26 Films People Hated Until They Gave It A Rewatch
Film buffs are sharing the top movies they once thought were absolute trash after the first watch, but somehow became all-time faves after a rewatch. It turns out, second chances really make all the difference...
"Honestly, for me, Disney's Encanto (2021). The first time, I put it on as background noise after exhausting my preferred movies during the pandemic. The only thing that really stood out was the song "Surface Pressure." Over a year later, I looked into this song with a YouTube analysis. That's when I found out that Lin Manuel Miranda was involved with all the songs and lyrics. I decided to watch again, and really watch again. I find it's an incredible exploration of generational pain, and the pain hidden in perfectionism. It moves me a lot, and I watch it at least once every four months for an emotional release."
"It was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The first time, I thought it was just a quirky breakup movie with weird editing. Years later, I rewatched it and every line, every silence seems very good. Best portrayal of how deeply we carry the people we love, even when we try not to."
"A common answer around here and I agree with it is The Big Lebowski. I think a lot of people have it in their head that it's going to be a more straight up comedy the first time. Mind you it's very funny, often hilariously, but it's not like a more typical comedy. Then going back a second time knowing what type of movie it actually is already, you're able to appreciate it."
"2001: A Space Odyssey. When I saw it as a teenager, I was bored to death. When I saw it ten years later, I was blown away by how great it is. It's one of my top three favorite movies now."
"Love Actually. First time, I wanted more of some characters and less of others. I got peeved by all the jumping around. Now, I like all the stories, and watch it at least once a year."
"Taxi Driver. My dad had hyped it up to me for a while but I didn't like it. Then I watched it again a few years later and realized how powerful it's depiction of loneliness is. I fell in love with the soundtrack, the atmosphere, and the writing. I have no idea what I was thinking the first time I watched it. I must have been in a bad mood. It's now one of my favourite films."
"Burn After Reading! I don't know why, but the first time I watched it, I was expecting more of a spy thriller sort of movie. I ended up really hating it, feeling like the whole thing was a massive waste of time. A friend of mine convinced me to give it a second chance years later, and it's become one of my favourite movies ever since. I still crack up when I think about the ending scene, 'You don't know why he wants to go to Venezuela?'"
"Starship Troopers. I was 16 when that came out and all the satire flew right over my head. I just wanted a 'rah-rah space marines kill the bad guys' action movie. As that, I felt it was mediocre. I revisited it older and actually understood it's a masterpiece."
"Snatch. I watched it stoned the first time and I couldn't understand their accents, let alone follow the story. All I remembered was the amazing soundtrack. I watched it sober with subtitles on a year later and I loved it."
"The Terminal. When it came out, I must have been about 12. I thought it was just a movie about a silly foreign man stuck in a terminal and he gets into silly hijinks. I rewatched it recently and it's a gem. It's got an amazing script. Tons of funny and hard-hitting lines. Tons of set ups and payoffs."
"My pick would be Blade Runner: The Final Cut. The first two times I watched it, I thought it was boring, motivationless, and not expressive enough for me to get invested. Then on the third watch, something clicked, and now I absolutely love it."
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I didn't get it when it first came out when I was 19. I watched it again at 34 and it's a beautiful meditation on the absurdity of life, missed chances, and the short time we have together. It's Fincher's most romantic and sentimental film."
"No Country for Old Men. It's deconstructive and kind of tricks the viewer into thinking things will turn out in a cliché way, and then they don't. I had to rewatch in order to see things from a different POV because my expectations clouded my understanding of what was going on. The point of the film isn't that society today is getting worse. It's that everyone eventually gets old and can't handle the ever-changing world anymore. The characters of Brolin/Harrelson refuse to accept that reality and are destroyed, while Jones' character realizes he is in over his head, backs down, and lives."
"RoboCop 1987. I thought it was stupid, over acted, and the stop motion was silly. But then I 'got' the inner conflict of Murphy, how good the acting is, and the satire of corporate America. Now I'm a huge lifelong fan. I even pick up memorabilia now and again. I'm that sad."
"There Will Be Blood! Lost me in the beginning with no dialogue, I got uninterested quick! Watched it a few weeks later, and bam! What a great movie!"
"Napoleon Dynamite. Everybody raved about it and after my first viewing, I just thought it was the dumbest movie I have ever seen. A month or two later, I saw it again. What possessed me to watch it again, I don't remember, but it hit different at that time and I really enjoyed it. 'Your mom goes to college' is still a line I use whenever I can. Unfortunately as the years go by, it just isn't recognized as much as it once was."
"Jackie Brown. I went to watch it opening weekend, and I hated it because it wasn't Pulp Fiction...now I adore the movie and say it is underrated. Plus, the soundtrack is a BANGER."
"Zoolander. I watched it in high school and thought it was dumb. I watched it a few years later, and all the jokes just finally hit and it was hilarious. Not sure I've ever had my opinion of a movie's humour flip so drastically from 'it was lame' to 'it's GOATed.'"
"Last Action Hero. As a kid, Arnold was the guy I wanted to look like growing up. But this movie is an interesting deconstruction of the super cop trope and how much that shit just wouldn't work in real life. 'In this world, Jack, the bad guys can win!' And they do. A lot."
"Office Space. I was like 16 when I first watched it. I'd never worked a soul-destroying office job. It was mildly funny but I didn't get it. I didn't know. Now I know. Now I know what would drive someone to want to beat the shit out of a printer."
"The Other Guys. I saw it in theatres and I guess I just wasn't in the right head space. Maybe too high, maybe not high enough, but I remember walking out feeling disappointed. Now on the other hand, every single time I've watched it since, I think it's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Michael Keaton alone is amazing. The running jokes of hot girls loving Will and him refusing to accept he was a pimp. And the guys accepting and loving tickets to Broadway shows as bribes. These are both such top tier bits!!!!!!"
"Dark City. I saw it in the theatre, and it didn't grab me for some reason. A couple of years later, I randomly rented the VHS, forgetting I had seen it. I ended up loving it so much, I immediately watched it a second time. On my way back home from returning the tape, I stopped at Circuit City to buy a DVD player and that movie in DVD."
"The Usual Suspects. The ending (first viewing), provided a whole new layer of appreciation when I watched it again."
"Brokeback Mountain. I was a stupid teenager the first time I saw it and thought it was boring. I saw it again in my early 30s and cried my eyes out. I still can't believe it didn't win the best picture Oscar the year it was nominated. That movie is a masterpiece."
"Moulin Rouge. I didn't understand, is it a period piece? Why are they singing modern music? The fu** is happening? Are we all just pretending he isn't shuffling around on his knees? That's the sexiest tango I've ever seen and tango is literally dancing sex! Wait did she just die? When I saw it a second time it all clicked. I love that movie. It's funny, tragic, emotional, and beautiful. Also the fact that Clone Wars' Obi got a 'girlfriend' named Satine because of this movie is crazy."
Have you hate-watched any of these back in the day? Maybe it's time to give them another shot — you might be surprised!
If you've ever rewatched a movie you HATED the first time, and ended up LOVING it after, we want to hear about it! Drop it in the comments, or share it anonymously in the form below!
And if you like what you see, take a look at BuzzFeed Canada's Instagram and TikTok socials!
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
12 minutes ago
- New York Times
Justin Bieber Awakens His Old Soul
In 2007, back when YouTube was in its infancy and Justin Bieber was not far beyond his, he and his mother posted to the platform a series of videos of him singing covers. Mostly, he gave preternaturally tender versions of R&B hits — Ne-Yo's 'So Sick,' Brian McKnight's 'Back at One,' Aretha Franklin's 'Respect' (!) and more. (There is also 40 seconds of 'Justin Bieber playing the djembe' for the curious.) All of these videos remain on Bieber's YouTube channel and the spirit captured in them has remained in his music, even if at times it has appeared to be shoved into the back seat and told to remain quiet while the adults were talking. By the dawn of the 2010s, he was a pop phenom, and a couple of years after that, he was the most successful male pop star of his generation. The more successful he became, though, the more his connection to R&B was pared back. 'Journals,' his 2013 EP of lo-fi soul, became a connoisseur's favorite, but didn't reorient his trip to the pop stratosphere. On his biggest hits — especially the 2015 pair 'Where Are Ü Now' and 'What Do You Mean?' — his voice, and how it was filtered, was more eau de toilette than eau de parfum. A decade has passed since then, and Bieber has spent long stretches of that time in a kind of public retreat. He's had big hits, and he's toured big rooms, and he's been an object of tabloid scrutiny and public speculation about his mental health; largely, he's been a superstar seeking a shadow. 'Swag,' Bieber's seventh studio album, which was released with almost no advance notice last week, is a winning example of an older artist — though, at just 31, it feels lightly ludicrous to refer to Bieber this way — being willing to toss much of the old playbook away, or at least obscure it really well. It is an album of spacey, sometimes slithery soul music — some of it highly digitally manipulated, some of it refreshingly acoustic — that feels like a reversion to Bieber's core passions refracted through the lens of a performer who has seen too much. The low-pressure environment of this album is tactile — Bieber sings in a variety of modes, he collaborates with unexpected peers, he has standard-length songs and also snippets and skits. But when Bieber finds common ground between his pop training and progressive ear, magic happens. 'Daisies,' a collaboration with the guitar-pop radical is urgent and approachably provocative. 'All I Can Take,' with its hard-slap drums and sparking synths, the quiet storm revival 'Go Baby' and the reverent and patient 'Sweet Spot' all nod to the work that Maurice Starr and later Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis did with the crucial 1980s R&B boy band New Edition. On the convincing and elegantly constructed 'Yukon,' Bieber's voice is heavily manipulated, but not in the dehumanizing way it once was; here he becomes a larger-than-life character of flirtatious excess. 'I know you like to go slow, but we could go faster / Tell me the password,' he sings with a wink, in a cadence that could just as easily have come from Drake. There is gospel hiding in Bieber's R&B — he attempts a literal pass at it on 'Glory Voice Memo,' a brief interlude that features his most ambitious singing ('I've been used, and I've been beaten down / I been let down and stalled out'). And the album closes with a benediction from Marvin Winans, of gospel's Winans clan, singing 'Forgiveness.' But the real belief on this album is in commitment. Bieber has been married to his wife, Hailey, since 2018 and became a father last year. He has duty on his mind, though he sings about it as if it were a sensual act. On 'Go Baby,' he references Hailey's success in the cosmetics business: 'That's my baby, she's iconic / iPhone case, lip gloss on it.' On 'Walking Away,' he navigates a relationship experiencing some hiccups: 'We've been testing our patience / I think we better off if we just take a breath / And remember what grace is.' That sentiment recurs on the excellent, Prince-esque 'Devotion,' one of the album's highlights. That song features the soul experimentalist Dijon (a longtime collaborator), who sings as well as sharing writing and production credits. It includes some of Bieber's simplest and most affecting singing, celebrating the virtues of love's tiniest gestures: 'I'd rather take the long way home / So we can laugh and sing a couple more songs.' (Much of the production and writing on 'Swag' falls to Carter Lang, who has worked extensively with SZA, and Eddie Benjamin.) A handful of rappers are invited to the party, though not all are quite sure how to contort themselves to handle these dreamy beats. (Though to be fair, none have ever rapped over Clams Casino instrumentals.) Gunna sounds a bit over-ethereal on 'Way It Is,' and Sexyy Red sounds more patient in her erotic exultations than usual on 'Sweet Spot.' Only Lil B, in chant mode on 'Dadz Love,' and Cash Cobain, already a pop-minded abstract sensualist, on the album's title track, truly stick the landing. Most of the sturdiest music on 'Swag' is on the first half; the second half is a scattershot amalgam mostly consisting of vocal demos with lyrics that feel incomplete, or at least understudied, and humor skits about Bieber's relationship to Black culture, featuring the comedian Druski. Those three interludes are an attempt at explaining something about how Bieber navigates the world, or perhaps how the world navigates Bieber. He presents himself as an object of study and a sponge of perception, a surprisingly passive approach to life for a person of his fame level. (At least he didn't sample a Martin Luther King Jr. speech, as he did on his 2021 album 'Justice.') Which isn't to say that this music is an apology. If anything, it betrays a sly confidence that Bieber has often displayed in real life, but not always on record. It's as if he's unearthed something old and true about himself, and is thrilled to be playing with it again. Even the album's name, 'Swag,' reverts to an early-2010s iteration of innocence that predated his mega-celebrity. It's a callback to the nonsensical exultations of Lil B and Tyler, the Creator, who were committing upheaval in hip-hop's underground at the same moment that Bieber was being ever more firmly slotted into pop superstardom. (It is also a vivid demonstration of the diminishing rate of nostalgia in action.) Is it too late to go back? Never say never. Justin Bieber'Swag'(Def Jam)
Time Magazine
an hour ago
- Time Magazine
Tefi Pessoa: TIME100 Creators 2025
Tefi Pessoa is on Drew Barrymore's couch. She's making TikToks with Barack Obama. She's on the red carpet, interviewing Sarah Jessica Parker. She's doling out wisdom in her new advice column for the Cut , and soon she'll be yapping on her first podcast, Tefi Talks . Known online as @hellotefi, Estefanía Vanegas Pessoa is the internet's big sister—a title that's been a long time coming. In 2020, after her YouTube talk show, Tefi , was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brazilian and Colombian American creator began posting unused clips—ranging from analyses of Robert Pattinson's 'golden ratio' to odes to pubic hair—on TikTok. 'Being online has helped heal something in me where I thought I had to ask permission or have certain accolades,' says Pessoa, 34, who also uses her platform to react to news events. Now, with 1.9 million followers on TikTok and 400,000 on Instagram, she says she still thinks of a post that gets more than 11 likes as a success—a nod to Instagram's simpler early days. For Pessoa, it's not about the numbers; it's about taking up space and giving others the freedom to do the same.
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
‘Toy Story' is returning to theaters this year. Here's when and why.
Pixar and Disney are welcoming fans back to Andy's room as "Toy Story" is returning to movie theaters soon. Pixar, an animation studio owned by Disney, announced the film's theatrical return in an X post on Thursday, July 17. "Mark your calendars! Disney & Pixar's Toy Story returns to the BIG SCREEN September 12," the X post reads. Originally released in theaters on Nov. 22, 1995, the first-ever fully computer-animated feature film will return to theaters to celebrate its 30th anniversary, according to Pixar. What is 'Toy Story' about? "Toy Story" follows a group of toys belonging to Andy Davis. When Andy is away from his toys, they come alive, including the film's central characters, Buzz Lightyear( Tim Allen) and Woody (Tom Hanks). Woody, who is a cowboy doll, is "profoundly jealous" when Buzz Lightyear, a spaceman action figure, "supplants him as the top toy in (Andy's) bedroom," IMDB's synopsis for the film reads. The two toys have to eventually "put aside their differences" once they are separated from Andy in the movie. Directed by John Lasseter, "Toy Story" became one of the highest-grossing films of 1995. According to a June 2022 newsletter from the Oscars, when the movie was released, "animation was changed forever." "The genre, known for transporting audiences to new worlds, was up until that point mostly hand-drawn, using techniques made popular by Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros," the newsletter says. "But when Disney joined forces with Pixar — a then-up-and-coming computer animation studio chaired by Steve Jobs — for 'Toy Story,' the first computer-animated feature film was born, and a new world of film was unlocked." More news: Disneyland turns 70: See photos of the magic from then to now 'Toy Story' was just the beginning "Toy Story" was not a one-off, as several sequels came after the film's initial release, including "Toy Story 2," "Toy Story 3," "Toy Story 4," and the upcoming "Toy Story 5," which is expected to hit theaters in 2026. "Buzz, Woody, Jessie are challenged after being introduced to what kids are obsessed with today: electronics," IMDB's synopsis for "Toy Story 5" reads. What inspired 'Toy Story'? According to the Academy Awards' newsletter, Lasseter's Oscar-winning short film "Tin Toy" inspired the then-new Disney-Pixar partnership to "explore a movie from a small toy's perspective." While the script for "Toy Story" underwent rewrites, computer scientists were working on building the software that would eventually make computer animation possible. "We were not filmmakers at the time," she recalled. "We did not understand film language. We were simply doing whatever we were told to get graphic images on the screen by programming as quickly as we could to get the pictures made… and we were learning along the way.' "Toy Story" paved the way for animated films, even leading to the Academy Awards creating an Oscar category for Best Animated Feature. Its success also led to the creation of Toy Story Land, a themed area at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. "It was a movie. It was lit, it was dimensional, we had cameras moving around through things. We had Steadicam kind of shots, all that stuff, and it felt like a movie," Lasseter said of the film, per the newsletter. "Yet, they were cartoony, and they were moving like cartoons, and yet I could touch them. They were plastic. It was all that uniqueness — understanding the limitations of what the medium was at that time, and creating the characters and the storytelling." Watch 'Toy Story' trailer Jonathan Limehouse covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at JLimehouse@
