Underrated/overrated/overhated/underhated

You've probably seen this template before.




Fill it in with any movie-related topic. It can be films within the same series or genre, directors, countries, or anything else. I'll start with countries.


Good: France. Talented people who always see their vision through. No fear, no hesitation. The nation has my respect in every area, including film.
Bad: Serbia. Shrill, insecure, and often with nothing interesting to say. A Serbian Film is a title way more representative than you think.


Underrated: Russia. People will say russian films are good, but I don't think the mainstream is on the same page as me. I assure you, the silents like Battleship Potemkin are not even close to their best.
Overrated: Japan. They have talent, they habe good composers, actors, and directors, but their people-pleasing "never offend anyone" culture rubs me the wrong way. They just lack the courage that, say, France has. Sometimes it's not a problem (paprika, seven samurai), but often times it is, and ends up with a lot of wasted potential. Also the worst film I've ever seen, ghost in the shell, is japanese, so there's that.
Overhated: Croatia. People here often say our films are worthless. I've checked, and I know that's not the case.
Underhated: Hungary. Is it possible for Hitler and Stalin to live so utterly rent-free in someone's head? Do something else, for God's sake.


Neutral: Thailand. I see they have a unique thing going on, but I can't say I get it. Fans of thai cinema aren't that plentiful or that loud, as far as I've seen, so I can't form any positive or negative opinion.

British: Wonderful movies. 🇬🇧

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Is there such a thing as that favorite weak item choice in multiple choice tests - "All of the above"? That would be American movies. "None of the above" would be way off.

Skizz, where are you from?

Profile says Baltimore.

This thread feels a bit… juvenile-absolutist? How many Serbian films have you seen? That said, I’m sure the topic has merits; it’s just that even as someone with fairly strong/consistent opinions on which countries’ films nearly always appeal to me (e.g. Spain), I feel like it’s not really possible to make such categorical claims about a country’s entire filmmaking history. I certainly don’t think you can judge an entire cinematic tradition as either under- or overrated.

I agree. Unless you have seen every film from every country you can't claim they have the best or worst. There is always a hidden gem in a pile of rocks. Even a diamond is called a rock.

And what is trash to you, maybe a treasure to someone else.

Yep...Baltimore, home of the Star Spangled Banner as well as The Govans Grille and Abe Sherman's Bookstore. I live down near the old gunpowder factory.

I think US has hidden gems in cinema. But not everything is great.

Never been there, but loved The Wire. And now there’s a new Baltimore series.

Ironically there's a whole bunch of different "Baltimores", depending on where and how you live. TV shows like The Wire and Homicide, Life on the Streets only show the part of the town that makes plots for cop shows, but it becomes a familiar image.....Baltimore, with its thugs, junkies and cynical cops. Happily, I don't live in THAT Baltimore, but the one I live in doesn't have much plot material for violent TV shows.

Personally, I'd like to go back to the John Waters version of Baltimore. It's much more entertaining. It's much more fun to have crazy characters doing bad dialog in a laundromat in Hampden, which has been in a number of his films, with its row houses and corner saloons.

I have to think out each of these categories carefully, but a few things come to mind immediately for overrated:

Saving Private Ryan

Slumdog Millionaire

Shakespeare in Love

Heat

Batman Begins

Annie Hall

Black Panther

I loved all of these. Lol.

I think that chart is overrated and underhated.

Underrated/overrated/overhated/underhated=Today's Hollywood films.

👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻

This, basically. While there could be value in broadly assessing certain film outputs (by country, region, etc…), it would require a far greater degree of nuance, analysis, historical-cultural understanding than a glib, one-word placement on a too-cute-by-half chart could possibly allow for.

And to get a comprehensive understanding of any one country’s filmic output, let alone enough different countries to meaningfully compare them, with no added restrictions on time period, movements, filmmakers, genres, trends, etc…? Well, I would love to know how many Serbian / Hungarian / Croatian / Thai / French / Japanese / Russian movies we’re actually taking into consideration here.

Sounds exactly where I live, which is one of the poorest cities in America. One could shoot The Wire right here & make a great series. But nobody wants to come here & shoot anything. (Except other people from time to time.) There’s huge wealth here too with streets solely inhabited by doctors, lawyers, et al. But, at the end of the work day, most people get in their cars & drive to their homes in more salubrious towns.

At least Baltimore has cachet.

I've seen every serbian film that frequently appears on imdb top lists. Tko to tamo peva, skupljači perja, tri, kad porastem biću kengur, balkanski špijun, and so on. The only one I haven't seen is Tito i Ja, but by then I had seen enough to give up. I saw the patterns.


I did it because I wanted to do a top 10 yugoslavian movies list, and found out that every serbian movie, maybe barring Sedam i Po, is terrible, and all for the same reason. I wanted them to be good, I wouldn't even try for that list otherwise. I never go into movies wanting them to be bad, but trust me, I know what I'm talking about when I say this.

Fair enough. I suppose what that tells me is that Serbian films just don’t vibe with you, and that’s fine. I, for one, don’t enjoy most Russian films, despite being aware many are masterpieces. It’s just that to me, this doesn’t mean Russian (or Serbian in your case) films are bad, or, indeed, that they are any one uniform thing. They are just something I don’t enjoy. There certainly are patterns, that I agree with.

Interesting, because I just found the MosFilms channel. The only GREAT movie I loved was "The Cranes Are Flying" but that was a long time ago. The shaky-cam in "Soy Cuba" made a good movie worse.


I don't think you need to see every single movie, but if you see a hundred of movies from one country (that's not too populous) with movies from every year, mainstream, low-budget, independent, young/old directors, you get a better sense, just like anything else.


I look at each movie as it's own category. Terms seem to stifle creativity (usually due to marketing).. When a director is new, has a hit, and falls into a "New Wave" director, then any deviation becomes "What the hell is this? I only understand one kind of independence" - which is the ultimate problem; making non-conformity an industry. And many times you hear stories of how a movie failed because an "arty" movie is advertised as an action (and many other permutations).

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