Against the Crowd Blogathon 2016

We’ve been following Dell on Movies and taken part in a few of his brilliant blogathons for a couple of years now, and I was so happy to see in our Blogger feed that he was hosting his Against the Crowd blogathon again, this year in partnership with KG’s Movie Rants! We somehow missed last year’s edition so there was no way I was going to let that happen again. Especially so soon after watching a ‘must watch classic’ that I actually kind of hated, and have been too scared to review…

As always, a blogathon comes with a set of rules, and here they are in Dell’s own words:

1. Pick one movie that "everyone" loves (the more iconic, the better). That movie must have a score of at least 75% on rottentomatoes.com. Tell us why you hate it.

2. Pick one movie that "everyone" hates (the more notorious, the better). That movie must have a score of less than 35% on rottentomatoes.com. Tell us why you love it.

3. Include the tomato meter scores of both movies.

4. Use one of the banners in this post, or feel free to create your own.

5. Comment on this post, or on KG's Movie Rants with the two movies you intend on writing on.

6. Publish your post on any day from Monday August 22 through Friday August 26, 2016.

Even better, check out Dell’s original post here to find out more and to check out the other banners.

Let’s kick this off!

The Departed (2006)

Everyone loves The Departed, right? It’s ranked #42 on IMDB’s Top 250, and it features some of the biggest names in the movie industry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Jack Nicholson to name just a few. There’s a cop who’s undercover as a gang member, and a gang member undercover as a cop, there’s backstabbing, deceit, lies, etc. I lost track of who was actually working for who very quickly, and boy was it a long movie!

Spoiler alert right now for the very few who haven’t seen this...was it really worth anything in the end anyway? I spent the last 20 minutes or so with my jaw on the floor because it was just such a ‘WTF’ moment. In fact, let me tell you a funny story. On the way home from our honeymoon, my husband and I couldn’t get seats next to each other on one of the flights, so we caught up at JFK once we landed. I asked him what movies he’d watched and he said he watched The Departed. ‘Ugh!’ I cried out in the middle of Departure Gate 18. ‘I hated that movie. Everyone just died in the end anyway!’. That’s the moment my husband told me he’d ‘started’ to watch the movie. He still had half an hour left. Sorry, love. He has since seen the ending, and explained (at length) the importance of it all. I smiled and nodded the whole time to make up for spoiling the ending like a jerk.

Taxi Driver (1976)
This is also listed on IMDB's Top 250 and a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes so it must be good right?  Every person I have spoken to who has seen this film has loved it and I just don't get it. I don't hate it by any stretch, I just didn't particularly enjoy it.  I think there is a chance that I am missing something that everyone else is getting because I don't understand why everyone loves it.

I have gone into depth in a full review on the blog previously so I won't ramble on too much about the ins and outs of this one but I felt like it took a long time to get into the real heart of the story and honestly in the last few scenes I actually started to enjoy it.  It just took too long to get to that point.  Maybe i'll watch it again at some point and give it another chance, who knows!

Chappie (2015)

So I went digging through the Rotten Tomatoes website for this one. There are plenty of terrible movies that I kind of liked, but not enough to defend publicly. Once I started scrolling through the ‘rotten’ movies, I was heartbroken to spot Chappie on the list! 

The plot is a little crazy, sure, and I know a lot of people hated on Ninja and Yolandi (I still don’t know who they are) but Chappie alone made me love his movie. I always have a soft spot for the underdog, and so Chappie was loveable from the very start as the cursed robot forever coming back damaged from every mission. Then he was given artificial intelligence, he gets excited about rubber chickens, and going for rides in the car. I’d like my own Chappie please, with the orange antennae and reject sticker and everything.

It didn’t have the political agenda that District 9 had, but I thought the lessons about how impressionable Chappie was in his ‘infancy’ were well thought out, and I’ll carry on defending this movie for as long as I’m a blogger!

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
I was not on the bandwagon with this one, I wasn't thrilled when they announced Ben Affleck as Batman and so I gave up on being excited.  I put it to the back of my mind, hardly watched any of the trailers and managed to completely miss it in the cinemas.  Therefore, I missed a lot of the negativity surrounding the film, I refuse to read reviews before making my own choices so all the negative reviews just went over my head.  

A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to watch it, so armed with a glass of wine and an endless supply of junk food, I prepared myself to be disappointed....and then I wasn't.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the greatest film in the world but I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.  I like all the actors that were in it and it provided a fix for my latest Jesse Eisenberg obsession (thanks Now you see me 2!!).  I do have a full review to write up for this so I won't go into too much detail but I thought the story was clever pitching Batman against Superman (even if it was only for a short time) and the introduction of Wonder Woman. Considering I am more Marvel than DC, I really was surprised that I enjoyed it but I think my lack of expectations made it that much better.

Review: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

I couldn't bear to watch this film at the cinema. I really wanted to see it, and I did at the second opportunity, but I can't sit still for 3 hours in a cinema! I can happily say that I've watched it in the comfort of my own home in two sittings.  I really wanted to see this at the cinema but had to be aware that it was NSFD, the D being Dad!!  I usually head to the cinema with the old fart but I have to be careful what we see (a prime example was the opening scene of Dallas Buyers Club - awkward!!!)

So, the film is based around the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who after joining a 'penny-stock' firm decides to start his own company and so begins Stratton Oakmont.  What follows is divorce, prostitutes, drugs, money, drugs, more prostitutes, parties and a trophy wife.

Jenna had warned me about some of the scenes in this film. It is most definitely NSFT, NSFP and a lot of other acronyms which we need to dedicate a blog post of its own to. There are some shocking scenes, but I think what shocked me the most was learning that many of them had been toned down during editing! I dread to think what the originals would have looked like!

I really enjoyed this film, but I have to admit it did lose me in certain places. I get distracted easily and I stopped paying attention at one point. To be fair to the film though, I have absolutely zero knowledge of the stock broker market, nor do I have any interest in learning about it, so it wouldn't be fair of me to call those parts boring.  I have to disagree, I was gripped from beginning to end, I didn't even notice how long the film was until it finished.  The story was great and somehow made you love a character that you should hate, DiCaprio does help with this though as he is just so likeable! As someone who isn't a die hard fan of Scorsese's work (I think Goodfellas is a must see on our to-do list!) I think this might be by favourite of his (at the moment!) and particularly my favourite partnership between him and DiCaprio (I found Shutter Island too dull until the end and lost the plot completely with The Departed)

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate the scene below? It was my favourite scene and had me howling with laughter!  This was also by far my favourite scene, as well as the morning after when he sees the car!! Brilliant!



So all in all for me, an enjoyable, funny film, but far too long! I certainly won't be watching the extended, 4 hour long version. - I will!!!  I'll post an update when I've seen it!

Very funny, very enjoyable would happily watch it again.  Although, I wasn't bothered by the length of the film, it could have been cut shorter and been made more concise in certain places to accommodate the Allie's of the world ;-)
What I really needed was you there to explain all the bits I dozed off to!