So name the top five movies that you love, but think are underrated or under-regarded by the general populace (or even just the Pavvie population). Reasoning would be helpful.
In no particular order:
Being John Malkovich-I saw this at the theater when it first came out, knowing that it was gonna be all about weirdness. I left the theater thinking that the movie scored on the weirdness front, but that it was just weird for the sake of being weird.
Then I watched it another dozen or so times, and came to realize how brilliantly deep the film actually is. Buried under all the overt strangeness is a look at fame, individuality, gender, and what it means to be a human in this "winter economic climate." How does one define him or herself? How does one define one's gender? Are these definitions fixed or arbitrary? How does fame affect one's self-identification? And that's not even getting into the whole "metaphysical can of worms" the film brings up with shifting consciousness from one corporeal form to another. Yeah, the word brilliant is extremely overused, but I think this film delivers on the expectations of that word.
Series 7: The Contenders-Besides my RPGM games deriving their titles from this film, this is criminally underrated. Reality TV was just beginning to sprout its wings when this film hit theaters. MTV had already established the genre with The Real World, and more and more reality-based television programs were beginning to air, albeit not like the glut today. This film was made to resemble a marathon of the titular TV program. The twist is, it's the near-future, and a government mandate dictates that if you are chosen for the program, you need to kill the others chosen for the same "series," and only by winning (ie-not dying) could you get your freedom. The main character is 8 months pregnant when the film begins, and she needs to kill the others in order to keep her baby.
This sounds like something out of The Running Man, but it's filmed (on video) exactly like modern reality TV, with the live cameras, jump-cut editing, and the candid interviews and (sometimes manufactured) drama. I would call it a spoof or satire, but it's actually black comedy at its finest. Problem is, the sometimes melodramatic scenes are SO well done that what you should realistically be laughing your ass off at, you sometimes take at face value and ARE affected by them. Tragically underseen.
Jackie Brown-After the phenomenal success of Pulp Fiction, a LOT of people were let down by this. I saw this opening day (Christmas Day), and even though it took a few more viewings, came to realize that as a whole, this is the superior film. And come on, Robert DeNiro playing WAY against type as a stoner, and the overly annoying Chris Tucker making a brief appearance only to get offed...how could this come CLOSE to being bad?
Mainly, it's because it does not rely on a gimmick (the gimmicky "switch" takes a page from Kubrick's The Killing, but the rest of the film does not rely on it as Pulp Fiction did), and instead is invested in its characters. The "romance," if you wanna call it that, between its two leads is completely believable. Two middle-aged (or a bit older) people who do not "meet cute," but instead meet outside of jail, and exchange realistic dialogue (Tarantino always specializes in dialogue, but with Pulp Fiction, it was more cool machismo...here, it's how people would really talk given their situations) center the narrative in the realm of believability. I could go on and on for another few paragraphs about what makes this movie great, but boiled down to its essentials, it's basically because Tarantino gives his characters the time they need to develop, and the "switch" gimmick is just the cherry on top.
Slacker-Sure, A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life, Before Sunrise (and arguably Tape) are better films than this, but for a pretty much zero budget film to completely obliterate cinematic convention (Buñuel notwithstanding), and have well-regarded films like Memento and Pulp Fiction follow in its wake, and NOT get recognized borders on tragic. Just for Linklater to come up with this idea (there is no "main" character in the film...the filmic space only follows one particular character or group of characters for mere minutes) and execute it using non-actors on pretty much no budget deserves a huge amount of credit. Plus, if you see this multiple times, it'll surely become one of your most quotable films. The film is not really "good" in the conventional sense of the word, and nothing really even happens (as there is zero plot) throughout the course of the film.
But it's never less than interesting, and if you start to lose interest in one character or characters (the car enthusiasts or the Madonna pap smear girl, as examples in my case), another one will take his place soon enough (the JFK conspiracy guy, the "You should quit tormenting women with sexual intercourse" woman, the old man who thwarts a robbery by taking the would-be robber for a walk to discuss life). See this back to back with El Mariachi for two zero budget films from the Austin, Texas film scene whose directors went on to bigger things (Linklater's next film was Dazed and Confused and Robert Rodriguez did everything from El Mariachi's remake/sequel Desperado to From Dusk Til Dawn to Spy Kids).
Repo Man-I'm not really sure what to say about this besides the fact that if you've not seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so. As with Slacker above, this is not a "good" film in the conventional sense of the word, but it is quirky, offbeat, and sometimes hilarious. Any film that has the Circle Jerks crooning off-kilter lounge music, is about punks and aliens, and quotes some obscure Alice in Wonderland nonsense words (and plays them backwards through a phone call, no less) pretty much needs to be seen. Harry Dean Stanton plus Emilio Estevez plus a Dennis Hopper look-alike adds up to win. "You know how everyone's into weirdness right now?"
In no particular order:
Being John Malkovich-I saw this at the theater when it first came out, knowing that it was gonna be all about weirdness. I left the theater thinking that the movie scored on the weirdness front, but that it was just weird for the sake of being weird.
Then I watched it another dozen or so times, and came to realize how brilliantly deep the film actually is. Buried under all the overt strangeness is a look at fame, individuality, gender, and what it means to be a human in this "winter economic climate." How does one define him or herself? How does one define one's gender? Are these definitions fixed or arbitrary? How does fame affect one's self-identification? And that's not even getting into the whole "metaphysical can of worms" the film brings up with shifting consciousness from one corporeal form to another. Yeah, the word brilliant is extremely overused, but I think this film delivers on the expectations of that word.
Series 7: The Contenders-Besides my RPGM games deriving their titles from this film, this is criminally underrated. Reality TV was just beginning to sprout its wings when this film hit theaters. MTV had already established the genre with The Real World, and more and more reality-based television programs were beginning to air, albeit not like the glut today. This film was made to resemble a marathon of the titular TV program. The twist is, it's the near-future, and a government mandate dictates that if you are chosen for the program, you need to kill the others chosen for the same "series," and only by winning (ie-not dying) could you get your freedom. The main character is 8 months pregnant when the film begins, and she needs to kill the others in order to keep her baby.
This sounds like something out of The Running Man, but it's filmed (on video) exactly like modern reality TV, with the live cameras, jump-cut editing, and the candid interviews and (sometimes manufactured) drama. I would call it a spoof or satire, but it's actually black comedy at its finest. Problem is, the sometimes melodramatic scenes are SO well done that what you should realistically be laughing your ass off at, you sometimes take at face value and ARE affected by them. Tragically underseen.
Jackie Brown-After the phenomenal success of Pulp Fiction, a LOT of people were let down by this. I saw this opening day (Christmas Day), and even though it took a few more viewings, came to realize that as a whole, this is the superior film. And come on, Robert DeNiro playing WAY against type as a stoner, and the overly annoying Chris Tucker making a brief appearance only to get offed...how could this come CLOSE to being bad?
Mainly, it's because it does not rely on a gimmick (the gimmicky "switch" takes a page from Kubrick's The Killing, but the rest of the film does not rely on it as Pulp Fiction did), and instead is invested in its characters. The "romance," if you wanna call it that, between its two leads is completely believable. Two middle-aged (or a bit older) people who do not "meet cute," but instead meet outside of jail, and exchange realistic dialogue (Tarantino always specializes in dialogue, but with Pulp Fiction, it was more cool machismo...here, it's how people would really talk given their situations) center the narrative in the realm of believability. I could go on and on for another few paragraphs about what makes this movie great, but boiled down to its essentials, it's basically because Tarantino gives his characters the time they need to develop, and the "switch" gimmick is just the cherry on top.
Slacker-Sure, A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life, Before Sunrise (and arguably Tape) are better films than this, but for a pretty much zero budget film to completely obliterate cinematic convention (Buñuel notwithstanding), and have well-regarded films like Memento and Pulp Fiction follow in its wake, and NOT get recognized borders on tragic. Just for Linklater to come up with this idea (there is no "main" character in the film...the filmic space only follows one particular character or group of characters for mere minutes) and execute it using non-actors on pretty much no budget deserves a huge amount of credit. Plus, if you see this multiple times, it'll surely become one of your most quotable films. The film is not really "good" in the conventional sense of the word, and nothing really even happens (as there is zero plot) throughout the course of the film.
But it's never less than interesting, and if you start to lose interest in one character or characters (the car enthusiasts or the Madonna pap smear girl, as examples in my case), another one will take his place soon enough (the JFK conspiracy guy, the "You should quit tormenting women with sexual intercourse" woman, the old man who thwarts a robbery by taking the would-be robber for a walk to discuss life). See this back to back with El Mariachi for two zero budget films from the Austin, Texas film scene whose directors went on to bigger things (Linklater's next film was Dazed and Confused and Robert Rodriguez did everything from El Mariachi's remake/sequel Desperado to From Dusk Til Dawn to Spy Kids).
Repo Man-I'm not really sure what to say about this besides the fact that if you've not seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so. As with Slacker above, this is not a "good" film in the conventional sense of the word, but it is quirky, offbeat, and sometimes hilarious. Any film that has the Circle Jerks crooning off-kilter lounge music, is about punks and aliens, and quotes some obscure Alice in Wonderland nonsense words (and plays them backwards through a phone call, no less) pretty much needs to be seen. Harry Dean Stanton plus Emilio Estevez plus a Dennis Hopper look-alike adds up to win. "You know how everyone's into weirdness right now?"
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