Against the Crowd Blog-a-Thon 2018

What is now becoming an annual tradition every August of the year is the Against the Crowd Blog-a-thon hosted by Wendell of Dell on Movies for this year’s edition. Having participated three times already in 2015, 2016, and last year’s edition, I have decided to participate for this year’s event as it’s just so fun to do. Here are the rules:

1. Pick one movie that "everyone" loves (the more iconic, the better). That movie must have a score of 75% or more 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 35% or less 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. Let us know what two movies you intend on writing about in one of the following ways: Comment on this or any ACB 2018 post on this site Tweet me @w_ott3 E-mail me: dellott@yahoo.com

6. Publish your post on any day from Monday August 20 through Sunday August 26, 2018.

A new rule is added as it relates to films that doesn’t have a Rotten Tomatoes score where a film that has a score from the IMDB higher than 7.5 and lower than 4.0 can be selected. Here is what I’m picking:

Anyone who has read my blog know that a lot of the films I review are foreign films as I’m often known for giving foreign films positive reviews. If one was to ask me my opinion on Fernando Trueba’s 1992 film Belle Epoque that introduced Penelope Cruz to international audiences. My response would be that the movie sucked. Why would I dislike a period romantic film from Spain that didn’t just feature Cruz in one of her early roles but also future international stars like Ariadna Gil and Maribel Verdu? Well… It’s one of those films that I saw in my mid-teens as like any other kid. I stay up watching films late at night just to see boobs. The film did have Gil topless but I was disappointed by the lack of nudity from Cruz who was becoming a big star. Years later as I had acquired a grasp of what cinema is, I re-watched it just to see if it was any good as I wasn’t impressed by it the first time.

In that re-watch, I found the whole film to be very boring and too safe for my tastes. It’s really the kind of film that is more of an awards-bait kind of film set in the early 1930s just before the emergence of the Spanish Civil War where a young soldier hides at the home of an old man in the country and falls for his four daughters where he would eventually aim for the youngest played by Cruz. It’s got all of the things expected in an awards-bait kind of film and despite the performances of Cruz, Gil, and Verdu. I don’t remember anything else as I was more appalled by the fact that this was the film that won not just a bunch of Goyas (Spain’s equivalent to the Oscars) over a much better film in Jamon Jamon by Bigas Luna that also starred Cruz and her future husband Javier Bardem. This was the film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film over Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine and Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. Ugh…

For every film that takes itself way too seriously, there has to be a counterbalance and what better counterbalance for that in one of the most ridiculous films of the 2000s. Written, directed, and starring Steve Oedenkerk comes a kung fu spoof film where Oedenkerk puts himself in the 1976 kung fu film Tiger and Crane Fist where it is about a guy who is the Chosen One as he is trying to stop an evil madman who has re-named himself Betty. It’s silly as it involves a CGI cow trying to stop the Chosen One, gopher-chucks, a tongue with a face, a mysterious evil council, and a master who likes to listen to pop and hip-hop as he thinks ‘Nsync is the bomb (they are). Oedenkerk a few years ago announced a sequel though nothing hasn’t emerged as I’m sure myself and many fans of the film are still waiting.

Related: Kung Pow!: Enter the Fist

© thevoid99 2018