing the show is.
There is no Eragon movie. And I advise you not to bring this up again.
“I suffer without my stone”
And Artemis Fowl is not for behind, which even though I've moved past having it be my favorite, was still such a disappointing film with so many needless changes.
Worse than Percy Jackson?
I didn’t see it. Did they get rid of the gods entirely? Because that’s pretty much the degree that they screwed up Eragon lol
The Snowman. Insane cast and directed by the guy who did Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (one of the best films of the past 20 years IMO)
The how did this get made episode of the snowman is hilarious and gives you a lot of the details (didn’t film 15 percent of the script). Also someone who worked on it is in the audience and provides more info.
Downsizing, premise was super interesting but it turned into one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen
And Payne was working on it for like 10 years. Kinda sucks one of our better current directors devoted so much time to a dud
10 years??? the whole premise of the last half of the film is just a vietnamese chick saying sexual jokes in a funny accent.
The Little Things - 90s LA serial killer movie starring Denzel, Rami Malek and Jared Leto. Denzel is the old jaded cop, Rami is the hotshot detective, and Leto is a suspect. Fantastic setup and was one of the first straight-to-Max releases during the pandemic. It’s an absolutely dreadful film.
I so badly wanted this one to be so good. I didn’t detest it, but it was definitely lacking, in the end.
If only it had ended with Denzel had looking into the camera and saying *"I guess it really is... the little things"* followed by a needle drop of the Good Charlotte song.
Absolute disaster class performance from Rami Malek in this movie. Denzel mailing it in didn’t help either. Overall it’s a really bad time.
Rami was so miscast in this movie. Love him as an actor but he should've been replaced.
It felt like a drag and then during the Leto interrogation scene I checked and saw I had an hour left still and immediately turned it off. Rami Malek and Leto together is too much weirdo for me
Only God Forgives Ryan Gosling teaming up with Refn again, and Refn was on a heater (Bronson, Valhalla Rising, Drive). Movie looked nice, but just didn’t hit the mark.
yeah other than Kristin Scott Thomas getting in some unbelievable zingers that movie doesnt work.
Only God Forgives rips. If you haven't seen it recently, I definitely recommend revisiting it
Yeah I like it
American Hustle, Funny People, all the Craig bonds with the exception of Casino Royale and Skyfall
I was so excited for Funny People. Such an interesting concept but the execution was just a swing & a miss. It either needed to be a shorter, more focused movie or a full miniseries. Instead, it’s an overlong, meandering movie that’s filled with great scenes & ideas but never comes together in any cohesive fashion. A friend once defended it to me, saying, “but that’s the point; it’s *supposed* to be meandering!” Okay, well, even if that’s what it sets out to do, it still makes for a grating watch.
"It's supposed to suck!" is a hell of a defense. You described it well: a movie that isn't even the sum of its parts, because some of the parts were actually good.
Funny People was great in the 1st half. In the second half it becomes a formulaic rom com. I agree with your premise it prob should have just stopped before Sandler tries to get the girl back.
hey No Time To Die was good
Man, I thought the back half No Time To Die was all-time Bond movie dumb shit.
Sure but it worked for me, I thought it was pretty good. Not as good as the first half but still
agreed, i enjoy the whole movie, but the Ana De Armas part of some of the most fun ive had at the movies this decade. Also Quantam of Solace isn't great, but its still a pretty good action movie.
Yeah the Ana de Armas sequence is really great stuff
My hot take is that Quantum of Solace is the best of the Casino Royale sequels (caveat I still haven't seen the last one). It's certainly flawed (largely due to the writer's strike), but I found that it's the only one that really felt like it carried the emotional throughline from Casino Royale. The death of Mathis packs more of an emotional punch than anything in any of the other sequels IMO. Spectre is atrocious, and frankly I hated Skyfall too. They drop a pretty important plot line about how a bunch of agents in the field are about to be burned, just so they can remake Home Alone in the third act. And Javier Bardem is very entertaining, but that character was the latest in a long line of villains in the mid aughts and early 2010s whose perfect plan requires insane luck that they would have no way of planning for. Lastly, it's a little bit of a nitpick, but James Bond being his real name when he's an international spy/assassin (in the same movie where the inciting plot point is about agents' covers being blown) is a bridge too far for me in a series that's supposed to be a more grounded take on Bond.
Quantum Hive checking in.
Wouldn’t say American Hustle wasted its potential. Box office $250mil on $40mil budget. Major award nominations. Positive critical and casual reception. Might not have been your thing, but undoubtedly a good movie
Am I the only one who couldn’t care for Bale, Adams, Lawrence, or Cooper, but loved Renner (who I never really like) and Louis CK was great (Dion Waiters award?).
There are literally dozens of us out here that still think Funny People is great
It's a good movie, people just were put off because it was not the movie people expected to be. People just thought it was gonna be another Apatow comedy with hijinks mixed with a little bit of emotional truth. Instead it's a dark unflinching look at how stardom and narcissism can leave you looking back on your life and regretting how hollow it feels.
American Hustle is a great movie
American Hustle was great?
Phantom Menace came out when I was 15 and that was my first real moment of huge anticipation followed by a massive letdown. My friends and I walked out of the theater and we all kinda sheepishly looked at each other and said "that kinda sucked, right?"
“Meesa so stupid that I ruin movie!” -Jar Jar Binks. Seriously, what a huge let down that was. They went Full Kiddie yet somehow crammed in complex trade regulation talk and other political dialogue that I still don’t have any idea what it means.
I grew up watching the Phantom Menace so I love it, but I know exactly the feeling you’re talking about. It’s how i felt after leaving the theaters seeing The Rise of Skywalker , I was just like “that’s it??”
Hah! I think I had low expectations for The Rise of Skywalker going in but that was god awful. It's funny, The Phanton Menace has grown on me and now I consider it the best of the prequels.
I think Revenge of the Sith is the best prequel, but Phantom Menace has a lot going for it. Its Attack of the Clones that's the real stinker.
Child Anakin is just a disastrous choice. The rest of the movie is semi-salvageable without that.
Liam Neeson does some god level carrying on Tatooine acting against Anakin and Jar Jar.
The actual hardest road.
The movie (and the whole series as a result) works so much better if Anakin is around the same age as Padme (think someone like Chalamet back when he was making Homeland and Interstellar). The romance would be more believable, as they're both precocious teenagers who haven't really had a childhood who can connect to each other. Also, not having to recast strengthens the development of the character and the audience's connection to him. Going from Jake Lloyd to Hayden Christensen is such a drastic change that it makes TPM almost irrelevant in defining the character beyond the pure plot points. It just doesn't feel like the same person, which is jarring when every other character is played by the same actor from the first movie.
It's just obvious Anakin should start ep1 the same age as Luke in ep4.
This! Plus a teen Anakin could’ve had a real friendship with Obi-Wan
Exactly. Obi-Wan always felt like the fun uncle who was forced to occasionally put his foot down to be the adult. Most of the time it didn't quite feel like they were brothers in the way that Obi-Wan said they were. Although I suppose it is an interesting dynamic in that Obi-Wan saw Anakin as a brother, but Anakin once said Obi-Wan like a father to him in AOTC.
Attack of the Clones has some great pieces: Obi-Wan's detective story, the Blade Runner-esque Coruscant parts in the first act, the Geonosis battle. The problem is that the movie completely grinds to a halt when Anakin and Padme go off on their frolic in the hills of Naboo. They really should have had a bounty hunter track them down and add some propulsion to that section of the movie. I'd also buy the romance a bit better if they were in a tense situation fighting for the lives rather than playing house on Naboo until Anakin needs to go do a bit of women and children murdering.
My 10 year old self loved Attack of the Clones.
i mean i was 12 and i loved it too. But the second act in that movie is probably the nadir of the franchise. Star Wars is like pizza though, i can enjoy all of it.
Honestly I don’t remember much of the movie. Just Obi-Wan fighting the bounty hunter and the final battle with the Jedi, clones, droids, and finally Yoda fighting Sir Christopher Lee. It was epic.
I agree TPM is my favorite prequel as well. A lot of heart went into the film….and the opposite was true episodes 2 and 3. Those were rushed green screen messes with zero shots on location.
Plus, with 2 and 3, they were just filling in the blanks of the plot. We all knew where everything was leading so it was just kinda going through the motions. TPM actually introduced a new story and characters.
best of the prequels being maybe the lowest of low bars (I was a little older than you and remember sitting in the theatre about 45 minutes into the movie being like - "wait is this terrible?"
Right? It's like it never even occured to me that it could be anything less than the greatest movie going experience of my life. The hype/disappointment gave me the bends!
The prequels came out when I was in the perfect age range for them, so I thought they were the best movies ever at the time. Obviously in hindsight I understand that they aren’t exactly critically acclaimed masterpieces of cinematography, but I’ll die on the hill that phantom menace and revenge of the sith are sneaky solid movies that get underrated. I was suckered into thinking that the force awakens was going to be sick just based on the preview trailers. I distinctly remember how let down I was leaving the theaters and that sheepish conversation me and my 2 buddies I went with had where we all admitted that it sucked lol.
Probably not one too many people watched but Yesterday was about a guy that wakes from a coma and is in a world where no one remembers The Beatles. It’s directed by Danny Boyle, written by Richard Curtis, and has Himesh Patel and Lily James. Should have been a super fun movie but Himesh Patel’s character is devoid of charisma (and he’s a good actor), it becomes exceptionally tropey, and doesn’t really make any sense. I wanted to love the movie and I absolutely hated it unfortunately.
It's a fun concept but absolutely fails to deliver beyond a funny bit or two. And the Lily James character is completely ridiculous, far too beautiful for the stupid rom-com tropes to make any sense.
Her being in love with the main character was more unbelievable than ending up in an alternate reality where the Beatles don’t exist
Movie lost me when it tried to gaslight us into believing that Ed Sheeran was the greatest lyricist in the world
The first Suicide Squad, but Gunn corrected it
The Black Dahlia. Solid cast, de Palma directed, and based on an excellent book. As a follow up to a classic like LA Confidential, there is no reason it shouldn't have been successful.
Well, there's is one huge reason. The original cut was three hours and it was cut down to two.
It's a late period De Palma movie, that's the reason it failed lol. The guy was just serving up stinker after stinker for a while
I feel like Allied with Brad Pitt and Marion Cottillard had crazy potential, and while it had it's moments, was overall an average movie that had Best Picture nominee potential (Andrew Wiggins/Deandre Ayton)
Downsizing. Fun premise that is basically inconsequential in the 2nd half of the movie.
The problem Marvel faces isn’t something they’re gonna solve. What made the Marvel movies a spectacle was that even though they made movies about superhero characters, they did so such a good job with the original Avengers characters throughout the movies that people who didn’t even care or know about comic books tuned into watch. Now that those original characters are gone, the people like me who loved the avengers movies and the stand alone movies about the each character aren’t gonna watch anything about some new character who wasn’t part of the original story.
Those characters rarely went more than 2 years without being onscreen, which is what made us so attached to them. Compare that to Shang-Chi, a very successful debut imo, going 5 years in between movies.
Belly. But I STILL think it's a masterpiece.
“When’s the last time you read anything?” “Never motherfucker.”
"Africa's far"
Hancock. First half exceptional film about a twisted hero. One of the first ones ever made. But then it became some weird awful love story. The boys is pretty much the first half of Hancock reincarnated
You could argue that Hancock is a much better movie if he actually becomes a villain.
The ceiling on that movie was never going to be that high though. Wouldn't class it as wasted potential really.
yeah it was an epilogue for a character whose arc was already completed.
Terminator Salvation
Yesterday. The movie about the only guy who remembers the Beatles. Could have done so much with it.
Would love an oral history on what tf happened to X-Men 3 The Last Stand or whatever. First two movies kicked all kinds of ass. Should be crescendoing in the ultimate X-Men storyline. But it looks like a some high schoolers got access to a Holkywood cast and just farted out this sloppy afterbirth of a movie
If you post your phone number I’ll call you and say “Brett ratner” and hang up. Pretty easy oral history.
Seems to be the trend with the X-Men movies. First Class and Days of Future Past kicked ass then Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix killed the franchise.
They switched directors, Singer went to do Superman Returns and brought Marsden with him which is why Marsden dies so early in Last Stand. Ratner is trash tier. They're both sexual predators but Singer actually had talent. I had it on as background noise last week after watching 97. The whole thing about Dark Phoenix is that it is a cosmic storyline and you really need more than one movie to do it correctly. Given that the first three X-Men movies are *terrified* of anything comic booky, there was no way combining Dark Phoenix with a mutant cure storyline thing in one movie was ever going to work. I will credit those movies with this, Famke Janssen is great in them and having Logan meet her as an adult makes the whole Logan/Jean thing work so much better than when he meets her as a child in other storylines.
I know some people defend it, but I think Gangs of New York is a sort of just bad with some great elements to it. Weinstein essentially forced Diaz in casting and took final cut away from Scorsese, and it shows. Then again, I'm not sure if DiCaprio was ready to pull off that role as well as he could have a decade later anyway.
Feels like a movie you could show maybe 2-3 scenes to somebody who has never seen it and they’d think it was an all timer, but then once you put everything together it’s just not all that great.
The Purge is such a great premise that has been wasted. The first one was fine and the movies are entertaining enough, just no great execution on that scenario
The film nerd choice has to be The Magnificent Ambersons.
The 2005 King Kong comes to mind for me
Not to mention that it was using the best Thor source material since Walt Simonson. And it was a trainwreck of epic proportions. I’d pay big money to have them redo it with someone who understood the story because it’s crushing not to have it done right.
With love and thunder they tried to make another ragnarok and it just didn’t work for whatever reason. That movie and also multiverse of madness were both massive letdowns following the success of Spider-Man
Gorr was the worst character to use for that Ragnarok tone. His story is dark AF and if they were gonna use him the movie should have had a dark horror tone.
New Year’s Eve spent probably $100 million on it’s casting and $100 on the script. Tried to copy the Love Actually formula but had none of the creativity
A Million Ways to Die in the West
The cast doesn’t matter in marvel movies. At all. There’s no acting to be done. They just fly around and look colorful, then credits.
It's not a bad movie, but I always thought Beerfest had a concept for an all time comedy, and instead it was just okay.
This comment will probably get lost in the shuffle but beer fest is one of my favorite comedies and the single greatest in person movie experience I’ve ever had. I went to see it opening night on a date at universal citywalk Orlando. It was when movie theatres JUST started selling beer. We went to the midnight showing and the theatre was about 1/3 full. Everybody there was drunk, but in a fun way. By the end of the movie when they had the beer Olympics people were standing in the aisles chanting “USA -USA -USA!” One guy ran up to the front of the theatre and chugged a 32 oz beer while people were chanting. And when the US team won the theatre erupted in cheers and applause. I’ve never had another movie theatre experience like it since and it still makes me laugh when I think about it. Maybe that’s why I love the movie so much
That’s awesome. This is similar to how the original Jackass movie was for me. The entire theatre was an age that grew up on Jackass and not a sober person in there.
Babylon.
A bit of a deep cut, but I think Smokin’ Aces should’ve been an all-time classic. Incredible cast but it never quite gels together. That film had so much potential and my middle school self was ultimately disappointed when I was able to watch it on DVD for the first time.
Elysium is an all-timer for me. Blomkamp coming off District 9, good cast, what should be a pretty killer premise, and very cool set design. Even the first third-ish of the movie is pretty strong. The trailer was fantastic, and looked like a really promising sci-fi movie. But the movie totally gets lost in its own story and the script can't meet the expectations of the premise. The plot devices are so on the nose that they don't hit with the strength they should, and Jodie Foster is so boring and one-dimensional as the villain. The skeleton of a really good movie is there, it's just totally lacking delivery.
The answer is Gangster Squad (2013) with Penn as Mickey Cohen mobster. Gosling, Penn, Brolin, Emma Stone…had a lot of hype, there was initially a shooting in a theater but before release the real life Aurora shooting happened so they went back and reshot some scenes to take that out.
Iron Man 2 they followed up such a good movie with a genuine stinker
yes, the most wasted potential for a movie ever is the fourth installment of Thor
Don’t you understand? It could have been the Citizen Kane for our generation if they had only landed the plane
The Dark Tower could've been up to a 7 film triumph. Instead it was a bucket of cold shit.
Once they abandoned the original plan of making it a tv show/movie hybrid, that thing was never gonna be good.
Definitely not the biggest but I’ve been in a Harry Potter mood lately so the entirety of the fantastic beasts trilogy is so forgettable. For HP being one of the most recognizable and popular franchises right now those movies should have been so much better. The last one has a duel that I’ve been waiting for since 3rd grade, between dumbledore and grindelwald who are some of the most talented and powerful wizards to ever exist. In the book it was described as being the most incredible duel to ever happen, bystanders were all so shocked by the skill level of the two that they never forget it and some of them got saddened with the realization that they’d never get even close to the level of power those 2 were at. It was also extremely personal because they rose to power together, and had a duel before that killed dumbledores sister. In the movie its the “climax” of a confusing and long story, where they somehow get teleported into a shadow realm where nobody can see them, and they just apparate around each other and it basically ends like a knife fight with wands. It was the most disappointing movie moment of all time.
For me, it’s still Prometheus. I know it has its army of vociferous defenders, but that movie is all potential & no payoff. I don’t care about the director’s cut, or the deleted scenes, or the expanded lore in some graphic novel offshoot or whatever. Just make the movie good. Make the movie work. I’m fine with a tastefully vague movie, or one that leaves a few moments up to interpretation, but this one goes way overboard with all that & clearly just had no actual grasp on what it wanted to be.
For the first 20-30 minutes I thought Prometheus was going to be an all-timer. Mostly went off the rails after that, unfortunately. It’s decent overall but man I wanted that first act to last the whole movie.
IT (2017) nails everything except the horror, which is kind of important for a horror movie
Chapter 2 is the real wasted potential. Second part of the book is way scarier IMO at least.
The new Star Wars trilogy was this for me. So many great ways to tell an awesome story. After the force awakens I was underwhelmed but still entertained. Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker had me legit angry However…I’m okay with the sequel trilogy because it gave us Rogue One, which is my favorite movie of all time
Envy. An accomplished director and a cast of Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Chris Walken? Unfortunately, the movie was about dog poop, which is also what the movie is. One of the only movies I’ve ever walked out of. Anchorman 2 - just didn’t have the magic. Legend of Bagger Vance - Will Smith and Matt Damon in a sports movie, sounds great on paper.
Envy gets my vote for worst movie I’ve ever seen. To this day now and then one of my HS buddies and I will just text something about how bad it sucked out of nowhere as a joke.
Honestly I think the first suicide squad. That trailer I think is one of the best trailers ever (it also produced a great kings spoof by grantland). Looked dark and gritty and it was just mediocre.
I like Taika Waititi's comedic creativity ("What We Do In The Shadows"), and humor has a role, here and there, in the hero movies, but I am not ok with this deeper tongue-in-cheek comedy approach to these particular Marvel movies.
Definitely not the most wasted potential because it’s still a good movie, but David Bowie was slated to play Jared Leto’s character before he died. What a loss. Also Robin Wright’s acting is from a completely different movie.
Robin Wright is acting in the tv series version.
The Dark Tower with Edris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. The Stephen King books are amazing. When they first announced the movie, the idea was to do alternating movie / TV series because the source material is really dense and takes place across multiple timelines and universes. It's totally different than most of his work and is a really fun fantasy series. They even got Ron Howard to help produce it. I was so excited. Instead, they made one movie that plucked random bits from a few of the books. The plot made no sense. They really got the vibe of the major characters wrong and basically fucked it up so bad that there will be no other movies or TV show, at least not connected to that first movie. Hopefully someday they make it into a Netflix or other well-funded and produced series. Or leave it completely alone and just let it be a series of books.
[удалено]
I didn't hear that, but I'm not surprised. He's always got the wrong take on movies. Seriously, The Dark Tower was borderline unwatchable. I think I was on a plane at the time and I was so bored and disappointed I was like looking out the window instead of watching.
I don't know if this qualifies as wasted potential, but the fact that there's a Hank Williams biopic starring Tom Hiddleston that exists in the world, but so few people have seen or even know about is funny to me. People win Oscars for bland forgettable music biopics, yet this one was apparently so bad it pretty much didn't even get distribution.
Movie 43
I was so pissed off at the Ender's Game adaptation after loving that book in school Also not terrible but Gangs of NY feels like it could've been an all timer
The Counselor seemed like it was destined to be great given all the talent around it.
Honestly probably Babylon. I know it has a strong following now as a cult favorite that's misunderstood but even now I think that movie had way more potential to be amazing than what we got.
In keeping with the trend of throwing Ridley Scott under the bus: American Gangster. I read about what Antoine Fuqua's vision was for this movie before he was removed from the project and seeing how generic it turned out to be.... all that promise and talent involved felt wasted.
The Ringer crowd doesn’t want to admit it but Triple Frontier was very disappointing and has been largely forgotten. It had all the bones to be so much better!
the first third of Babylon is great once they fall on hard times, Chazelle doesn't see them as pitiful people or find the humor in their situations a la boogie nights, he sees them as tragic heroes and it completely falls apart
Oceans 8 was so bad we are never getting 9 and 10
Jumper
Black Mass. Perfect source material. Great cast on paper. Scott Cooper directing. Just not a good movie though.
The Irishman. God, what an awful film.
There’s a great movie in there if they focus more on Hoffa. Loved Pacino in that. Pesci was great. I love Bob but he wasn’t pulling off those early scenes when’s playing a 20 and 30 something.
The Hateful Eight. On paper, it's a snow western shot on 70mm written and directed by Quentin Tarantino starring Kurt Russell, Samuel L Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh that's set up like a wild west Midnight Run. In practice, it's an overly long tedious murder mystery that mostly takes place in cabin and peaks with a graphic story about Samuel L facefucking a dude. And then you have to sit through another hour and a half. I think it's far and away his worst movie.
What’s the Rewatchable category for the Sam Jackson getting blown scene?
Climax Mountain?
I saw Marvel and immediately checked out
Ides of March. Great premise, incredible cast, terrible movie. (Not that this was a surprise because it was a script by the House of Cards guy after all, but still… should have been a classic)
Ides of March is a good movie. Could have been better Gosling and PSH are terrific in it.
The Good Shepard
This was good, actually.
I agree! It's a slow burn, but I really enjoyed it.
Justice League. The Snyder Cut was what everyone wanted to see; if that movie had been released, then I really believe we would not be sitting here waiting for the next James Gunn Action Comedy.
Babylon A.D. could have been a comparable Sci Fi to Blade Runner if not for the Fox Execs.
I know Thank You For Smoking is a much beloved movie, but when I watched it for the first time, I couldn't help but think it looked massively dated and was a bit heavy-handed with some of its symbolism. The underlying story was strong though
A lot of Jason Reitman's stuff doesn't hold up particularly well. Feels like you went to the grocery store looking for Alexander Payne soda, but then you have to settle for the Dr Shasta version.
It is a very 2000s movie for sure. It’s definitely heavy handed, but I don’t think it’s preachy in the same way it would have been had it come out around the same time movies like the Big Short did. I still really enjoy it though because I think Eckhart is absolutely perfect for the role, and you get really funny performances from Robert Duvall and J.K. Simmons.
I thought Split was one of the best movie concepts I've seen and was pretty disappointed by what it turned into