+1
I kinda intended to make a thread like that some day, but minus the guilty pleasure part. That is, movies you feel that only you, or almost only you, enjoyed, and other people diss unfairly.
For instance, I don't, really don't, understand the bad reputation of Cimino's Heaven's Gate, which I consider a magnificent movie.
I see why people mock Jean Giraud's Cabbage Soup (there's a scene that features farts, farts ! that is not serious !). But to me it's a masterful adaptation of the funny, moving and poetic René Fallet novel.
Not even David Lynch wants to hear about Dune, which was apparently butchered by the studios. Still, I find it a very honorable adaptation of the novels, I love its slow, heavy pace, and its designs and casting choices - I only reproach it its weurd deus ex machina ending that fast forwards half a dozen novels in two lines of dialogues, and its much too unbirdlike ornithopters.
There's a french comedy named You won't have Alsace-Lorraine, which makes me laugh and only me (well, it made another person laugh but he's dead now, so I'm the only human left), but that's only because other humans have no humor and I hate them all.
Not all of Romero's later living dead movies were great, but Diary of the Dead was nice.
I consider Runaway an excellent sci-fi action thriller (gotta love these mechanical arachnids, hovering mines and homing bullets).
And I don't get the criticism of Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, for instance.
So.... "guilty" pleasures..? As in : movies that I like but wouldn't present as great and misunderstood ?...
Maybe a bunch of Hill/Spencer flicks. Not the two Trinita, which are objectively great, but stuff like Who finds a friend finds a treasure. Because childhood. I suppose the old Fantomas movies by Hunebelle fall into that category too. Damn they can be bad. I love them.
Also, maybe (and increasingly) by old beloved James Bond movies, with all their cheese and sexism. This kinda includes the eerie Ok Connery / Operation Kid Brother, because.
And maybe some monster or saucers movies from the Harryhausen era, I'm not sure of their public status but I still enjoy them tremendously. I'm just fond of ancient sci-fi, and clumsiness or naivety just endears them to me.
So maybe Walt Disney's The Black Hole ? It's a terrible and terribly interesting, paradoxical movie.
Some old films of that kind may be shielded by childhood nostalgia (The Final Countdown, etc) but I'd have to re-watch them to see on what level they should or shouldn't be defended... Which ones are objectively good, which ones would embarrassingly fall out of grace, and which ones would just retain their aura of psychological comfort...
Also, it goes without saying that, be definition, no John Carpenter movie is below me. I know that Ghosts of Mars and Vampire$ are... well... okay... they are what they are. I'll love them forever no matter what. I've decided they were great before even watching them and nothing will ever make me change my mind, not even them.
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Get working on your custom lists, people !
Last edited by Flicker; 08-20-21 at 07:15 PM.