You Either Love Them or Hate Them: 15 Films That Divided Critics

They all have important names among their directors (James Cameron, Riddley Scott, J.J. Abrams, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Bay) as well as star-studded casts: Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Mark Wahlberg, Benicio del Toro, Oscar Isaac, Samuel L. Jackson, João Aquin Phoenix, Jessica Chastain. And yet they received devastating criticism. But not only that: they also received excessive praise.

So? Are they bad or are they good?

Many films in the history of cinema have had a polarizing effect on critics, something that was sometimes also reflected in the impact they had on the public. This list includes 15 essentials from the controversial list, which are currently available for streaming. Will you love them or hate them?

La pasión de Cristo (The Passion of the Christ) - Star+

Conductor: Mel Gibson. With Jim Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Maia Morgenstern

Following the success of the award-winning Braveheart, Gibson tackled a religious epic in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew to count the final 12 hours in Jesus' life, the day of his crucifixion in Jerusalem. Taking literally the etymology of the word passion, which is suffering and pain, this film of extreme violence begins with the scourging of this rebellious and socially dangerous figure for both Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, and Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest.

It then continues with the crowning of thorns, the journey forced to carry the cross to Calvary, crucifixion and death, all with abundant lashes, beatings, skinning, blood and broken bones. Less inspired by the Gospels than in the 14 Stations of the Cross, the film cost about $30 million and grossed $612 million at the global box office.

He loved her rogerebert.com: “Is the movie good or great? I imagine that each person's reaction (visceral, theological, artistic) will be different. I was touched by the depth of feelings, the skill of the actors and the technicians (...) It's a film about an idea. The idea that it is necessary to fully understand passion if Christianity makes any sense. Gibson has conveyed his idea with absolute urgency.”

Newsweek hated her: “With unabated savagery, Passion sounds like the Gospel according to the Marquis de Sade. It is sadism, not alleged anti-Semitism, that attracts the most attention. (Of course, I don't think Gibson is anti-Semitic, but those inclined to intolerance will find fuel for their fire here.) The incessant gore is counterproductive. (...) I felt abused by a filmmaker determined to punish the public for who knows what sins”.

21 grams - HBO Max

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu. With Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts

Three narratives are intertwined in this story: that of a very sick mathematician, that of a woman torn apart by mourning who hides a past, and that of an ex-convict turned to religion. The characters are united by a horrific car accident. The title arises from the belief that at the time of death people's bodies lose 21 grams, weight that would supposedly correspond to that of the soul.

The Guardian loved her: “As in the films by Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino or Gus Van Sant, we see scenes out of order, we see the same scenes from different angles, moments and images are incorporated so that they rhyme visually with each other. 21 grams is very unique: a fluid, stimulating and virtuous cinema”.

The New Yorker hated her: “It's the kind of bad movie that makes a critic feel horrible. It has been done with great sincerity and yet, however passionate and moving in part, it is also the failure of arrogance. The saddest thing is that [the screenwriter] Arriaga and González Iñárritu got so caught up in the tragic and deep emotions that they wanted to express that they never wondered if the film worked for the audience even at the simplest level.”

¡Madre! (Mother!) - Netflix, Movistar Play

Director: Darren Aronofsky. Con Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer

On a plain, with a beautiful forest nearby, a couple have settled in a mansion that once suffered a fire. She — neither of them has a name — is dedicated to restoring it with dedication and talent; he, a famous poet, struggles with the difficulties of writing the masterpiece that everyone expects.

One night someone knocks on the door. The visitor is an admirer of the poet, as is his wife, who does not hide his curiosity or respect the limits of privacy in someone else's house. Suddenly the chaos they cause fuels the writer's creativity—or ego—at the expense of the wife, who descends into the spiral of sacrifice that happens when someone wants everything, and more, from another.

Indiewire loved her: “[The film] is unfolding from a deadly, tense and claustrophobic first hour, and it becomes one of the best sustained escalations of madness (...) that has ever burned a movie screen. A vehement religious allegory, a piece of horror with a haunted house, a psychological journey so extreme that it should carry a health warning.”

Observer hated her: “An exercise in torture and hysteria so exaggerated that I didn't know whether to scream or laugh out loud. By stealing ideas from Polanski, Fellini and Kubrick, [Aronofsky] has built an absurd Freudian nightmare that is more a wet dream than a bad dream, with the subtlety of a chainsaw.”

Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens (Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens) - Disney+

Director: J.J. Abrams. Con: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac

The story begins when General Leia Organa asks the best pilot in the Galaxy and Resistance to find her brother Luke Skywalker, lost years ago. It is the seventh installment of the Star Wars saga (whether you consider the chronology of the story or the release dates) and a third trilogy begins.

It is the first film in the series that Disney made after buying it from Lucasfilm in 2012, marking the retirement of George Lucas, who only attended as a creative consultant.

The New York Times loved her: “The big news is — spoiler alert — that it's good. (...) It perfectly balances the most beloved favorites — Harrison Ford, ladies and gentlemen — and new cinematic wonders. (...) It has as always toy devices and creatures, but also men and women attractive because of their imperfection, whose mistakes and victories, decency and nonsense will remind you that a pop mythology like Star Wars needs more than old gods to sustain itself”.

The Chicago Reader hated her: “The franchise that destroyed American cinema has returned, with author and fan J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III) in charge of the reins left by the creator of the saga, George Lucas. (...) Like other installments, it is less a film than an exercise to massage a youth-minded audience who want an experience that is new and familiar at the same time.”

The Eight Most Hated (The Hateful Eight) - HBO Max

Director: Quentin Tarantino. Con Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen

The story takes place shortly after the Civil War. In a storm in the icy fields of Wyoming, a bounty hunter travels to deliver a fugitive to justice in Red Rock. Along the way they find another bounty hunter and a man claiming to be the new sheriff of Red Rock.

The weather forces them to take refuge in a hostel, where they are not received by the owner — who doesn't appear anywhere — but by a man who claims to take care of the place until she returns. A Confederate general, a cowboy and the Red Rock executioner are also there. A bloodstain will unleash more trouble than the harshness of winter.

He loved her Variety: “A racy cop who owes both Agatha Christie and Anthony Mann. Although Tarantino plays with many of the classic themes of the lawless land genre, it is debatable whether this mystery work with long, delicious dialogue, qualifies as a western. It could be considered rather as a continuation of the north-south confrontation (...) A well-deserved and hateful eighth entry in one of the most distinctive films in American cinema”.

The BBC hated it: “I'm not the only one who thinks it's Tarantino's worst film: a slow fiasco, lacking imagination, full of poison but without much intelligence. (...) The film even reveals its plot turn ahead of time (Russell's character realizes it) and as the last act Tarantino has only to increase gore, as if that could somehow give substance to his work”.

The Blair Witch Project (The Blair Witch Project) - Prime Video

Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. Featuring: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard

This mockumentary is a horror story that goes far beyond the standards of the genre: it shows little and generates fear precisely because of that, leaving everything in the imagination of the public.

With the real names of the protagonists to give it more realism, it tells the story of three amateur documentarians (the director, Heather; the cameraman, Josh; the sound manager, Mike) who go into a forest to find a local legend, the Blair Witch. After a year without them returning, you will find the footage they shot. The film reconstructs, based on these images, what could have happened on the young people's journey to horror.

He loved her The New York Times: “An ingenious example of how to make something out of nothing. Nothing but imagination, and a strategy so creative that it should elevate its filmmakers to the status of poster boys in film schools around the world.”

The Los Angeles Times hated her: “The film is a smart and entertaining publicity stunt, nothing more and nothing less.”

Lost in Translation - Paramount+

Director: Sofia Coppola. With Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi

A Hollywood actor on his way to old age, increasingly less required, is in Japan to film a whisky ad and do some interviews, and he hardly changes cold words with his wife during calls. The wife of a successful photographer spends time at the Tokyo hotel not knowing what to do, while he has the day busy end to end. When these characters cross paths at the bar, they start talking. Each one feels that the other has the same loneliness and tenderness, and thus they open an existential parenthesis that comforts them.

He loved her Evening Standard: “The vision of Bill Murray singing 'More Than This', by Roxy Music, in a karaoke bar will accompany me for a long time. That moment in the film strikes a perfect balance between humor and sadness, a capital balance that characterizes it (...) Tensions surround the failure of communication, bewilderment, exhaustion and unfulfilled passion. And from this seemingly scarce material, Coppola has created what is probably one of the films of the year. (...) A wonderful, exquisite film”.

MTV hated her: “Racism often lacks originality, tragically and absurdly. That is the main conclusion of having seen Lost in Translation [almost 20 years after its release]. I told at least five jokes about using the L instead of the R (...) According to the film, Japanese sexuality is 'rare'. Japanese television is 'weird'. Japanese food is good, but Japanese tastes are 'rare'. (...) Coppola's camera also runs through the most banal images of 'the Japanese' possible: geisha, kimonos, Buddhist temples, neon-filled cityscapes, pachinko halls, Mount Fuji, floral arrangements.”

Sangre, sudor y gloria (Pain & Gain) - Netflix

Director: Michael Bay. Con Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie

It's Miami, it's the beginning of the nineties and a bodybuilder wonders why he can't live the American dream in a big way. With the help of two other colleagues, they begin a series of kidnappings that are complicated by torture and murder, perhaps because their criminal plans could have benefited from more brains and less muscle. The story is based on the real case of Daniel Lugo, manager of the Sun Gym gym.

New York loved her: “A Bay like we've never seen before, looking for a tour de force style: montage plus narration in the tradition of Scorsese's Good Boys and Danny Boyle films like Trainspotting. (...) As the film goes from simple satire to a mixture of Three Stooges style antics with bloody violence, you can't believe what you're seeing and you know that, on some level, the pleasure you feel is wrong.”

Film Comment hated her: “Bay has been forging her own brand of macho porn for years, and Pain & Gain is the latest show. This is another incarnation of Michael Bay's Male Fantasies Camp: a band of brothers (pure American), positioned as fearless role models for impressionable young people. These are serious guys with the strength and recklessness necessary to destroy the bad guys (usually not Americans).”

El consejero (The Counselor) - Star+

Officer (s): Ridley Scott. With Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt

A successful lawyer from Texas, who runs a Bentley and is about to get married, seems to have it all, but, in reality, his finances aren't what it seems. He thus engages in a complex plot of drug trafficking with a dark middleman, the owner of a night club and his psychopathic girlfriend. Something for which he was not prepared by law, and that now puts his life and that of his fiancée at risk.

He loved her Evening Standard: “According to rumors, it was going to be a star-studded ruin. It's a long way from that and deserves to be seen. But it is the product of the clash of two very different sensibilities, that of its screenwriter, Cormac McCarthy, and that of its director, Ridley Scott. [The filmmaker] masterfully directs the action sequences, and a speechless shooting and kidnapping are among the best scenes in the film.”

Variety hated her: “What could have been an independent thriller full of malice and sinuosity increased in budget but not necessarily in emotion, given that Scott and a group of incredibly ill-chosen frontline actors advance to stumbling through a scrub of dense philosophical dialogue, frightening audiences who could have happily accepted a more conventional genre film”.

Nymphomaniac (two volumes) - Netflix

Conductor: Lars von Trier. With Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Udo Kier, Willem Dafoe

One winter night a woman lies beaten in an alley. A man finds her and takes her home to cure her. She tells him the story of her life punctuated exclusively by her sexual experiences with hundreds of men since adolescence and is self-diagnosed as a nymphomaniac. He listens to her carefully and talks to her about her hobbies, such as fly fishing, Fibonacci's Book of Square Numbers and music performed on organ. The story consists of eight chapters divided into two volumes.

The Times loved her: “This fascinating film explores two facets of controversial director Von Trier: that of nerd and that of iconoclast. Nymphomaniac is radical on many fronts, not only in the use of porn actors such as doubles and CGI, allowing to reveal the naked truth of any sexual encounter. (...) This is nordic-noir sex, wrapped in a film that is as complex as it is unforgettable”.

USA Today hated her: “Provocative filmmaker Lars von Trier mixes pedantic commentary on math, music and Edgar Allan Poe with amazingly dry descriptions of a woman's prodigious sexual appetite. (...) Carnality abounds, but it is more clinical than sexy.”

Signs - Star+

Director: M. Night Shyamalan. Con: Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin

When widowed by a car accident, a former episcopal priest enters a stage of crisis with his faith. On the farm in Pennsylvania where he lives with his children and brother he begins to find circles in the cornfields, but he does not attach importance to it: he attributes them to local vandals. But soon the press begins to cover the appearance of these circles in different fields of the world. The former priest and his family believe that it is the work of aliens and that it is time to prepare to reject an invasion of space.

Decider loved her: “The masterful pairing of sound and film is mostly what makes it so creepy; every scary shot is perfectly paired with a soundtrack that ensures maximum impact. Shyamalan understands how seemingly mundane interactions can be elevated in an instant if the right ingredients are added, and that's what he does.”

LA Weekly hated her: “Instead of making his hero regain his faith the old-fashioned way — making peace with his wife's death and finding God's hand in the worldly signs that surround him — Shyamalan manipulates the plot details so impudently that the film ends up feeling like a cheap sermon fundamentalist”.

Source (Inception) - HBO Max

Director: Christopher Nolan. Con Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliot Page

The best secret thief, who draws from people's unconscious while they sleep, is both a very important figure in the world of corporate espionage and a fugitive from the law. One last job might allow you to retire to live quietly, but it's something you've never done: instead of stealing an idea, you'll have to implant it in the head of a company's CEO. But an enemy jeopardizes the project and the team it works with. An enemy that no one sees, except the thief, since it comes from his past.

Newsweek loved her: “The fascinating and endless whirlpool that this film is could only have been made by Nolan, who mixes the brain writhing of Memento (his thriller that goes back in time) with the spectacular action of his megahit about Batman, The Dark Knight (The Dark Knight). Nolan is the most cerebral of Hollywood directors and Origen is more than the pinnacle of the genre 'everything was a dream'”.

Independent hated her: “Nolan scatters his narrative over several levels, fluctuating between a car chase through the streets in the rain, a shooting at the top of an alpine shelter, another in an “unreconstructed dream space”, whatever that is. (...) It is [a film] intricate, twisted and mysterious. Also profusely boring.”

Avatar - Disney+

Director: James Cameron. Con Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver

This epic sci-fi story is the highest-grossing film of all time and won several Oscar nominations, including Best Film and Best Director. A paraplegic marine takes the place of his brother, killed in a robbery, on a mission to the distant moon Pandora. He discovers that the exploitation of a precious material, which could end energy problems on Earth, also endangers the native humanoids, Na'vi. His connection with them, and in particular his infatuation with one of them, will divide him between loyalty to his mission and the protection of the Na'vi.

The New York Times loved her: “Cameron turned a man's cinematic dream into a psychedelic and joyful journey about the end of life as we know it. Dreamed for several decades and made in more than four years, the film is an ode to the natural world produced mostly with software, an exploration of the invisible world of spirit, in the style of Emerson, full of action in the style of Cameron. Created to conquer hearts, minds, history books and box office records.”

The Atlantic hated it: “The film is the work of James Cameron, who also wrote and directed Titanic. I would have preferred to have given us a Titanic II. (...) The film is in 3-D. Believe me, the 3-D glasses didn't add much to it.”

Man of Steel - HBO Max

Director: Zack Snyder. Con: Henry Cavill, Russel Crowe, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon

A planet is dying and a child is evacuated to Earth, where he will live among humans. He discovers that he has extraordinary powers and in his youth he sets out to discover where he comes from. But other survivors from their home world pose a danger to humanity, which Superman decides to defend. This reboot of the story of the character from DC Comics discusses the origins of the superhero was a British-American production.

He loved her rogerebert.com: “The absence of the name 'Superman' makes us expect a total recreation, and that is what this film offers. (...) It is a 2013 version of the story: dark, twisted and violent, full of images of collapsing skyscrapers and survivors of the disaster drowned in dust, in the style of September 11. It's sincere but not particularly funny or sweet. The hero is a melancholic hunk who defends a planet so besieged by apocalyptic conspiracies that it assumes that anyone who presents himself as the good guy has ulterior motives. Steel is what it takes to be super in this world.”

The Financial Times hated it: “The Man of Steel, who takes up the story of Superman on screen, closely follows the recent revivals of the Batman and Spiderman franchises, and is produced by the director of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan. But if those heroes seem to have something left to give, The Man of Steel — two and a half hours of exaggerated banality wandering into tedium and oblivion — is more like leftovers.”

The Tree of Life - Prime Video, Mubi, Movistar Play

Director: Terrence Malick. Con Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain

The story of a family from Waco, Texas, in the 1950s is told from the eyes of the eldest son, whose life is followed from the innocence of childhood to the skepticism of adulthood. His parents' teachings have been almost opposite; the son will try to mend his complicated relationship with his father, while seeking answers to his questions about the origin and meaning of life.

The Spectator loved her: “This fragmentary, non-linear film is partly a visual essay on the evolution of the universe (seriously), part a story about the arrival of adulthood and partly a study of nature (...) It is also a philosophical contemplation on religion. (...) Malick's camera movements take you through windows so that you float high in unexpected ways. The photograph is spectacularly exuberant, with scenes that intertwine waterfalls with baby feet and church windows with herbs swaying in the breeze.”

Film Comment hated her: “Despite passages with glorious camera movements (...) the film tries to represent the creator's presence from an aesthetically insufferable pile of sensitive voiceover combined with a saturation of religious classical music. I don't blame Malick's beliefs, just the way he shapes them into a movie.”

KEEP READING: