OT: Movies you probably never heard of but ought to check out.

[Zorro]

Have we done this? If so, the mods can delete and I won't be mad (or transfer it to the right place). If not, here are a few I would like to nominate; "Down by Law", a Jim Jamusch film starring Tom Waits. "The Wrong Box", a British farce with Sir Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine. Peter Sellers, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. "The King of Hearts", Starring Alan Bates. "Bedazzled", the original with Cook and Moore, not the tepid remake. "Rules of the Game", (Criterion dvd version), Jean Renior. Now everyone pile on!

 

[Kaizen]

Last Night (2011)
Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington play a New York couple who, over the course of one night, face temptation — she with an old flame who might be her soul mate (Guillaume Canet) and he with a colleague (Eva Mendes). The story is mature, the direction (by Massy Tadjedin) expert, and the acting superb. Knightley's final scene just might leave you gutted. —Missy Schwartz

 

[Mdoggie]

Don’t know if it’s unheard of but I personally don’t know many who have seen it. Classic with an all star cast . Highly recommended!

 

[Bigboote]

Not really unknown, but certainly a cult movie: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, whence my moniker and avatar (not that I'm obsessed or anything). Buckaroo Banzai is a brain surgeon/particle physicist/martial artist/rock star who unwittingly opens the door for a bunch of rogue aliens from the 8th dimension. John Lithgow is brilliant as the bad guy. Ellen Barkin (who was also in Down By Law), Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli all have supporting parts.

I love Down By Law, too. Roberto Benigni is brilliant in it.

 

[JimGunther]

Two of my favs:
"The Sure Thing" early John Cusack / Rob Reiner collaboration - Road comedy - fellow goes cross country to make it with a "sure thing" - tawdry set-up - some cute laughs =sweet finale.
"Same Time Next Year" =Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn meet every year for an illicit tryst = another seemingly tawdry set up = sweet / life story.
2 of the very few DVDs I own - were difficult to obtain in pre-Amazon days. Worth the search

 

[SVCBeercats]

"The Gods Must Be Crazy" is the funniest movie ever for me as a 38 year old. I guess I'll to have view it again to see if this old man thinks it is still funny. It grossed $200M USA so maybe it is not as unknown as I think it is. Below are its ratings and a synopsis:

IMDB: 7.3-10 Rotten Tomatoes 85% Common Sense Media 4-5
"Kalahari bushman Xi (played by genuine bushman N!xau) is as surprised as the rest of his tribe when a Coke bottle, thrown from a passing plane, lands in the middle of their village. This "gift from the gods" proves to be a mixed blessing when the tribesmen fight over it and eventually use it for a weapon. To keep peace in the village, Xi is assigned to take the bottle to "the end of the earth" (actually a lush valley) and throw it back to the gods. Meanwhile, back in urbanized South Africa, Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo) leaves her office job in the city to take a job teaching Kalahari children; once in the wilderness, she finds herself constantly bumping into clumsy microbiologist Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers). And meanwhile, maniacal Sam Boga (Louw Verwey) is leading a military coup against the government. How do all these various and wildly divergent characters fit together? You'll have to see The Gods Must be Crazy yourself--if you haven't seen it already. This Botswanian comedy/melodrama was directed by Jamie Uys, who had helmed dozens of films before Gods and would make many more afterwards. Originally slated for limited domestic distribution in 1982, Gods Must Be Crazy was picked up for American consumption by 20th Century-Fox in 1984. Within a few weeks, "word of mouth" transformed Gods into the biggest foreign boxoffice hit ever released in the U.S."
From Rotten Tomatoes

 

[bluedevil]

The Red Violin.....Didn't get much pub but well worth watching.......

 

[cohenzone]

A couple listed above I think were pretty well known. The Gods Must Be Crazy is great. I think was
Oscar nominated.

A few of my favorites, Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow
about living parallel lives

Don Juan DeMarco, early Johnny Depp and featuring Brando and Dunaway about a young man who makes you question what is insane and does it matter.

And if a movie about ballroom dancing could be interesting Strictly Ballroom out of Australia is it.

There could be a thread about movies you saw but wish you hadn’t.Top of my list, the Oscar winner American Beauty. Great acting (you.too, Kevin Spacey) but I loathed every character and wanted them all to die to end their misery and mine Ditto for The Ice Storm with Sigourney Weaver that I hated for the same reason.

 

[Drumguy]

I think one of the most underrated movies is "Almost Famous". Great music, great cast, fun story about rock and roll, Kate Hudson before she was famous, Phillip Seymour Hoffman - "of course I'm home, I'm uncool. ......... Friendship is the booze they feed ya. ........ I met you, you are not cool. "

 

[Steelerone]

Ok gang. Gonna show my age and hope that some of you younger boneyarders will take my advice and just try a couple. These are WW2 movies and are geared to the audience of the time. The first is "Mr. Winkle Goes To War" starring the great Edward G. Robinson as a mild mannered bank clerk who is in his late thirties but is drafted into the army by mistake. While in training the army realizes it's mistake and offers to release him but by that time he has started to undergo a change in personality (for the better.) The second movie is "The War Against Mrs. Hadley" and deals with a upscale socialite woman who finds the war "inconvenient" and has a marvelous cast with the great supporting actor Edward Arnold and a small role for a future star, Van Johnson. Hey, you've got time, why not? They play them from time to time on TCM.

 

[Zorro]

There could be a thread about movies you saw but wish you hadn’t.Top of my list, the Oscar winner American Beauty. Great acting (you.too, Kevin Spacey) but I loathed every character and wanted them all to die to end their misery and mine Ditto for The Ice Storm with Sigourney Weaver that I hated fir the same reason.

Or, as Mark Twain famously said about the characters in "The Last of the Mohicans", "you wish they would all get drowned together".

And in your suggested category, I would like to nominate "Gremlins" and "My Life as a Dog".

 

[UpstateNY]

Searching for Sugarman (currently on Netflix) - wonderful documentary about a musician lost to obscurity and then rediscovered

 

[cohenzone]

Or, as Mark Twain famously said about the characters in "The Last of the Mohicans", "you wish they would all get drowned together".

What the heck did Twain know about writing? Everyone’s a critic.

 

[j66kicker]

Not really unknown, but certainly a cult movie: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, whence my moniker and avatar (not that I'm obsessed or anything). Buckaroo Banzai is a brain surgeon/particle physicist/martial artist/rock star who unwittingly opens the door for a bunch of rogue aliens from the 8th dimension. John Lithgow is brilliant as the bad guy. Ellen Barkin (who was also in Down By Law), Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli all have supporting parts.

I love Down By Law, too. Roberto Benigni is brilliant in it.

Full disclosure - Buckaroo Banzai was at least obscure enough that I had never heard of it. So a couple years ago you were correcting another BY poster on the pronunciation of "boo-TAY", which caused me to google it, or do a google image search on your avatar, or something like that. I rented the movie and watched it that night.

 

[Ozimoto]

My nomination for utterly horrible films would be "Being John Malkovich." Sometimes movies are so strange that they become a cult classic. This wasn't one of them...

 

[wyo83002]

At Play In the Fields of the Lord. Amazing cast, amazing movie.

 

[Dokey]

Here’s a very simple, largely two person cast

Two Night Stand

 

[asuwish]

"The Gods Must Be Crazy" is the funniest movie ever for me as a 38 year old. I guess I'll to have view it again to see if this old man thinks it is still funny. It grossed $200M USA so maybe it is not as unknown as I think it is. Below are its ratings and a synopsis:

IMDB: 7.3-10 Rotten Tomatoes 85% Common Sense Media 4-5
"Kalahari bushman Xi (played by genuine bushman N!xau) is as surprised as the rest of his tribe when a Coke bottle, thrown from a passing plane, lands in the middle of their village. This "gift from the gods" proves to be a mixed blessing when the tribesmen fight over it and eventually use it for a weapon. To keep peace in the village, Xi is assigned to take the bottle to "the end of the earth" (actually a lush valley) and throw it back to the gods. Meanwhile, back in urbanized South Africa, Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo) leaves her office job in the city to take a job teaching Kalahari children; once in the wilderness, she finds herself constantly bumping into clumsy microbiologist Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers). And meanwhile, maniacal Sam Boga (Louw Verwey) is leading a military coup against the government. How do all these various and wildly divergent characters fit together? You'll have to see The Gods Must be Crazy yourself--if you haven't seen it already. This Botswanian comedy/melodrama was directed by Jamie Uys, who had helmed dozens of films before Gods and would make many more afterwards. Originally slated for limited domestic distribution in 1982, Gods Must Be Crazy was picked up for American consumption by 20th Century-Fox in 1984. Within a few weeks, "word of mouth" transformed Gods into the biggest foreign boxoffice hit ever released in the U.S."
From Rotten Tomatoes

Very smart movie. It went from unknown to midnight movie, when they existed, for a decade.

 

[RSHERMVIKES]

I am a lover of movies! I have a collection of movies from 1915 to the present day! As of now at #1604 between Video and DVD's! My surprise movies are:
1. STEALING HOME, 1999, with Mark Harmon, Jodie Foster & Harold Ramis. It follows Harmon's Billy Wyatt, from HS baseball player to adulthood, and Jodie Foster is his friend and mentor with Ramis his best buddy. A coming-of-age movie!
2.. A WALK IN THE SUN, 1945, A WWII movie with G.I's in Italy. Great cast of Dana Andrews, LLoyd Bridges, Richard Conte, George Tyne, John Ireland. A platoon going to try to take a German held farmhouse.
3. SAHARA, 1943, another great cast Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Bennett, J. Carrol Naish. WWII American tank crew with allied soldiers in North Africa.
4. SHENANDOAH, 1965, James Stewart, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, About a family in VA during the Civil War.
5. TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE,2012, Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, Clint is an old-time Baseball Scout in the Braves organization that is losing his sight and his estranged daughter, Adams, goes on his scouting trip, for a stud young outfielder.
6. FORT APACHE 1948, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, 1949, and RIO GRANDE 1950,,The trilogy of John Wayne/John Ford, Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, John Agar, Ward Bond in Fort Apache, Yellow Ribbon, has Wayne, Joanne Dru,John Agar,Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr. and 3rd Rio Grande, has Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Johnson, Carey, Jr. Takes place in the late 1870's. A U.S.A. cavalry dealing with hostile indians.

 

[Littlemin]

Two of my favs:
"The Sure Thing" early John Cusack / Rob Reiner collaboration - Road comedy - fellow goes cross country to make it with a "sure thing" - tawdry set-up - some cute laughs =sweet finale.
"Same Time Next Year" =Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn meet every year for an illicit tryst = another seemingly tawdry set up = sweet / life story.
2 of the very few DVDs I own - were difficult to obtain in pre-Amazon days. Worth the search
[/QUOTE

Could not agree more with Down By Law, great movie!!

 

[geordi]

Two of my absolute favorites:
Somewhere in Time --- Eddie and the Cruisers

 

[Zorro]

What the heck did Twain know about writing? Everyone’s a critic.

If you are not familiar with his "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", you have missed one of the funniest pieces ever written in the English language!

 

[cohenzone]

If you are not familiar with his "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", you have missed one of the funniest pieces ever written in the English language!

Yup. I’ve read it. What a snob that Clemens guy was. Had to hide behind a fake name.

Aside, if you haven’t read his Letters From the Earth, a great and totally current satire on religion.

 

[Conndog]

Someone mentioned the Australian movie "Strictly Ballroom", and I saw a couple of other Australian movies that I liked a lot that probably are not well known.
One is "Man of Flowers" - weird/quirky characters, great music
Another is "Danny Deckchair" - remember the guy who went up in an armchair 10,000 feet with hot air balloons for his lift? Loosely made with this in mind

Not an Australian film but American, but I always liked "The Pope of Greenwich Village" starring Mickey Rourke, and another goodie is "The Flim-Flam Man" starring George C Scott

 

[Kaizen]

The Ultimate Gift
A great 2007 movie you can watch it free in YouTube.