The first one is a pretty typical Don Bluth film so if you like movies like American Tail or The Secret of NIMH you might like that one, too.

The sequels in the other hand are just shameless cash grabs directed aimly at kids (or their parents needing to shut them up for 90 minutes) that try to be like Disney movies by inserting songs into the narrative, except without the songwriting talent. I wouldn't really recommend them since most of them are a a bit lame with typical childrens' adventures with life lessons that might appeal to the kids but leave the adults cold. I just mostly like them because they're cute and harmless.

@Pizmo: Yeah I won't deny that WWW is horrible, but I find it amusing and as mentioned, with a bit of scotch.

Man, so many great hated films people have already chimed in with here. I loved Alien 3, but before going to see it I'd heard nothing except how awful it was so my expectations were in the toilet to begin with. The story behind it's creation is just as scary as the film is itself, and the Assembly Cut goes a long way towards restoring stuff that should never have been chopped out in the first place. My assumption is that people disliked Alien 3 because they went into it expecting to see "Aliens 2". Basically the same reason people were disappointed with the third Terminator film: it wasn't "T2, Part Two". I think Alien 3 was far more necessary than Terminator 3 though. We could have ended the franchise with T2 and been just fine. Ending the Alien franchise with Aliens would have left far too many unanswered questions. Fans may not have been happy with how David Fincher answered those questions, but it's astonishing the film turned out good at all considering the top-to-bottom studio abuse it suffered.

Mortal Kombat is another favorite that was mentioned. Hell, I even love Last Action Hero. There's a great Shane Black story in there dying to get out, and I don't think people give it enough credit. It's just a fun picture with an awesome soundtrack.

Movielens will show you movies that you rated unusually. My top three "unusual dislikes" are Shrek, Thor, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. My top three "unusual likes" (excepting very obscure titles) are Coonskin, The Lobster, and Blue Ruin.

I would pay to see an actual John Slater movie

I really don’t like violence very much so that makes Quentin Tarantino films unwatchable for me.

For similar reasons Mononoke Hime is by far my least favorite Miayazaki movie, even though he’s overall my favorite director.

My favorite Orson Wells movie is F For Fake, which a lot of people see as terrible late period crap from him. To me its pure genius.

I have no interest in modern superhero movies, even though I read the comics they came from.

"I don't care who does what to your Hershey highway! And stop shouting!"

That’s brave. There are people here who claim to like Godfather III, The Phantom Menace, etc but this may be the bravest admission.

If they only made parts 2-13 or however high they went it would be one thing but original is a high point in Western animation. It only having one song, during the credits even, really sets it apart from those bloody karaoke videos or whatever you call those ratchety sequels. It’s also much longer IIRC than the sequels (despite being very short) and is absolutely beautiful to look at whereas the sequels are basically TV grade.

EDIT: I’ve been doing some reading and HOLY CRAP there actually are 13 Land Before Times. I was being a sarcastic prick, I didn’t think that was actually true. Dang...

That's actually on my Criterion to buy eventually list.

The Marvel/DC movies are throwaway cinema, but can be okay enough to watch once with friends. Depends why you are looking to watch a movie.

Funny thing, I once bought one of Eureka's DVDs and the booklet inside it was for F For Fake rather than the movie's own. I did get a replacement but I can't remember what happened to that booklet since they told me not to send it back. I have a bad packrat tendency so I don't think I threw it away. Probably in a folder somewhere.


It's a rather annoying trend and I think it shows just how much true filmmakers like Bluth have to struggle to keep studios from just imitating Disney at everything and trying to make nothing but animated musicals. How the hell Land Before Time managed to garner that many sequels instead of just making a friggin' TV show (which it eventually did!), I'll never know. Must be a lot of money in DTV movies?

I honestly only like them up to a point, and my interest wanes significantly once they move from traditional animation to digital - I think part 8 is the one where the cheap digital animation is really obvious with that kind of crappy digital airbrushed shading on all the characters with visible jagged edges because it was not shot at a very high resolution. The dinosaurs designs for the new characters start to become increasingly ridicilous as the series progresses, making me question if they were based on any actual species at all and they just made them up for the sake of belting out another movie. The stories also started to become even more childish and more like what you'd expect from a TV series rather than a feature film, even if it is a direct to video one. Part 7 is probably the last one worth actually watching mostly because it's ending twist is so bizarre, even for a film series with so many entries already under it's vest, and particularly one about juvenile dinosaurs.

I worked at a video store in the US in the 90s. That was the market for The Land Before Time. The OG was a hit on video from day one because it was $40, basically, which was a great price for VHS at the time. You can make one Ep at a time until its unpopular instead of committing millions to a 13EP episode block that may get cancelled before they air. You also only have to satisfy one or two video distributors to have the entire US. The sequels kinda cashed in on that market, which is way easier than TV. Its the same story with the OVA in Japan but TLBT might be the ultimate American OVA...

I've always appreciated Highlander 2 for some reason. To me it's a very entertaining flick that sticks out from the rest without being too aware of it. I've only seen Director's cut however.

And tbh, I really don't like to use the term hate, but I will say I had a very difficult time watching There Will Be Blood. It wasn't bad in any way, but it left me completely unaffected. Several of PTA's films are splendid (Boogie Nights, Magnolia and The Master are all great) and I will give this one a new try in the future for sure, but right now I really cannot make anything out of it. Once I try to analyze the film it just becomes a mess. Is it his greedy mind, bad relationship with his son or his conflict with the church that's supposed to be in center? Or all three? I just couldn't get it during my original viewing and was left there, scrathing my head...

See if you can name another movie that combines dystopian Blade Runner-esque future with urban fantasy. There really aren't all that many.

People say a lot of bad things about Highlander 2, and all of it is fair. What they aren’t being fair to is Highlander 1 which is just as ridiculous as the others.

Anything that has Sean Connery in it is basically something that takes MAJOR suspension of disbelief. No, not that “Would MI6’s main man really be Scottish in the 60s?” That’s merely fantastic, I mean that accent. That...*insane* accent. And no, it’s not just “Scottish”. I know what Scottish sounds like. There are innumerable Scottish accents in cinema and none of them sound like what Connery sounds like. He has a “Sean Connery” accent. And trying to buy that he’s like...some Egyptian alien is just...well, if you can buy anything in Highlander you should be able to buy everything in that series is what I’m saying. It’s all nuts. He may as well be King Agamemnon or King Richard or a Russian U boat captain. It’s all totally bats as far as I’m concerned.

Highlander is like a great Chinese kung fu series with all the great fighting taken out making it not great.

As an alternative, or a pallet cleanser, I recommend The Heroic Trio. Now THATS how you do stupid!

But who else could have played Zed??

It's a shame a lot of those old OVAs flamed out. Some of my all time favorites are high cut OVAs like Giant Robo. Gundam Origin and Gundam Unicorn are great more recent examples of this type of release. I would think you've seen those already, but if not I recommend them highly.



Hugh Laurie sounds perfect in House. Connery was just lazy.

Yeah, I have all the Unicorn and Origin BRs. I like Unicorn more but its been a great decade for Gundam OVAs, easily as good as the 0080-0083 era (although I still prefer those older shows).

Interesting factoid: Since the episodes of Origin keep getting longer and contain more action thereby needing more cuts per minute the storyboard books have gotten progressively thicker as the series has gone on. A few episodes back they got too thick for the box to fit right so they don't sit flush (like an Apple box). The newest one is the longest EP and the thickest outer box with inserts in place to keep the lid square. Because of this every EP came in a slightly different sized outer shipper. The Japanese sure can make things out of paper...If these boxes were made in CA or the US 9/10 nothing would fit, the pages would stick together from too much gloss, the discs would be on some dumb spool gimmick that cracks the first time you open it, etc. Its genuinely difficult to engineer paper to precision, just look at how much crappier American LD jackets are than JP ones. Everything fits perfectly here.

Origin ended up pretty much like I thought it would, I guess slightly better than I had thought. It does such a great job of...being an origin story, that it really makes stuff like the Star Wars prequels look very bad at doing the same thing. My perspective of the OG show is now forever altered, but in a *good* way, not a Jar Jar Binks kind of way.

That being said I still like Unicorn more. Origin is an origin but Unicorn actually has its own focus and takes the show into places we've wanted to go for ages. Newtype philosophy is the true soul of Gundam, the robots just pay the bills. Also, Origin has CG robots which is just...I don't care for it, I have little respect for it, and I'm not that entertained by it.

Giant Robo on the other hand is just the best OVA series ever.

I'd love to see a US BD release of Giant Robo. Megazone 23 is another. I have both on DVD already but would happily buy BDs.

Back in the day I had to see Giant Robo in four different formats to see it all. Originally the USMC LD of EP1, then fansubs to get caught up, then Manga VHS since they quit LD, then streaming off Manga’s website for the finale. It had extremely rocky distribution, which had a lot to do with the show taking forEVER to come out in Japan.

The OG LDs are still the realest release but the video quality ain’t great. The Gigabox had video quality issues. The US DVD... I can’t remember, even though I have it.

A BR would be great if they have the negative. If not I’ll stick with the LDs.

I think there is a Megazone BR in Japan, isn’t there?

I actually like all the crazy accents in the original Highlander, particularly Christoper Lambert's, helps sell the idea that these people are so old that they no longer have accents that belong to their origin...why that would mean an Egyptian via Spain would sound Scottish I've no idea though. Maybe he was trying to go local for Connor's benefit?


You're right though, Highlander is trash but for me it's beloved trash. I love the film and wouldn't change one of it's many flaws