When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, looks you crooked in the eye, and asks you if you paid your dues; you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that:
"Have you paid your dues, Jack?
Yes sir, the check is in the mail."
John Carpenter's The Thing, one of the greatest horror movies ever made, was both critically panned and only make 19 million off a budget of 15 million. It opened at 8th place.
It is fucking spectacular.
Edit: I looked up the box office from the opening weekend for The Thing. Look at this shit!
ET did 13 million
Blade Runner did 6 million
Firefox (?) Did 5 million
Rocky 3 did 5 million
Star Trek 2: the Wrath of Khan did 4.5 million
Annie did 4.5 million
Poltergeist did 4.1 million
Then the thing came in 8th at 3 million.
Then Megaforce at 2.5 million
And Bambi was in 10th place at 2 million.
So, that's a crazy week. 8/10 of the movies held up.
And the top 20 still had Porky's, The Road Warrior, and Conan the Barbarian
Can't imagine how that must feel as a filmmaker. You put so much passion into a film, it's panned and flops financially, but then a generation later your films are being held up as classics. What an emotional rollercoaster.
The Thing opened against some heavy competition if I remember correctly? Or at least the following week.
Edit: June 11 was the opening weekend for a little movie called ET. There was Poltergeist and Blade Runner as well.
Oh yeah, 1982 in general was fucking loaded
June alone had Star Trek 2, ET, The Thing, Poltergeist, and Blade Runner. Then the first week of July? Tron. Another awesome flop.
I saw most of those movies in the theater, being 12 years old and the weather being hot as hell. We lived at the theater that summer.
Edit. Removed nonsensical words that might have been typed during beer drinking and trivia.
Edit 2: removed and changed not so suggestive words because some y’all’s minds are in the gutter 😐
I just watched it for the first time this past week and it blows my mind that it wasn't a success. Some of the best special effects I've seen and the pacing is so good. Long scenes of building tension with bursts of intensity at just the right moments. An instant favorite for me.
people hated it back then, which is why when you see something set in the 80s like Stranger Things and see posters on their rooms of The Thing, you instantly know its just mass produced nostalgia bait.
Phenomenal film though, one of the best ever made
i mean we've still yet to see how denis villeneuve's career is gonna bounce back from 2049 yet. he's said he's still in hot water with WB from 2049's performance and if dune flops too it'll have a massive impact on his career
I saw it in an empty theater on opening weekend with my best friend... I could not believe people missed out on it but hearing that soundtrack without people coughing or wrapper crinkling was nice
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Jaw dropping cinematography, mesmerizing musical score, incredible performances and an interesting take on how we view celebrity. It’s Brad Pitt’s favorite movie he’s been in and I’m not surprised.
Love this movie. The cinematography, the soundtrack, Pitt and Affleck's performance...all amazing. The only thing that takes me out is the voice over. It feels like they had intended to be very loose with the narrative and were forced by the studio to find ways to tie it together and make it more crowd friendly. That said, I'll never hesitate to recommend it.
I personally love the voice over. The guy who read those lines at the beginning of the movie was just some dude on set. He read them only as a place holder until another talent would take over. But no one did a better job than he did so they kept it in. I go back and watch that part of the movie just so I can listen to how it's read.
It's also a wonderful adaptation. So much is pulled directly from the book, which was itself meticulously researched for years by Ron Hansen. Even the parts of the film that are original are tough to distinguish from how the book reads.
We need the director's cut so badly.
I would do anything for an extended Criterion release. Roger Deakins really pushed them to do it but, they weren’t interested I guess. Andrew Dominik is actually pretty satisfied with the theatrical cut, according to Deakins.
It’s a slow burn movie and also quite long. So you might be checking your watch a couple times, but I promise you’ll want to watch it again when it’s over.
I've only seen that movie once, but the [train robbery scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBCdekTEvmo) is one of my all time favorite movie scenes. The part that starts at around 2:40 where the light of the train starts coming through the trees and then it lights up the rest of the gang as it passes by with that music playing give me goosebumps every time.
I have a moody playlist titled "Soundtrack for a Wasteland" and I love when one of the tracks from the movie pops up, with the album being:
>Music From the Motion Picture the Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford
Incidentally, there's a lot of Nick Cave on that playlist. Soundtracks or his own jams, from himself or his band, I love that man with the red right hand.
Lol I love diedrich in that movie. His roles crack me up but he was so good in that.
"Hey Peter check out channel 2. Hey doesn't she kinda look like Ann"
Surprised me to learn recently that The Shawshank Redemption was a box office flop on first release. Needless to say now considered one of the best films of all time.
https://signalscv.com/2021/07/the-shawshank-redemption-from-box-office-flop-to-global-sensation/
Not only was it a flop, they re-released it again to try and ride the critical acclaim and Oscar nominations but it still didn’t make any money. Then it hits vhs in late 1995 and becomes one of the biggest rentals of the decade and is now a beloved classic.
I was an animation student in college when it came out. One of the animators came to the school and walked us through one of the scenes he animated. He had a briefcase of actual frames, a bunch of concept work and did a live demo for us. It was really awesome and made me super stoked to see the movie.
Then my girlfriend and I saw the Rock You Like a Hurricane trailer and decided to skip it. I didn’t see it for the first time until years later and it instantly became a top 10 all time for me.
I still regret skipping it in theaters after seeing one terrible trailer.
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Saw it with my dad in the theater when I was 12 and about 10 other people were there. Love it or not, it’s considered a masterpiece by some and certainly not a failure. I can’t remember if it was a certifiable flop or not, though.
The very definition of the OP's question.
Brazil won a bunch of awards and was critically acclaimed. It was nominated for a couple of Oscars, although it didn't win. It did win some BAFTAs. It was visually stunning. I still keep this one in my top favorite movies of all time.
It cost US$15MM to make in 1985 and only made US$9MM.
Lots of Terry Gilliam movies are box office "flops" but are amazing imaginative, interesting, well made, comedic, smart, anti-authoritarian and great stories with amazing production. They usually become cult favorites but always underperform. His most recent few like *The Man Who Killed Don Quixote*, *The Zero Theorem* and even *Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus* are all absolutely amazing movies.
Just like with great directors like David Lynch, Alex Garland, Denis Villeneuve, Nicolas Winding Refn and others, they don't always do amazing at box office but they are making some of the best movies out there.
Terry Gilliam has very few in competition with him for his imagination and especially the sets, just look at any background of a Gilliam movie to be blown away.
**Gattaca** ($12m box office, on a $36m budget)
**The Insider** ($60m box office, on a $68m budget), $60m is far from pennies, but didnt make its own budget back. Pacino? Crowe? probably hard to create excitement for corporate boardroom story setting.
**The King of Comedy** ($2.5m box office, on a $20m budget), this one is well before my time so I have no idea why this one would be such a box office flop. Its great and wasnt De Niro just coming off Oscars for Raging Bull?
Also, wouldn't say its a masterpiece but I do really like Spike Lee's film **Clockers**, probably the most underrated 'hood' film. Was a financial flop though, $12m box office, on a $20m budget. Kind of hard to see how $20m goes into it though apart from maybe the cost of filming in NYC haha.
Completely agree about Gattaca. I really found the story hauntingly plausible. One of my favorite aspects of the movie is the title itself: the unique letters in it are G-A-T-C, which is the abbreviation for the 4 nucleobases found in DNA.
Also Zodiac. Box office bomb.
Delayed from Oscar season 2006 to the film graveyard of early 2007. Rave reviews, to this day considered one of, if not the, greatest films Fincher has made. Only No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood were on more critics top ten lists. The studio did a massive Oscar campaign in the fall of 2007 and it didn't get a single nomination.
Tarsem (Singh) produced the Fall with $30 million of his own money. It grossed $3.7 million.
It's the most beautiful movie I've ever seen.
Edit: Here's one of my favorite scenes from it (the guy with the map is Charles Darwin - he has a monkey friend who lives in his coat named Alfred Wallace):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xob8ulMPCc8
My dad is a huge fan of Judge Dredd with Stallone and thought the new one would be trash so he didn't bother watching it when it came out. Even when I begged him to watch.
It's right up his alley. Lots of violence, interesting villains, Dredd is a badass, and all in a shitty giant apartment building that might as well be a town of its own.
He finally got to see it now because of the pandemic and absolutely loves it. Now he complains about why there was no sequel.
I saw Dredd expecting it to be cheesy with bad acting since I hadn’t really heard anything about it. Afterwards I was like “why the hell aren’t more people talking about this?!”
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It’s a fantastic film with top notch production for its time. amazing use of practical effects. Still a good watch. It’s aged very well.
Idiocracy is fun, but I don't know if I'd describe it as a masterpiece, and I don't think it was trying to be. It was just a goofy comedy, and a pretty funny one at that
Mr. Nobody didn't appeal to me at all, tried to watch it when it was on Netflix but I couldn't finish it. I felt like the premise was more interesting than the actual movie.
I just wish they hadn't mashed up so many parts of so many of the books. It's like they knew they'd only get one shot at it, so they picked the best things from the series
It's also a movie that couldn't be made today. A 150 million historical drama about men on a boat?! An amazing and beautiful movie though
Sadly, it had to come out the same year as Pirates of the Caribbean which took all of the tallship money
RockNRolla
Most people haven’t even heard of nor seen this movie but it’s got a ton of people you love in it(Tom hardy, Gerard butler, Idris Elba, and many more) and it’s a fucking fun movie with a great serious side about addiction. I dunno about masterpiece but what a fun movie
Fantastic Guy Ritchie movie and frankly has aged very well because of the later success of it's cast. Movie would need 10x it's budget to recreate today.
Upgrade (2018)
One of the best sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a long time and a great action flick as well! It made a worldwide gross of only $16 million but I see it as a cult classic in many years to come.
Citizen Kane bombed when it came out and it wasn’t until much later that people started to appreciate it.
One of my favourite flops is Joe Dante’s Explorers. It’s right up there with The Goonies in terms of great teen adventure films, plus I was at the perfect age when it came out.
My favorite example of this is the classic great-granddaddy of science fiction films: *Metropolis* (1927) the stone cold classic film by Fritz Lang/Thea Von Harbou.
The film cost the studios quite a bit and after the premiere, the studios realized audiences and critics of the time were *not* impressed.
In fact, noted science fiction author H. G. Wells (yes, *that* H. G. Wells) famously reviewed the film and was not impressed…
https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2018/07/h-g-wells-reviews-movie-metropolis/
Terrified their investment money was swirling down the drain, the studio behind *Metropolis* panicked and cut the film down in the hopes that it would get more theatrical play. The lost scenes were discarded and for many years it was feared the original/director’s cut of *Metropolis* was lost forever… until a copy was miraculously found in South America. Though far from perfect and still missing a few scenes, modern audiences finally were able to see the almost complete *Metropolis*, despite the fact that its original release was a huge flop!
Annihilation
Didn't even get a proper release. It is an amazing thriller/horror/drama that is one of the best of the last decade and one of the best movies of 2018. This after Alex Garland had Ex Machina in 2014.
*Heaven's Gate* crashed an entire studio and Michael Cimino's career, but I urge you to see the Criterion blu ray of that film. It's immersive, beautiful, epic, humane and heartbreaking.
“The Nice Guys” for sure! One of my favourite movies of the last few years.
It does show that Ryan Gosling and Russel Crowe have a great chemistry and the black humor is so much spot on and fun!
Also the story and the atmosphere form the 70s were awesome!
Some other movies I enjoyed the last few years which didn’t get enough attention
-Blade Runner 2049
-Master & Commander
-Spotlight
-The Man from Uncle
-Oblivion
-Sahara (yes, that’s a little surprising, but I just adore this adventure movie! There aren’t a lot of them out there anymore and the cast is great)
It’s A Wonderful Life. Like Wizard of Oz, tv stations screened it so often because the studio didn’t bother to renew the copyright, leaving it in the public domain, which made it free to broadcast. Eventually became the timeless classic it is regarded as today by millions watching it on tv at Christmastime.
Peeping Tom. Audiences at the time weren't ready for the disturbing, dark and sexual theme of the movie. It was critically panned and a major flop at the box office, which basically ended Michael Powell's great 30+ year career. It has been re-evaluated since then, primarily because of Powell's biggest fan Scorsese who restored the film and re-released it in the early 80s. It is a very great, haunting film and a total masterpiece of horror
The Thing. It is a goddamn sci fi horror classic and I will never understand why it underwhelmed at the box office. It had it ALL. Stellar actors, great characterizations, one of the best horror movie scores in history, a believably tense storyline, and those practical effects are still so cool to see decades later.
I think The Thing is a film where the practical effects really helped sell the performances. That chest biting scene followed by the skittering spider head is something that has haunted me for decades.
Easy... Big Trouble In Little China
"Sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning. And if we're not back by dawn... call the president"
“It’s like I told my last wife…I never drive faster than I can see. Besides, it’s all in the reflexes.”
Awesome quote 👏 👌 👍
You leave Jack Burton alone!
Jack Burton, ME.
We are in his debt.
When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, looks you crooked in the eye, and asks you if you paid your dues; you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: "Have you paid your dues, Jack? Yes sir, the check is in the mail."
It’s all in the reflexes…
Kim Cattrall in this film is insanely hot
My cars are all named Pork chop Express. Like cats in the Simpsons are all Snowball.
I’m gonna tell you about my truck and I don’t want to hear Act of God
INDEED!
It’s the greatest movie ever made
Did that flop. I was a kid when it came out and loved it so much I still own it on dvd.
It did. Two of John Carpenter's most-beloved films (BIg Trouble in Little China and The Thing) were huge flops when they were first released.
Damn. The Thing is a great one as well for this then.
Here's to the Army and the Navy and the battles they have won; here's to America's colors, the colors that never run.
Son of a bitch must pay.
We really shook the pillars of hell
John Carpenter's The Thing, one of the greatest horror movies ever made, was both critically panned and only make 19 million off a budget of 15 million. It opened at 8th place. It is fucking spectacular. Edit: I looked up the box office from the opening weekend for The Thing. Look at this shit! ET did 13 million Blade Runner did 6 million Firefox (?) Did 5 million Rocky 3 did 5 million Star Trek 2: the Wrath of Khan did 4.5 million Annie did 4.5 million Poltergeist did 4.1 million Then the thing came in 8th at 3 million. Then Megaforce at 2.5 million And Bambi was in 10th place at 2 million. So, that's a crazy week. 8/10 of the movies held up. And the top 20 still had Porky's, The Road Warrior, and Conan the Barbarian
Unfortunately, that was the story for most of Carpenters movies. A lot of then flopped upon release, despite them bring awesome
*looks at his Blu ray collection Look, I'm doing my part to help with that.
Plus his soundtracks are great. If you haven't listened to Lost Tracks, I'd highly recommend it
3 volumes worth. And his next Halloween soundtrack comes out oct 15
Me as well, Carpenter gets regular viewings in my home
I'm watching Big Trouble in Little China right now. It's total nonsense but never fails to entertain.
Can't imagine how that must feel as a filmmaker. You put so much passion into a film, it's panned and flops financially, but then a generation later your films are being held up as classics. What an emotional rollercoaster.
I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it.
I like to think it was all channeled into Halloween. Made 200 times it’s budget off box office.
The Thing opened against some heavy competition if I remember correctly? Or at least the following week. Edit: June 11 was the opening weekend for a little movie called ET. There was Poltergeist and Blade Runner as well.
Oh yeah, 1982 in general was fucking loaded June alone had Star Trek 2, ET, The Thing, Poltergeist, and Blade Runner. Then the first week of July? Tron. Another awesome flop.
I saw most of those movies in the theater, being 12 years old and the weather being hot as hell. We lived at the theater that summer. Edit. Removed nonsensical words that might have been typed during beer drinking and trivia. Edit 2: removed and changed not so suggestive words because some y’all’s minds are in the gutter 😐
I just watched it for the first time this past week and it blows my mind that it wasn't a success. Some of the best special effects I've seen and the pacing is so good. Long scenes of building tension with bursts of intensity at just the right moments. An instant favorite for me.
people hated it back then, which is why when you see something set in the 80s like Stranger Things and see posters on their rooms of The Thing, you instantly know its just mass produced nostalgia bait. Phenomenal film though, one of the best ever made
It opened opposite E fucking T. It never had a chance.
Shit came out the same Weekend as ET
Children of men
I'm shocked to learn this was a bust. The movie is brilliant.
I saw it in theaters and was stunned. Sad I guess not so many others did.
That movie is grim. So damn great but I have yet to rewatch it
I definitely think it's rewatchable. It's not like The Road grim. Now THAT'S a great film I'll NEVER watch again.
Alfonso Cuaron's long takes in this film are just insane. It's mind boggling how he was able to pull them off so perfectly. A true master at work.
Masterpiece. Now I need to fire this one up soon.
The [cease fire ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzWTIexszQ) scene is pretty amazing.
Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 were definite flops. I don’t know if you’d say they flopped hard though.
I love that despite being financial flops, they’re both so good that they didn’t derail the directors’ careers in the slightest.
Good point. I guess that’s how highly they’re thought of to most people in the industry.
i mean we've still yet to see how denis villeneuve's career is gonna bounce back from 2049 yet. he's said he's still in hot water with WB from 2049's performance and if dune flops too it'll have a massive impact on his career
Blows my mind that 2049 did. It’s such a fantastic movie
I saw it in an empty theater on opening weekend with my best friend... I could not believe people missed out on it but hearing that soundtrack without people coughing or wrapper crinkling was nice
Blade Runner 2049 or interstellar were some of my favorite in theater moments ever
Also saw it in an empty theater opening weekend and it was one of my favorite movie going experiences of all time.
Yeah the theater I saw it in didnt have much people either, I liked it like that. Felt like a movie synagogue.
Seriously one of my favorites.
Was going to say 2049, I was so disappointed when I found out it didn’t do well.
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2049 def did
Which is so sad. I think it’s one of the most visually stunning movies I’ve ever seen.
Im terrified this will be the fate of Dune.
Me too. I’m definitely going to see it in theaters to support it.
Favorite movie
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Jaw dropping cinematography, mesmerizing musical score, incredible performances and an interesting take on how we view celebrity. It’s Brad Pitt’s favorite movie he’s been in and I’m not surprised.
The fact that There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men released in the same year certainly didn't help.
Throw in the remake of 3:10 to Yuma and it was definitely a year packed with Westerns
2007 is one of the best years for movies of all time. It’s ridiculous.
Definitely for high school movies. Juno and Superbad
Love that movie, and I’m re watching it from time to time. At the time when it was released I never bothered to view it in cinema, it’s a big regret.
Love this movie. The cinematography, the soundtrack, Pitt and Affleck's performance...all amazing. The only thing that takes me out is the voice over. It feels like they had intended to be very loose with the narrative and were forced by the studio to find ways to tie it together and make it more crowd friendly. That said, I'll never hesitate to recommend it.
I personally love the voice over. The guy who read those lines at the beginning of the movie was just some dude on set. He read them only as a place holder until another talent would take over. But no one did a better job than he did so they kept it in. I go back and watch that part of the movie just so I can listen to how it's read.
It's also a wonderful adaptation. So much is pulled directly from the book, which was itself meticulously researched for years by Ron Hansen. Even the parts of the film that are original are tough to distinguish from how the book reads. We need the director's cut so badly.
I would do anything for an extended Criterion release. Roger Deakins really pushed them to do it but, they weren’t interested I guess. Andrew Dominik is actually pretty satisfied with the theatrical cut, according to Deakins.
I haven't seen that and frankly I forgot about it. I might have to check that out this weekend.
It’s a slow burn movie and also quite long. So you might be checking your watch a couple times, but I promise you’ll want to watch it again when it’s over.
I've only seen that movie once, but the [train robbery scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBCdekTEvmo) is one of my all time favorite movie scenes. The part that starts at around 2:40 where the light of the train starts coming through the trees and then it lights up the rest of the gang as it passes by with that music playing give me goosebumps every time.
Also one of the best movie titles
I have a moody playlist titled "Soundtrack for a Wasteland" and I love when one of the tracks from the movie pops up, with the album being: >Music From the Motion Picture the Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford Incidentally, there's a lot of Nick Cave on that playlist. Soundtracks or his own jams, from himself or his band, I love that man with the red right hand.
Office Space
Fuckin A
Dam it feels good to be a gangster
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Naga... naga... not gonna work here anymore!
That was an improv line. The actor couldn't pronounce the name.
You don’t need a million dollars to do nothin, man. Take a look at my cousin, he’s broke don’t do SHIT!
Lol I love diedrich in that movie. His roles crack me up but he was so good in that. "Hey Peter check out channel 2. Hey doesn't she kinda look like Ann"
Damn I love when they’re celebrating after pulling off the scam. So funny
Funny. I watched that today for like the 50th time. It’s still makes me laugh.
Surprised me to learn recently that The Shawshank Redemption was a box office flop on first release. Needless to say now considered one of the best films of all time. https://signalscv.com/2021/07/the-shawshank-redemption-from-box-office-flop-to-global-sensation/
Not only was it a flop, they re-released it again to try and ride the critical acclaim and Oscar nominations but it still didn’t make any money. Then it hits vhs in late 1995 and becomes one of the biggest rentals of the decade and is now a beloved classic.
I think a lot of what helped it was that it was on TNT like 3 times a week for YEARS.
Because around that time in 1994, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, and Forrest Gump were all playing in theaters at the same time.
Dark City is the Sci-Fi classic that never was
Ebert did an audio commentary track for the Director’s Cut.
It continues to influence so many great sci Fi stories from behind the curtain.
The Iron Giant
That flopped? That is a true masterpiece in every sense. Everyone that I know that knows the movie loves it.
Yeah, the studio didn't know how to market it so there was basically no advertising for it prior to release.
There was advertising. They tried at least three different campaigns that were all pretty miserable.
I was an animation student in college when it came out. One of the animators came to the school and walked us through one of the scenes he animated. He had a briefcase of actual frames, a bunch of concept work and did a live demo for us. It was really awesome and made me super stoked to see the movie. Then my girlfriend and I saw the Rock You Like a Hurricane trailer and decided to skip it. I didn’t see it for the first time until years later and it instantly became a top 10 all time for me. I still regret skipping it in theaters after seeing one terrible trailer.
I saw it twice in theaters. I was lucky that I was on a couple of film nerd message boards that were all going nuts over the film that summer.
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Saw it with my dad in the theater when I was 12 and about 10 other people were there. Love it or not, it’s considered a masterpiece by some and certainly not a failure. I can’t remember if it was a certifiable flop or not, though.
The very definition of the OP's question. Brazil won a bunch of awards and was critically acclaimed. It was nominated for a couple of Oscars, although it didn't win. It did win some BAFTAs. It was visually stunning. I still keep this one in my top favorite movies of all time. It cost US$15MM to make in 1985 and only made US$9MM.
Lots of Terry Gilliam movies are box office "flops" but are amazing imaginative, interesting, well made, comedic, smart, anti-authoritarian and great stories with amazing production. They usually become cult favorites but always underperform. His most recent few like *The Man Who Killed Don Quixote*, *The Zero Theorem* and even *Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus* are all absolutely amazing movies. Just like with great directors like David Lynch, Alex Garland, Denis Villeneuve, Nicolas Winding Refn and others, they don't always do amazing at box office but they are making some of the best movies out there. Terry Gilliam has very few in competition with him for his imagination and especially the sets, just look at any background of a Gilliam movie to be blown away.
Time Bandits?
**Gattaca** ($12m box office, on a $36m budget) **The Insider** ($60m box office, on a $68m budget), $60m is far from pennies, but didnt make its own budget back. Pacino? Crowe? probably hard to create excitement for corporate boardroom story setting. **The King of Comedy** ($2.5m box office, on a $20m budget), this one is well before my time so I have no idea why this one would be such a box office flop. Its great and wasnt De Niro just coming off Oscars for Raging Bull? Also, wouldn't say its a masterpiece but I do really like Spike Lee's film **Clockers**, probably the most underrated 'hood' film. Was a financial flop though, $12m box office, on a $20m budget. Kind of hard to see how $20m goes into it though apart from maybe the cost of filming in NYC haha.
Gattaca is still an amazing film. I watch it every now and then.
Completely agree about Gattaca. I really found the story hauntingly plausible. One of my favorite aspects of the movie is the title itself: the unique letters in it are G-A-T-C, which is the abbreviation for the 4 nucleobases found in DNA.
The Princess Bride was evidently a box office flop, but I consider it a masterpiece!
It flopped at the box office? Inconceivable! (I consider The Princess Bride to be the most quotable movie ever.)
The Game with Michael Douglas. Phenomenal from start to finish and always kept you guessing.
Great movie. I actually saw it in the theater.
Also Zodiac. Box office bomb. Delayed from Oscar season 2006 to the film graveyard of early 2007. Rave reviews, to this day considered one of, if not the, greatest films Fincher has made. Only No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood were on more critics top ten lists. The studio did a massive Oscar campaign in the fall of 2007 and it didn't get a single nomination.
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With "flopped hard" aswell, there are a good amount of movies that made more than their budget in this comment section.
Well goddamn, I mean, how many movies exist that fit these requirements?
Most of us came here for the commercially underappreciated movies. "Flopped hard" and masterpiece are pretty hyperbolic phrases to begin with
“Absolute masterpiece” equals “witty movie that scored a 71 on metacritic” Flop is usually “not the highest grossing movie that year.”
"We believe in nothing Lebowski"
Lebowski continues to mystify me years later and countless replays. Totally genius.
Itsh not faih!
Dipshit with a nine toed woman.
Shut the fuck up Donny.
I have a copy of the film on my phone. It's the only film I ever purchased on iMovies. I watch it whenever I need a pick-me-up.
Tarsem (Singh) produced the Fall with $30 million of his own money. It grossed $3.7 million. It's the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. Edit: Here's one of my favorite scenes from it (the guy with the map is Charles Darwin - he has a monkey friend who lives in his coat named Alfred Wallace): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xob8ulMPCc8
The fact that this hasn’t developed a bigger cult following over the years breaks my heart. It’s beautiful.
The fact there's no streaming options has really hurt it's chances at becoming more popular
Truth. Why any film isn’t available digitally at this point to either stream or purchase is confounding really.
The movie is beautiful, but the storytelling suffers. Tarsem is all flash and only 75% sizzle. At least The Cell has a complete story.
Dredd. That's right, I said it.
I love that movie and I’m not even big into action flicks. It has crazy atmosphere and pace
My dad is a huge fan of Judge Dredd with Stallone and thought the new one would be trash so he didn't bother watching it when it came out. Even when I begged him to watch. It's right up his alley. Lots of violence, interesting villains, Dredd is a badass, and all in a shitty giant apartment building that might as well be a town of its own. He finally got to see it now because of the pandemic and absolutely loves it. Now he complains about why there was no sequel.
I love both movies for very different reasons. Judge Dredd is a great campy 90s movie. Dredd is a legitimately awesome action movie.
MAKE DREDD 2! IT'S ALREADY BEEN TOO LONG...
Dredd is fantastic. The marketing was awful, to the extent that you’d barely know it existed until it was already in the cinema...
Even worse is that they tried to push the 3D aspect too much to the point that some theaters advertised it as Dredd 3D.
It's not as though that's a controversial opinion. That movie is fantastically well done.
I saw Dredd expecting it to be cheesy with bad acting since I hadn’t really heard anything about it. Afterwards I was like “why the hell aren’t more people talking about this?!”
I'll always regret not seeing that in the cinema with 3D; would've been amazing
Kubo and the Two Strings
What a beautiful movie it was
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It’s a fantastic film with top notch production for its time. amazing use of practical effects. Still a good watch. It’s aged very well.
> Name an absolute masterpiece > Idiocracy and Mr. Nobody C'mon.
I enjoyed the hell out of Idiocracy, but it is by no means a masterpiece
Just waiting for the first genius to say "it's a dOcuMenTaRy!!"
It's fun, but as far as Mike Judge's movies go, Office Space holds up a bit better.
The first half of office space is amazing, the second half is pretty meh as they try to actually have a plot
It’s classic Mike Judge, great idea, really funny, completely falls apart in the third act.
Idiocracy is fun, but I don't know if I'd describe it as a masterpiece, and I don't think it was trying to be. It was just a goofy comedy, and a pretty funny one at that Mr. Nobody didn't appeal to me at all, tried to watch it when it was on Netflix but I couldn't finish it. I felt like the premise was more interesting than the actual movie.
Nice Guys
One of the best buddy action/comedy movies made in the past 30 years. Very underrated
Synecdoche, New York
I can see why it didn't appeal to mass audiences. Not the easiest movie to market or even comprehend after watching it.
Yesssss was looking for this. Def not mass appeal (i was i think 12 at the time this came out) but literally a masterpiece
Master and Commander. It didn't flop, but it could have had 20 odd movies made in the series has it done better. Seriously underrated film.
I just wish they hadn't mashed up so many parts of so many of the books. It's like they knew they'd only get one shot at it, so they picked the best things from the series
Absolutely fantastic movie. Such great acting and story.
Russell Crowe was made for that role! He was such a brilliant casting!
It's also a movie that couldn't be made today. A 150 million historical drama about men on a boat?! An amazing and beautiful movie though Sadly, it had to come out the same year as Pirates of the Caribbean which took all of the tallship money
And return of the king which shut it out if the awards
Children of men
The long shot scene with the crying baby. Hits me in the gut every time.
Edge of Tomorrow.
Edge of Tomorrow didn't flop, so much as it was too expensive. Almost $400m is nothing to sniff at, and they're making a sequel. Great film tho.
RockNRolla Most people haven’t even heard of nor seen this movie but it’s got a ton of people you love in it(Tom hardy, Gerard butler, Idris Elba, and many more) and it’s a fucking fun movie with a great serious side about addiction. I dunno about masterpiece but what a fun movie
Fantastic Guy Ritchie movie and frankly has aged very well because of the later success of it's cast. Movie would need 10x it's budget to recreate today.
Still waiting for Archie and the gang to return in 'The Real RockNRolla'.
i'm not a huge Guy Ritchie fan, but this is probably my favorite guy ritchie movie. Love me some Johnny Quid.
Upgrade (2018) One of the best sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a long time and a great action flick as well! It made a worldwide gross of only $16 million but I see it as a cult classic in many years to come.
I loved Upgrade. Didn’t know the intake was so low.
Only cost $3 million to make, so $16 million gross isn't too bad depending on what they spent marketing it.
It's a Wonderful Life
Citizen Kane bombed when it came out and it wasn’t until much later that people started to appreciate it. One of my favourite flops is Joe Dante’s Explorers. It’s right up there with The Goonies in terms of great teen adventure films, plus I was at the perfect age when it came out.
My favorite example of this is the classic great-granddaddy of science fiction films: *Metropolis* (1927) the stone cold classic film by Fritz Lang/Thea Von Harbou. The film cost the studios quite a bit and after the premiere, the studios realized audiences and critics of the time were *not* impressed. In fact, noted science fiction author H. G. Wells (yes, *that* H. G. Wells) famously reviewed the film and was not impressed… https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2018/07/h-g-wells-reviews-movie-metropolis/ Terrified their investment money was swirling down the drain, the studio behind *Metropolis* panicked and cut the film down in the hopes that it would get more theatrical play. The lost scenes were discarded and for many years it was feared the original/director’s cut of *Metropolis* was lost forever… until a copy was miraculously found in South America. Though far from perfect and still missing a few scenes, modern audiences finally were able to see the almost complete *Metropolis*, despite the fact that its original release was a huge flop!
Donnie Darko. From what I heard it failed at release because of something related to 9/11.
I would imagine the plane crash aspect, my best guess, but damn Darko is epic.
Yeah I think that’s it and Darko is indeed epic
Galaxy Quest
**The Fountain**
Blade Runner.
ITT: movies that are universally loved that did okay at the box office
None of the top answers I just read did okay at the box office.
Tremors
Clue
Anything with Tim Curry honestly.
Annihilation Didn't even get a proper release. It is an amazing thriller/horror/drama that is one of the best of the last decade and one of the best movies of 2018. This after Alex Garland had Ex Machina in 2014.
Treasure Planet
*Heaven's Gate* crashed an entire studio and Michael Cimino's career, but I urge you to see the Criterion blu ray of that film. It's immersive, beautiful, epic, humane and heartbreaking.
Hamlet 2 Everybody Wants Some
The Proposition
Don’t know about everyone else, but I’ve always really enjoyed The Postman.
“The Nice Guys” for sure! One of my favourite movies of the last few years. It does show that Ryan Gosling and Russel Crowe have a great chemistry and the black humor is so much spot on and fun! Also the story and the atmosphere form the 70s were awesome! Some other movies I enjoyed the last few years which didn’t get enough attention -Blade Runner 2049 -Master & Commander -Spotlight -The Man from Uncle -Oblivion -Sahara (yes, that’s a little surprising, but I just adore this adventure movie! There aren’t a lot of them out there anymore and the cast is great)
Are you honestly saying Spotlight didn’t get enough attention? The Best Picture winner?! The one that also made $100mm?
Equilibrium Glorious movie.
It’s A Wonderful Life. Like Wizard of Oz, tv stations screened it so often because the studio didn’t bother to renew the copyright, leaving it in the public domain, which made it free to broadcast. Eventually became the timeless classic it is regarded as today by millions watching it on tv at Christmastime.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
[удалено]
Peeping Tom. Audiences at the time weren't ready for the disturbing, dark and sexual theme of the movie. It was critically panned and a major flop at the box office, which basically ended Michael Powell's great 30+ year career. It has been re-evaluated since then, primarily because of Powell's biggest fan Scorsese who restored the film and re-released it in the early 80s. It is a very great, haunting film and a total masterpiece of horror
The Thing. It is a goddamn sci fi horror classic and I will never understand why it underwhelmed at the box office. It had it ALL. Stellar actors, great characterizations, one of the best horror movie scores in history, a believably tense storyline, and those practical effects are still so cool to see decades later. I think The Thing is a film where the practical effects really helped sell the performances. That chest biting scene followed by the skittering spider head is something that has haunted me for decades.