【1984 Archives】

You've read about our favorite films984 Archivesdissected our list of stellar TV. A lot of discussion went into those picks, and obviously not everyone on the team was in agreement about each one.

That's where this list comes in.

We all have things we loved this decade that weren't ever going to make the official rankings, but we still personally enjoyed.

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We're talking about the TV and movies that didn't have such a great Rotten Tomatoes score. The shows that were canceled after a few episodes. Entertainment that you're constantly forced to defend as "No, but it's actually great— wait, where are you going?"

Below, each member of the Mashable Entertainment team shares one thing they loved this decade, popular opinion be damned.

Selfie

JOHN CHO, KAREN GILLAN Credit: Eric McCandless/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images

I think about Selfiea lot. It was a modern remake of Pygmalion(or, if you’re a musicals fan, My Fair Lady) that ran for half a season on ABC before it was canceled; its final episodes streamed exclusively on Hulu back when that was considered a bad thing. Selfiewas, and hear me out, actually good though. I’d even argue that Selfiewas great.

Part of the reason Selfiegot a bad rep in its time was because its romantic lead Eliza Dooley (played by Karen Gillan) was a stereotypical Instagram-obsessed millennial. Her character started out as an obnoxious influencer with plenty of followers but no friends, who the 2014 audience viewed as a gross anomaly as opposed to a clear prediction of where Insta-fame would lead in the latter half of the decade. Gillan’s chemistry with John Cho, who played Henry Higgins, was off-the-charts fiery, and I adored watching the two of them change together and fall in tentative love over the course of the first season.

Selfieseemed like a flash-in-the-pan attempt to cash in on social media trends, but it was actually a thoughtful, funny, and romantic meditation on how apps and online attention can warp a person’s sense of belonging in the world — as well as their sense of self(ie). Gillan and Cho are fine with their careers these days, but Selfie still deserved better. -Alexis Nedd, Senior Entertainment Reporter

Watch it on:Hulu

Home Again

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Home Againhit theaters and my heart in 2017, and while audiences and many critics didn't care for it, I loved it enough for everyone. I watched this odd little romantic comedy starring Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon (Alice) three times in theaters and a bunch more since then.

This isn't a "bad movie" that you watch with your friends to make fun of; my joy is purer than that. There is something endlessly fascinating to me to watch this group of individuals — all of whom are very fine actors and none of whom behave like a human would in this film — coming together to make an odd little family consisting of a woman, her ex-husband, her two small, impressionable children, and three random twenty-something guys who live with her and are half in love with her. Everyone in the film pretends this is normal; it's not but I want it to be!!

I love Candice Bergen's character inviting the young strangers to move in! I love Jon Rudnitsky's character's sweet friendship with Alice's daughters! I love that Alice breaks up with her young lover when he can't make a casual friends' dinner because he has the most important work meeting of his career at the same time!

Movies don't have to be good to be great, and no film better exemplified that this decade than this one. -Erin Strecker, Entertainment Editor Watch it on:Amazon Prime

Batman Vs. Superman

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Zack Snyder's grimy vision of the DC universe isn't everyone's cup of tea. Indeed, the 28% Rotten Tomatoes score, 44 Metascore, and B Cinemascorecollectively suggest that a huge chunk of the moviegoing public regarded Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justiceas something more akin to Granny's peach tea. For my money, though, it may have been the most compelling superhero movie from a decade glutted with superhero movies.

Batman v Supermanplays out like a photo-negative of the standard comic-book-movie formula. Rather than emphasize what is relatable about these characters, it casts them as larger than life, and their dramas as epic tragedies. Instead of painting them as inspirational and aspirational, it highlights what is terrifying and tragic about them. They are defined less by their victories than their failures -- the lives they didn't save, the disasters they didn't prevent, the cries they didn't answer. And their world doesn't feel safer or kinder because such heroes exist; it feels darker and more dangerous because of the potential for destruction that comes with such awesome power.

Yet amid all this doom and gloom, Batman v Supermandoes, eventually, find its way to hope — rare, precious, and obtained at an extreme cost. I get why why people thought this movie was too dour, too cynical, or too ridiculous. But to me, it reads as uplifting. It's an argument for clinging onto courage and compassion even when all seems lost, for trying to help even when you knowyou can't fix it all. Or, to paraphrase another caped-crusader flick: It's the superhero movie we deserve, and the one I need right now. -Angie Han, Deputy Entertainment Editor

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Watch it on: iTunes(I recommend the Ultimate Edition, which is longer but better; however, the theatrical cut is also widely available.)

Orange is the New Black Season 5

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Everyone loves a good bottle episode — until it's a bottle season, and then they don't.

When Orange is the New Blackdecided to set Season 5 in a real-time prison riot, it seemed like a daring risk and chance to shake up the storytelling in an otherwise monotonous setting. The result polarized critics — and by that I mean it put me on one side and everyone else on the other. The season was almost universally disliked and criticized on a structural level for the same reasons that I ate it up. Inmates became tyrants and guards became prisoners. Negotiations grew hostile, sometimes over Cheetos. Red dismembered a man to get into an iPhone (just change the passcode!). The pain of Poussey's passing was still raw and immediate, and in its wake the women of Litchfield saw firsthand what kind of society they could create if they had the chance. At a press junket, Danielle Brooks (Taystee) asked me if the lockdown alarm in the first episode was annoying.

"You get used to it after a few minutes," I said. "I had a great time."

I may have been the last person to say this to her or anyone about that season. - Proma Khosla, Entertainment Reporter

Watch it on: Netflix

Garry Marshall's holiday movies

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The final three films of Garry Marshall’s legendary career are considered by many to be his worst. But to me, they are a heartwarming reminder of a life well-lived. 


Marshall’s holiday movies, Valentine’s Day(2010), New Year’s Eve (2011), and Mother’s Day (2016), were unequivocally skewered by critics upon release. Regarded as charmless cash grabs, the three projects hold a 31% on Rotten Tomatoes — combined — and continue to incite verbal disgust among cinephiles today.

On some level, I understand everyone’s aversion to these feature-length Hallmark cards. Marshall’s holiday movies aren’t anywhere near as spectacular asPretty Womanor The Princess Diaries, despite an overflow of talent and funding. They lack compelling central narratives, feature a menagerie of half-baked characters, and regularly struggle to justify themselves. And of course, Marshall’s decision to feature essentially all-white casts wasn’t appropriate then and isn’t appropriate now.

Still, I refuse to see these generally pleasant movies as Marshall’s corporate sell-out, or late-in-life decline. Instead, I embrace them as a reminder of all that Marshall did for portraying women on screen. Sure, plenty of people see him as "just the rom-com guy." But all of his films pass the Bechdel test, Valentine's Dayincluded — and there’s a reason so many incredible women wanted to appear in his last movies, no matter how maligned.

Garry Marshall’s holiday films weren’t his best, but they’ll be annual background noise in my home for years to come.-Alison Foreman, Entertainment Reporter

Watch it on:Valentine’s Day(2010), New Year’s Eve(2011), and Mother’s Day(2016) are available for rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video.

Sucker Punch

Credit: Legendary Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock

The 2010s are almost over. I might as well bloody this hill one, last time: Zack Snyder's Sucker Punchis a good movie, actually.

Snyder created something much smarter than he ever gets credit for. Sure, it's imperfect. The movie's entire marketing campaign hung its pitch on scantily clad women doing action things, but the text tells a different story. There's a thoughtfulness to the way Sucker Punchis constructed that justifies the marketing sleight of hand. That might even be the point.In reality, the movie is an examination of sexism and the multiple planes on which it exists. It has Things To Say that the world wasn't really tuned into back in 2011. The female leads that carry the movie weren't as well-developed as they could have been, but that may have been part of the point as well. Sucker Punch's unblinking objectification of its female stars transforms into a weapon that they use in their fight to reclaim their independence.

It's not the best movie of the past 10 years, but it's a movie that weirdly, unexpectedly, probably unintentionally predicted where we'd up as a culture by 2020. -Adam Rosenberg, Senior Entertainment Reporter

Watch it on: Hulu

I Feel Pretty

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Amy Schumer’s I Feel Pretty received its fair share of criticism. Many saw it as incomparable to Trainwreck and equally as much of a flop as Snatched. I Feel Pretty is the story of Renee Bennett (Schumer), a straight sized woman who works at a cosmetics company. She’s dissatisfied with her life and her body… until she hits her head and magically gains self-confidence out the wazoo, which enables her to turn her life around, regardless of how she actually looks.

Yes, Schumer’s Renee is an inconsistent character whose core morals seem to morph throughout the movie. Yes, because Renee works at a cosmetics company, she ends up utilizing self-love as a marketing ploy for a new line of makeup. But the film's concept and story were enough to win me over. I laughed, I cried (that ending monologue!), and I related to Renee. There’s something innately human in her quest to feel validated by others in a world in which she feels completely overlooked. Plus, the film’s supporting cast is phenomenal. Michelle Williams shines in her comedic and heartfelt role as the cosmetic company’s burgeoning mogul. Aidy Bryant and Busy Phillips play realistic, admirable, fun women. Bonus: Schumer’s got a knack for lovably “ordinary” romantic male leads: who else coincidentally developed a huge crush on Bill Hader right after seeing Trainwreck? Rory Scovel’s Mason in I Feel Pretty is adorable and sincere.

I Feel Pretty is by no means a perfect movie, but it does its job by telling an all-too-relatable story that takes place in our very imperfect world.-Tricia Crimmins, Entertainment Fellow

Watch it on: Hulu, Amazon Prime

Minions

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I am fully aware that the little yellow minions who shot to fame in the 2010 film Despicable Meare popular. Kids love them. Moms on Facebook love them. But I, a guy in his 20s, am not supposed to love them. Why, because they’re not considered cool? Because they aren’t marketed at my demographic? I don’t care about all that. I love minions and I love the 2015 movie Minions,which dives into the origins of the little yellow henchmen, who have been acting as the helpers for evil doers since the dawn of time.

It’s bold to create a movie that centers around characters who can’t speak. Sure, they can say “banana” and each others’ names, but most of their communication comes from their actions, body language, nonsense babbling, and slapstick comedy, and it’s so entertaining.Did critics like Minions? Not really. That’s because they didn’t get it. The story of the minions and their romp through history as denizens of all kinds of evil creatures and people, from dinosaurs to the ruthlessly imperialistic French emperor Napoleon, is great as they fail again and again. They were conveniently hiding in a cave during World War II, so don’t worry, they aren’t nazis. After so much failure, they are redeemed in their discovery of Gru. It’s a good story and the minions are a delight, no matter what the haters say. -Kellen Beck, Entertainment Reporter

Watch it on:Amazon Prime, and iTunes