Thanks for the memories!

People are voting emotionally.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

There's something about "Cutthroat Island" that makes it enjoyable in spite of its shortcomings (miscast Geena Davis, sometimes questionable direction, sour reputation for bankrupting its studio). Mainly, this is a pretty kickass pirate movie with good action and an unflagging sense of adventure. Most of this is due to the magnificent score - which is probably the magical ingredient that keeps this vessel afloat.Honestly, this would probably be dead in the water without Debney's score (bad puns on the house), but I enjoyed myself a lot more than expected.7/10

I mean, yes of course it was a flop at the box office because it cost a lot of money to make and was released around the world and only made a fraction of that money back. So by the technical definition of flop this movie was a flop.But most flops are really bad movies. Like really bad. Like REALLY bad. And this movie isn't bad at all! Not even half bad. I think this movie is even slightly better than the average movie especially when you consider putting it up against just other movies of the same era. It's a decent movie.I don't know if it was maybe bad marketing, or bad word of mouth, or just a sexist attitude that didn't want to see a movie with a female ship commander, but this movie deserved better!

From the director of Die Hard 2 (1990) and the collective pens of six screenplay writers comes Cutthroat Island (1995) the brazenly cheesy pirate saga of ill repute. Starring Oscar winner Geena Davis, Oscar nominated Frank Langella and…umm…Matthew Modine, Cutthroat Island is the tall tale of a female pirate captain (Geena Davis) attempting to find the fabled titular island before her heinous uncle (also a pirate captain and also Frank Langella) does. The key to her triumph; a con artist named Shaw (Modine) who knows Latin and can translate the map.This movie is about as boilerplate as one can get. The characters are one dimensional, the dialogue stilted, the special effects; a masterwork in bombastic nineties ridiculousness. Yet there's something near-magical about this particular train wreck. Nearly ever scene has explosions and sword fighting mayhem all of which are well choreographed if sloppily done.Geena Davis tries her absolute hardest to pull off her Captain Morgan (yes her name is Captain Morgan), a lord knows her 6 foot frame would have made her an obvious choice for hard fighting buccaneer. I commend her for the physicality she brings to the role managing to get punched in the face and break through candy glass unfazed. But her elegance and beauty betray her. Her smiles are always genuine and her body language is always feminine; maybe the demeanor of a bourgeois suffragette at the turn of the century but not that of a bloodthirsty rogue pirate.Most of the blame for this film's so-bad-it's-good quality lies squarely with the director Renny Harlin who also directed the recent clunker The Legend of Hercules (2014). Harlin comes from the school of grandiose action films before CGI. Like Guy Hamilton and John McTiernan before him, swift, consistent flow of action takes precedence over story, human characters and all the other little things that don't matter. They accomplish this with elaborate set pieces, daring stunt work and, as mentioned before, lots and lots of explosions. Unlike Hamilton and McTiernan, Harlin has no artistic instinct behind the camera. The cinematography is grimy and brown and the set, while expensive looking is nevertheless noticeably fake. It's as if Harlin wanted to update the swashbucklers of Douglas Fairbanks yet didn't bother to update anything except for the actors.Then there's the writing which is borderline absurd. What passes for witty one-liners, are groan worthy puns and non-sequiturs with little bearing on anything of consequence. Everything else is exposition. It's as if the six writers of the film all hated each other, were trapped in a room together, unable to leave until they came up with something and poised to be overly critical of everything the other said and did. What's left is a script with no creativity or panache. In being so bland the authors of this rubbish commit the cardinal sin of writing: letting the audience notice the exposed frame of the writing instead of the action on the screen.Yet, at the end of the day, Cutthroat Island is too harebrained to be taken seriously. If you go in with low expectation and a tendency to not take yourself or your films seriously, you might come out of a viewing on top. There is intrinsic value in watching a movie like Cutthroat Island, especially if you plan on going into a career in film. Movies like this serve to make you acutely aware of what not to do.http://www.theyservepopcorninhell.blogspot.com

Just as good as Pirates of the Caribbean and wonderful example of a movie that relied on practical FX and stunts. Before CGI locked its claws on Hollywood and turned film into highdef cartoons. Sure, most can complain about the hollowness of the script and some bad acting. COUGH: Matthew Modine. But, over all, if you like pirates, lost gold, remote islands real wooden ships, gigantic (and I mean GIGANTIC) explosions then this movie for you. In fact during a scene where people fall down a seaside cliff into an oncoming wave my 5 year old gasped out loud. Proof that despite our technical achievements in movie making, a solid stunt can still marvel.