eta: Would Mystery Men count? I seem to remember it not doing very well at the box office, and yet I didn't really know anyone (in my relative age group) who didn't love it. /eta
It's weird, but I wanted to like that movie a lot more than I did. It had decent casting and decent high concepts that I felt weren't really well-executed, so I only marginally liked it. (The Greg Kinnear moment was pretty awesome, if you don't know the plot.)
I tend to feel that way about a lot of Ben Stiller movies. I love him as a person, I think he's a super-funny actor... but I tend to be lukewarm to most of his films. (I didn't really like the "Fockers" films either, or Walter Mitty, or whatever else. Don't ask me. Dodgeball was more amusing.)
Yeah, it got a bad rap - even David Lynch himself pooh-poohs it now - but I've always loved it.
I remember trying to watch it in the 90's (?) without ever reading the book or before I was ready to handle Lynch films, and I barely remember anything except for the water drop motif. Maybe a rewatch would do more for me now. I'm looking forward to the Villeneuve version coming out soon.
Shit, most of Carpenter’s body of work. I know I mentioned him already but I can think of few directors who made so many films that were initially panned/ignored only to be re-evaluated as classics. Halloween did well but after that it was hit or miss, more often miss for him. Especially if you look at his post Starman body of work. Yet with a few exceptions like Ghosts of Mars and The Ward, the majority of those films are now loved
Loved by who? Just trying to get a sense. Critics? Horror lovers? A particular segment of horror lovers?
he's another guy who I find interesting because he did his own thing, but typically for me it's just been marginally okay, I just don't get into his approach and it feels barely a step above B sometimes. [I am fonder of Cronenberg.] Maybe I just expect more psychological depth or something. I even tried watching "Escape from New York" within the past year again and got bored by the midpoint. I think my favorite films of his (that I will rewatch) have been "The Thing" and "Prince of Darkness". I remember kind of enjoying Sam Neill's "In the Mouth of Madness" performance too.
(HAHAHA! Now I just wiki'ed it to spell Sam Neill's name correctly, and it says all three of these films are considered Carpenter's informal "Apocalypse Trilogy" -- I guess that's the connecting thread.)