underrated films

faceman

God there are some awful films being mentioned here!

"What About Bob" with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfus, excellent comedy!

Psycho II - unlike most horror sequels, Psyscho II isnt half bad at all but suffered from "it can never be as good as the first" syndrome

norrie rugger

Tron

pwd

films I like that got bad reviews:

freddy got fingered
x-men 3
return of the jedi
starship troopers
kevin and perry go large

Big_Dave88

The Salton Sea is a really cool film, too bad nobody's heard of it. I also think mad max: beyond thunderdome is really underrated but I'm not exactly proud of that.

JP Liz

eagle eye wrote: »

Its called The Last Supper.

+ 1

JP Liz

Buffalo Soldiers

Clay Pigeons

Inventing the Abbotts

irish_bob

two which spring to mind and which ive only seen recently , beowulf and appocolypto

Patricide

irish_bob wrote: »

two which spring to mind and which ive only seen recently , beowulf and appocolypto

I thought apolocypto was well recieved at the time no?

Dryad

The Matador - stars Pierce Brosnan as a seedy, washed up hitman and Greg Kinnear as the guy who, in redeeming him rehabilitates himself. For Brosnan this character is the complete antithesis of his normal Bond-type persona but in my humble opinion this is the acting gig of his life. A sadly overlooked and underrated film.

irish_bob

Patricide wrote: »

I thought apolocypto was well recieved at the time no?

it got decent enough reviews but nothing special , i thought it was a near classic myself

Sanjuro

Days Of Heaven
Bottle Rocket
Rushmore
Dead Man's Shoes (was at a screening in the IFI with Paddy Considine. Awesome)
Following
The Fountain
Grosse Point Blank
In The Mood For Love
Northfork
Return To Oz
The Addams Family

faceman

Im going to throw in a little gem i remember last night:

"Looking for Richard". An Al Pacino tour de force, documentary as he sets out staging a production of Richard III with Alec Baldwin and Winona Ryder. Its a documentary but very engaging.

e_e

Sanjuro wrote: »

Dead Man's Shoes (was at a screening in the IFI with Paddy Considine. Awesome)
In The Mood For Love

Absolutely.

Pride Fighter

Commando

fluke

8mm
Arlington Road
The Mist

psicic

Okay, none of my movies were 'unknowns' but I've steered away from some fantastic films because, while underrated in one sense, they were big budget/successful enough to stay in the public consciousness, despite not being respected enough in my opinion. Also I won't rehash some of the classics others have mentioned.

Taking a random sample of movies that have fallen hard from grace and deserve better:

Work of art
Monsignor Quixote : a beautiful piece of work and engrossing story, probably more a reflection of the author's (Graham Greene's) own internal conflicts than than anything else. Might have been a TV movie but still fantastic. As an example of a beautiful element from this movie - a naive village priest(Alex Guinness) has, as travelling companion and best-friend, a cynical ex-Communist ex-Mayor (Leo McKern). Acting is nothing short of superb and it is a great depiction (accurate or not) of Spain after Franco.

Action/Comedy
Has to be the Luc Besson gem Wasabi. It has Jean Reno playing his stereo typical cop in a style that is lifted out of both French and Japanese comics. It's a fairly standard 'thriller' plot set in Japan. There is character development, there is plot and there are backstories for each of the characters. Plus violence. The whole movie is witty and engaging, shot well and incredibly stylish. They make fun about the size of Renos nose in a great way. Even the tag line on imdb is funny: "Quite Possibly The Greatest French-Language, English-Subtitled, Japanese Action-Comedy Of All Time."

Sci-Fi/Comedy
Dark Star : What can I say? Rarely shown on TV, a funny, weird slice of 70s sci-fi comedy from John Carpenter.

Brainless fun
All the Resident Evil films. No, they're not very deep. No, they are not true to the video games. However, if you are not looking for either of these things and, instead, want a nice, inoffensive triology of movies to pass the time, these are the ticket. Yes, they are commercially successful, but a lot of snobbery seems to exist towards these movies for some reason. They are good movies and succeed at what they attempt to do.

Irish 'almosts'
The Actors is yet another in a long line of 'almost' great Irish movies. Whereas people tend to be kinder to "I went down" and "Intermission", people tend to unfairly pan the Actors. Dylan Moran's range of impressions in this movie are fantastic and - unlike modern-day Eddie Murphy - his impressions are hilarious and more varied then simply putting on a fat-suit. Michael Caine is at his best in this movie - perhaps his best 'sleazy-but-nice-but-actually-sleazy' performance since Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Gambon is excellent as the braggard crime boss who's really a only minor criminal.

Asian
Many asian movies are underrated outside certain circles, but Perfect Blue is one of those movies that stands out for a couple of reasons; for example, it's one of the few movies I've seen where I thought the cut for television (i.e. the 'censored' version) was better then the DVD version (i.e. it helped preserve the mystery of what was happening better and helped the main character seem more isolated from her world), also written as a live action movie, they ran out of money so decided to make it an animation instead. It has rewatchability approaching zero, but watching it for the first time(in Japanese with subtitles, not in English), it is a high-impact, graphic horror movie heavy on the psychological turmoil as a young actress begins to question her own sanity. It's all about trust, what is real, your perceptions of other people and their perceptions of you.

Western
As a genre, Westerns have seen better days. From those very better days, one of my favourites has to be A Fistful of Dynamite. What a great movie, from the tragedy that surrounds the main characters, to the almost whimsical decision made by the one of the leads to turn the other into some sort of revolutionary hero that he never was himself, this is a movie with layers like an onion - or at least like an American parfait. Many western buffs hate this movie. I think it's charming. Melodramatic, but still charming.