Movies that weren't as bad as everyone says.

Since it's Good Friday, I though I would do a post about the lower things in life. I picked 5(actually 6) movies that, although not classics, are not as bad as you might think.

1: Broken Flowers

Boring? Yes. Doesn't go anywhere? Of course. But Bad? Not really. It was a quiet and laid back movie, that just slouches to an ending. Not much there, there. But it is a movie that doesn't pretend there is.

2: What Dreams May Come

Ok, anyone with half a brain can see this is a flawed movie. Sure it is Hollywood and Robin Williams trying to be intellectual and embarrassing themselves in the process. But it is also not painful to watch. Think about it as Dante for the Self-help, Yuppie, Baby Boomers.


3: Oldboy

Everyone points out that the only reason it won the Jury Prize at Cannes was become Tarantino was the foreman of the jury. That is true, but it ignores the fact that Oldboy is a great movie. First the negatives, Americans feel uncomfortable with movies where incest is a major plot device, violent in a ways that only Tarantino can can enjoy. After you see this movie, you want to just yell at the first person yo see "THAT WAS SOME EFFED UP SHIT!!!!!!!!!!" But it was good, I swear, go see it.

4: GO/Marie Antoinette

I combined these two because they both fall into the category of the indie director's sub-par follow-up movie.

Go is only slightly like Doug Liman's first movie, Swingers. If fact is owes more to Pulp Fiction than swingers. Yes it is one of the Pulp Fiction knockoffs we all had to sit through from 1995-1999, but it is also the best. I think the big reason this movie never went anywhere, i s because it was advertised as a cute high school comedy with Katie Holms, (a la Ten Things I hate About You) instead of the weird indie movie that it was.

Ok, this movie was not misleadingly advertised. The trailers where very clear that it was about Marie Antoinette, but it had Kirsten Dunst, and 80's punk music. In that respect the movie lived up to (low) expectations. Indeed the worst thing about this movie was its casting. Not just Ms. Dunst, but the whole cast was awful. Still Sofia Coppola tried to make a revisionist movie about the life of the ill fated French Queen, and if you are willing to go along with her, and ignore the bad acting, you will find a decent movie.

5: Fille Sur le Ponte

Not so much considered a bad movie; instead it is unjustly forgotten. The director, Patrice Leconte, is my favorite contemporary French director. Before you think I'm being all pretentious, he is also probably the only contemporary French director I know. Just a great movie about a guy and a girl who fall in love when he throws knives at her.