Overrated and underrated movies

[TwiceFriedRice]

Overrated:

300 - Fucking terrible movie.

Sin City - Gawd.

Napoleon Dynamite - This was an okay movie. But all the stupid teenagers spouting out all the quotes from the movie when it first came out got really fucking annoying, fast.

Forrest Gump - I hate putting it here, because I love it so much. But people talk like it's the greatest movie ever made, and frankly they're are many better movies than this one. Pulp Fiction should have won Best Picture in 1994.

The Notebook - Like this movie a lot too, but again the dumb girls that think this is the be all, end all of film because it's a good love story. Shame. Casablanca and Purple Rose of Cairo (though the latter is a different kind) is where the good love stories are.

Underrated:

Reservoir Dogs - Tarantino laid the ground work for his future films here, including the great Pulp Fiction. Should be talked about more.

Citizen Kane - I know it's considered the greatest film of all-time critically. But does anyone besides me and 60 year-old, hard-nosed critics really enjoy this film?

Predator - This movie's special effects make Alien look like child's play. While the latter film has aged quite significantly, Predator looks way ahead of it's time. You would think the alien gadgetry, explosions, and the Predator costume would look cheesy by now. It doesn't. It still holds up amazingly well today. The atmosphere is really what makes this movie, and again it holds up.

Good Will Hunting - Sorry guys, the script is fantastic.

American Graffiti - How come George Lucas' best directorial movie never gets talked about? (Right, because of Star Wars, I know.)

Empire Strikes Back - People take this one for granted because it's a Star Wars movie. Doesn't matter. Everything about this movie is phenomenal.


I could go on, but it's late.

[Hazuki-San]

All Scorcese films are overrated. Particularly The Departed.

Yes the Departed was a poor movie
but what about Casino, Goodfellas, Cape Fear
The Color of Money, Taxi Driver, Mean Streets and Raging Bull ?

Those films are not only great
but some of the best films of all time.

Good Will Hunting - Sorry guys, the script is fantastic.

Yeah that was a top film.

[Henry Spencer]

Reservoir Dogs underrated? Empire Strikes Back underrated? Citizen Kane underrated?
I think I've heard it all now...

All of the other replies are fine, I especially agree with Orange about Road to Perdition, it's one of my favourite movies and perfectly captures the time period it is set in. Plus, all of the main characters are brilliantly played by Tom Hanks (possibly his best performance, and definitely the most overlooked, playing against type), Daniel Craig, Paul Newman in his final on screen role and Jude Law playing one of the most chilling villain characters ever. Best graphic novel movie, ever made.

Overrated:
Totally agree about The Departed, it's the weakest film in Scorsese's career as far as I'm concerned, and he won the Oscar for that? Where were the Oscars when he made Raging Bull? Goodfellas? Taxi Driver? Fuckin' Oscars.

Most of Alfred Hitchcock's work. He is often listed as being the best director to come from ourselves (UK) but I don't think he is all that, personally. I've seen North By Northwest, which I thought was a total farce, as well as The Birds, which I couldn't sit through (which is a very rare thing with me). Then again, I loved Vertigo and liked Topaz and Psycho. He's very much a hit and miss director for me, hardly the best of all time, however.

Most of Tarantino's work. I enjoyed Reservoir Dogs, and am a fan of Pulp Fiction, as well Jackie Brown, but as far as his other work, nah, don't like it. I feel it's all overhyped, pretentious, annoying and has no real depth to it at all, like his earlier work did.

Underrated:

Angel Heart. My favourite movie. A multi-layered mystery set in the 50s. The most atmospheric movie I've ever seen, which gets better everytime I watch it. Mickey Rourke's best performance too. I'm so obsessed with this movie, I bought the press kit, which cost me just over one hundred quid alone. Must have watched it around eleven or twelve times since I first saw it eight years ago. It's also being remade. Gah.

Shattered. Another complex mystery movie that will no doubt be never seen by anyone here. Wolfgang Petersen's best work.

Naked Lunch. My favourite Cronenberg movie. It almost feels like his own version of Lynch's Eraserhead, but more constructive and watchable, of course. Another movie to watch for the atmosphere.

Lost Highway. What's this? Lynch actually making a movie with a plotline I could follow? And it was another blip under the radar for Lynch. It's still convoluted as hell, but it's infinitely better than say, Mulholland Drive.

Strange Days. People often talk about Blade Runner being this greatly under-appreciated science fiction movie that has reached cult status and in retrospective, far better viewed than it was back in the day. In my opinion, Strange Days is the next one to follow this trend. A science fiction mystery set around the millennium and a bizarre cast of characters. It;s stylish as hell and has Katheryn Bigelow written all over it. I'd also like to give a shout out to Bigelow's other work; Near Dark, another cult movie by herself, which is also underrated and overlooked.

Narc. The grittiest (and best) cop film I've ever seen. It never lets up and pulls no punches. The plot is great, performances outstanding, and the use of colours in this is fascinating.

[Hazuki-San]

DeNiro out classed Rourke in Angel Heart
but i agree it's a underrated film. Same with Narc.

Tarantino has made one good film (pulp fiction)
He's a very overrated film maker.

[Kenny]

I will say on a personal note for that year I thought Children of Men was the better film.

Totally. If fucking Scorsese got his oscar earlier, this film would've gotten it. Then again I didn't even like the original film Departed was based on either. Great ideas but so-so execution.

Napoleon Dynamite is shit and American Graffiti is awesome. Lucas was a decent director back then before Star Wars made him rich, fat and lazy.

[Riku Rose]

Tarantino has made one good film (pulp fiction)
He's a very overrated film maker.

Reservoir Dogs?
Jackie Brown?

[Hazuki-San]

Reservoir Dogs?
Jackie Brown?

Nothing special
Jackie Brown was quite boring to be honest.

I thought Children of Men was the better film

That was a terrible film.

[Kenny]

About the Alien films, the only one I really liked was the 4th one. Alien was hilarious slow garbage, Aliens was only good for the action, and Alien³ had great ideas going for it but was constantly inferred with the studio. Even then, some of the previous writers and directors hired had some dumbass shit planned for it before Fincher came in and tried to salvage the film.

I'm more of a Predator fan anyway. Those films didn't take themselves as seriously and they were better for it.

[OL]

All Scorcese films are overrated. Particularly The Departed.

Yes the Departed was a poor movie
but what about Casino, Goodfellas, Cape Fear
The Color of Money, Taxi Driver, Mean Streets and Raging Bull ?

What about them?
They're not all bad films, they're just overrated (as per the topic). I think Scorcese gets far to much acclaim with his films. He makes them with this pretentious notion that they're art, when in reality I would almost just call him a shock jock.
Even further than his films being overrated, he, as a director, is extremely overrated.

[Clint]

I agree with Road to Perdition. Amazing film, and some of the best cinematography ever used on screen. Shame the ending was a bit predictable.

[Jed]

Predator is one of my favorite movies, I can literally watch it over and over again and not get bored. Arnolds one liners are legendary.

Apocalypto and Last samurai are underrated, especially the last samurai, It was brilliant.

The Dark Knight was great(I got it on blue ray) but it is pretty overrated. I was entertained and enjoyed it but I wasn't blown away or anything. Maybe it's because I found it hard to concentrate because blue ray is too bright and it hurt my eyes.

Rocky 2 is amazing, it's on par with the first one IMO.

[Bluecast]

Okay one film I admit to really liking he did and that was Goodfellas.

But Taxi Driver...I don't get the hype,the film was pure crap to me,just seemed like any 1970's over the top film that was trying to be as dark and gritty that wanted a body count.
There was so many like that then.

[TwiceFriedRice]

Reservoir Dogs underrated? Empire Strikes Back underrated? Citizen Kane underrated?
I think I've heard it all now...

Please read my entire post, and you'll understand why I think they are underrated. Thanks.

If you're too lazy, I'll try and explain in more detail here.

Reservoir Dogs in my mind is underrated because people get so caught up in Pulp Fiction and Tarantino's later films to really appreciate it. It is a fantastic movie in my mind, and did what Pulp Fiction did before Pulp Fiction did it.

Empire Strikes Back, people who are not hardcore Star Wars fans I feel don't take it seriously as one of the best movies ever because it has Star Wars attached to it. But it really is a fantastic piece of cinema.

And like I already stated clearly, with Citizen Kane it seems that only I and really old, pretentious film critics really enjoy this film. Other people just state it's the best ever because of what it did technically and the story behind it. But I quite liked watching it myself.

[Bluecast]

ALL Star wars films are overrated,they DEFINE overrated when everything about all of them is mediocre at best.

Down to the smallest details they were so inconsistent all it did was bring SPFX to a new level and gave us ILM and bring the 70's out of this ultra gritty depressing stuff and lead us into the 80's where things got cheesier and happier but the writing and acting was still rather meh and downright poor at times.

Yet it's still held to such high standards people demand so much when it never even really met those standards to begin with.
The only character that was well done..well until his lame death scene was vader.

New ones were really not much worse than the old ones just like I mentioned before coming out held to such high standards and people finally saw Star Wars for what it truly was and hated them.



===============================================

Ok a couple truly overlooked and underrated films go watch the Gods must be crazy and Oh God.

[Kenny]

Well, if you get down to it, they are in fact cheesy scifi/fantasy b-movies. The acting and some of the dialogue is actually pretty bad. Harrison Ford, in particular, clearly didn't give a shit about the Han Solo role but for some reason still ends up being charismatic.

What made the original trilogy work were the effects, the distinctive puppets and costumes, brilliant (if simple) characters and development, the score, the props, the names (C3PO and R2D2 are easy to remember and say), the set design, and the techniques and mythologies used to bring this universe to life. Despite what I said earlier, it's very quotable (I am your father, may the force be with you, I got a bad feeling about this, ect.) Plus the lightsabers and the space fights were the shit back then, it introduced alot of new and exciting ideas that were never seen before and were implemented incredibly epically. I'm still amazed at the Battle of Yavin, its such an intense and exciting flurry of scenes executed marvelously by the guys at ILM. Plus around the late '70s-early 80s, films were edgier and darker in their content so it provided intriguing, psychological entertainment for younger and older audiences alike. The cinematography got progressively "mature" themed as opposed to the upbeat, cartoon look of the prequels years later.

So when you look at it that way, I don't find it hard to see why Star Wars is so respected and well-regarded. I myself am still entertained by the original movies for those very reasons. But strip all the innovation, memorable characters, and cool lightsaber/ship battles...and all you got is a pile of crap. It's much easier to denounce the prequels cause they are just that. The innovation of the past is just recycling, the characters are either tampered with or garbage, and the fights just feel tacked on rather then part of the story (and even if they were, its so a much lesser extent). It's also important to note that the original movies were produced and (later) written by other people while George was in the back just supervising everything. His ego got in the way of the prequels and he ended up doing everything. The people who pretty much made the originals refused to work for him even when he asked, so that pretty much says everything about him right there (and that fucking Indiana Jones 4 movie).



And in TFR's logic, I have to say Return of the Jedi is underrated in the original trilogy. People bash the film for the Ewoks and such, but its a fitting conclusion to the saga. The final battle with Darth is great, the Jabba's Palace segment is awesome, I personally like the Second Death Star battle and destruction better, and I always enjoyed watching the Ewoks rape the Imperial army with sticks and stones. Yet the nerds prefer Empire simply cause they have less Snuggle bears, meh.