Most of mine have been mentioned and fall into the "didn't have much expectation but it was great" category. So I'll take a different track . . .

Oppenheimer. I had really high expectations for it but also thought it was going to be really difficult to pull off. I thought Nolan and the cast killed it.

Would you say it...blew you away?

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Would you say it...blew you away?

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Yep. The cast's performance was . . . explosive.

Several that were mentioned here:

The Matrix
Pirates of the Caribbean
Guardians of the Galaxy

Then I would add:
The Hangover
Shawshank Redemption (I knew nothing going in to the theatre when I saw it and just knew that he was dead until that pebble went through the poster.) Never felt anything quite like that in a movie before that, or ever since.

toucan82 said:

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Kingsman

One of the most fun movies I've seen in a theater

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This reminded me of another one: Knives Out

I went in not knowing anything about and thought it was going to be an action movie, and in my head i had built it up to be a Kingsman type movie. It was not that at all, but it was still fantastic.

This thread delivers as advertised. So far, ALL the movies with enough blue stars to stand out all fit the description.

LOTR Fellowship
Pans Labyrinth

Shawshank for sure.
Tombstone as didn't like westerns.

Secondhand lions is another one.

One of my favs also is greatest game ever played.

KidDoc and I were treating ourselves to a date night back in 1998 and I can't even remember what we showed up to see but it was sold out. We looked through the available choices and settled for a movie called "There's Something About Mary" that we'd never heard of.

Holy ****. I don't think either of us had ever laughed so loudly and frequently in a movie up until that point, especially a movie we had no idea even existed until we got to the cinema.

The Worlds Fastest Indian - a treasure chest of phenomenal acting, story telling and old school problem solving wisdom.

Reptile. Barely knew what it was about and didn't understand the title. Benicio Del Toro was perfectly cast.

Carlo4 said:

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This thread delivers as advertised. So far, ALL the movies with enough blue stars to stand out all fit the description.

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I'll be the contrarian and completely disagree with this. I've seen most of the movies listed and saying "I expected the movie to be good but it was great" doesn't qualify for me. I think the standard has to be more than I expected a 6 or 7 out of 10 but got a 9 or 10 out of 10.

Movies like the latest D&D movie stand out to me because it's a niche genre with previous movie attempts being terrible. This movie came out of nowhere and surprised everyone and pulled in non-D&D fans who liked it.

IOW, my standard is "I expected it to suck, but it was damn good or great". It seems like many on this thread have never experienced that based on the choices given.

The Marksman said:

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YouBet said:

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Carlo4 said:

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This thread delivers as advertised. So far, ALL the movies with enough blue stars to stand out all fit the description.

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I'll be the contrarian and completely disagree with this. I've seen most of the movies listed and saying "I expected the movie to be good but it was great" doesn't qualify for me. I think the standard has to be more than I expected a 6 or 7 out of 10 but got a 9 or 10 out of 10.

Movies like the latest D&D movie stand out to me because it's a niche genre with previous movie attempts being terrible. This movie came out of nowhere and surprised everyone and pulled in non-D&D fans who liked it.

IOW, my standard is "I expected it to suck, but it was damn good or great". It seems like many on this thread have never experienced that based on the choices given.

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OP literally said "what movie did you have high expectations for but was even better than you thought?"

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Point. I'll stand down.

I had it differently in my head when I think about these kinds of threads.

on a documentary standpoint i had watched a rock climibing doc called Valley Uprising about the history of Yosemite rock climbing and heard about a movie coming out about one of the people in that movie called Free Solo

Free Solo was amazing the way it was done and it exceeded by far any expectations that i had. I was glad to see it won best documentary that year for the Oscars

Another one people told me about and i went in with high expectations only to have those blown past was Usual Suspects

Freddy Got Fingered


I went in knowing it would be good... I never would've thought it'd be one of the greatest movies of all time though


Easily top 10, probably top 5

Well, Star Wars changed my perspective of life and the sold out raucous crowd helped wanting to fight injustice but to the other extreme I'll go with Schindler's List and Brokeback Mountain - both critically acclaimed by the time I saw them, so I had some notice but I never experienced such sadness and despair with war and love to the degree they offered.

Back to the Future. The only promo or trailer we had seen was this one:



That's it, knew nothing else about it. We loved it so much we got right back in line for tickets and saw it again back-to-back the same night.

My main one is already covered here (Matrix) but another that was Redboxed randomly and turned out to have the entire living room cracking up consistently was SPY. Never even heard of it before it started so my expectations were literally nonexistent. Some of the things in it are just so off the wall and ridiculous though it just catches you off guard and just have to laugh at the absurdity of it. Jason Statham's character is incredible.

Blue Ribbon winners:

Everybody Wants Some!!! - just a fun movie. brought back a lot of feelings of getting to college and feeling like. really small fish in a big pond. Just a perfect depiction of that time in my life.

What we Do in the Shadows - had no idea what i was getting into and had no clue about Watiti. I just knew i was completely hooked 5 minutes in. one of the most uniquely hilarious movies i've ever seen.

I can still get my wife to crack up when I randomly say, "I took up piano at a late age."

Expecting a good Western, not expecting a masterpiece:

Unforgiven

Warrior - heard it was good. Had no idea a movie about MMA would have be bawling 4 times on a flight. Now one of my all time favorites.

Max Power said:

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John Wick - I can remember the trailer coming out and thinking it would just be a run of the mill action movie. Then the reviews started coming out and it sounded like there was a lot more there. I went to go see it and was totally blown away and told anyone who would listen to go see it. Now John Wick films are basically their own genre within action movies themselves.

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For some reason I totally missed out on John Wick...probably because I think Keanu's acting is "meh". But I finally watched all of them a couple months ago and totally loved them. Was a really good role for him to play. But really these movies are more than just Keanu - the alternate reality or whatever they are in, the trademark lighting, the kill count lol, etc.

So I'll +1 these.