Who knew that Channing Tatum was in so many awesome films?
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00:00 Sometimes, movies get a bad reputation. Even if you haven't seen them, you know there's
00:04 some that just blow. The Wicker Man remake is embarrassing, The Godfather Part 3 sucks,
00:10 and Batman and Robin ruins cinema, to name but a few. However, for as fun as it is to
00:15 dunk on bad movies, not all of them deserve the reputations they've garnered.
00:19 So with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 terrible films that are actually
00:24 awesome.
00:25 10. White House Down Okay, here's the pitch. It's die hard,
00:29 but in the White House, with Channing Tatum taking out the villains that are threatening
00:33 his daughter. Now, here's the problem with this movie. White House Down opened three
00:39 months after Olympus Has Fallen, which pretty much told the same story, only with more cliches
00:45 and worse CGI. Lack of originality aside, White House Down has all the big-books action
00:50 sequences that you'd expect from this sort of thing, and it's sheer joy as no-think
00:55 escapism leaves Olympus Has Fallen choking on its dust. Put simply, if you want to see
01:00 a car smash through the wall of the Oval Office and President Jamie Foxx take on his enemies
01:05 with a rocket launcher, well, you need to see this movie. Further fun is provided by
01:09 a car chase on the White House lawn with helicopter gunships and machine guns and whatnot, and
01:14 if you still need convincing about the film's merits, just try sitting through a double
01:19 bill of Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen back to back. Yeah, I know there's
01:24 more than those two movies, but even I wouldn't want to put you through three of them.
01:28 9. Spider-Man 3 Okay, here we go. Spider-Man 3 owns. And
01:33 I'm not just saying that because there's currently a Sam Raimi-verse love-in since
01:37 Nowhere Home came out. No, Spider-Man 3 has owned since 2007. Now let's get some things
01:43 out of the way. Is it as good as the first two instalments that preceded it? No. Does
01:48 it have its problems? Absolutely. Is it a bad movie though? Hell no it isn't. Yes,
01:54 the film is overstuffed, the Uncle Ben retcon sucks and Venom is done dirty, but there's
01:58 so much to love surrounding those pitfalls. Raimi's movies always put the focus first
02:03 and foremost on the interpersonal drama of the characters, and that shines through in
02:07 this sequel still. The breakup of Peter and Mary Jane's relationship is handled really
02:12 well, as is Peter's spiral caused by his own arrogance. Also, it's just really, really
02:18 funny. Peter's black suit antics are funny, the dancing in the street is funny, Bruce
02:23 Campbell's over-eager waiter is really, really funny. Only the hand of the action
02:29 is well handled with Raimi's passion still being there for that. The final fight in particular
02:33 is gnarly as hell and directed with such gusto. With all of this in mind, for this to be lumped
02:39 in with the worst superhero films of all time is an absolute crime.
02:45 Legion casts Paul Bettany as a machine gun wielding archangel who arrives at a truck
02:49 stop in the Mojave Desert to protect Waitress Charlie, who's about to give birth to the
02:54 future saviour of mankind. The forces of evil are also present and manifest themselves as
02:59 potty mouthed old ladies who can spider walk across ceilings or zombies that can only be
03:03 stopped by heavy artillery. It sounds awesome, right? Like a real slam bang supernatural
03:09 thriller that just wants to give you a good time. Well, it absolutely is. Though not quite
03:14 as good as Constantine which released in the same era, that's another movie that gets
03:17 labelled as terrible by the way that's also Kenny Good so you can have that one as an
03:21 extra. Legion though is dumb fun, and not to be one of those Noel Gallagher types who
03:26 screams that they don't make 'em how they used to, but it's even better in hindsight
03:30 knowing that a movie like this probably would never get a budget like this now. Plus, it's
03:35 simply difficult to dislike a movie where Paul Bettany leads Tyrese Gibson and Dennis
03:39 Quaid in a heavily armed assault against zombies dressed as ice cream vendors.
03:46 All a slasher movie really asks is that you get on its wavelength to enjoy it for what
03:50 it is. Although given alcohol's mysterious ability to lower expectations, being good
03:55 and loaded for these probably doesn't hurt either. Backed by WWE as a vehicle for teacher
04:00 turned grappler Kane, real name Glenn Jacobs, See No Evil casts the 6'10" behemoth as
04:06 Jacob Goodnight, one of those unstoppable killing machines with mummy issues. He just
04:11 so happens to be holed up in the Blackwell Hotel, when a bunch of people are sent there
04:15 on a cleaning assignment. But if you think this is a regular hotel without secret passageways
04:20 and one-way glass, well you're sadly mistaken.
04:23 Is it going to completely blow your mind? Absolutely not. Is it going to fill the void
04:27 in your life when it gets to 2am and you're looking for something to do? Well, it might
04:31 do just that.
04:34 When Transporter 3 arrived in cinemas, the response was expectedly harsh. In fact, The
04:39 Hollywood Reporter called it "a nonsensical, choppily edited bore". But if you need reassuring
04:44 as to just how awesome this movie is, just watch the Transporter refueled instead. Put
04:49 simply, when you combine Corey Young's fight choreography with Jason Statham's general
04:54 badass charisma, you really unto something special. And this sequel has a shot at being
04:58 the most demented entry in the franchise to boot. Wearing a bracelet that will explode
05:03 if he gets more than 75 feet away from his car, Statham's character has to travel across
05:07 Europe to deliver a package, and in the process gets involved in the usual martial arts standoffs
05:12 and car chases. The standout is the climactic sequence shot in real time without models
05:17 and CGI, where Statham drives his car onto a moving train in order to catch villain Robert
05:22 Knepper. Both actors seem to be having a whale of a time, relishing playing off each other
05:26 and you'll have fun watching them to boot.
05:31 If there's one type of film that Hollywood does well, it's the straight-to-video action
05:34 movie writ large. Take a Z-grade script, give it a studio budget and hey presto, you've
05:40 got yourself a cult classic in the making. With Pamela Anderson in the lead, Barb Wire
05:45 unfathomably rips off the plot of Casablanca, with Pam in the Humphrey Bogart role as the
05:50 nightclub owner who attempts to help an old flame escape the country. I mean, I could
05:54 probably just stop right there, right? That's surely enough of a pull. Well, if it's not,
05:59 though it was panned on release, the flick did have some supporters. Hell, Roger Ebert
06:04 even conceded that the movie quote "has a high energy level and a sense of deranged
06:08 fun". And deranged fun is exactly what it is. Taking its visual cues from previous comic
06:14 book adaptations like The Crow, Barb Wire knows it's B-grade material and never attempts
06:19 to take itself too seriously. It promises trash and oh boy does it deliver trash. And
06:24 hey, what's not to like about that?
06:29 Returning to the director's chair for the first time since the original, Paul W.S. Anderson
06:33 opens Resident Evil Afterlife with one of the most outrageous action scenes in the series.
06:38 With hundreds of clones of Hero Alice attacking Umbrella HQ before bad guy Albert Wesker detonates
06:44 a bomb that destroys everything in sight. It might be the peak of the whole thing, but
06:49 the rest of the film isn't bad either. In fact, there's more madness in store along
06:53 the way, including mind control devices, a reanimated Wesker with glowing red eyes who's
06:58 been eating test subjects and an encounter with a giant axe-wielding monster. With Anderson
07:03 at the helm, the action has more snap to it than its predecessors and he lets nothing
07:07 get in the way of giving the audience a good time. And that's ultimately what all of
07:11 these movies are, a good time. Even as a hardcore fan of the games myself, I have to appreciate
07:17 just how much Anderson commits to doing his own thing. Even if his own thing was pretty
07:22 insane.
07:23 For better or worse, the Wachowskis have always made movies for themselves. Though they received
07:29 huge mainstream success with The Matrix, the sisters have since used that as a jumping
07:33 off point to create huge blockbusters with distinct identities. And that exact element
07:38 has allowed Speed Racer, one of their most criticised projects, to shine so many years
07:43 later. See, the Wachowskis have always worn their anime influence on their sleeves, and
07:48 that made them the perfect candidates for this adaptation. The phrase "it's like
07:52 a comic book movie come to life" always gets thrown around willy nilly these days,
07:56 but here that assessment is true. Speed Racer has such a sense of style, brightness and
08:01 levity that's sadly marked it out as being too goofy in an era where the Dark Knight
08:06 was just about to change blockbusters forever. Speed Racer is more accessible than ever in
08:11 the 2020s, and it absolutely is worth a look.
08:18 So many of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies have been trashed over the years, but the
08:22 one that's universally hated is the René Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey starring
08:26 fourth movie. This thing has been criticised to death, to the point where I went into it
08:32 with dangerously low expectations. Which is why it was such a surprise to realise that
08:37 this movie is actually kinda awesome. In a way it's a knowing retread of the original,
08:42 pitching in-universe that the Texas Chainsaw story, you know, a family terrorising a young
08:46 woman in their house, is some kind of cyclical ritual that plays out constantly. It's a
08:52 weird meta-angle that eventually goes off the rails towards the end, implying that shady
08:56 supernatural businessmen have been controlling the family the whole time.
09:00 But before we get there, we do get to enjoy one of Matthew McConaughey's best performances,
09:05 and I'm deadly serious when I say that. He is absolutely committed to making this
09:09 character as nasty and brutish as he can. He totally goes for it, and it works, creating
09:15 a genuinely threatening aura and making for the franchise's best villain outside of
09:20 Leatherface.
09:21 It obviously has issues, it is panned for a reason, but there is a surprising amount
09:25 to like in here, especially considering just how safe the other instalments in this series
09:30 played it.
09:31 Number 1 - Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift
09:34 The Fast & Furious franchise is now one of the biggest in cinema history, but for a while
09:38 it looked like it was dead in the water before it really even had a chance to shine. After
09:43 two middling instalments, the series continued with Tokyo Drift, a spin-off that lacked any
09:48 of the original stars. One of the lowest rated flicks in the whole franchise, this effort
09:52 is often written off as the one movie that doesn't belong. The thing is though, Tokyo
09:56 Drift, in one sense, is actually the movie that saved the franchise, not nearly ended
10:01 it. And that's because it was directed by none other than Justin Lin.
10:05 Lin, as you may know, is instrumental to the success of the franchise in the long term,
10:10 being the man who fully clicked with the material and directed 3, 4, 5 and 6, and is set to
10:15 return for the upcoming two-part finale. He brought this franchise back from the brink,
10:20 and his talents are entirely on show in this maligned third flick. Seriously, if you're
10:24 a fan of these movies, Tokyo Drift shouldn't be ignored. Not only do we get so much of
10:29 a hand, but if you like 4, 5 and 6, well, this is almost on the exact same wavelength.
10:35 So that's our list. I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
10:38 What do you think about these movies? And am I talking just complete gibberish? Have
10:42 I lost my mind? I don't know, let me know. And while you're down there as well, can
10:46 you please give us a like, share, subscribe and head over to WokCulture.com for more lists
10:49 and news like this every single day. Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks
10:53 Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.