I second the nominations of Flirting, Runaway Train, and Pump Up the Volume. All excellent.
To those, I’d add Insignificance, which brings together (as characters) Marilyn Monroe, Senator Joe McCarthy, Joe Dimaggio, and Albert Einstein in a small hotel room in Manhattan during the filming of The Seven Year Itch. The scene of Monroe demonstrating her understanding of special relativity to Einstein using balloons and toy trucks is one of my all time favorites.
I can’t think of any just yet, so I’ll just comment on ones you guys came up with:
Permanent Midnight – Ben Stiller was excellent in this.
Doom Generation – I don’t know whether to love it or hate it. “I’m gonna find her, and I’m gonna kill her.”
Dark City – The Crow meets The Truman Show, really cool.
Spanking the Monkey – Dude, tell me you’re are not really going to… oh my God… what are you doing?.. Lady, that’s your… eeeewwwwwwww
Meet the Feebles – Again, is it sheer brilliance or just crap?
Underground and Black Cat White Cat by Emir Kustarica. The guy makes the most visually beautiful movies ever to grace the screen, and it seems that hardly anyone has seen them or even heard of them. Please, please, please rent one of these the next time you’re at your favorite video store with a decent foreign film section. If you love movies, I promise you that you won’t regret it. If you’re trying to choose one over the other, go for Underground
Another one is Leningrad Cowboys Go America. Totally hilarious flick about a group of Finnish rockers and the culture shock they face and produce as they tour through the states.
Some that haven’t been mentioned yet…
The Basketball Diaries - 1995 (DiCaprio, basketball and drugs)
Bottle Rocket - 1996 (My favorite movie of all time)
Eight Men Out - 1988 (About the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal)
The Game - 1997 (w/ Michael Douglas - Get ready for a hell of a ride in this one!)
In the Company of Men - 1997 (Human cruelty can be shocking)
Kalifornia - 1993 (Brad Pitt and David Duchovny)
Kiss or Kill - 1997 (Wild chase across Australia)
Naked - 1993 (Johnny’s odyssey through London at night)
Romper Stomper - 1992 (Australian skinheads w/Russell Crowe)
The Spanish Prisoner - 1997 (David Mamet’s best)
Swimming With Sharks - 1994 (Kevin Spacey at his best)
and not a great movie, but the best acting job I’ve ever seen is Nicolas Cage in : Vampire’s Kiss (1989).
How about Run Lola Run? This one of my favorite movies, and most people have never even heard of it. Great soundtrack too – they even re-used part of it in Any Given Sunday.
[hijack]In middle school, this idiot bully once came up to me and said “Hey, Kristen! You’re pretty. . . pretty ugly!” Then he went over to my best friend and said “Hey Josh! You’re a homo. . . a homosexual!”[hijack]
Anyway, as for the topic–I love Love and Death on Long Island; probably my favorite movie of all time. It’s just beautiful. I met this guy, and when I mentioned this movie and he knew what I was talking about, I totally fell for him. I also adore Knife in the Water, an early Roman Polanski movie that just blows my mind every time I see it.
Ya hadda ask…
The Gift - it’s just been released, so I know almost nobody has seen it. GO SEE THIS MOVIE. Don’t be alarmed when you see Keanu Reeves in the preview and the announcer says “from director Sam Raimi” - the movie is incredible. Sam Raimi- the guy who brought us the Evid Dead franchise- has created one of the finest movies I have ever seen. I mean serious Oscar quality. A subtle, creepy, engrossing little whodunit, with liberal dashes of ESP and small-town bigotry.
Snatch - Same as The Gift, just released to theaters and you MUST see it. Same director as Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Kind of a British Pulp Fiction, but done so well that we realize what a hack Tarantino is. All of the plots revolve around a diamond heist, two managers of an unlicensed boxer, and an Irish gypsy street fighter whose identity and his performance will blow your mind.
Blood of Heroes - Rutger Hauer. Joan Chen. Post-aoocalyptic athletics. Not a great movie, but very entertaining. Kind of a challenge to find at the rental places.
The Killer, which I think is John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat’s best film.
Meet the Hollowheads the story of the Hollowhead family set in the future. It’s set in this dark and despressing future world where everything is transported by tubes. It’s got a Brazil + National Lampoon Family Vacation + acid kind of feel to it. It also stars a very young Juliet Lewis, who I’m sure doesn’t put this one on her resume.
Oh yeah, another one:
Funny Games- a creepy-as-hell German movie about a vacationing family in peril.
Also, I’ll second Bottle Rocket (from the Wilson brothers, who also brought us Rushmore). Both damn fine films.
And I’ll third Runaway Train. Escaped cons on a runaway train in Alaska. No brakes, no way to stop the train or get off without crashing/dying. The entire movie is a beautiful metaphor.
You are right, this is an awesome flick.
Did you know that Owen Wilson is one of the Wilson brothers? Owen Wilson, as in Shanghai Moon and that crappy astroid movie with Bruce Willis! I never thought he would write a movie, much less a really good one.
R88 rubber-stamps The Killer, Miracle Mile, Runaway Train, Dark City and The Cube.
Speaking of John Woo, ‘A Bullet in the Head’ (Die xue jie tou) is one of my all-time faves, and IMO even better than The Killer. Three friends get in political trouble in Hong Kong in the late '60’s; they go on the lam to Viet Nam, where one finds his fortune in a crime gang. Eventually he betrays the other friends and kills one; the other seeks revenge. All the majesty and epic scope of the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now, with unforgettabnle action scenes.
And speaking of quirky Asian crime epics, how 'bout Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano’s ‘Sonatine’? This one’s basically about an inept gang of Japanese Yakuza who hide out on Okinawa after a job goes wrong. Great character studies (Kitano is amazing as a jaded, self-hating wise guy), cinematography and music.
Though it is probably too sacharine for most on this board. I think Enchanted April is really great.
I’ve seen quite a few of the movies listed here, even Meet The Feebles (you gotta love any movie with a fox singing about sodomy while a hippo slaughters the rest of the cast). Run Lola Run is extremely cool; I own it on DVD, along with Runaway Train (one of the first three DVDs I bought, actually). I must say, I don’t hold Dark City in high esteem, but that’s just me. Here’s my own additions:
Sorcerer: Four men running from their pasts wind up in a dirtbag Central American town. Two hundred miles away, an oil well explodes. To snuff the flames, the well’s owners need dynamite, but the only TNT they can find has been left unattended and the nitro has leaked out; the slightest jar could cause an explosion. Desperate for enough money to return home, the four men agree to drive two trucks loaded with the volatile cargo across 200 miles of hostile jungle terrain. Very intense. I hear that the original, The Wages Of Fear, is even better.
Kwaidan: Just saw this one recently. A stunningly-photographed Japanese film; it tells four ghost stories (avoid the 120 minute cut, they remove one entire story) at a slow, deliberate pace. The music is chilling, the scenery inviting…it’s just amazing.
“Black Moon” – a wierd, indescribable film from Louis Malle. Basically, it’s a woman exploring an abandoned farmhouse, but the entire film keeps your eyes on the screen. With the best unicorn every portrayed on film, the final scene is unforgettable.
“The Well” – No-name cast (except for Henry Morgan) in a story about race relations, years ahead of its time (it was released around 1951). A girl vanishes down a well; the white community blames the blacks, and a race war almost breaks out. “They found the girl!” “What girl? . . . Oh.”
“Deathwatch” – Barely released SF film starring Harvey Keitel as a man hired to broadcast a dying woman’s last days – without her knowing. Way ahead of the reality TV craze (1980s) and based on D. G. Compton’s novel.
“Condorman” – Amusing light entertainment, based on a Robert Sheckley novel. More popular in Britain than the U.S. due to the appearance of Michael Crawford.
“Love’s Labour’s Lost” – Kenneth Branagh’s merging of Shakespeare and 30s musicals. If you like both, you’ll love this.
“The Time of Their Lives” – Abbott and Costello in a very atypical film. Costello is charming as the tinker who is executed as a spy.
“Let’s Not Talk About All These Woman” – A slapstick comedy. Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Really. Actually quite funny. (Alternate title – “All These Woman”).
“The Comic” – Dick van Dyke in a biography of a fictional silent film star. Funny and ultimately sad. This shares with the Bergman the use of “Yes, We Have No Bananas” as background music at a funeral.
“It Came From Outer Space” – one of Jack Arnold’s classic SF films of the 50s, this is a nice antidote to the paranoia cliches so prevelent in SF. I’ve actually seen it in 3-D.
“El” – Louis Bunuel’s study of sexual obsession. A truly creepy and paranoid antagonist.
“Hearts of the West” – Jeff Bridges goes off to early Hollywood to become a star in the silent pictures. Andy Griffith’s best role. “Anyone can call himself a writer. When someone else calls you a writer, then you’re a writer.”
“Cry Uncle” – one of the dirtiest mainstream films ever made, in the early days of R ratings when anything could go. Funny comedy-mystery starring Alan Garfield. The inadvertant necrophilia scene is just the beginning.
“Putney Swope” – by Robert Downey (a prince), the actor’s father. A satire of the advertising game, where a black executive become head of an ad agency (he is their token, and is elected because no one thinks anyone would vote for him) and turns things upside down. “How many syllables, Mario?”
Creator - Peter O’Toole as a crazed, genius biologist. It’s about the search for God and all the kinds of love there are. Great script, great acting and you’ll cry at the “Son. Of. A. BITCH”! at the end.
Zachariah - The story of Siddharta, set in the Old West and heavy on the symbolism. All the important scenes have an angel hidden somewhere in the set, and great cameos - like Doug Kershaw as a crazed fiddler who sets Our Lad on the Call to Adventure. Especially good if you’ve read your Joseph Campbell and can pick out the Guardian of the Threshhold, the Dark Path, etc. Script by the Firesign Theatre, so if you smoke at all…
I got lots more, but I gotta do some work now…
Bunny Lake is Missing mid 60’s, directed by Otto Preminger, staring the guy from 2001, and Carol Lynley.
Carol Lynley is a single mom, story opens with her, newly moved to England, going to the school to pick up her daughter. Only there’s no trace of her daughter. And no proof that she ever existed.
I saw this way back years ago on TV once, and still can’t get it out of my head. Not available on video.
I agree with the choices of Dark City and Cube.
And I nominate:
Head: the only Monkees movie I know of with their best music and absolutely no plot.
Pi: A paranoid mathmetician goes insane. And has really good electronic music.
Entropy: A love story that I, a cynical teenage girl, actually enjoyed.
I second the vote for Ghost Dog, among others. Also give it a nod for an amazing soundtrack by RZA.
I have to clarify one thing: “Princess Mononoke” is originally a Japanese anime (and a hugely successful one, at that), written in Japanese. Neil Gaiman translated the screenplay from Japanese into English for a Disney release, but he did not write the screenplay.