I liked both of these movies quite a bit, particularly Across the Universe, but Daybreakers was also interesting and well-done.
Just now I clicked at Youtube to find scenes from Crash and this one popped up.
Watch it. Suspense; detective work; political hypocrisy and corruption; justice vs expediency. Is the fact that some cops are black and some are white absolutely integral to the story here? Absolutely … and Casablanca needed those “letters of transit.” But to reject this story because racism is involved, you’d have to reject Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia because war was involved.
(Just watch the first 2 minutes of the clip to see my point, and to avoid some spoilage if you’ve not yet watched the movie.)
By the way I did NOT call the eight films of OP “dark horses” because I thought that others hadn’t heard of them. (Though congrats to two who posted lists of films, none of which I’d heard of. 
) I posted them because others knew of them, but might wonder why I rate them so high.
Mystery Men* is a favorite of mine as well, and it is absolutely underappreciated. The other day, while I was pulling weeds in the garden, for some reason the line “Yes, of course. You may absolutely ‘bring zee brewskies’” popped into my head and I just started laughing.
I’ll add The Commitments (1991) as another movie that’s a great dark horse. It’s got great acting, a wonderful screenplay (based on Roddy Doyle’s book, of course) and absolutely electrifying musical performances, and you never hear anybody talk about it.
Something that makes my personal list different from others is that there are many genres I don’t particularly like, including Comedy, Action, Sci-Fi, Disaster. I do like some sentimental (e.g. love!) films, but they have to be very special to make my Top List. (Comedies I do rate very high include Good Bad and Ugly, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dr. Strangelove, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? … though it’s a stretch to call some of these comedies! :eek:)
But I’m not that weird. 
Most of the films on my Top Seventy-five List have an IMDB rating of 8.0 or more. Even most of the “dark horses” in OP have highish IMDB ratings …
8.2 Dial M for Murder
8.0 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
7.8 Crash (2004)
7.5 Whale Rider
7.4 Across the Universe
7.3 To Live and Die in L.A.
7.0 Flower Drum Song
6.5 The Third Miracle … with the exception of The Third Miracle.
(I wasn’t even aware that Crash got Best Picture Oscar until after I posted OP. Are there other “Best Pictures” with IMDB as low as 7.8?)
I do especially like heist thrillers, crime drama and spy intrigue. My Top Seventy-five List might include 7.1 Spy Game
6.8 The Score
6.5 Good Thief
“I woont you to goo out there and say ‘ahm black, and I’m prood of it.’”
One of the best car chases of all time. I like a lot of the dialogue as well, particularly any scene Defoe is in. “Do you know you’re living like a fuckin’ animal in the zoo?!”
I’m not sure whether I like Petersen better in this or Manhunter. Amazing scenes with the counterfeiting process. Shockingly violent. One of my favorites as well.
And that proves my point. That was not the message of the film, which was that racism is not simple or black and white. It shows we all have racist tendencies and they we’re blind to them. That what might be seen as racist is due to complex factors. That even if we deny we’re racist, the racism can come out in certain situations.
“Racism is bad” is the starting point, but that’s only the beginning.