Movies you didn't appreciate then, but do now. (and vice versa)

IdleMind

IdleMind

BANNED FOREVER
The concept of this thread is simple:

What is a movie, than when you were younger you saw and didn't like or appreciate, but having seen it again later you have come to appreciate it?

On the flip side, what is a movie you used to enjoy, but upon seeing it recently you wonder what the hell you were thinking when you liked it so much.

I'll begin:

Appreciate: Jackie Brown.
When I first saw it, I was coming off the then "edgier" Pulp Fiction and found the movie very boring. Upon a later viewing, I have come to appreciate its narrative, comparative lack of body count, and excellent character development.

Unappreciate: Nightmare before Christmas.
I think really, I just wanted to believe I liked this movie because I wanted to get with all the fangirls who wore stripes and black alot after this movie came out. In retrospect, it's... pretty terrible. No good visuals can cover the smell of an obvious cash grab.

-Idle
 
Appreciate: Tombstone

When I was a kid I thought it was a boring movie but once I was older I went back and watched it only to realize how awesome of a movie it really was.
 
I now appreciate all of the old Disney movies but as a kid... well, let's just say that Disney was really good at scaring children with (For example) Pink elephants on parade, Chernabog from Fantasia or the dark woods from SNow white back in the day.
 
Traffic and Crash are 2 movies I appreciated when I seen them a second time. Very good movies to see if you haven't seen them. Definitely both in my top 15 or so.
 
Appreciate: Kung Pow...

This movie was AWFUL when I first saw it in theaters. Now, every time I see it, it gets better and better.
 
Appreciate: Yojimbo

When I first saw it ( on DVD, it's a 1961 film ), it was nothing more than a bare bones black and white jidaigeki with a nameless hero. That was 8 years ago.

Every June 7 every year thereafter, I watch it and it gets cooler every time. I still think Mitsurugi should look like Toshiro Mifune's Kuwabatake Sanjuro in SC V. Come to think of it, Mitsurugi may have been inspired by Toshiro Mifune's.......

Don't Appreciate: Freejack

It was cool then but now....well,what can I say. I was a kid when I first saw it so bite me.
 
Those darn old mortal kombat movies.......

Edit: Weren't as good as I thought. Nostalgia can sometimes fool you...
 
Loved the Die hard movies: 1,2,3.
Poor John McClane, just trying to be a normal cop, then by movie 4 he was the god cop.
Bruce Willis will forever be known as John McClane to me...
 
Unappreciate: Spongebob Squarepants Movie. I loved it when if first came out 'cause I'm cool like that.
Watched it recently due to boredom.. I was very disappointed.
 
Appreciate: Two Girls One Cup

When I first saw this film I was appalled by the complete disregard of sanitation, but now I can see where the director was taking it. Moving from the west coast to the midwest was hard on me because I was just a kid with no experience of how the world worked. I would buy things I didn't need like shoes and hats, but then my bills started to pile up and I soon found my self in debt. I had to work two jobs just to pay my bills just like those two girls did. If this movie has given me anything it's this: People will do anything for money.
 
Appreciate: Eyes Wide Shut. I slept through it the first time in 2000. Good lord it was slow and boring. Watched it again a few years ago. It was still slow but I remember really liking it, even though almost nothing happens. That's the magic of Kubrick I guess.

Underappreciate: Wild Things. This movie is so much better when you're a horny 12 year old boy and internet porn isn't as widely available yet.
 
“IdleMind” said:
Unappreciate: Nightmare before Christmas.
I think really, I just wanted to believe I liked this movie because I wanted to get with all the fangirls who wore stripes and black alot after this movie came out. In retrospect, it's... pretty terrible. No good visuals can cover the smell of an obvious cash grab.
Click to expand...

Nightmare is one of my favorite movies. The extraordinary amount of labor that went into the animation, all the detail and creativity packed into the sets and models, is only part of it. I also think it’s one of Danny Elfman’s most cohesive soundtracks, with lyrics that really worm your way into your brain and are very fun to sing along with. Of course it’s got that Tim Burton streak of subversiveness and weirdness that was entertaining at the time (a very tired theme in his movies by now, IMHO), although it was actually written by Caroline Thompson ("The Addams Family") and directed by Henry Selick (“Coraline”) and all the better for it. But really it’s just a short, sweet, and sentimental film, unambitious in scope but successful in effect, wrapped in an unusual package.

Nobody really expected it to make money, to the point where the studio really did not initially support a very wide release or marketing campaign. They branded it under Touchstone because they didn’t even feel that it was appropriate for the Disney label. It was certainly not an attempted “cash grab” at its debut. It went on to do respectably, grossing $50m on an $18m budget, but that’s nowhere near normal Disney money (Aladdin preceded it and grossed half a billion, and the Lion King followed it and grossed three quarters of a billion).

On the audience side, back when it came out only a few people really liked it, and unfortunately it was largely appropriated by the goth / emo crowd and Tim Burton worshippers — who, I think, liked it more for its counter-culturalism and themes of displacement than as a film per se. In other words, they liked its imagery but ascribed more rebelliousness and rejection of “normalcy” to the movie than I think the filmmakers really intended (Tim Burton’s producer credit notwithstanding).

But worse, much much worse, is how Disney in recent years has whored it out as one of their “classics.” See, Nightmare is one of those odd movies which has actually grown in popularity with time; under-appreciated at release, people kept discovering it through video rentals to the point where it gained a very strong following. It used to be that official Nightmare merchandise was super-rare, really there wasn’t any to speak of. Suddenly you can’t walk down a city street without seeing some kind of Nightmare tshirt, notebook, hat, pen, lunchbox, playing card set, crossover music project with Marilyn Manson, whatever.

NOW it’s a cash grab (and god how I hate the whole “Tim Burton’s classic” line they keep trotting out, what an insult to the people who actually made this movie) and I am duly disappointed. It used to be a little gem of a movie that I could introduce to my friends. Now I sound like just one of the herd for even admitting I like it. Blah.

Anyway, I can appreciate that it’s not for everyone. If you don’t like it, that is your right. But I had to react to the stark assessment that it’s “pretty terrible,” when I think that as a labor of love with a lot of genuine emotion and creativity embedded in it, Nightmare can hold its own.
 
Anyway, to play along:

Unappreciate: The Whole Nine Yards. The first time I saw this movie I thought it was very funny. Saw part of it again... snoozefest. Don’t know what I was thinking.

Appreciate: not a movie, but a TV series. Actually, two TV series: Star Trek, and Star Trek TNG. As a kid I found the contrived scenes, awkward costumes, and very humanoid aliens to be pretty silly, to say nothing of ST’s dated look and ham-fisted acting or ST TNG’s distilled nerdiness. Now I enjoy the 60s retro vibe and tongue-in-cheek characters of ST, and the philosophical / creative short scifi vignettes that both series are based on.
 
Unappreciate: The Dark Knight, both Iron Man movies, Nightmare before Christmas.

Appreciate: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers movie.
 
The only experience akin to this that I can remember off the top of my head is M. Night Shaymalan's "Signs".

It just didn't take particularly long for the unappreciation to kick in.

I remember the credits started rolling and I had this sense of enjoyment from the movie, the kind you get after you've, well, just finished watching a good movie. I *felt* satisfied, but I think that's more or less because I decided to shut my brain off and watch it without any critical analysis whatsoever.

However, as we were standing up from our seats I started actually, you know, thinking about the movie, its plot, and how well it all held together ( or didn't hold together) and by the time I got to my car I hated it. Like to hate in five minutes.
 
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