Koyaanisqaatsi
Anyone here seen:
[ul]
[li]The Apple War – a Swedish film about developers wanting to build “Deutchneyland” in a small town; I think it is rather popular in Sweden but a little hard to come by in the US.[/li][li]The Adventures of Mark Twain – a claymation thing by Will Vinton released in 1985, around the time of Halley’s comet’s passage.[/li][li]Hotel Splendide – a strange British thing that kind of reminded me a tiny bit of Delicatessen[/li][/ul]
And some years ago, I had a channel on the T6 satellite for 3 months, Eurotica, on which they once showed a lengthy porn thing called Macbeth that was thin on plot, as you might expect, but the filmwork was rather impressive. I would like to see that again, for its grandiose absurdity and to try to figure out if it had anything to do with the play.
After Hours and The King of Comedy are two underrated Scosese films.
I know this is a zombie but I must have missed it the first time around. In the last few years I’ve seen a lot of fairly obscure movies. These all have fewer than 500 user ratings on IMDb:
The Brave One (1956)
Skippy (1931)
The Divine Lady (1929)
Bad Girl (1931)
The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)
Two Arabian Knights (1927)
In Old Arizona (1928)
Most of them were actually pretty good, getting 6 or 7 stars from me. The exception was In Old Arizona, which I gave only 5 stars to.
I am a little too lazy to see if I mentioned this film two years ago, but All This and World War II(1976)
World War II footage set to covers of Beatles songs.
Fire Sale (1977) Alan Arkin’s first film as Director. It’s a hilarious comedy about the dysfunctional Fikus family, starring Vincent Gardenia, Kay Medford, Rob Reiner and Arkin, as well.
In the Fall of 1977, it opened and closed so quickly, I never got to see it in the theater. A year later it was shown on HBO and I loved it. I video-taped it, and over Thanksgiving, I showed it to my family and they all were in hysterics. But outside of my family, it’s usually gotten a poor reception.
Also, A Boy and His Dog (1975) Starring a young Don Johnson, Jason Robards, Alvy Moore (Hank Kimball from Green Acres) and a beautiful actress, Susanne Benton (nudity, I think)
This is based on a bizarre post-apocalyptic story, by Harlan Ellison, and although I don’t usually like sci-fi, at all, I enjoyed this quirky film… maybe it had to do with the nudity - I saw it in college at a midnight show.
I’ve written about Will Vinton’s underappreciated adventures of Mark Twain many times on this Board. I own it on VHS and DVD.
Here’s another: Merian C. Cooper’s 1935 She, based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard. It’s regarded as the canonical version of the story, and it was made by much of the same crew that made **King Kong[/B[ two years earlier – Cooper, his wife Ruth Rose (script), composer Max Steiner (who used some very similar motifs as in KK), Ted Cheesman, and others. They actually cobbled together a script based on She and its sequel (some sources claim they added in stuff from other Haggard novels, but I don’t see it myself). I’d seen stills from it, but don’t recall ever seeing it on TV or anything. For many years it was thought to be lost in a studio fire, but a complete copy showed up in Buster Keaton’s collection of films (!) I finally bought a copy of the remastered and colorized version, the work on which was supervised by Ray Harryhausen. (Harryhausen generally has bad things to say about colorizing, but, as he points out, this film was supposed to be shot in color – the sets and costumes were made with that in mind. The budget was slashed close to production, so it never was. Internet critics who claim this film was conceived in black and white need to be reminded of this)
It’s one of those “Lost Civilization” stories that Haggard loved so much, and that was done too many times in movie serials. This is a case of it done right (I’[m sure a lot of those serials lifted from this film). The effects are great, and I’m surprised at how much borrowing there has been from this film - The Evil Queen from Disney’s Snow White was undoubtedly lifted from She, attitude, costume, and all. Harryhausen stole a clip 9actually raided the same stock library) for an avalanche in Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. And the Lunar Throne Room in First Men in the Moon is obviously inspired by She’s royal gallery.
Definitely worth a look, but you have to search for it. There are clips on YouTube.
yes
It’s weird that Scorsese hasn’t made any comedies since then. He seems (or seemed) to have a flair for it.
(I don’t think After Hours is particularly obscure though - it’s got over 29,000 user ratings on imdb).
I remember seeing *What’s So Bad About Feeling Good? *in the theater in 1968, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it on TV or heard it mentioned anywhere since then.
I also saw Zotz! with Tom Poston on TV in the early '70s, but no one else I’ve spoken to remembers it.
I remember both of them. The first was one of the odd films made by Mary Tyler Moore between The Dick van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (like “Change of Habit”, with MTM and Elvis Presley)
An Oscar completist, I assume?
The first was a huge hit in the Jewish community of Montreal (where it is set) when it came out in 1975. Nearly everybody in my circle saw it. I’ve never heard of anybody in any other city who even heard of it.
Joe Morton
Great actor who hasn’t gotten enough work.
I KNOW that I was one of the very few people who paid to see The Caveman’s Valentine. I took a date after brunch on a Sunday and there were only six other people in the theater. I saw it at River Oaks Mall in Calumet City before the place became a war zone.
Since the film GROSSED less than $700k on a $13.5 million budget, it’s pretty clear that not many people** anywhere** saw this film when it was at the theaters or that very few have probably seen it since then.
I’ll contribute the 1985 movie “Crime Wave”. No, not “Crimewave” by Sam Raimi, but rather the one filmed in Winnipeg – written by, directed by, produced by, and starring John Paizs.
I saw all of these in the theatre:
Satan’s Mistress- we saw it for the title, which turned out to be the best thing in the movie. All I really remember is that it would randomly cut to shots of the ocean for no reason whatsoever.
Bank Shot- I may have been too young to care about this movie (I was 9) but it was boring. I remember the plot sounded promising (bank robbers decide to steal a trailer-sized bank) but nothing happened for the first 3/4 of the movie.
The First Saturday In May - Documentary about some of the participants in the 2006 Kentucky Derby. They were lucky in that the ill-fated Derby winner, Barbaro, was one of the horses they followed. The only one of these I’d recommend.
Only in certain categories. I’m trying to watch all the winners for best picture, best director, all the acting categories, and all the writing categories. That’s just over 400 movies. I’ve seen all of them except 6, of which 2 are lost films that I’ll probably never see.
A couple in my collection with fewer than 200 IMDB ratings and less than 10 user reviews:
The Atomic Kid
The Horizontal Lieutenant
Ah, Dunderklumpen. I’d really be surprised if anyone else has seen this Swedish children’s film. Madame Pepperwinkle and I saw it when we were dating, and have fond memories of it, but it truly is dull and drags a lot.